Copyright © 1979 By Lawrence Wilson

Once the ship reached Alexandria heading for the Suez Canal the entire crew from the captain to the youngest seaman breathed a hearty sigh of relief.

The ship was only two years old, built in Canada from Lease-Lend funds made available by the United States, one of twenty-six identical cargo boats all called Fort something, in this case Fort Stikine, from a river in British Columbia. But this was wartime and though staunch in every respect the ship was no more than a floating volcano, for she was carrying 1,395 tons of explosives, a cargo which a torpedo, even one bomb from an aircraft could send sky-high, probably with catastrophic effects on other ships sailing with her. So when she left Birkenhead in February, 1944, the Fort Stikiru was put in the outside lane of a heavily protected convoy, which made her more vulnerable to U-boat attack but less lethal to other ships if, to put it bluntly, she blew up.

If those ships had passed anywhere near the Bay of Biscay in earlier war years they would probably have been decimated. But by this time, with greatly improved radar, depth-charging devices and the so-called Merchant Aircraft Carriers which could fly off scouting planes the U-boats were no longer the hunters but the hunted and this particular convoy reached Gibraltar without a scratch.

Then a grievous ordeal began. At Gibraltar the convoy split up, some ships continuing southwards down the coast of Africa and others, including the Fort Stikine, sailing cast through the Mediterranean. One evening when they were off Algiers they were attacked by twenty German Focke-Wulf aircraft which dropped bombs haphazardly and sprayed the decks with ma-chine-gun fire. The convoy threw up a terrific barrage and red-hot shell splinters began to shower down on the Stikine's deck plating less than half an inch thick. If just one of those splinters had got into the cargo .. . Then the ship's oerlikon guns opened up and the vibration sent a rack containing live shells crashing on to the deck. Near nightfall, with the German planes still hovering around, the convoy commodore ordered the ships to make smoke, whereupon when seamen aboard the Stikine tried to light a smoke cannister it burst into flames.

The convoy suffered no serious damage and the Stikine sur-vived unscathed. By the time she reached Alexandria the crew thought their troubles were over. But that first brush with dis-aster was a mere foretaste of things to come.

Meanwhile, as throughout the voyage so far, the subject of the dangerous cargo was banned among the crew. To speak, let alone joke about it was felt to be tempting providence. But from now on the journey was uneventful and on 30 March the Stikine docked at Karachi after crossing the Arabian Sea. There some crated gliders and Spitfires were unloaded and the spaces filled with fresh cargo destined together with the ex-plosives for Bombay. And what a cargo! Scrap iron, stinking fish manure and rice were the sort of stuff a ship might have to accept. But the rest was highly inflammable: hundreds of drums of lubricating oil, 8,700 bales of raw cotton, sulphur and resin. Except in wartime a captain would have been within his rights to refuse such a mixture. All he could do now was bow to the inevitable and get one of his officers to search the refer-ence books for details of raw cotton, how to stow it and the dangers to be avoided. Such a cargo was seldom if ever ex-ported from Britain and all he knew was that cotton was tricky, but just why he could not remember.

The officer came up with a note about damp cotton giving off hydrogen. That was bad enough. But if he or the captain had possessed two standard works published in the U.S. they would have found something else. After listing the fire precau-tions to be taken when loading or unloading raw cotton one of them stated: "Cotton bales which are or have been in contact with oil or grease are very liable to spontaneous combustion."

And the other, under the heading of explosives: "These com-modities should never be stowed in the same hatch with cotton but in a properly constructed magazine in the opposite end of the ship from that in which cotton is stowed." In No. 2 hold of the Fort Stikine 769 tons of raw cotton were stowed in the bottom with timber and scrap iron above it. Then in the upper compartment drums of lubricating oil, some of which were leak-ing, were stacked on tarpaulins which covered most but not all of the deck between the upper and lower holds. In this upper compartment there were also 124 gold bars valued at a million pounds, sealed in a steel tank lashed to the bulkhead and consigned to a Bombay bank, and 168 tons of Category A, the most sensitive explosives. Two more of the ship's five holds were also stowed with explosives and cotton.

On 9 April, the Fort Stikine sailed from Karachi in convoy with tankers from the Persian Gulf down the west coast of India towards Bombay, arriving three days later in the beauti-ful harbour lying between the mainland on the east and, to the west, the long tongue of Bombay Island with its docks, ware-houses, railway terminus and street upon street of poor wooden houses. The ship tied up in Victoria Dock, flanked by Prince's Dock to the north and Alexandra Dock to the south, all three of them on the east side of the island. Normally, port regula-tions required that ships carrying explosives should fly a red flag and unload into lighters in the harbour. But in wartime the first requirement would have been an advertisement to enemy agents and the second had to be waived for the sake of rapid turnround. So it was that on that day the Fort Stikine found herself at the nerve centre of western India while only a handful of people knew just what she was carrying.

On the 12th, the same day that she docked, unloading began by Indian stevedores - first the fish manure because the stench had plagued the crew ever since Karachi, then sundries such as dynamos and wireless sets, some of the timber and scrap iron. It was not until the following morning that the foreman of stevedores was told about the explosives. The less sensitive categories, B and C, could be unloaded straight on to the dock. Category A would go into lighters. But the lighters did not come alongside until midday just before the lunch break and in the afternoon only half the stevedores worked on the explosives. The result was that by Friday the 14th most of Category A was still in the hold.

Meanwhile, the chief engineer was dismantling part of the engines to replace a faulty slide valve, which meant that in a sudden emergency the ship could not move under her own steam.

During the midday break some stevedores went ashore, others stayed on deck to eat and rest. There was, of course, a strict no smoking rule and this was partly enforced by eight watchmen, two seamen and six civilians divided into two par-ties, their primary duty being to guard against sabotage. But at this time there was confusion as to which party was supposed to be on duty and so, unbeknown to anyone, no watch was being kept.

Eventually perhaps a stevedore noticed this and slipped down into No. 2 hold for an illicit cigarette, leaving behind a burning stub. More likely, oil was leaking on to raw cotton. At any rate, around 12.30 p.m. smoke was seen drifting lazily from the hold - but not yet by anyone aboard the Stikine. The chief officer of another ship in the Victoria Dock saw it spiral-ling from a ventilator. Someone else on a third ship noticed the same thing. Ashore, an inspector of police watched it curling from a hatchway - but smoke so thin and slight that none of these men thought of raising the alarm.

Fifteen minutes passed before the foreman of stevedores saw and smelt the smoke, but when fire hoses were brought up they proved too short to reach every corner of the hold. Even so, a massive weight of water applied immediately might have quenched the fire. But here came another snag. There was a routine instruction in the docks that if a ship carrying ex-plosives caught fire a special message had to be passed direct to the Bombay Fire Brigade. The man detailed to do this failed to get through, so he sounded off an ordinary street fire alarm -which brought only two fire engines to the scene.

From now on, shortcomings, confusions and failures piled up. Despite sixteen pumps that were eventually pouring water into the hold the smoke and heat kept on increasing. Certain that the ship would blow up, the officer in charge of ordnance at the docks wanted her scuttled. But this could not be done because the sea cocks in the Fort Stikiru and others of her class were designed to let water out, not in. Someone else wanted her towed out into the harbour and sunk. But as Mr Coombs the fire chief explained, that would involve taking her off shore-based hoses, so letting the fire rage almost unchecked. As for the captain, he believed his ship could still be saved. In the result, she stayed where she was, in the very heart of Bombay's docks, surrounded by 60,000 tons of shipping.

Meanwhile, no general alarm had been given and the busy life of the huge port with its hundreds of warehouses con-tinued. Indeed, no system existed for giving such an alarm. In the previous year, when the Japanese threat had diminished, Bombay had been declared a "white area" for the purposes of air-raid precautions and an organization which might have been used for such a purpose had been largely disbanded, in-cluding its ambulance, rescue and auxiliary fire services. Other facilities existed, of course, for work such as this, some of them voluntary, but in a situation of looming disaster and in the absence of the A.R.P. set-up no one was empowered to give overall direction. The naval officer in charge, Bombay, might have done so, but strictly speaking that was only his job in the event of enemy sea-borne attack.

So the danger grew with no general precautions taken. Just before 3 p.m. the driver of a trailer pump standing on the dock below the port side of the Fort Stikine felt heat on his face and, looking up, saw a patch of paint on the plates beginning to bubble, then moments later fly off in hardened flakes. Im-mediately news was passed to Mr Coombs that the seat of the fire had been located and he ordered up a gas cutter to make a hole in the ship's side so that hoses could be passed through. But when the gas cutter arrived and a match was applied to the jet only black smoke emerged and no one could rectify the fault. Still, another cutter was on its way or should have been but for another twist of fate. Minutes previously, before it was realized that the Fire Chief had one at hand, someone had put through a call to the works department at the docks asking urgently for a cutter, then, when the first cutter was brought up but before it proved faulty, the request was cancelled.

By now thirty-two hoses had poured 900 tons of water into No. 2 hold, but still the smoke was increasing and the deck itself was so hot that planks of wood had to be laid down, then soaked with water for the heroic Indian fire fighters to stand on. But many people were wondering why with that weight of water in the hold the fire was not extinguished. The only pos-sible explanation was - not realized till later - that the water had hardly touched the fire and had actually helped to bring about the final cataclysm. As the water level rose burning cotton bales must have floated up with it, nearer every minute to the Category A explosives in the upper hold until at a certain moment the fires reached the strips of wood used as packing around boxes of ammunition.

That moment arrived around 3.40 p.m. and within minutes some of the ammunition exploded. There was a sudden belch of yellowish black smoke and flames started to lick round the. hatch coaming. The fire fighters fell back, then with great cour-age surged forward, grabbed their hoses again and played the jets towards the ammunition boxes. But it was too late.

The flames rose and fell for a while longer then suddenly without warning roared up mast-high, carrying with them wisps and streamers of burning cotton that floated down and started fires on surrounding ships. Coombs yelled to his men to get clear and they made a rush for the gangplank. The captain ordered "Abandon Ship". Meanwhile, crowds of sightseers were gathering at the dockside in blissful ignorance that at any moment the ship might blow up. There was still no red flag at the mast that might have warned them.

Having checked that everyone on board had left, the cap-tain went ashore - and was still there, helplessly watching his stricken ship, when at 4.06 p.m. No. 2 hold exploded.

In that split second the Bombay docks up to a mile away and almost everything in them were devastated. Flaming oil drums and blazing cotton bales shot up as though fired from guns, then fell on ships, sheds and houses to start yet more fires. Of twenty-four ships in or near the Victoria Dock eleven were set on fire and four sunk or badly damaged, while the 3,935-ton, 400-foot British-owned steamer Jalapadma, lying behind the Fort Stikine, was wrenched through a right-angle and ended up with her back broken, her bow in the water and the stern perched 60 feet high on top of a dockside shed. People were seized by the shock wave and flung high in the air, to land in some cases hundreds of yards away, dead or still breathing. White-hot metal splinters came humming down, tearing off arms and legs, inflicting terrible injuries. As for the Fort Stikine, the bow section sheered off and sank immediately, leaving the stern with forward bulkheads intact still afloat. Her captain was never seen again.

The explosion produced many freak effects. Fire Chief Coombs was standing on cotton bales piled on the quay when it came. When he looked down he found he had lost his trous- ers, all but the waistband and the two side pockets. A captain of ordnance was flung from his motor-cycle on to a heap of rubbish. Staggering to his feet he made for an abandoned car, to find the ignition key still in place but the engine blown clean away. Mr Motiwala, a Parsee civil engineer who lived in a flat some way behind the docks, heard something smash through the corrugated iron roof, bounce through his living-room and end up with a clang against the balcony. When he picked it up he found it was a gold bar.

But mostly the aftermath was a grim struggle to save ships, warehouses, goods, homes and human lives, a struggle im-peded by lack of organization. The consequences in a disaster of that magnitude were serious. Immediate action was neces-sary to stop fires reaching residential areas, shift dangerous explosives piled high in warehouses along the quays and sal-vage goods worth millions of pounds. But no strict priorities were observed because no one was in charge. Instead, thous-ands of volunteers, service and civilian, helped as best they could with whatever lay to hand amid a confusion that grew worse as the day wore on. Stevedores were sent home while 40,000 boxes of ammunition still lay in sheds, waiting to be moved. Then soldiers came to do the job - and were stopped by harbour police who demanded to see their passes. Initially the volunteers were also prevented from entering Prince's and Victoria docks. When the soldiers were at last let through some brought with them pumps requisitioned from fire stations which in their ignorance they thought were faulty because, after pumping for a few minutes, the water pressure fell off. But this was simply due to the filters becoming clogged with cotton floating in the docks. No one thought of that. The consequence was that sixty-five experienced firemen were robbed of their pumps to no purpose.

But the greatest error of all was made by three people, two naval captains and a colonel, the Deputy Director of Ord-nance Services. After the explosion each separately tried to assess the situations in Victoria and Prince's docks and each came to the same conclusion: that the fierce fires raging made them inpenetrable. This assessment, passed to subordinates, prevented many fire-fighters and volunteers from going in. But in fact heroic individuals had been there all the time and almost single-handed one man was in process of saving his ship, the Norwegian motor vessel Belray in Prince's dock.

Twenty-year-old Able Seaman Roy Hayward, R. N., had been drafted as gunlayer to the armed cargo ship which was lying three hundred yards from the Fort Stikine with a broad quay between them. When the explosion came several Indian workers on board the Belray were gruesomely injured and Hay-ward spent some time carrying them one by one to the quay from where transport took them to hospital. Then he helped to put out some fires on the boat deck, after which he noticed a big warehouse ablaze on the north side of the dock near a Burmah Shell oil storage depot. Some firemen were already working there and he joined them until, looking back, he saw the Belray was burning again.

By now the threat to the oil storage depot was over, so some of the men came back with him, with their pumps. First they had to hose a passage through some burning sheds that lay between them and the ship, then Hayward climbed a crane, dragging a hose pipe with him, so that he could direct it straight into a hold where timber was on fire. That done, he got down to the quay again - and saw that the stern close to the 4-inch magazine was aflame. A moment later, ninety-eight rockets stored on deck for a rocket-firing weapon exploded. Meanwhile the bow had broken loose and was out in midstream and now the stern was inaccessible so, determined to get aboard, Hayward borrowed a fire ladder and climbed up over the side, to find he was the only man on the ship. From there, as the decks were too hot to walk on, he worked his way aft step by step outside the ship's rail and was finally able to direct the quayside hoses into the magazine.

By that one man the Belray was saved to sail again, and many other people, British, Indian and American, from Army, Navy or Air Force as well as civilians performed staggering feats of heroism on that fateful Friday and on into the follow-ing night, without official help or organization, plunging into the inferno of the docks to rescue men calling for help from burning ships or clinging to anything that would float, up to their necks in water hot from incandescent debris, so covered with wreckage that at a casual glance it looked like a rubbish tip on dry land. And this in spite of the fact that at 4.40 p.m. the after part of the Fort Stikine containing 790 tons of ex-plosives and still afloat had blown up with a shattering roar, raining down fragments as in a volcanic eruption.

Cold statistics tell of the loss and destruction: 1,376 known deaths (but many more unknown), thousands injured, 34,639 tons of shipping destroyed, 55,000 tons of grain intended for human consumption, likewise thousands of tons of other foods, ammunition, war equipment, textiles, timber and machinery. Fifty thousand people from 6,000 firms thrown out of work, 3,000 made destitute. Upwards of a million tons of rubble and debris.

When it came to restoring the shambles, organization came belatedly into its own. Acetylene torches sliced up wrecked warehouses. Bulldozers cleared rubble. Tugs trailing huge nets towed accumulated rubbish from the docks. Some ships, dam-aged beyond repair, were dragged out and sunk in the har-bour, others were patched up till they could be properly re-paired.

Next, with great ingenuity the forward end of the Jalapadma was sealed and made watertight, then cut free from the stern so that it too could be sunk in open water. After that, the stern was sliced up into manageable pieces and taken away. Finally, the walls of Victoria Dock were repaired, which involved drain-ing out the water completely. Eight thousand men worked on this job, apart from thousands more in the residential and industrial areas, and within seven months the docks were in operation again.

A marvellous recovery. But when we think back to the events of that terrible day the whole disaster and the scope of the aftermath seem to have depended on factors apparently disconnected but brought rather than coming together to pro-duce a fatal result. The captain of the Fort Stikine who did not know what happens when oil meets cotton - the wartime aban-donment of safety precautions for ships carrying explosives -the delay in discharging Category A - the ship unable to move under her own steam - confusion over watch-keeping duties -delay in spotting smoke from the hold - fire hoses too short -fire brigade not properly informed - scuttling impossible - no general alarm - gas cutter not working - substitute cancelled - fire hoses float burning cotton towards explosives - sightseers not warned of danger - stevedores sent home - soldiers stopped by harbour police - "faulty" pumps - false appreciation by senior officers -. no plan for such a disaster - no overall authority.

Nor were these the only factors. A principal water main in the residential area was cut through by a piece of jagged steel. Over 200 fire pumps owned by private firms were never used because no one asked for them - and at an early stage the general manager of the docks and two of his deputies, experi-enced men badly needed to give orders, were killed.