Shipyard Find

 A CBC Radio interview today, December 17, reported that portions of the ill-fated French ship Mont Blanc were recovered during dredging operations at Halifax Shipyard. The "large" pieces were removed from the harbour bottom and landed but their location is not currently known. There are now calls for preserving the pieces as part of a larger Halifax Explosion Museum. 

 (The Maritime Musem of the Atlantic already devotes a large area to the explosion and is home to CSS Acadia, a ship that was actually present in Halifax at the time of the explosion.)

(They have also compiled a listing of all the ships involved in one way or another with the event. It can be found in this Wikipedia entry:

https://maritimemuseum.novascotia.ca/research/ships-halifax-harbour-explosion

 

On December 6, 1917 the outbound Norwegian owned ship IMO, in port to load relief supplies for Belgium, and the inbound Mont Blanc heavily laden with explosives, collided in the Narrows of Halifax harbour. The impact dislodged chemicals, triggering a fire on the Mont Blanc. Within minutes the ship exploded leveling the Richmond district in the north end of Halifax, The largest man-made explosion until the atomic blasts of the Second World War, resulted in the deaths of at least 1,782 people, injured 9,000 and left many thousands homeless.

Immediately following the explosion a pressure wave washed the IMO ashore in Dartmouth. However the burning Mont Blanc had been abandoned by its crew and drifted ashore on the Halifax side of the Narrows at Pier 6 (which was then a finger pier, extending out from shore) before the explosion. The force of the explosion had propelled some parts of the ship airborne, including an anchor fluke, which landed some miles away. The ship was essentially obliterated. (The Mont Blanc crew made it to the Dartmouth shore and tried to warn residents about the danger, but were not understood as they spoke only French.) 

The immediate area of the explosion, at Pier 6, now termed "Ground Zero" - has been built over several times, but that is not where the current dredging is going on. That work is at the area well to the south at the Machine Shop Wharf. That is the area where the interviewee believes that the remains of the Mont Blanc are resting. I suggest caution in making such an identification without more study. The Mont Blanc has been well documented, and it should be possible to confirm the identity of the recovered material. 

The area of current activity at the Shipyard, with Fort Needham and the Richmond area in the backgtound.

 In the months following the explosion, the shipyard was returned to operation as a vital asset for ship repair during wartime. I venture to say little time was spent documenting the explosion aftermath, but there were several other ship and boat losses in the general area, and all nearby buildings were flattened. Considerable debris no doubt ended up in the water, some of it at least must have been steel plate. 

In May 1918, only five months later, Prime Minister Robert Borden, expropriated the shipyard (which in those days was called the Halifax Graving Dock Company), at a fraction of its value, for his own political agenda, which included building a fleet of Canadian Government owned merchant ships to replace war losses. Facilites at the shipyard were then upgraded and rebuilt for shipbuilding. (Inicidentally the shipyard was handed over to Borden's cronies and it evolved into the Dominion Steel and Coal Company - at one time Canada's largest industrial enterprise. The Canadian Government Merchant Marine was a huge fiasco with the ships completed after the war was over, and sold off at a fraction of their building cost.)

Another rebuild took place in World War II when the shipyard again became vital in repairing war damaged ships, and late in the war, building warships.

In recent years Halifax Shipyard has been completely rebuilt again under the National Shipbuilding Strategy.  Work is currently underway to build a new pier face as part of the upgrades needed to build, fit out and maintain the new River class destroyers for the Royal Navy. That work is in the area where the shipyard once had floating drydocks and at the Machine Ship Wharf - at the farthest south end of the Shipyard (farthest away from Pier 6). The floating drydocks have long since been sold and removed. The sea bottom has now been dredged, graded and partly filled and new concrete caissons floated into place and submerged to form the new pier face, farther out from shore than the old shoreline. It is not surprising that material has been recovered from the bottom in that area but it is certainly hasty to identify it as from the Mont Blanc. The orginal Machine Shop was destroyed in the explosion and the four finger piers in the area were filled over and a single wharf, parallel to shore was built, becoming the present Machine Shop Wharf.

Whether there was any pre-construction archaelogy done or any guidelines for uncovered artefacts during the current dredging program is unknown. There was more concern related to the removal and safe disposal of hazardous materials from the sea bottom, such as heavy metals. All the dredge spoil was to be moved to Woodside where it was to be prepared for removal to a safe disposal site on shore.

When the area of Pier 6 (actually Piers 6, 7 and 8) was rebuilt in 2012-2013, tons of artefacts were uncovered and scrapped, or reburied, with little or no attention paid to any historic significance. They were far more likely to have been relevant to the explosion.

It is unfortunate that ill-informed opinion will detract from well meaning efforts to memorialize the Richmond area and the lives lost in 1917.

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