Had never heard of this before
1947: A cargo ship explodes at dockside in Texas City, Texas. The blast and the fires that follow kill about 600 people and injure 3,500 more. Six decades later, it remains the deadliest explosion and worst industrial disaster in U.S. history.
The Grandcamp, a World War II Liberty ship that had been converted to a French merchant vessel, was taking on a load of ammonium nitrate fertilizer at a quay next to a complex of Monsanto chemical factories, offices and labs. The ship's carpenter smelled smoke in the No. 4 hold around 8 a.m. on April 16 and found that a few bags of fertilizer were on fire. He tried dousing it with a few buckets of water, then a fire extinguisher.
When he called for a hose, the ship's captain forbade it, fearful that water would destroy the $500 worth of cargo that was on fire. The skipper ordered the hold closed and its fire-suppression valves opened to release steam. Ordinarily a good idea, but not in this case.
Ammonium nitrate decomposes at around 350 degrees Fahrenheit. The fire grew. The captain ordered his crew to abandon ship.
Texas City had a small fire department. Just 36 hours before the fire, National Maritime Union co-founder James Gavin had told union members in New York that Texas City was unsafe and a "natural" for a catastrophic explosion.
Firefighters tried spraying the burning ship from the dock. Spectators, including schoolchildren crowded the quayside to watch the action. Bad idea.
The Grandcamp exploded at 9:12 a.m. Exploded is probably too mild a word.
The captain and 32 of the Grandcamp's crew died; 10 somehow survived. More than 200 people were killed on the quay. The blast was heard 160 miles away. It shattered all the windows in Texas City and half of those in Galveston, 10 miles away.
