HALIFAX DISASTER.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 January 1918, Page 7

HALIFAX DISASTER.

A GRUESOME TALE. TERRIFIC EXPLOSION. PART OF TOWN WIPED OUT San Francisco, Dec. 14. Undoubtedly the most graphic pen picture of thS Halifax disaster was that given by (ieorge Yates, the private secretary of the Prime Minister of Canada. Yates is a trained hewspaper-man. [ Returning to the stricken city with Sir Robert Borden from Prince Edward Island the day after the grim event. Mr. Yates had the. advantage of an early tour of the ruined district, and has given his impressions in this vivid story, exclusively secured by the Auckland Star It is interesting to note that Mr. Yates was among the casualties of the big city hall collapse in London, Ontario, some years ago. He woke up after that event and found himself on slab No. '23" of the temporary morgue. TOO DREADFUL TO DESCRIBE. In his story Mr. Yates said: — "The catastrophe is almost too dreadful to admit of description in coherent, matter-of-fact English, and yet too complete for adequate portrayal by means of the undiscriminating camera. To properly appreciate it one must be able to conjure up a picture of what once was in contrast with what no longer is. I have visited Halifax on many occasions, have seen the North street station area., : Richmond and Willow Park in normal times, and when swollen with the abnormal flux of war. I have seen the panoramic heavily of the Dartmouth shore at all seasons and always in restful contrast to the somewhat sombre decidedly crowded, and for the most part, frame-constructed district that slopwd back from the tracks up the hill on which this historic old city stands. It was the home district of the working classes, with here and there an isolated though stately relic of other times. -It was this hard-workln,g wage-earning community that Thursday morning's tragedy wiped out. WIPED OUT PROPER PHRASE. "Wiped out" is exactly the proper phrase. In the hard-shelled towns of Flanders some walls do stand after the intense bombardment. Here a single devastating blast passed up the hill, and in the twinkling of an eve crushed the breatli of life out of 2000 people and rendered -20,000 homeless and destitute. This morning I walked over .what had been a dwelling, among the debris of which an old man worked alone. It was merely a flattened heap of wreckage, offering no obstruction to the eve and very little to the feet. What once had been a backyard looked out over the exact scene of the explosion. In the cutting below were the railway tracks, in the foreground the narrows, leading from the harbor proper to the seclusion of the Bedford basin, and t ' ibablv half a mile across the Dartmouth shore. In the railway yards scores of men labored to reestablish communications where the tracks had been washed out by the tidal wave that followed the explosion, and which left dead fish and other evidences of marine life embedded in the wreckage ■at the base of the cliff on which I stood.

DOUBLED THE TASK. The blizzard which had raged for 15 hours i.ad doubled the task of tired and disheartened men Imagine intact rooms and snug double windows, the depressing influence of a terrific gale of wet. dinging snow, sweeping over the city with scarcely a pane of glass intact, and carrying its .chill contact, in a falling temperature over thousands of beds of pain. But toward rooming the gale subsided into p steady, though bitter northeast breeze, and nciw the sun lit up a melancholy sight. On the shore, less than 200 yards away, lay the war-gray prow of a steamer—all that was left of the Mont Blanc, so I was informed. To the right, over on the Dartmouth shore, hard aground, but seemingly not in had shape, lay the Tmo, the Norwegian Belgian relief ship which collided with the French boat with its dreadful cargo.

ALL THAT WAS LEFT. To th'e left a few sunken piles and one distorted steamer, slammed bodily against a pile of wreckage which had once been a dock, was all that was left of Piers 6, 7, 8 .and 9. To those piers had come the fire chief and his deputy when the alarm of fire was turned in. and to the same spot hurried Reporter Ronaync, of the Chronicle, who had gossiped cheerily with me at my, room in the Queen's Hotel when the Prime Minister opened his campaign in Halifax the other week. Soldiers, too, hurried to the scene. How many I do not know, but I have talked with One man who told me he and another at one point at least found a score of bodies of men, who, though stripped of clothing and, in some instances, even of flesh, were quite evidently military men, b'ecause of the scraps of khaki rags in their immediate vicinity. It was even a rendezvous, of death, and death overtook even the man who turned in the alarm.

WAS TOO SLOW B-it death was 11a respector of persons in the i.eighborhood o( the explosion. A few blackened timbers along the track tc the left represent the Richmond station.* The dispatcher phoned to a conferee up the line: "'Ammunition ship is on fire in the harbor, and then; is likely to be an explosion. I'm gpirig to beat it.'' Juat then the explosion occurred, and they found his body in the basement. Of tiie yardmen not 10 per cent, remain; of 70 spare trainmen not 10 had reported for duty this morning. That mass of wrecked and twisted rolling stock in the Richmond yard represents some 400 freight cars and 70 or 80 passenger coaches which have bse." temporarily planed out of commission. All that, and more, was what the eye caught as it swept in a semi-circle along the waterfront, and railway tracks. But what lay behind and up the hill? GRfIESOME REMINDERS. It is not necessary to move from the spot to supply details enougli to convey an adequate ideu of the- scene as a whole. Less than a hundred yards away volunteers are searching the mips of a house for bodies. With sledge hammers, pickaxes. crowbars and levers oE all kinds, they tug at the twister] wreckage which they hurriedly thfmv aside. A sleigh pauses and a man joins the little groun of onlookers. It is the Prime Minister of Canada gathering at first hand the] intimate details of tile appalling disaster j to the city of his youth and early manhood. Along the road comes another sleigh, an open cutter. The driver walks behind, and with him walks two downcast men, There are persons in th-' sleigh, but they art: mercifully covered,

though ho' sufficiently to hrdc the ghastly contortions of their twjstcd frame?. Across the street is a heavy wagon uirned upsidv do-,vii. In the shafts lie the. remains of two horses,, one completely cut in two with what .sc-ems to he n. plate from the ill-fated vessel. The leant had reached the slriei'.from a roadway leading back about SO yards to what had been a foundry. XOT ONE ESCAPED. There a jumble of bricks and a bright pile of coal marks the tomb of 40 men who met death at the bench and lathe. None escaped. On the roadside were the remains of two motor-cars torn absolutely to splinters. The old man already referred to was working aimlessly over the wreckage of what had been his home. He threw to one side an artificial limb. "That," he said, seeming to think that the incident required explanation, "belonged to the lodger downstairs. He r won't need it any more. Ho was a. railroad man, and he lost his leg, and they put him on a crossing. He's gone. When mv old woman heard that the boat might blow up she wept up to the daughter's place on the hill there. You can see liie place still smoking from here." 'Did she escape injury?" I asked. To me it seems as if the old mun had left his story unfinished. ''Oh, no," lie answered simply, "alio jnd the daughter and four children, were liurned. It's funny I should find that cork leg undamaged, don't you thick ?"

THE PITY OF IT. Two men approached. One had the usual bandage around his neck and face that mark the hundreds of walking victims of flying glass, the other, with hollow lack-lustre eyes and blackened hands and face, carried a sack on his shoulder. It was of sinister shaps and blood-stained, possibly all that was left of his family. I was prepared for that by the story a railroad man told me earlier in the day about a man carrying a small box on his shoulder who was inquiring for a train. He seemed dazed, and someone asked him what he had in the box. "That,"' he replied, "is all that is left of my wife and two children. I am taking "them to Windsor to bury them." „• • CAN NEVER FORGET. On the other Bide of the street, a short distance from,the dead horses, was what seemed to be a bundle of bedding. On the top, as a protection from the snow, was spread some frayed kitchen linoleum. To prevent the wind from blowing this away was a piece of scaffolding. Instinct warned me not to see the obvious explanation; but a compelling curiosity caused me to raise a corner of the linoleum. I was relieved to see nothing but some bedding and turned to look at a camera man for a Boston paper, who was making a series of photographs in the vicinity. At this I heard a cry of horror from my companion. He had pierced the veil and raised the blanket T caught one quick glance of the bed's dead occupant, for Which I shall always be sorry, as now my memory is indelibly seared by an impression I would gladly forget. It was enough hut not all. As we drove back past the diggers in the ruins by the' foundry a man came forward j and asked my companion if he was going ' down town, and if so, would he ca'l at the undertakers and have them send out a sleigh. "We have found two more." he said, pointing to two wrapped bundles, one pitifully small. I

THE GHASTLY NIGHT LIGHTS. To-night they brought the ear around from the new ocean terminals to North Street. All the way through the devastated area piles cf burning coal, of which there is now an acute scarcity, and still smouldering wreckage throw a ghastly light over a scene of wreckage more complete than star-shelled-lighted No Man's Land. I write this on a siding alongside of the North Street station, familiar to thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. The platform is sprinkled with splintered glass, and the'building is roofless, windowless and doorless, while the interior is filled with confused masses ot wreckage and drifted snow. I begin to feel that I now Tniow what war must mean. Close at hand is all of war's dreadful embellishment, but _the sentry on the platform alongside spoils the illusion singing, none too quietly, about his girl "In little ole New York," and the ear porter has risen from his first sound sleep to put his head out of the-''kitchen window and ask him. more in sorrow than in angerj the whereabouts of the sergeant of the guard.

HALIFAX HAS CUP OF MISERY. Halifax's cup of misery was filled when after two days of horror caused by the explosion and the blizzard the following xiay, making the rescue work almost impossible, the temperature dropped and a rain and wind storm broke over the devastated city. * Experiences of the refugees, who, unable to secure accommodation in the crowded homes here, were housed in tents on the citadel hill and common, are indescribable. The wind blew the tents down in a number of cases, while tiißTain drenched the occupants. Many of them had to spend most of the night in the open fields in pitch darkness until tile relief parties found them and escorted them to buildings where they could at least stand up out "of the rain, although the wind blew through the windowless buildings at 50 miles an houi'. To-day (December 9) a warm rain was falling, partly melting three feet of snow on the ground, causing each street to be a torrent, thus hampering the work,of getting the automobiles with supplies to their destination. Notwithstanding the awful condition, 500 sailors from the navy department toiled among the ruins searching for bodies.

A CLOSE CALL. The narrow escape the city of Halifax had from complete destruction with, a possible loss of 20,000 lives was disclosed to-day when a description of bow a fire which broke out on the munition ship Picton was put out before it could reach its cargo. The Picton caught fire following the explosion on the Mont Blanc, and at the time was lying in a position much nearer the heart of the port than the Mont Blanc. The credit for extinguishing the flames on the ahip and placing her in a position wharf, even had she exploded, she would have done little harm, is r>iven to Captain J. W. Harrison, formerly a British skipper, and now marine superintendent of'the Furness-Withy line in Halifax. A short while ago the Picton, while on a voyage with munition? from an American port to Great Britain, lost her rudder off Halifax in a storm. She was towed here' for repairs. These had been completed, and «lie was moored oft" t|> ( > Acadia sugar refinery, about a mile straight across from the heart of the city, waiting the order to proceed to sea.

. . SKIPPER'S BIUVK ACT, The skipper of the ship and the members of Hia crew wore welching the lire 011 the. Mont islam: aiul nearly all were killed when the explosion took place. Those who survived, knowing the nature of the cargo of their own vessel, and seeing it ablaze from the effects of the explosion, made haste to desert her and place themselves in safety. Captain Harrison, 011 seeing the ship on lire, and also recognising that Halifax would be utterly destroyed if its cargo of munitions was ever exploded, went aboard and single-handed began the hazardous work of placing the steamer as far away from tjie city as possible.' He cut the hawser and file ship begun to drift awav on the tide. He then lilled up the hose and played it on the tire. Fortunately the flames were attacking ft section of l the ship where they were easily accessible, and owing to the captain's timely work were kept away from the munitions in the cargo holds. Captain Harrison stuck to his task until he could get. assistance to completely extinguish the flames. The ship was then taken outside the danger zone. In addition to saving the city from the effect* of a second explosion, the captain apparently also saved her valuable cargo, while the ship, it is thought, beyond being badly strained and partially imrned, can soon be rendered lit for service again. Less successful, but not less courageous, waa the action of Captain Brennsn, and the crew of the tug boat Stella Marie. Ordered by the Admiralty authorities to try and draw the beached Mont Blanc into deep water to sink her, Captain Brennan had begun his workwhen the explosion occurred, killing him ftiid his crew and blowing ashore the torn fragments of the tiny vessel. The Stella Marie was towing two scows up the harbor when the collision (between the Imo and the iiont Blanc occurred. He was signalled by the Admiralty officials to drop the. :'oows and go to the Mont Blanc, which was ablate from stem to stem at the time. Captain Brenniu lost no time, and followed the French ship, which had heen beached. I-le had got a rope aboard her when the explosion occurred.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN 1

On December 11 the capture of a carrier pigeon, under whose wings was a message in German, was reported to the police of Halifax. The pigeon, probably wounded in the explosion five days previously, entered the window of a home near the burned area. Its number was "Mew York, No. 29." The pigeon was handed over to tb c chief of police of Dartmouth, who declined to make any statement ponding the delivery of the message to the military authorities. The woman who captured it said the bird was suffering intensely from the cold, and seemed to 'have come into Halifax for shelter. Two strange craft were at sea not far from Halifax at night.