Source of Threat and Source of Assistance: The Maritime Aspect of the 1917 Halifax Explosion
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The 1917 Halifax explosion is usually thought of as an event that devastated the cities of Halifax and Dartmouth.It is true that most of the 1963 dead and 9000 injured were civilians -the largest single group of dead were Roman Catholics and/or housewives -and the greatest damage was to private homes in the Halifax's North End.But the explosion resulted from a fire caused by a collision between a Norwegian and a French ship.It damaged or destroyed four British merchant ships -Calonne, Curaca, Middleham Castle and Pictonand a Norwegian vessel (Hovland).It caused substantial damage to the British cruiser, High Flyer, a US Coast Guard vessel, Morill; three tugs, Hilford, Stella Maris and Wasper B; and another smaller vessel, Raguse.It also destroyed a schooner, San Bernardo.It left Halifax harbour so badly damaged that convoys were delayed, some incoming traffic was re-routed and the Admiralty changed the rules for North Atlantic shipping.After the explosion, sailors from British, Canadian and American ships in harbour helped in search and rescue, and teamed up with civilians to use boats to transport the injured along the waterfront. 1 A US Navy ship, Old Colony, became a floating hospital.In addition, two other USN vessels, Tacoma and Von Steuben, arrived in Halifax five and one-half hours after the explosion.For eight days, they assisted the Canadian Army with security.After reviewing the situation in Halifax harbour prior to the explosion, this article looks at the collision that led to the fire and eventually to the explosion.It then discusses the response, before turning to an examination of the way that blame was assessed.Finally, there is a discussion of the implications of the Halifax harbour incident for maritime response to seaport incidents, and concludes that while ports are prone to disasters, effective response may come from the sea. 2 There is already a great deal of literature about the Halifax explosion.There are four novels set in and around the explosion, two of them semi-autobiographical.3 As well, there are scores of non-fiction accounts.The first doctoral dissertation to examine the phenomenon of disasters dealt with the explosion.4 There is an unpublished manuscript by a Dartmouth journalist, Dwight Johnstone, and an instant book by another journalist, Stanley Smith.5 There is an official history by Graham Metson and scores of articles, including no fewer than four on the medical response.6 There is also an excellent book by Janet Kitz focussing on the relief efforts.7 Yet there is little on the maritime aspects of the explosion.The exceptions areThe Northern Mariner/Le Marin du nord, X, No. 4 (October 2000), 39-50.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".