AFTER TOURING THE HARBOUR LESS THAN AN HOUR AFTER THE explosion, Rear-Admiral Bertram Chambers summarized what he saw in a report to the Admiralty in London: “A fire was raging from the vicinity of the dry dock right up to Richmond and to the top of the hill. Every building in the vicinity appeared to have been demolished…. No description of mine can adequately picture the devastation which has befallen this city. For miles in the principal streets, every window has been reduced to fragments, whilst in parts far from the explosion, houses have collapsed and chimney stacks have fallen. Large fragments of the exploding vessel have been picked up miles from the explosion.”
Highflyer had lost three officers and forty men and it was “difficult to exaggerate the damage.” Chambers said he hoped to sail the current convoy shortly, but added, “Please notify all Halifax out of action for some time.” The situation, he said, was as bad as it could possibly be.
Vice-Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, the deputy first sea lord, informed the British war cabinet that Halifax would be closed for some time. The Admiralty instructed all ships bound for the US to bypass Halifax and head directly to their destination. Ships bound for the Panama Canal would be checked at Kingston, Jamaica. Canadian convoys would have to sail from “St. John’s, Brunswick” [sic], “an alternative but much inferior port.” The situation was so worrisome that when the captain of the US Coast Guard Cutter Morrill asked permission to return to a US port for repairs, his request was refused. Morrill was told to join the Androscoggin (coming from St. John’s, Newfoundland) in an attempt to keep the St. Lawrence River open. Because the explosion occurred at the end of the St. Lawrence shipping season, it was essential to keep the river open so Quebec City and Montreal could handle military traffic.
After thoroughly examining the medical situation, the Canadian army reached similar depressing conclusions. It advised Ottawa that it could not handle incoming wounded:
Pier two standing but interior destroyed have made arrangements to rebuild at once… Naval authorities state they can continue to handle men coming in we will have to handle from ship to train as it will be impossible to use Clearing Depot for at least one month think if possible smaller boats should go to St. John [Saint John, New Brunswick] it will be hard to handle them here unless Railway can give quick despatch which they can not do yet.
In view of this message, a troop ship bringing 1206 Canadian officers and men home on convalescent leave and 503 women and children, among them dependents of soldiers, was diverted to an American port, where it arrived 19 December. Staff from Halifax went by train to meet it. Those arrangements lasted until 10 January, when Halifax received its first shipment of convalescent soldiers. However, Pier 2 was not fully repaired until May.
A few days later, Morrill’s orders were changed. Instead of being ordered to stand by to keep the St. Lawrence clear of ice, she was told to assist a ship that had run aground at Savage Harbour, Prince Edward Island. That change reflected the fact that the situation had dramatically improved. On 10 December, four days after the explosion, Rear-Admiral Chambers told the prime minister and key officials from the port and the railway that the harbour was not blocked by Mont-Blanc’s wreckage. He added that the only ships severely damaged were those in the inner harbour—Calonne, Middleham Castle, Picton, Hovland, Curaca, IMO, and Mont-Blanc herself. The ships in Bedford Basin had all escaped damage. Finally, the best news of all: the essential repairs to Highflyer were almost done and the convoy that had been delayed could soon sail. The Admiralty had considered using Calgarian or an escort brought from Bermuda, but decided to wait until Highflyer was repaired. Acting on that information wired to London by Chambers, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, the First Sea Lord, told the war cabinet that “the situation was in hand and convoys could be continued.”
On Wednesday, 11 December, five days after the explosion, Highflyer and Knight Templar left with a slow convoy of thirty-three ships. Four days after that, on 15 December, Changuinola escorted a fast convoy of seven more ships. Hildebrand left the next day, 16 December, with nine slow ships. On 21 December, another convoy sailed with seven fast ships escorted by Calgarian. Three more convoys comprising nineteen, seven, and five ships left before the end of the month. Chambers reported to London that the first convoy had been delayed by the damage to Highflyer, the second “by the general disorganization following the explosion and by furious gales which held up all work,” the third just slightly because its escort, Hildebrand, was late in arriving. Overall, however, the convoy situation was restored. The Admiralty was delighted and complimented Chambers on his exemplary performance. No one raised the questions that were still being asked in Halifax:
To an impartial observer, the answers seemed obvious. Mont-Blanc was a French ship. The Americans loaded it with explosives. The British sent it to Halifax. The collision took place in a harbour under the control of the Canadian naval service. Therefore, all four countries bore some of the blame. At the very least, the incident could teach something about handling dangerous substances. There was an inquiry, but it did not examine any of these issues. That was deliberate. No one in authority wanted the real cause of the Halifax explosion probed by a public inquiry. As we will see shortly, the lawyer retained by the government made that clear in writing before the first witness appeared.
Initially, many people in Halifax blamed the explosion on the Germans. That was because when Mont-Blanc exploded many assumed the city was under German attack. Jock Hamilton, quarter-master sergeant with the Royal Canadian Regiment depot, for example, was in his office at the Wellington Barracks when Mont-Blanc exploded. The explosion sent a huge piece of glass into a cupboard and another into his thigh. It came out of his ankle five years later. Hamilton recalls, “I figured this was it, a [German] naval shell had hit the place.” He yelled, “‘Good God. Jerry’s got our number!’” Dean J.P. Llwyd was saying morning prayers at the Anglican Cathedral. He had just risen to read the psalms when he felt something like a mild earthquake. Then the whole building trembled and glass started falling from the windows. Llwyd said to himself, “That is a German shell,” and it flashed across his mind that a submarine had crossed the Atlantic and bombarded Halifax.
Josephine Clark was a secretary in downtown Halifax. She was at her desk when the bell rang for her to go upstairs and take dictation. As she climbed the stairs, the building shook. She had no idea what was happening, but a retired soldier who lived upstairs came running down toward her yelling, “Air raid! Air raid! Get to the cellar!” She followed him down the stairs but the cellar door was struck. She ended up on the street where she could see the cloud rising farther north. Today, when she sees a space launch, the cloud of smoke and fire below the rocket reminds her of 9:04:35 a.m., 6 December 1917. Josephine Bishop was eighty-six kilometres away in Truro. She was reading morning prayers to her class when her school started shaking. She wrote to a friend, “Needless to say we were all upset, thought at first the Germans might have opened fire on Halifax.”
The official historian, Professor Archibald MacMechan, had the same thought. He was at home in the south end of the city, kilometres away from the harbour. When his house shook and a piece of debris smashed through his door, he was certain the Germans had arrived. Within five minutes, someone had made it across the city and corrected that impression. Josephine Clark learned even faster. She had barely reached the street when someone there told her a ship had blown up.
Once it was clear there was no German attack, thoughts turned to the possibility of sabotage. That rumour was harder to put down. On 10 December, police took into custody seven persons of German nationality: H.R. Bergman, Charles Calfruckbon, William Meyer, C.G. Shultz, Jacob Rabinovitch, Joseph Hornstein, and Emma Shepherd. Howard Glube had met Bergman at a jewellery supply house and come to hate the man. “There is no question he was a German sympathizer,” he said. “When they locked him up, I loved it.” However, the local German community played no part in what happened. When the police released the six, they said there was never any suspicion these persons had been responsible for the explosion. They had been interned for their protection because of the anti-German feelings that followed the explosion. The internment did, however, fan suspicion.
There were rumours that a carrier pigeon had been found carrying a message in German. It was supposedly turned over to the Dartmouth Chief of Police. There were detailed accounts—some reached Boston—that the body of a German saboteur had been found near the Wellington Barracks. Jim Lotz even used the idea of German saboteurs in his novel The Sixth of December, which was based on the explosion and published in 1981. (Lotz even wove Leon Trotsky into the plot—based on the fact Trotsky was at one point detained in Halifax in 1917.) Although rumours of a German plot were kept alive for years—Samuel Henry Prince raised them again in his talk in 1924—there is not the slightest evidence the incident involved sabotage. In an effort to detect German spies, the Canadian army brought in two German-speaking intelligence officers, Captain H.H.V. Koelle and Lieutenant Geoffrey M. Le Hain, and empowered them to arrest and interrogate suspects. They eavesdropped on conversations in bars hoping no one would realize they understood German. They heard nothing, arrested no one. Passengers on incoming ships were searched so thoroughly that one woman was found to have printing on her backside. Captain J.A. Bayer (a member of the Prince Edward Island Heavy Brigade’s detachment in the forts), a photographer in civilian life, was called in to photograph her posterior. It turned out she was using newspapers to cover the toilet seat and that the ink had stained her bottom.
Once German sabotage was ruled out, suspicions turned toward IMO. It was said IMO had deliberately rammed Mont-Blanc and that IMO’s Norwegian crew was sympathetic to Germany. When IMO’s wheelman, John Johansen, offered to pay a nurse from Boston $25 to get him out of hospital, she reported him to the military police. He was arrested and held in solitary confinement, watched by an armed guard. The incident made headlines in Boston. Suspicion of him was further aroused when material in a foreign language was found among his papers. By the time it was realized the language was Norwegian and not German, the investigators had learned Johansen’s efforts to get out of hospital had nothing to do with spying. He wanted to see his girlfriend. In any case, it was hard to sustain suspicion against a neutral country whose ships were being sunk regularly by the Germans. It was also hard to blame a ship when her captain and her pilot, and some of her crew, were victims of the explosion.
With a German attack, German saboteurs, and IMO’s crew ruled out, the public turned its attention to the crew of Mont-Blanc. Here there seemed genuine grounds for suspicion and anger. First, it was Mont-Blanc, not IMO, that exploded. Second, or so the public believed, the crew had fled without telling anyone. No one had understood the crew’s shouted warnings in French and Lieutenant-Commander Murray—to whom Mont-Blanc’s pilot shouted a warning—was killed in the explosion. Most important, Mont-Blanc’s crew was French. The French were refusing to take part in the war and now they were blowing up Halifax. However, the “French” opposed to the war were French Canadians. The Mont-Blanc’s crew was from France, which was fully involved in the war. But that did not matter. A public that could believe Sir Wilfrid Laurier was a friend of the Kaiser found it easy to believe French sailors would blow up Halifax. In his book The Town That Died, Michael Bird concludes: “Le Médec and his crew … had one great disadvantage—the fact that they were Frenchmen—which, in the eyes of the majority of Nova Scotians, made them capable of almost anything.” It certainly coloured a formal inquiry held to discover what happened. The Admiralty judge who ran it was so determined to blame the French that he discounted all the evidence to the contrary.
Prejudices aside, it seems easy to place the blame for the explosion. Mont-Blanc was on the correct side of the channel and had signalled her intention to stay there. IMO was on the wrong side of the channel. On that basis, Mont-Blanc was right and IMO wrong. If two cars were heading toward each other and one was on the wrong side of the road, surely that one would be responsible for any accident that ensued. Was it conceivable the IMO’s captain, Haakon From, had stubbornly refused to concede the right of way? Incredibly enough, that was plausible. A few months earlier, when IMO broke down in Philadelphia and required repairs costing $9000, From got into a brawl with Gustav Schmaal, the owner of Schmaal Engineering, the firm that did the repairs. Schmaal said From attacked him when he came to collect his money: “When I entered the cabin, he glared at me like a man out of his mind and snarled like a beast. Raising his big fist, he brought it down on my head, knocking me to the floor. Then, cursing loudly, he picked me up bodily and hurled me towards the door of the cabin. As soon as I regained my feet, I ran for my life.”
After the incident in Philadelphia, IMO fled the harbour, but was stopped by the American authorities and From was ordered to face charges. If From could lose his temper in Philadelphia, he could certainly lose it again in Halifax. And he had reason to be angry. He was a whaler used to being in charge of his own ship, free to go where the wind, waves, and whales took him. Now he was ferrying relief supplies across the Atlantic and was being forced to go where the British told him. He had not wanted to come to Halifax, but he had no choice. Then, when he wanted to leave, another frustration: his coal supply came so late he was forced to stay another night in harbour. Now, as IMO was finally under way, a tiny ship was whistling at him, telling him to get out of her way. It was true From had assaulted Schmaal. It was also true From had a short temper. However, it was hard to believe that a captain of his experience would deliberately hold course and risk a collision—or that a pilot with an excellent record would let him do so. There had to be another explanation.
The man appointed to prepare evidence for the inquiry was one of Halifax’s most prominent counsels. Born in Antigonish and educated in London, Paris, and at Dalhousie and Harvard, W.A. Henry was another of the Presbyterian fraternity that ran Halifax. He belonged to Fort Massey Presbyterian Church, the same church as Judge Drysdale, the judge who would conduct the inquiry, and C.J. Burchell, the lawyer who would act for IMO. Henry was a reluctant advocate. He could have earned more money acting for one of his regular clients—the owners of IMO or the owners of Mont-Blanc. By accepting the government brief, Henry lost income and lost a chance to go to London when the case was appealed to what was then the final court of appeal for Canadian cases, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. He asked to be paid $100 per day for his services instead of the $75 per day paid counsel at the time of the Empress of Ireland inquiry. He argued the amount was justified because acting for the government had cost him income:
If I had not been retained by the government, I should have represented one or other of the ships, almost certainly the “Mont Blanc”. Both had agents in Halifax whose business I attend to. The Robert Reford Co. Ltd. agents for the “Mount Blanc” [sic] were inclined to be annoyed because I couldn’t act for them, as were Pickford & Black Limited, agents for the Imo. As both retained other counsel, they were also instructed in the collision action and cross-claim instituted in the Admiralty Court, which I would have undoubtedly had, on one side or the other. As the values involved run into millions the litigation will no doubt be carried to the Privy Council, and the remuneration of counsel engaged will be very handsome. Then, too, though I am not enamoured of that class of work, I lost the defence of those criminally charged as a result of the judge’s findings.
Despite his concerns about Canada’s allies and about money, Henry was desperately trying to get ready for an inquiry. Given the conditions in Halifax, that was not easy: “The storm made locomotion almost impossible, all transportation facilities have been commandeered for relief work, the trams were stalled by snow, and practically the only way to communicate was by telephone and even that was seriously restricted by the number of instruments put out of order by the explosion and by the cable between this city and Dartmouth being broken or injured so that no communications with Dartmouth could be had.” Despite that, he was ready to start on 13 December, after a delay of one day when one of the commissioners arrived late.
In addition to retaining Henry, the federal government found a judge who would run the inquiry the way they wanted. Arthur Drysdale knew before the inquiry started that Mont-Blanc was responsible. He was so sure of that fact that he ran the inquiry like a kangaroo court. When a Halifax lawyer, Donald Kerr, read the proceedings years later, he described what happened as “astonishing and bizarre.” Kerr was even more astonished at the behaviour of the lawyer representing IMO, C.J. Burchell. The key people on IMO had been killed in the explosion: if he was to make a case, Burchell had to break the testimony of those who had survived—the captain and pilot of Mont-Blanc. He went after them in an abusive and unprofessional way. Kerr found his behaviour extraordinary: “On two occasions, Burchell told a witness that another witness was waiting in the wings whose testimony would absolutely contradict what the current witness was saying. A first-year law student learns that one must never make such a statement unless the witness referred to is, in fact, available and will testify. In Burchell’s case, both of his statements were false. The additional witnesses Burchell referred to simply did not exist.”
When Burchell was challenged by Chief Examining Officer Frederick Evan Wyatt, who demanded to know who the witnesses were who would challenge his testimony, Burchell was forced to back down. That did not stop his abusive and misleading tactics—tactics that on most occasions were tolerated by the judge. Burchell even made fun of Pilot Francis Mackey’s grasp of French, playing up his inability to spell in French the words of the ship’s telegraph. Yet, a reading of the transcript shows Mackey knew the crucial meanings: full speed, half speed, and slow.
In addition to going after the witnesses from Mont-Blanc, Burchell tried to divert the inquiry from its goal—to determine why there was a collision—by focusing on which ship exploded. By doing that, he focused attention on Mont-Blanc. It blew up and therefore it had to be responsible. On 17 December, for example, he concluded his second day of cross-examination of Mont-Blanc’s pilot, Francis Mackey:
Burchell then implied that Mackey was a hard drinker. Mackey said quite openly he might have drunk too much occasionally when he was younger, but not any longer. Others said he was close to a teetotaler. Apparently, Burchell also made up that allegation.
In the long run, Burchell’s attempts to obscure the purpose of the inquiry may have damaged his efforts as counsel for IMO. When the lawsuit finally reached the Supreme Court of Canada, two judges commented on this aspect of the inquiry:
There may have been a reason for Burchell’s emotional performance. On the day of the explosion, he used his car as an ambulance, starting immediately after the explosion and carrying on until one o’clock the next morning. Like most volunteers, Burchell ignored the cry that there might be a second explosion. The next morning, at 7:30 a.m., he started meeting incoming trains carrying doctors and nurses then, after a quick breakfast, helped removed the homeless from two streets in the North End. He kept going for another 11 hours until his car became stuck in a snowdrift and he had to abandon it and walk home. On his last call before getting stuck, he had crawled into the basement of a home where he found a soldier and four women huddled around an oil stove. He persuaded the women to go with him to a shelter, but the man, a sergeant, said he had to report to work. Burchell wanted to punish those who had so damaged his city and, to him, those responsible were the captain and pilot and crew from Mont-Blanc.
Assisting Judge Drysdale in the inquiry were two “nautical assessors,” whose role was to question witnesses concerning the details of maritime navigation. Captain L.A. Demers, whose rank came from his long career in the merchant marine, was the dominion wreck commissioner in the federal government’s marine department. The second was Captain Walter Hose, RCN, appointed because the port was under naval control in wartime. Hose, as captain of patrols, commanded the Royal Canadian Navy’s force of anti-submarine vessels that patrolled the outer approaches to the harbour and the shipping lanes along the coast. These duties were for operations well clear of the inner harbour where the disaster took place. Still, there was reason to question the independence of his views, as did Mayor Peter Martin in a protest he sent to Sir Robert Borden on 13 January 1918: Hose “should be examined not examiner.” Martin’s view reflected a bitter animus against the Canadian navy in an impassioned search for those responsible for the disaster. Still, it was true that Hose had been on the fore bridge of Niobe when the collision occurred, had seen part of what happened, and had discussed this, even before the explosion, with Niobe’s first lieutenant. Shortly after the explosion, he temporarily replaced the injured Captain Pasco as captain superintendent, and thus became responsible for the management of harbour traffic. Nevertheless, as Charles Ballantyne, the naval minister, pointed out to Borden, Hose had been nominated by Admiral Sir Charles Kingsmill, the director of the naval service, as particularly well qualified. Hose, moreover, had no part in establishing or enforcing the traffic regulations at the port, which was the central issue concerning the navy in the inquiry. Hose continued to participate, but did not ask questions when Captain Pasco, the chief examining officer Commander Frederick Wyatt, or the Mate Terrance Freeman, who had examined Mont-Blanc at the entrance to the port, appeared as witnesses.
The inquiry was only the first stage in a series of legal manoeuvres. Next, there was a trial before the Exchequer Court. The judge who heard that case was none other than Arthur Drysdale, who had already decided who was at fault. It was hardly surprising that he told the court he already had heard the evidence and knew what had happened. Nor it is surprising he reached the same conclusion: Mont-Blanc was entirely responsible. Given a track record like that, it was inevitable the case was appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, and eventually to London. (Until 1949, decisions of Canada’s Supreme Court could be taken on appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London.)
The Wreck Commission Inquiry, which gathered the testimony and evidence used in the subsequent legal proceedings, concluded that the collision was a “violation of the rules of the road … the pilot and the master of the S. S. Mont-Blanc were wholly responsible.” Even though a collision was imminent, Mont-Blanc should have stayed along the Dartmouth shore. The fact that IMO was on the wrong side of the channel was irrelevant. The inquiry concluded that Mont-Blanc’s pilot should be fired, lose his licence, and be prosecuted in the criminal courts, and that the French government should cancel Le Médec’s master’s ticket and take court action. They censured the chief examining officer, Commander Wyatt, saying he was guilty of neglect, and censured Edward Renner, pilot of the American steamer Clara that had forced IMO to stay along the Dartmouth shore. They were enraged that Francis Mackey was allowed to carry on as a pilot while there was an inquiry. “In our opinion,” they said, “the authorities should have promptly suspended the pilot.” They noted that harbour regulations did not deal specifically with the handling of explosives and said that should be changed. “We realize that whilst the war goes on under present conditions explosives must move, but in view of what has happened we strongly recommend that the subject be dealt with specifically by the proper authorities.”
The findings of the inquiry were issued 4 February 1918, less than two months after the explosion. They said nothing about the fact that Mont-Blanc was a floating bomb or why that was the case. Although Henry gave no indication of his own views, he had deep reservations about the findings, as he informed the deputy minister of Marine and Fisheries, Alex Johnston, in a letter dated that same day:
The decision that the whole responsibility for the collision falls on the “Mont-Blanc” has come as a great surprise to most people. It was expected that the “Imo” would have been found to be primarily at fault for being and remaining on the wrong side of the channel, and that the Mont-Blanc might also be found to blame for a manoeuvre performed just before the collision. I hardly think that the Higher Courts will take the same view of the facts when an appeal is asserted from the Admiralty decision which will undoubtedly follow the judgment just delivered.
Next came the Exchequer Court. The counsel for Mont-Blanc claimed that IMO was going too fast, was on the wrong side of the channel, had not kept a good lookout, had come into Mont-Blanc’s channel, and her decision to reverse engines put the ships on a collision course when they were about to pass. Mont-Blanc’s lawyers also claimed IMO had not been operated as her signals indicated. IMO’s counsel claimed Mont-Blanc was going too fast, had not signalled properly, failed to reverse her engines even when she thought—incorrectly—that IMO was in her channel. In addition, they argued Mont-Blanc was not flying a red flag, that she had disobeyed the harbourmaster by bringing explosives into Halifax, and that there was divided command on the bridge. All those arguments were superfluous. Judge Drysdale was presiding and he had already made up his mind. When a witness appeared who had not previously testified—and that witness supported Mont-Blanc’s version of what happened—Drysdale virtually accused him of lying. Joseph L. Makiny, captain of the tug Nereid, stated that IMO was on the wrong side of the channel and that Mont-Blanc had made a desperate last-second attempt to avoid a collision. Drysdale interrupted his testimony on several occasions, then announced in his decision:
In his decision, Judge Drysdale completely dismissed Makiny’s evidence:
As to Makiny’s evidence, I have only to say that he did not impress me as throwing any light on the situation. His manner was bad and his matter worse. In short I do not believe him…. Once you settle where the collision occurred and I think it is undoubted that it occurred on the Halifax side of the mid-channel you find the impossibility of the story of Pilot Mackey. Even if you say mid-channel, the story of the French ship is absurd.
Once again, Drysdale ignored the evidence. Once again, Mont-Blanc was held responsible. Once again, questions about the loading of the ship, the handling of dangerous cargoes, and the fact that other traffic was moving about were ignored.
When the case reached the Supreme Court of Canada, two judges agreed with Burchell that Mont-Blanc was fully at fault. Two others concluded just the opposite. They said IMO was at fault. IMO was on the wrong side of the channel from the start and Mont-Blanc’s last-ditch attempt to get out of the way was understandable, though it may have been unwise. However, the Supreme Court was no less free of prejudice than Burchell. The judges who blamed Mont-Blanc were anglophones. The ones who blamed IMO were French Canadians. The court split along ethnic lines. The fifth judge—the one whose views should have decided the case—said that he could not choose between the two: IMO and Mont-Blanc were equally responsible. That split—two on one side, two on the other, one undecided—would have allowed the original decision to stand. In other words, Mont-Blanc would be held responsible. However, the two francophone judges did not like that. Even though their written opinions stated IMO was responsible, they voted with the judge who could not make up his mind. Despite their own arguments to the contrary, they held that the responsibility was equally divided. Therefore, two judges held Mont-Blanc responsible, and three said the fault was split. The Exchequer Court decision was overturned. The blame was now split fifty-fifty.
The fourth and final proceeding was an appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London and was heard by some famous names in legal history, including Viscount Haldane and Lord Dunedin, as well as Admiral Sir Nelson Ommanney. Their Lordships said they had tried to sort out the testimony about whistling, but had been unable to do so:
Of the independent witnesses examined, several, on points other than the whistling, corroborate, in substance, the officers and crew of this ship [Mont-Blanc]. They differ with them on the question of the nature, number and sequence of the signals. On the question of whistling, the evidence is, on the whole case, so contradictory that it is impossible to found upon it any precise and confident conclusion. This difficulty does not exist to the same extent as to the movements of the ships themselves, of which these signals, at best, ought to be heralds.
Then they seemed to move in a completely different direction to earlier adjudications in that they were sympathetic to the Mont-Blanc:
The Mont-Blanc until she starboarded her helm—went to port—in the agony of collision, never left her own water. The speed of the Mont-Blanc was not immoderate. The IMO in order to have struck the Mont-Blanc as hard as it did must have been going at a higher rate of speed than her witnesses admitted. The Mont-Blanc at the time of the collision must have had little way or else the stem of the IMO would have been twisted.
However, the court ruled all that did not matter. It said the two ships were equally responsible because they came too close to each other without trying to stop, noting that Mont-Blanc’s officers testified the distance between the two ships was 400 to 500 feet (125 to 150 metres) when she tried to evade the collision, and that was before IMO had reversed her engines: “It appears to their Lordships that it was a most hazardous position for such big ships to be allowed to get into; and that it necessarily involved the risk of collision; and that both captains were to blame for not having prevented their respective ships from getting into it…. Their Lordships are clearly of opinion that both ships are to blame for their reciprocal neglect above mentioned to have reversed and gone astern earlier than they did.”
In other words, although its reasons were different, the judicial committee upheld the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. The blame was split fifty-fifty. Whatever the merits of their conclusion, their lordships seemed unconcerned about facts. The decision said the IMO was in Bedford Basin for the purpose of being convoyed, which, of course, was not true. It also included calculations based on the length of IMO, which it says was 133 yards long. IMO was actually 143 yards (131 metres) long, making it a substantially larger ship. Their lordships did not mind. They ignored much of the evidence anyway.
The civil case was not the only outcome of the incident. Three of those involved—Mont-Blanc’s pilot, Francis Mackey, Mont-Blanc’s captain, Aimé Le Médec, and the chief examining officer, Commander Wyatt—were arrested on warrants sworn by the chief of police, Frank Hanrahan. They were charged with the unlawful death of the IMO’s pilot, William Hayes. On 6 March, the Crown applied to have another charge added—criminal negligence. The magistrate, Robert A. McLeod, agreed, and then ruled that there was sufficient evidence to commit the men for trial. Mackey’s lawyer, Walter O’Hearn, went to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court. After hearing that appeal, Justice Benjamin Russell ordered Pilot Mackey released. He said there was no evidence to find him criminally culpable. And he said this in very clear terms:
I do not think there is anything … that tends to substantiate the charge of such negligence that would be a necessary ingredient in the crime of manslaughter. I should go further and be inclined to hold that there is not a single fact proved or even stated in evidence that is not consistent with the exercise of the highest degree of care and thought on the part of the pilot of the Mont-Blanc. It is, under the evidence before me, differing as it does from that which was before the Admiralty court, a debatable question whether there was even a mistake made by the pilot in the course pursued by the navigation of the ship. It surely cannot have been manslaughter for a defendant to have done what was best in his judgment to prevent an accident even if, in spite of his best efforts, the struggle was unsuccessful.
Later, the same judge released Le Médec.
Though the third person charged, Commander Wyatt, had to stand trial after the grand jury returned a true bill, he was found not guilty. What was remarkable about the case is that the key evidence—in the view of Judge Russell—was from Joseph Makiny, the captain of the Nereid, the man Judge Drysdale had suggested was a liar. Obviously, his colleagues did not share Drysdale’s opinion. Dissatisfied, Police Chief Hanrahan tried to go directly to the Supreme Court himself to get a preferred indictment against Le Médec and Mackey. The new mayor, Arthur Charles Hawkins, swore an affidavit in support. The application was not successful.
Despite the court order absolving Mackey from any responsibility for what happened, Charles C. Ballantyne, the minister of Marine and Fisheries in Borden’s Union government, refused to restore Mackey’s licence. The chairperson of the pilotage commission, James Hall, said Mackey should be allowed to resume his career. Judge Drysdale had argued that Mackey’s actions were criminal because, knowing that Mont-Blanc carried explosives, he had but one choice: stop and order full speed astern and signal this to IMO with three whistles. That would have swung the ship’s bow to starboard (presumably into the Dartmouth shore). Hall pointed out that Mr. Justice Russell had found “not a tittle of evidence to submit to the Grand Jury and he has taken the unusual course of discharging the pilot under the writ of habeas corpus.” Hall told Ballantyne that the Pilotage Commissioners felt that, “considering Pilot Mackey’s long and honourable record and the necessity for pilots at the present time, we ought to allow [him] to continue his duties.” Nevetheless, Mackey would have to wage a four-year legal battle, and await a change of government, before his license was restored in 1922.21
The French shipping line ignored the complaints against Le Médec. He carried on as a captain until he retired. Perhaps one reason he survived was that his fellow captains wrote to the French government on his behalf. In a letter dated 11 March 1918, they charged that the collision and explosion were the fault of IMO, not Mont-Blanc. They said the blame was laid against Le Médec and Mont-Blanc “to calm the opinions of the inhabitants of Halifax.” In that, they were probably correct.
Still, that leaves unanswered the questions about the way Mont-Blanc was loaded, the fact that she was sent to Halifax and allowed into the harbour without special precautions, or the fact that other traffic was moving about the harbour. That those questions were never raised was not a coincidence. Before the inquiry started, a decision had been made to avoid anything that might raise questions about the Americans, who had loaded the ship in such a dangerous way; the British, who had sent the ship to Halifax; or the French, whose ship it was. On 22 December, the counsel for the Wreck Commission Inquiry, W.A. Henry, wrote to Alex Johnston, deputy minister of Marine and Fisheries:
The whole subject matter of such an investigation is so closely allied with the carrying on of the war that it would be considered improper that anything in the nature of a public inquiry could be instituted. The whole matter of the convoying of ships across the Atlantic from Canadian ports is in the hands, I understand, of the British Admiralty. It seems to me that no Court of Inquiry authorized by the Canadian government would have jurisdiction to investigate proceedings of the Admiralty. In the case of the Mont-Blanc another important consideration is involved. This ship was loaded in the United States with a cargo destined for France and no doubt owned by the French government. The war interests therefore of our two greatest allies are involved which would make, I think, the holding of such an investigation a delicate matter.
Henry had no intention of doing anything that might embarrass the Americans, the British, or the French government, and the government in Ottawa knew that. As far as the real issues were concerned, the inquiry was a farce. Of course, in public, Henry gave no indication that the inquiry’s hands were tied before it started. It probably never occurred to him that his letter would be preserved and eventually made public.