Word: grandcamp
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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What had caused the blast? The Coast Guard would say nothing, except that seamen, who had not been warned of the danger of nitrate cargoes (see SCIENCE), had been smoking on board the Grandcamp...
...busy, prosperous people "howdy'd" one another in the streets. Down along the waterfront, $125 million worth of oil refineries, tin smelters and chemical plants labored mightily to assure Texas City's future. Down there too was the only small blot on the day-the French freighter Grandcamp, loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and docked some 700 ft. from the great Monsanto Chemical Co. plant, was afire...
...first only the crew, the longshoremen and the local fire department troubled about the Grandcamp. But as the smoke rolled blacker, some 200 people gathered at the dock to watch. By 9 a.m., the fire fighters, who knew something about the explosive fury of nitrate, figured they had better move the ship out into Galveston Bay. Twelve minutes later it was too late...
...tremendous thunderclap, the Grandcamp vanished. Hot steel screamed uptown. A flaming wall of oil-covered water rolled over the docks as the blast picked up a steel barge and flung it 100 yards inland. Two light planes that had been circling over the harbor plummeted down together with 300-lb. chunks of ship's steel. Then, in a splitting series of explosions (one of which flipped a fire truck on top of the beached barge), the Monsanto plant and most of the rest of the waterfront blew...
...High Flyer, a nitrate-laden sister of the Grandcamp, was afire and might explode any minute...