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THE DAY BOMBAY CAUGHT FIRE
14th April 1944 was
just another day for the people of Bombay. It was high summer. There was
nothing abnormal about the humid but not so hot Friday. Activities on the
Victoria dock of Bombay port and the single screw, 7142-ton, 441 feet in
length and 57 feet across coal burner S.S.Fort Stikine, berthed in the dock,
were also as usual.
Those were the days of
Second World War. India, still a British colony, had to aid the war effort.
Bombay, the major port in the east, was the clearinghouse, distribution centre
and storehouse of the war paraphernalia.
Stikine had sailed from Birkenhead in Britain and with a stopover at Karachi port had berthed in the Victoria dock two days earlier on April 12. It carried explosives, ammunition and other war material for the planned allied attack on Japan. In its hold were 238 tons of highly sensitive 'A' category and 187 tons of 'C' category of explosives.
Also stored in its hold
were lubricating oil drums besides bales of raw cotton, heavy timber, scrap
iron, old dynamos and wireless sets. It also had a large cache of gold ingots
in a steel tank welded to the bulkhead. These gold bars from London were to
stabilize the Indian Rupee, which was sagging due to the war and fear of invasion
from Japan. The gold was valued at approx. two million Pounds Sterling at that
time.
It was around 1235 on April 14 when officers on ships nearby noticed smoke billowing out of the ship. Some others noticed it again after a few minutes but assumed that those on Stikine would be aware of it and take the necessary action.
As luck would have it, none on Stikine noticed anything amiss. It was only around 1400 that some stevedores returning from lunch noticed the smoke and raised the first fire alarm. The crew now alerted promptly swung into action. The fire service crew from the dock joined the efforts. Soon two teams of firemen and equipment from Carnac Bunder Fire Station reached the scene.
The gravity of the situation was such that the first party had to despatch an emergency message for more men and equipment. Very soon the Chief Officer Coombs with his officers and men reached the distressed ship. The time was 1440. Despite all efforts the fire could not be located.
The fire fighting crew was unable to reach the fire water to the smouldering cargo as cotton bales soaked it up. Thick, black, asphyxiating smoke and hot toxic gases from the dangerous cargo the fire fighters out. 19-year-old Mehervanjee, the young sub-leader with his protective gas mask could stay down for just about 10 minutes in hold.
Time was running out and the situation was getting out of hand. The deck and sides of Stikine had turned red. Efforts to cut holes in the sides using oxy-acetylene torch had to be given up due to the water cascading down from the deck. Metal cutters were no match for the heavy gauge steel plate.
A distress message to Mazagon dock evoked no response. The army, fire brigade and fire salvage corps personnel began the job of removing explosives and ammunition from the superheated hold. The heat patch on the side of the ship grew larger with each passing moment. The radiations from the struck ship set a shed on the dock ablaze.
The tower clock showed 1550. The fire fighters had run out of options. Coombs gave orders to abandon the ship. Some brave and daring officers and men however did not leave their posts and continued to fight the prowling flames. The tower clock registered 1606 and a tremendous explosion that followed froze the clock hands at that moment as if in a record for posterity.
Molten metals and lethal debris killed the crew still on their posts. Blazing cotton bales, flaring oil drums, blobs of melting metal flew up, showering down over a vast area killing and maiming old and young, starting numerous fires in sheds and ships in the Victoria and Prince's Docks.
The shock waves generated by the explosion were so powerful that the Meteorological seismograph at Simla, more than a thousand miles away registered it. The explosion was so loud that windows rattled and shattered as far away as Dadar, a distance of 8 miles. Buildings shook as if in an earthquake. People ran out only to be showered with deadly slivers of shattered window glass and lethal chunks of metal torn from ships, dock installations and other solid structures.
The destruction in the docks and surrounding area was immense and several hundred-dock workers were killed instantly. About 300 acres of the dock was devastated and 12 other ships in the vicinity perished!
But the worse was still
to come. The ill-fated ship had not sunk entirely after the first explosion.
Its hold bulging with high explosives, ammunition and cargo was still intact.
It was 1640, just 34 minutes after the first explosion, when a second and much
more powerful and devastating explosion followed.
Stikine went up in the air like flying saucer and rose to the level of 3000 feet! A majority of brave men of the Bombay Fire Brigade and Bombay Fire Salvage Corps, who answered the call to duty immediately after the first blast, lost their lives in the second explosion.
Hot mass of molten metal, un-burnt ammunition, barrels of burning oil and bales of burning cotton were thrown up and showered over an area in excess of one square mile. The force generated by the second blast started a tidal wave that lifted the 400 feet, 4000 ton S.S.Jalpadma clear off the water 50 feet high and slammed her down.
On that fateful Friday there were 23 ships berthed in Victoria and Prince's docks, only six remained after the disaster struck. 300 acres of dock area was in ruins. Port equipment lay in shambles. Fire service infrastructure was devastated. But the valiant firemen continued to fight the fire without respite for days and nights.
The exact number of people who perished in the fire will never be known. Official records show that Bombay Fire Brigade, its auxiliary services and the Fire Salvage Corps sustained 68 casualties with injuries to 87.
There was utter chaos and panic in the metropolis. Rumours spread rapidly that the Japanese had commenced hostilities on the same style as the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in the Hawaiian Islands in December 1941. The Japanese were in fact nowhere near Bombay.
Nevertheless, the Bombay
Central (BB&CI) and Victoria Terminus (GIP) stations were packed to capacity
with terrorized people fleeing the city in whichever train they could board
for their villages with all belongings they could carry.
The explosion caused one of the gold bars from Stikine to crash through the roof of the third floor apartment at Kukana House in Dhobi Talao in Girgam of a Parsi named Burjorji Cooverji Motivala more than a mile from the docks. He promptly returned the gold bar to the authorities for which an award of Rs 999/- was given to him, which he donated for relief work.
Almost all of the other
gold bars were subsequently recovered from different parts of the city; the
last ones to be found were hauled up from the bottom of the sea in the docks.
However, during normal dredging operations carried out periodically to maintain
the depth of the docking bays one or two gold bars were found intact sporadically
as late as the 1970s and returned to the British government.
In 1963, the government of India, in recognition of the valour and dedication of the men and officers who gave their lives in the explosion and its aftermath, declared April 14, 1944 as Fire Service Day.
References: John Ennis, Bombay Explosion, 1960; Loss Prevention News Vol. 9, No.1; World Wide Web.