Tom Mathews’s Reviews > The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism > Status Update

Two American naval officers, Captain Stanford E. Moses of the USS Von Steuben, which had taken minor damage when the steamship Northwind drifted into it, and Captain Howard Symington of the USS Tacoma, which had felt the concussion 52 miles off Halifax and returned to port, asked, “Is there anything we can do?”

Rescuers, whether professionals or amateurs, appeared by the thousands all over town, an instant army of mercy reporting for duty—unofficial and unorganized but utterly committed to providing aid to anyone who needed it. It was these spontaneous acts of generosity, courage, and selflessness that did more to reassure victims than any formal communication could have achieved.

When the cloud released its contents, it created what witnesses described as “dark rain.” But anyone caught underneath the fallout could tell you it wasn’t water coming down but a thick, black precipitation of hot oil and soot, like liquid tar, mixed with heavy, scalding shrapnel that cut, burned, and blackened everything in its path.

The great-grandson of Canada’s greatest privateer, Joseph Barss Jr., who had captured, burned, or sunk dozens of American ships in the War of 1812, Ernest had inherited more than a little anti-American sentiment. But in 1917 that was true of most Canadians, who resented the Americans’ persistent threats to annex their land from the time the United States was born to as recently as 1911.