About midway in the last two years of war--to be exact December, 1917,--a French munitioner[23] heavily laden with trinitrotoluol, the most powerful of known explosives, reached Halifax from New York. On the early morning of the sixth of that month, she was proceeding under her own steam up the harbor-length toward anchorage in the basin--an oval expansion half-hidden by a blunt hill called Turple Head. Suddenly an empty Belgian relief ship[24] swept through the Narrows directly in her pathway. There was a confusion of signals; a few agonized manoeuvers. The vessels collided; and the shock of their colliding shook the world! [23] The _Mont Blanc_, St. Nazaire, Captain Lemedec, Pilot Francis Mackay, owners La Compagnie General Transatlantique 3,121 tons gross, 2252 net register, steel, single screw, 330 ft. long, 40 ft. beam, speed 7-1/2 to 8 knots, inward bound, from New York to await convoy. Cargo 450,000 lbs. trinitrotoluol, 2300 tons picric acid, 35 tons benzol, employed in carrying munitions to France. [24] The _Imo_, Christiania, Captain Fron, Pilot William Hayes, owners Southern Pacific Whaling Company, 5,041 tons gross, 3161 tons register, steel, single screw, 430 ft. long, 45 ft. beam, speed 11 to 12 knots, outward bound to New York, in ballast, employed in carrying food to Belgium. War came to America that morning. Two thousand slain, six thousand injured, ten thousand homeless, thirty-five millions of dollars in property destroyed, three hundred acres left a smoking waste, churches, schools, factories blown down or burned--such was the appalling havoc of the greatest single explosion in the history of the world.[25] It was an episode which baffles description. It is difficult to gain from words even an approximate idea of the catastrophe and what followed in its trail. [25] The greatest previous explosion was when 500,000 pounds of dynamite blew up in Baltimore Harbor. It was all of a sudden--a single devastating blast; then the sound as of the crashing of a thousand chandeliers. Men and women cowered under the shower of debris and glass. There was one awful moment when hearts sank, and breaths were held. Then women cried aloud, and men looked dumbly into each other's eyes, and awaited the crack of doom. To some death was quick and merciful in its coming. Others were blinded, and staggered to and fro before they dropped. Still others with shattered limbs dragged themselves forth into the light--naked, blackened, unrecognizable human shapes. They lay prone upon the streetside, under the shadow of the great death-cloud which still dropped soot and oil and water. It was truly a sight to make the angels weep.