The Day Bombay BLEW UP

Seventy-eight years ago this month occurred a great explosion in Bombay harbour that killed hundreds and imperilled the city

- John Ennis

APRIL 1985

Friday, 14 April 1944, was a pleasant spring day in Bombay, then a vital supply blaze for the planned invasion of Japan. The harbour was jammed with ships of every Allied flag. Western and Asian troops throng the city buying coloured silk, sarees, ivory elephants and incense sticks for souvenirs. In the dockside district, people were carrying on their everyday activities.

At 12:30 by the clock in the harbour tower, the dock workers stopped for lunch. On a Norwegian merchant ship, the Belray, Able Seaman Roy Hayward, going below, noticed what looked like a whisper of smoke coming from a ventilator of the Fort Stikine. This was a 7,200tonne cargo vessel, which lay in the adjoining dock. She had left Liverpool seven weeks earlier, loaded with ammunition and explosives, airplanes, stores and £2 million of worth of gold bars intended to help stabilize the rupee.

At 1:30 p.m. The dock workers returned to the Fort Stikine. As they entered Number Two hold, they saw smoke coming from the port side nearest the quay. The stevedores scrambled up from the hold shouting, “Fire!"

Men from a Bombay fire-brigade pump on the quay promptly ran with their hoses to the ship. Not until their section leader was on board, however, did he remember that, for a fire in a ship carrying explosives, his instructions were to sendan immediate Number Two alarm, which would call out a large force. With orders to dial 290, his sub-leader struggled back down the gangway, now crowded with dock workers pushing to get ashore, and dashed to a telephone. But the telephone had no dial. Confused, he ran 160 metres along the dockside, broke the glass of a fire alarm and rang the bell. Thus the fire brigade control room received only a normal call fortwo pumps. The hands of the harbour clock tower stood at 2:16 p.m.