On March 6, 1945, nearly 100 men were getting the SS Greenhill Park ready for her voyage to Australia.
The freighter had been docked at the CPR’s Pier B-C (now Canada Place) since Feb. 27 and was loaded with a mixed cargo of mostly lumber, newsprint, and tin plate. But there were also pickles, sunglasses, light bulbs, cloth, lamps, radio equipment, books and knitting needles. And what would be most problematic, 94 tonnes of explosive sodium chlorate, boxes of signal flares and several barrels of overproof whisky all packed together in close proximity.
The 60 per cent proof whisky came from a distillery in Eastern Canada and was proving hard to resist for some of the longshoremen and crew members. They siphoned off the booze, hiding it in hot water bottles and lunch boxes to take home with them when their shift ended. They were likely unaware that the fumes of the whisky were highly volatile and explosive. It was dark in the hold, and a little before noon, one of the men lit a match so he could see, and then carelessly dropped it into the spilled whisky.
And boom.
A sheet of solid flames shot up more than 30 metres in the air, and the ensuing explosions took out most of the large plate glass windows along automobile row on West Georgia Street. Thousands of windows in downtown office buildings smashed and glass rained down on busy Vancouver streets. Buildings shook. The blasts blew out 10 heavy corrugated iron doors inside of Pier B. Some survivors claimed they saw men thrown up to 23 metres in the air.
Pickles and sunglasses rained down from the sky, while shredded canvas and paper swirled around the signalmen on the Lions Gate Bridge, blown there by a westerly wind.
It wasn’t anything like the scale of the Halifax explosion of 1917, but it was the Port of Vancouver’s biggest wartime scare. Many on the ground thought the Japanese were attacking and ran for air-raid shelters.
North Vancouver’s Frank Wright was the 25-year-old captain of the Sutherland Brown. The army supply ship was docked at the foot of Cardero and Wright and his skeleton crew were the first to reach the 130-metre-long Greenhill Park. They managed to get a tow line onto the freighter.
With the help of North Vancouver’s Douglas Dixon, the captain of a Charles Cates harbour tug, they tried to beach the ship on the North Shore’s mud flats where it could do the least damage, but the tide was too strong. They eventually managed to pass under the Lions Gate Bridge and into deep water. But the ship resisted and finally landed on the rocks near Siwash Rock in Stanley Park.
The fire burned for three days.
Thirty-four-year-old Donald Bell of North Vancouver, a husband and father of three, was one of eight men – six longshoremen and two crew members, who were killed in the explosion. He died from fourth degree burns that covered his entire body. Twenty-six others, including seven firefighters, were injured.
The SS Green Hill Park was named after a park in Nova Scotia and she was one of nearly 400 merchant vessels built for the Canadian Government. There’s a large board at the Shipyards in Lower Lonsdale just behind the ice rink. The title is North Sand Vessels and the board lists all the ships built at Burrard Docks during the war years in the order that they were built. The Greenhill Park is No. 18 under Victory Type Vessels. She launched on Nov. 10, 1943, and was delivered on Jan. 25, 1944. It took just 159 days from start to finish.
After the fire burned itself out, the Greenhill was towed back to Burrard Dry Dock and rebuilt. A Greek captain bought her and changed her name to the SS Phaeax 11. She was renamed the Lagos Michigan in 1956, and in 1967 she was broken up and sold for scrap in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan.
In memory of those who were killed: Donald Bell, 34; Joseph Brooks, 51; Julius Kern, 41; William Lewis, 46; Merton McGrath, 46; Donald Munn, 54; Montague Munn, 57; Walter Peterson, 56.
Eve Lazarus is a North Vancouver resident and author. Her latest book is Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck. [email protected]
