Bombay Docks Explosion 1944 Universal Newsreel; 800 to 1300 Killed 14 April is known as National Fire Service Day

Mike Collins








Thanks very much for posting this clip.

My dad was lieutenant engineer on the Royal Navy ship that was lying end-to-end with the SS Stikine. I don't know its name. In peace time, the Stikine would have been left anchored at sea because of its cargo, but because of wartime secrecy, it was brought into port to appear like any other ship. A shipmate told my dad there was a fire on the ship next to them, so he thought he would go take a look, and he was just coming onto the deck at the moment it blew up. A good friend of his had been in town when it happened, and rushed back to the scene of the disaster, and asked another seaman "Where's Lt. Collins?" He was told "He's lying in the companionway with his head blown off". He went looking for my dad and found him unconscious, and organised getting him to hospital, where he woke up a week later. His convalescence was quite long, though I don't think he had any broken bones. He was told that the doctors were initially spending only seconds with each patient, laid out in the corridors, and when they came to my dad, he had an eye hanging out on his cheek. One of the doctors was going to cut it off, but the other suggested putting it back into the socket to give it a chance of recovery. I don't know if that story is true, but it's what he was told. Most of the survivors from his ship joined another Royal Navy ship, and my dad wanted to go with them, as they were men he knew and had worked with, but he was still too ill. That ship was torpedoed and went down with all hands. I was conceived in 1945, so my life is intimately tied up with the Bombay Explosion. After he left hospital, he was put in charge of part of the operation to clean up the dock and get it functional again. I have heard many stories from him of the explosion and its aftermath. There was a steel disk lying on the wharf, which he ordered to be removed with a crane - but the crane couldn't lift it. It turned out that it was the end of a ship's propeller shaft that had been blown sky high, and had come down on its end, almost completely burying itself. It may still be there. His hearing was badly affected, and in later life, he went almost completely deaf as a result. Even when he was in his 40's, I had to always talk to him with a raised voice. He died just two weeks short of his 90th birthday, in August, 1999.