Texas City

The Grandcamp was loading ammonium nitrate fertiliser at the dock when a fire was found in a hold at eight in the morning. The captain ordered the hatches sealed and steam put in, to save the cargo.

The Texas City volunteer fire department came down to the dock. So did a crowd of onlookers, because the smoke coming off her was a striking orange.

At twelve minutes past nine she went up. The blast levelled the dock area, knocked two light aircraft out of the sky, and sent her two-tonne anchor two miles inland. A second ship, the High Flyer, detonated fifteen hours later.

Five hundred and eighty-one were killed. Every one of the twenty-eight men of the Texas City fire department who were on the dock was killed at once, and only one piece of one of their fire engines was ever found.

A third of the town's houses were condemned. It remains the worst industrial accident in American history.