[gmw]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

[...] My take on "fault" is that the explosion is almost entirely the fault of the Imo -they were on the wrong side of the channel, going too fast, and not following accepted procedures (not moving over when the Mont-Blanc responded that no they wouldn't switch sides). I don't fault the MB for fleeing and not putting up a red flag even though it would have normally been required and would have been easy to do. They were specifically told not to earlier due to the war and the pilot should have told them to do that if it was required for Halifax at the time. I wish we knew whether or not the pilot on the Imo told the captain to yield and move over. That seems like the main intentional rather than accidental cause for the incident. The rest of it was a series of unfortunate events (both trying to swerve at the same time, etc.) but the Imo plowing forward on the wrong side of the channel and then refusing to correct themselves was deliberate.

I was of much the same opinion until I got to the privy council opinion:

They underscored the simplicity of the “collision rule,” which holds that each ship, when faced with a possible collision, had only two choices: stop or reverse. Both ships, the Lords argued, should have gone full speed astern “long before they were allowed to approach so close to each other as 500 feet. Both Masters were to blame for not having prevented their respective ships from getting into it.”

This, it seems to me, is really the core of it. From and Hayes in Imo should have backed up because they were on the wrong side of the road, Le Médec and Mackey in Mont-Blanc should have stopped or backed up because he was sitting on bomb and he knew it, and he knew that no one else knew it (he had not raised the red flag), so it was his responsibility to stay clear.

20-20 hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Then there's the possibility that something else was happening on Imo that we never got to learn about - see Bookpossum's post.

Originally Posted by Dazrin

I have a hard time blaming the crew of the Mont-Blanc for fleeing. Given the nature of the explosives the fact that there was ~15 minutes before the explosion to flee was surprising. It was obvious they didn't think that would happen. Yes, looking back they should have taken more time to warn off everyone else but even if they knew they had 10+ minutes, could they really have saved much? Some of the boats would have been able to get away (although the wave might have gotten them anyway) but could the neighborhoods on both sides of the harbor have been warned and evacuated in time? The situation really called for an in-depth what if... [...]

This is a difficult situation. I can understand their fleeing, but I can still find some 20-20 hindsight blame. Logic (if anyone had been thinking rationally) should have told them that if they had as little time as they thought then they would not have enough time to get clear, so why bother when even a brief amount of time onboard might have improved the situation significantly, and if there was time to get clear, then there was definitely time to get the ship on a better course (or even just stop where they were) and/or to warn others to stay clear and so save lives. There was a war on, they'd been under threat of attack since leaving New York, was it really unreasonable to expect (at least some of) them to stay aboard and try to minimise the damage?

I'm not making any bets on whether I'd have behaved any better in their position, I'm just saying what seems apparent from the comfort and safety of my desk a hundred years on.