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The Halifax Explosion occurred near Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on the morning of Thursday, December 6, 1917. SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship fully laden with wartime explosives, collided with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo[2] in the Narrows, a strait connecting the upper Halifax Harbour to Bedford Basin. Approximately twenty minutes later, a fire on board the French ship ignited her explosive cargo, causing a cataclysmic explosion that devastated the Richmond District of Halifax. Approximately 2,000 people were killed by debris, fires, and collapsed buildings, and it is estimated that nearly 9,000 others were injured.[3] The blast was the largest man-made explosion prior to the development of nuclear weapons[4] with an equivalent force of roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT.[5] In a meeting of the Royal Society of Canada in May 1918, Dalhousie University's Professor Howard L. Bronson estimated the blast at some 2400 metric tons of high explosive.[6]

Mont-Blanc was under orders from the French government to carry her highly explosive cargo overseas to Bordeaux, France. At roughly 8:45 am, she collided at slow speed (one to one and a half mph) with the 'in-ballast' (without cargo) Imo, chartered by the Commission for Relief in Belgium to pick up a cargo of relief supplies in New York. The resultant fire aboard the French ship quickly grew out of control. Without adequate and accessible firefighting equipment, the captain, pilot, officers and men were forced to abandon her within a few minutes following the accident. Approximately 20 minutes later (at 9:04:35 am), Mont-Blanc exploded with tremendous force [7] Nearly all structures within a half-mile (800 m) radius, including the entire community of Richmond, were completely obliterated. A pressure wave of air snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels, and carried fragments of the Mont-Blanc for kilometres. Hardly a window in the city proper survived the concussion. Across the harbour, in Dartmouth, there was also widespread damage.[3] A tsunami created by the blast wiped out the physical community of Mi’kmaw First Nations people that had lived in the Tuft's Cove area for generations. There were a number of casualties including five children who drowned when the tsunami came ashore at Nevin's Cove.[8]

The war
began for corporate America long before it started for the common
man. Within two months of the conflict's August 1914 beginning,
Charles Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel, one of the world's
largest arms merchants, took a profitable trip to London. There,
he secured orders from the British government for millions of artillery
shells, as well as ten 500-ton submarines. Though the construction
of such foreign vessels broke the law, Bethlehem proceeded with
it and the Wilson administration did not stop them. The company
earned $61 million in 1916, more than its combined gross revenues
for the previous eight years.

"The
Bethlehem story is a pithy summary of the evolution of the United
States into a branch of the British armament industry during the
thirty-two months of its neutrality," writes historian Thomas
Fleming in his powerhouse book The
Illusion of Victory: America in World War I. "Wilson
talked – and talked and talked – about neutrality and
apparently convinced himself that he was neutral. But the United
States he was supposedly running was not neutral, in thought, word
or deed, thanks to Wellington House (the engine of British government
propaganda) – and the international banking firm of J. P. Morgan
in New York."

By the
time America declared war on Germany, Morgan was having a bang-up
war of its own. The company had already loaned Britain and France
$2.1 billion (around $30 billion by 2004 standards), and had cleared
$30 million – around $425 million in 2004 dollars – in
profit.

Fleming
summarizes a very effective partnership: "As British and French
orders for ammunition and other war materiel filled the books of
U.S. companies, the pressure for financial assistance to pay for
them grew more and more acute." In other words, the more intense
the fighting, the more arms, ordnance, and supplies the British
and French ordered from American manufacturers, and the more money
they borrowed from American banks.

U.S. Trade with Belligerents, 1914 - 1916
(Millions of Dollars)
Nation 1914 1915 1916 percent change
Great Britain $594 million 912 1,527 + 257%
France $160 million 369 629 +393%
Italy $74 million 185 269 +364%
Germany $345 million 2 9 .2 9 - 1,150%
What is the trend of U.S. trade from 1914 to 1916? Why?