The 1944 blasts

The newspapers recently reported that while dredging in the Bombay harbor to create a jetty capable of accommodating larger ships, Bombay Port Trust workers found two gold bars of 100 gm and 50 gm stuck in the steel plate of the dredger’s hopper. Preliminary examination showed that they belonged to SS Fort Stikine, a British freighter.

This took me back to the year 1944 when I was a 17-year-old student. The SS Fort Stikine was carrying gold, cotton and explosives (bullets and bombshells) when it blew up at the Victoria Docks on April 14, 1944 sending half a million tons of rubble and debris flying over a wide radius. Sixty-six years later, I can still recall some of the happenings of that day.

The first explosion occurred at 4 p.m. This was followed by a more powerful one at 4.30 when it is believed that almost all the wall clocks in Bombay stopped functioning, such was the impact. A tragedy occurred when a platoon of bravehearts, led by a Parsi, Chief Fire Officer Rustom Palamkot, lost their lives fighting the raging inferno.

A gold bar, valued at that time at about Rs 90,000, was flung all the way from Victoria Docks to land at the residence of a Parsi civil engineer, Burjorji Motiwala, at Dhobi Talao opposite the H. B. Wadia Atash Behram. Motiwala returned the gold bar to the then British government the next day. Pleased with his honesty the government gave him not only a suitable certificate but also a cash award. Motiwala returned the cash with a request that the amount be used towards the war effort as World War II was going on.

At the time of the explosion a strong rumor had spread that Japan had invaded India and bombarded Calcutta, resulting in the exodus of half of the population of Bombay to their native places. But when news started trickling in that the explosions were due to the blasts at the SS Fort Stikine, people began returning to the city.

BHIKHAJI M. ADENWALLA