HALIFAX DISASTER.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17661, 13 December 1917, Page 5

HALIFAX DISASTER.

FURTHER DETAILS. NINE VESSELS By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. Australian and N.Z. Cable Aasooiation. OTTAWA, December 11. Nine ships were wrecked or driven aground as a result of the tidal wave caused by the Mont Blanc explosion. A wall of water twenty-five feet high swept the waterfront. Sixty-five stevedores engaged at Messrs Furness, Withy and Co.’s wharf were drowned.

A tug was lifted on top of the pier, the crew escaping uninjured. A worker engaged on another pier who felt the pier shed tremble, slipped under a wooden beam. "When the wave engulfed the pier he clung to the beam until rescued. Six men who had been working alongside him were killed. A hundred and eighty-eight men working in a dry dock were caught in the swirl of water which fell over the dock sides and all were drowned. STEAMERS COLLIDE. Telegrams from Halifax report that n shell from the Mont Blanc fell in front of the house occupied bv Captain Kendall, ex-commander of the ill-fated Empress of Ireland, burying itself in the ground, without exploding. Captain Kendall escaped with a few cuts from broken glass. Thirteen men in the rigging of warships were blown into the water and drowned. A soldier working amongst the ruins found his own baby alive. Later he discovered his wife and five other children dead. A steamer entering the harbour during the tidal wave rammed another and then ran ashore.

GERMAN MESSAGE FOUND ON PIGEON.

HALIFAX, December 11. , A carrier pigeon captured had beneath its wing messages in German, details of which have not been published. The pigeon belonged to New York.