That was a heck of an explosion!

While Wikiwandering the other day, doing research for a forthcoming book, I happened upon the account of SS John Burke, a Liberty ship built during World War II.  Her sister ship, SS John W. Brown, one of only two surviving Liberty ships that are still seaworthy, is shown below to illustrate approximately what she would have looked like.

Liberty ships could carry over 10,000 tons (deadweight) of cargo, and were used throughout the world.  2,710 of them were built.

Wikipedia reports:

On what would be her final trip in late 1944, Burke departed Seattle, Washington for Guam, where she spent several days loading munitions for the invasion force on the island of Mindoro. Burke then departed with the 100-ship "Uncle Plus 13" convoy, bound for Leyte in the Philippines. The convoy arrived at Leyte the night of December 27.

Japanese forces were alerted to the convoy's arrival shortly before daybreak on December 28. A flight of six Japanese kamikaze fighter/bombers was sent up from Cebu Island shortly after dawn. If the convoy was destroyed, the U.S. forces on Mindoro would be cut off from their supply line.

That morning Burke and the other ships in the Mindoro-bound TG 77.11 (under the command of Captain George F. Mentz) were at general quarters shortly after receiving the dawn weather report that reported that air cover would not launch until the poor weather cleared. The crews began their wait for the inevitable arrival of Japanese aircraft.

At about 0815 hours, the first kamikaze appeared on the American ships' radar, and orders were immediately given for the convoy to begin evasive manoeuvring. Through holes in the clouds, the Japanese pilots sighted the large American force as it steamed through calm seas south of Cebu and Bohol Islands. The Japanese aircraft were three A6M Zero fighters of the 201st Air Group, which had taken off from Cebu at 0950 and were led by Lt. Masami Hoshino. Each carried a 250kg bomb. As they began their attack, one of the pilots chose John Burke as his target. Diving through heavy anti-aircraft fire, the Japanese pilot had no intention of pulling out of his steep dive. At 1020, despite the damage to his aircraft, he crashed between Burke's #2 and #3 cargo holds.

A brief flash of fire was visible to most of the ships in the convoy, and for several seconds, only smoke could be seen billowing from her hold. A few seconds later, a huge pillar of fire shot out of Burke's cargo hold, followed by an immense cloud of white smoke. Within seconds all eyes were drawn to Burke where an enormous fireball erupted as her entire cargo of munitions detonated, instantly destroying the ship and killing her crew of 40 merchant marine sailors and 28 or 29 armed guards. For several seconds, Burke was not visible under an enormous mushroom cloud of smoke, fire and explosions. Several ships nearby were damaged by the force of the blast and flying fragments. The shock wave rocked the entire convoy, and several ships reported that they had been torpedoed. A US Army "FS" type ship just aft of Burke was severely damaged by the blast, sinking before it could be identified. As the cloud of smoke cleared, nearby ships closed on Burke's former position to search for survivors. It was soon clear that Burke, and all men aboard her, were gone.

There's more at the link.

Film of the explosion that destroyed SS John Burke was recently restored.  Here's the new version.  It's pretty spectacular.

That was a cargo of about 10,000 tons of explosives blowing sky-high.  Most of those aboard probably never knew what hit them.  It's a graphic illustration of how merchant seamen, as well as US Navy personnel, were in danger during the war at sea.  Violence and destruction spared no-one.

May all who died aboard the SS John Burke rest in peace.

Peter

The man who put the hole in the donut

I was intrigued to learn the history behind the hole in the donut.

Captain Gregory, 85, lived at the Sailor’s Snug Harbor in Quincy, Mass. His fame as the inventor of the modern donut had spread, and the Washington Post interviewed him in a story published March 26, 1916.

He told the reporter he discovered the donut hole when he worked as a 16-year-old crewman on a lime-trading schooner.

“Now in them days we used to cut the doughnuts into diamond shapes, and also into long strips, bent in half, and then twisted,” he said. “I don’t think we called them donuts then–they was just ‘fried cakes’ and ‘twisters.’ Well, sir, they used to fry all right around the edges, but when you had the edges done the insides was all raw dough. And the twisters used to sop up all the grease just where they bent, and they were tough on the digestion.”

He asked himself if a space inside the dough would solve the difficulty – and then came the great inspiration.

“I took the cover off the ship’s tin pepper box, and—I cut into the middle of that donut the first hole ever seen by mortal eyes!”

Gregory, born in 1832, would have had his insight around 1858. According to the New York Times, he rose to second mate at 19, mate at 21 and master mariner at 25. He sailed in all kinds of vessels from the lime coaster to a full-rigged ship.

But the donut made him famous. He had asked a tinsmith to fabricate a donut cutter for him, and soon, reported the Times, ‘cooks everywhere had adopted it.’

There's more at the link.

The dates in the article don't quite add up.  If Gregory had "invented" the donut hole at the age of 16, it would have been in 1848, not 1858.  Nevertheless, it's an amusing anecdote, and quite possibly true, given that no alternative explanation for the donut hole has ever been advanced.

The Smithsonian Magazine thinks that Gregory's mother may have had something to do with it.

Fast-forward to the mid-19th century and Elizabeth Gregory, a New England ship captain's mother who made a wicked deep-fried dough that cleverly used her son's spice cargo of nutmeg and cinnamon, along with lemon rind. Some say she made it so son Hanson and his crew could store a pastry on long voyages, one that might help ward off scurvy and colds. In any case, Mrs. Gregory put hazelnuts or walnuts in the center, where the dough might not cook through, and in a literal-minded way called them doughnuts.

Her son always claimed credit for something less than that: putting the hole in the doughnut. Some cynical doughnut historians maintain that Captain Gregory did it to stint on ingredients, others that he thought the hole might make the whole easier to digest. Still others say that he gave the doughnut its shape when, needing to keep both hands on the wheel in a storm, he skewered one of his mom's doughnuts on a spoke of his ship's wheel. In an interview with the Boston Post at the turn of the century, Captain Gregory tried to quell such rumors with his recollection of the moment 50 years before: using the top of a round tin pepper box, he said, he cut into the middle of a doughnut "the first doughnut hole ever seen by mortal eyes."

Again, more at the link.

I never thought of the donut as being part of seafaring history, as well as culinary.  One learns something new every day.

Peter

A monster container ship is collecting . . . empties?

One of the biggest container ships in the world, the MSC Anna, recently visited California.  Here's a video report about her arrival.

What I found most interesting was the comment that she'd come to collect empty containers, and take them back to China.  This is a vitally important part of re-establishing international trade.  With the shutdown across the globe, containers that were en route to their destinations were delivered - and then just sat there, with no way to get them back to the factories that sent them.  Without those containers, the factories couldn't pack goods for export, even if they got their production lines running again.  There was basically a complete, almost unbridgeable disconnect between producer and consumer, particularly when most container shipping shut down.

It's encouraging to see so large a ship filled with thousands upon thousands of empty containers.  May they soon be filled again!

(The ship itself is an absolute monster, posing all sorts of challenges to pilots and port staff.  You can read about that in this article.  I found it very interesting.)

Peter