20 May, 2007

During March, Sean Street, with producer Julian May, travelled to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to record material for their latest radio feature. This tells the story of the Halifax Harbour explosion of 1917, which dessimated great sections of the city, and neighbouring Dartmouth. The results of their work can be heard on BBC Radio 3's "Sunday Feature", on the evening of May 20th. The programme contains among other things, the witness of three survivors of the explosion, which was caused when a munitions ship, The "Mont Blanc" laden with huge quanitites of explosive bound for the Western Front collided in the narrow harbour with an outbound Belgian Relief vessel, the "Imo". The resultant explosion killed thousands and made thousands more homeless. It was the largest man-made explosion before the Hiroshima atomic bomb.