On 13 April 1944, the British Navy chartered the Canadian freighter Fort Stikina to load and unload cargo in Mumbai, India, when it exploded, destroying almost all of Mumbai's buildings, and none of the 1,377 seafarers, including the captain, survived. What is even more shocking is that the results of the British investigation turned out to be a tragedy caused by the smell of fish pulled on the boat.
On February 24, 1944, fort Stigina, loaded with parts from 12 cannons, marched toward Karachi, Pakistan, and after arriving in Karachi, unloaded the parts of the cannons, loaded them with 1,390 tons of explosives, 8,700 bales of cotton, hundreds of barrels of lubricating oil, some scrap metal, and tons of fish that were not very fresh, and headed for Mumbai, India.
Due to the high temperature at that time, soon after, the fish began to rot, emitting a fishy odor that spread to the whole ship, and it is said that almost every crew member was smoked and vomited by the stinky fish, but strangely they did not even throw these stinky fish away on the way.
On April 13, the ship was anchored at the Mumbai docks, Indian workers boarded the ship to unload fish, and the next day, when they noticed smoke coming from cargo hold 2, they immediately shouted "Fire!" ”
The Mumbai fire brigade immediately rushed to the ship and sprayed water on the smoking cargo hold, but the fire ignited the cargo hold containing explosives, causing an explosion immediately.
In the early days of the fire, Captain Smith actually had a choice, driving the ship to the open sea to let it explode or sink on the spot, no matter how to choose to minimize the losses, but he was hesitant to make up his mind, because the ship not only had the war materials needed by the British army, but also more than ten million pounds of gold bricks looted by the British from India.
Just as the ship hesitated, at 3:30 p.m. there was an earth-shattering noise, and the front of the ship exploded, killing the captain and all 1,376 crew members on board. All the staff at the port of Mumbai and the passengers of other ships, as well as the firefighters who were already present to fight the fire, were thrown into the air with this loud noise, and then some fell into the sea, and some landed on the docks, and none of them survived.
A few minutes later, all the ships moored in the harbor sank, and the dock was reduced to rubble. Parts of the port of Mumbai were also on fire.
To make matters worse, the £1 million worth of gold bricks carried by fort Stygina was blown up and scattered, and fragments of metal hit the entire city of Mumbai like a storm. A mile away, the British officer, Captain Sydney Keeley, was also cut in two by a sharp barricade, and ordinary people were killed and wounded.
Mumbai residents shouted and screamed to escape, the explosion caused gold bricks to fly everywhere, and in the face of disaster, even the poor people did not dare to risk picking them up. The Victoria Quay in Mumbai Harbor and the 27 large ships docked in the dock were all destroyed, the houses, buildings and warehouses of the residents around the dock were all destroyed, and more than 7,000 Allied soldiers were mobilized to extinguish the fire for more than a week, and more importantly, Mumbai, a vital port, was built for more than half a year before it was reopened.
The results of the British government's investigation show that the direct damage caused by the fire is more than 8 million pounds, and the Indians who have suffered huge losses have not received the slightest compensation from the British, the British government believes that the Indians themselves pulled the stinky fish on the boat, causing the hull to explode, and the root cause is the Indians themselves, which has nothing to do with the British, so they refuse to compensate.
Such a huge explosion, is it really caused by stinky fish? Since all the parties were dead, even the hull of the ship had been blown to pieces, the truth was nowhere to be found, and India was still under British colonization at the time, so it could only swallow this bitter fruit.
