A single bale of cotton ignited the hold and blew up a city
カートのアイテムが多すぎます
ご購入は五十タイトルがカートに入っている場合のみです。
カートに追加できませんでした。
しばらく経ってから再度お試しください。
ウィッシュリストに追加できませんでした。
しばらく経ってから再度お試しください。
ほしい物リストの削除に失敗しました。
しばらく経ってから再度お試しください。
ポッドキャストのフォローに失敗しました
ポッドキャストのフォロー解除に失敗しました
A single bale of cotton ignited the hold and blew up a city
-
ナレーター：
-
著者：
概要
The smell of smoke reached the dockworkers just after two in the afternoon, drifting up from a hold packed with raw cotton, lubricating oil, and something far more volatile hidden beneath it. On most ships, a thread of smoke like that means a manageable problem. This was not most ships. What was stacked below deck that afternoon in Bombay's Victoria Dock would leave a harbour giving up its secrets for the next sixty-seven years — so what exactly was down there, and why did no one raise the flag that would have warned everyone in time?
In this episode, we trace the voyage of the SS Fort Stikine from Birkenhead to Bombay, the wartime decisions that packed her hold with explosives, gold, and cotton, and the explosion that followed — asking how so many separate, ordinary failures were allowed to stack on top of each other until a city paid for them.
Person: Captain Alexander James Naismith
Location: Victoria Dock, Bombay
Date: April 14, 1944
Case: the explosion of the SS Fort Stikine
Status: roughly 800 dead, the docks destroyed, and cargo still surfacing from the harbour floor decades later
- The Fort Stikine carried 238 tons of category-A explosives stored beneath 8,700 bales of raw cotton and barrels of lubricating oil
- 124 gold bars, each weighing nearly 25 kilograms, were packed into the hold in 31 wooden crates
- The ship never flew the required red B flag signaling dangerous cargo
- 66 firefighters were among the 231 dock and fire personnel killed fighting the blaze
- The explosion was felt as a tremor at Shimla, over 1,700 kilometers away, and heard 80 kilometers from Bombay
- British-Indian censorship delayed press reports for nearly a month, while Japanese-controlled Radio Saigon broadcast the story the very next day
- The last recovered gold bar surfaced in February 2011, and a live 45-kilogram shell was dredged up that October — 66 and 67 years after the explosion
To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.
© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
まだレビューはありません