April 16, 1947: the ship is the SS Grandcamp. There is a fire in the hold, and the men on the dock are members of the Texas City Volunteer Fire Department, who are attempting to extinguish it.
SS Grandcamp’s cargo includes 2,200 tons of ammonium nitrate.
A few minutes after this photo was taken, it’s going to detonate in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history, creating a mushroom cloud more than 2,000 feet tall. All but one of the firefighters in that photo are going to be instantly killed, and no identifiable fragment of most of their bodies will ever be recovered. Nearly a thousand buildings in Texas City are going to be flattened, and windows will be broken and pedestrians knocked over by the force of the blast ten miles away in Galveston. Steel shrapnel will be flung out at hypersonic speeds and fall from the sky in molten chunks, igniting secondary fires all over the surrounding area, including the various storage tanks of the local Monsanto chemical refinery and another ship in the harbor, High Flyer, whose own 1,000 tons of ammonium nitrate will detonate in turn.
At least 468 will be confirmed dead, more than 5,000 will be injured, and the disaster will cost more than $100 million in property damage (in 1947 dollars - over a billion in today’s money).