Greenhill Park (ship, 1943)

The Greenhill Park was a freighter, built in 1943, that exploded, and burst into flames, in Vancouver, British Columbia's harbour, on March 6, 1945. According to a 2013 retrospective article, in the Vancouver Sun, this was Vancouver's worst disaster, at the time it occurred.

The ship was owned by the Park Steamship Company, which was owned by Canada's Federal government. The government had built 400 vessels during World War 2. She was named after an actual park in Nova Scotia.

She was operated for the Government by Canada Shipping Company.

The ship's cargo included 85 or 95 tons of Sodium Chlorate, commonly used as a fertilizer, but one of the fertilizers that, under certain conditions, can be a powerful high explosive. Observers saw three explosions, and, initially, it was believed that portions of the ship's cargo of Sodium Chlorate exploded. Her cargo also included six tons of flares, and barrels of overproof whiskey.

The ship was being loaded at a Canadian Pacific Railway pier, and six longshoremen, and two seamen, lost their lives. Windows were broken all over Vancouver's downtown. Vancouver firefighters could not extinguish the blaze, so they beached her, near Siwash Rock, in Stanley Park, to prevent her drifting into other vessels, and setting them on fire.

The Vancouver Sun reported that, eventually, some longshoremen confessed that they had clandestinely tapped the whisky barrels, and it ws the spilled whisky that was accidentally ignited, and started the fire. John Stanton, reporting in the Northern Mariner, wrote that the whisky was 60 percent alcohol -- fifty percent more alcohol than normal whisky. He wrote that those unfamiliar with it, may not have understood that the fumes from overproof alcohol are far more volatile, and explosive, than regular whisky.

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