Post by Catsmate on Mar 31, 2014 12:34:25 GMT
April 14th might just be a bad day for ships. In 1912 the Titanic struck the fatal iceberg, but in 1944 there was another maritime tragedy, the loss of the S.S. Fort Stikine in Bombay (Mumbai today) on the fourteenth of April.
The ship was two years old, a smallish wartime constructed cargo vessel built in Canada. She'd travelled from Birkenhead via Karachi, with a dangerous cargo; more than 1,400 tonnes of munitions, including filled shells, torpedoes, mines, signal rockets and 238 tons of highly sensitive 'A' explosives. Plus aircraft parts and other supplies. At Karachi she'd taken on, over the protests of her master, tens of thousands of bales of cotton and drums of lubricating oil. As captain Alexander Naismith said, she carried "just about everything that will either burn or blow up".
One part of her cargo was inert however; 31 crates of gold. Each containing four 800oz (~25kg) bars. Total value of about £900,000 at the time; about €94 million today.
What exactly happened that day isn't known, and barring time travel never will be. The first signs of fire were spotted around 14:00, and the crew (well aware of their cargo though, due to wartime secrecy, most others in the port were not) mobilised to fight the blaze in the No. 2 hold and called for assistance. Despite the efforts of the ship's crew, dockside fire fighters and and fireboats they were unable to extinguish the conflagration (more than 900 tonnes of water were pumped into the ship. It was reported that water was boiling all around the vessel from the heat being produced.
The order to abandon ship was given at 15:45 after Naismith verified that explosives were burning; at 16:06 there was a huge explosion, breaking the Fort Stikine's hull apart, followed by a second blast at 16:34. A nearby clock tower had it's hand frozen at six minutes past four.
The effects of the explosions were terrible; they showed up on seismographs over 1,500km away, were audible to 80km, shattered windows 12km away and dispersed burning cotton and oil for 800m, all over the Bombay docks and the surrounding slums; about five square kilometres burned, including about 50,000 tonnes of stored food.
Thirteen other ships, docked nearby, were sunk with others damaged.
The death toll isn't known exactly, wartime censorship and secrecy didn't help, but 66 fire fighters and 167 other ship and dockside personnel (including Naismith and his chief officer) were killed along with at least 500 civilians.
Plausible estimates say more than 1,300 died and the death toll of the Titanic (1,517) may have been exceeded.
Gold bars and other debris were launched through the air to descend onto the city; a resident living 2km away had a bar descend through his apartment's roof, missing him. (He returned it).
A secondary school 5km away had part of a propeller land outside the building.
Gold bars have been recovered from the bay as recently as 2011, some are still missing.
The cause of the fire and explosion have never been determined; sabotage was possible (the Japanese certainly claimed it) but so is carelessness and mischance.
So what'd the relevance of this tragedy be to DWAITAS? Well several possibilities exist:
1. A background event for a party who happen to be in the area, complicating things as they have to work in a city rife with panic, 50,000 people left homeless, food shortages and fires around them.
2. Someone with foreknowledge (not necessarily a time traveller; perhaps one was careless with a book or a wiki printout and someone noted the event?) wants to stop the disaster, and the party has to stop them.
3. The party, aware of the disaster, finds that something has already happened to change events. They have to alter history back to it's proper course. And kill hundreds of people. In a wartime environment worried about sabotage and rather prone to shooting people. And hopefully avoid blowing themselves up in the process.
4. Someone wants to steal the gold; other time travellers or locals. Security was actually pretty lax, due to wartime secrecy. Someone like The Meddler might have a use for a few tonnes of gold.
5. The party wants to steal the gold. OK history says it was recovered but when has that ever stopped Doctor Who? Perhaps just one person, a new Companion, who remembers the event and fancies acquiring a couple of bars for the future....
6. Disaster tourists. Remember the film Timescape (aka Disaster in Time and Grand Tour: Disaster in Time)? No? OK a group of people from the boring future pop back in time to watch past disasters. Perhaps our heroes discover an odd group with a good vantage point and suspiciously advanced cameras. Or perhaps the tourists have under-estimated local paranoia and are in jail; get them out (preferably before they reveal too much) and recover any advanced technology, such as a slate loaded with "Great Historical Disasters 1930-2030".
7. A variation on number 5; the avaricious Companion caused the disaster, and the Time Lord knows this is going to happen. This is more for a group that doesn't mind being railroaded.
Didn't Torchwood have an office in India? Hmmmm.......
And frankly if you can't do something with a huge, mysterious explosion and three tonnes of missing gold you really should give up playing RPGs and try daytime television.............
The ship was two years old, a smallish wartime constructed cargo vessel built in Canada. She'd travelled from Birkenhead via Karachi, with a dangerous cargo; more than 1,400 tonnes of munitions, including filled shells, torpedoes, mines, signal rockets and 238 tons of highly sensitive 'A' explosives. Plus aircraft parts and other supplies. At Karachi she'd taken on, over the protests of her master, tens of thousands of bales of cotton and drums of lubricating oil. As captain Alexander Naismith said, she carried "just about everything that will either burn or blow up".
One part of her cargo was inert however; 31 crates of gold. Each containing four 800oz (~25kg) bars. Total value of about £900,000 at the time; about €94 million today.
What exactly happened that day isn't known, and barring time travel never will be. The first signs of fire were spotted around 14:00, and the crew (well aware of their cargo though, due to wartime secrecy, most others in the port were not) mobilised to fight the blaze in the No. 2 hold and called for assistance. Despite the efforts of the ship's crew, dockside fire fighters and and fireboats they were unable to extinguish the conflagration (more than 900 tonnes of water were pumped into the ship. It was reported that water was boiling all around the vessel from the heat being produced.
The order to abandon ship was given at 15:45 after Naismith verified that explosives were burning; at 16:06 there was a huge explosion, breaking the Fort Stikine's hull apart, followed by a second blast at 16:34. A nearby clock tower had it's hand frozen at six minutes past four.
The effects of the explosions were terrible; they showed up on seismographs over 1,500km away, were audible to 80km, shattered windows 12km away and dispersed burning cotton and oil for 800m, all over the Bombay docks and the surrounding slums; about five square kilometres burned, including about 50,000 tonnes of stored food.
Thirteen other ships, docked nearby, were sunk with others damaged.
The death toll isn't known exactly, wartime censorship and secrecy didn't help, but 66 fire fighters and 167 other ship and dockside personnel (including Naismith and his chief officer) were killed along with at least 500 civilians.
Plausible estimates say more than 1,300 died and the death toll of the Titanic (1,517) may have been exceeded.
Gold bars and other debris were launched through the air to descend onto the city; a resident living 2km away had a bar descend through his apartment's roof, missing him. (He returned it).
A secondary school 5km away had part of a propeller land outside the building.
Gold bars have been recovered from the bay as recently as 2011, some are still missing.
The cause of the fire and explosion have never been determined; sabotage was possible (the Japanese certainly claimed it) but so is carelessness and mischance.
So what'd the relevance of this tragedy be to DWAITAS? Well several possibilities exist:
1. A background event for a party who happen to be in the area, complicating things as they have to work in a city rife with panic, 50,000 people left homeless, food shortages and fires around them.
2. Someone with foreknowledge (not necessarily a time traveller; perhaps one was careless with a book or a wiki printout and someone noted the event?) wants to stop the disaster, and the party has to stop them.
3. The party, aware of the disaster, finds that something has already happened to change events. They have to alter history back to it's proper course. And kill hundreds of people. In a wartime environment worried about sabotage and rather prone to shooting people. And hopefully avoid blowing themselves up in the process.
4. Someone wants to steal the gold; other time travellers or locals. Security was actually pretty lax, due to wartime secrecy. Someone like The Meddler might have a use for a few tonnes of gold.
5. The party wants to steal the gold. OK history says it was recovered but when has that ever stopped Doctor Who? Perhaps just one person, a new Companion, who remembers the event and fancies acquiring a couple of bars for the future....
6. Disaster tourists. Remember the film Timescape (aka Disaster in Time and Grand Tour: Disaster in Time)? No? OK a group of people from the boring future pop back in time to watch past disasters. Perhaps our heroes discover an odd group with a good vantage point and suspiciously advanced cameras. Or perhaps the tourists have under-estimated local paranoia and are in jail; get them out (preferably before they reveal too much) and recover any advanced technology, such as a slate loaded with "Great Historical Disasters 1930-2030".
7. A variation on number 5; the avaricious Companion caused the disaster, and the Time Lord knows this is going to happen. This is more for a group that doesn't mind being railroaded.
Didn't Torchwood have an office in India? Hmmmm.......
And frankly if you can't do something with a huge, mysterious explosion and three tonnes of missing gold you really should give up playing RPGs and try daytime television.............
