Shattered City (1 Viewer)

[Lance Nichols]

Being a bit of a historical buff (mostly internested in Naval and Maritime History) I was pleased to see this on CBC. I quite enjoyed it, even if "Connie" kept reminding me of "Dawn" from BtVS.

Anyone else watch it, and anyone going to buy the DVDs?

For those not from Canada, or Boston, in 1917 Halifax was flattened by an enormous explosion, that killed over 2000 people. It was the largest explosion in history, until Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A French flagged munitons ship was struck by an Dutch transport. The French ship was carrying over 240,000 tonnes of TNT.

Check out Halifax Explosion for more.

Edited for spelling error...

 

[John Watson]

We watched it, very good, tho I always want to know how much is factually true, and how much is "drama" based on real events. Was there really an old salt rowing up to the Mont Blanc, who was able to witness the crew and captain abandon the ship, while the pilot tried to take measures to avoid or minimize the catastrophe? And he (the old salt) was found in time to avoid the pilot being made the scapegoat? The ending reminded me of the device in Titantic, with the old lady gimmick again. And yeah, Connie was pretty precocious, but much smarter than Dawn

There was a documentary aired in advance, and they used CGI to represent the two ships and the city scape of the day. But I found the representation of how few buildings there were on the hillside rather incredible, I was sure Halifax was a bigger looking place than that in 1917.

The DVD might be good, especially as we grew very irritated by the repetitiousness of the commercials. I'm curious whether the Irving company commercials were broadcast in "Upper Canada"?

Here is the actual CBC website with purportedly lots of resources for serious historical assessment. There is another program scheduled for tonight, having to do with the "history" and we will watch that as well.

http://www.cbc.ca/halifaxexplosion/

 

[Lance Nichols]

Well, I don't know about the intelligence bit, as this is a posting that ISN'T about BtVs, I will leave it alone for now.

The city has a population of about 45-50K at the time, and I would have though more of it would have been closer to the shore/harbour as well.

The CSS Acadia is moored @ the maritime museum, as mentioned by the host, is the Sackville still there as well, an how is the restoration of her coming?

Nope, no Irving oil adverts here, but yeah, the adverts were excessive. Glad CBC has done the BBC bit of putting the DVDs out as soon as the show aired. We had a section near the end with a 5 minute audio drop out...