On 16 Apr 1947 a small fire in the hold of the SS Grandcamp, loaded with thousands of tons of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer, grew into a conflagration that eventually caused the ship to explode. When the Grandcamp exploded, the force of the blast knocked people over in Galveston (10 miles away) and broke windows in Houston (40 miles away). People felt the shock wave 100 miles away in Louisiana.
The Grandcamp's explosion destroyed the Monsanto Chemical prcessing plant and a ruptured tanks ar an adjacent oil refinery, causing them to explode. After 16 hours to desperate attempts to move the SS High Flyer out of port to prevent her load of ammonium-nitrate from blowing up too, she finally exploded. Again, that blast ignited subsequent explosions in nearby refineries.
The devastation was compared to that seen at Nagasaki Japan after the atomic bomb was dropped on that city and the end of WWII.
Almost 600 people died instantly at Texas City. Close to 5000 people were injured. After all the fires were out and all the bodies discovered, 63 unidentified sets of remains were left in a makeshift morgue in this shattered city.
Over two months after the disaster, with emotions still raw and the city still pretty much leveled, a new cemetery was created on what had been barren prairie north of town. Many thousands of Texas City and Gulf Coast residents took time off from rebuilding the city to come pay their respects to the unknown dead, who were given funerals with donated hearses and flowers. Volunteer clergy officialted and volunteer pallbearers carried the unknowns to the hearses.
The new graveyard for the unknowns was named simply "Memorial Cemetery." It was closed to other burials immediately after the service, intending to be a self-contained memorial for all the dead of Texas City who perished that day. It was the first memorial to this disaster erected in the city.
The gates and a white marble angel monument were all that adorned the cemetery for many decades. Today, the cemetery is a centerpiece of a larger and more evocative memorial. Although the subject matter is difficult, this memorial and cemetert is well worth a visit.
From eyewitness accounts of the disaster and the aftermath: (
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"The burial service for the unidentified dead was held Sunday morning, June 22, 1947 at 10:00 A.M. Despite the fact that there was very little advance publicity, cars were park a mile and a half up and down the highway, and the crowd was estimated at 5,000.
The sixty-three caskets were brought from Camp Wallace by separate hearses from fifty-one participating funeral homes in twenty-eight cities. It was a striking procession, probably the longest in the history of funeral services. Each casket was carried by pallbearers from the American Legion, V.F.W., Labor Organizations and Volunteer Firemen. Each was decorated with a spray of flowers, gifts of the Florist Association.
In this small plot of ground, at the time of the service only a scarred prairie, were placed the remains of sixty-three unidentified dead, each in its own casket, each in its own lined grave~numbered and recorded so that if a new inquiry were ever necessary the information would be available.
No one else ever has ever been buried in this cemetery; no one else ever will be. It stands as a resting place for those unidentified, and a memorial for all those who suffered during that time." [end]