Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

He was shocked by a brilliant flash from the Quinalt Victory, a glare that seemed as bright as the sun. Marston felt a shock wave, felt its unimaginable, crushing pressure as it reached him. Then, even before he could react, there was a second flash, this one brighter than a thousand suns, and a second shock wave infinitely greater than the first. But he felt it for only the most fleeting of moments, and then he felt nothing more.

HISTORIC NOTE

At 10:20 p.m., Monday, July 17, 1944, a huge explosion occurred at Port Chicago, California. Two ships were moored at the loading pier of the naval station there. The E.A. Bryan was fully loaded and ready to leave for the Pacific theatre of operations with a huge cargo of high explosives and military equipment. The Quinalt Victory, a brand-new vessel built at the Kaiser Shipyard in nearby Richmond, California, was preparing to take on its own cargo.

Some 320 individuals were killed in the explosion, most of them African-American stevedores. An additional 400 persons were injured. A common form of injury was blindness caused by flying splinters of window-glass in naval barracks. The main explosion was preceded by a rumble or smaller explosion, reports differing, which drew many off-duty stevedores to the windows to see what had caused the sound.

The brilliant flash, the roar of the explosion, and the shaking of the earth that resulted, were seen, heard, and felt as far away as the cities of Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco.

The Bryan, the Quinalt Victory, the loading pier, the railroad spur running along the pier, and the ammunition train that was parked on the pier at the time, were all totally destroyed. The town of Port Chicago was obliterated and a visitor to its site today will find only a few forlorn street markers to show where

once a community thrived.

While official statements about the disaster aver only to the high explosives which had been loaded in the E.A. Bryan, critics in later years suggested that the explosion was nuclear in nature. In the summer of 1944 the atomic bomb was top secret and the very existence of the Manhattan Project was shrouded in layers of security. But once the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, speculation began that more than dynamite had been involved in the Port Chicago disaster.

If the Port Chicago explosion was indeed nuclear in nature, further speculation is divided between those who believe the explosion was accidental in origin, or was in fact a test by the United States government to measure the effects of a nuclear bomb. Certainly the weapons base at Port Chicago would have made a fine test subject, with ships, a railroad spur, temporary and permanent buildings, and many hundreds of expendable human subjects.

Perhaps the Port Chicago explosion was a nuclear accident? If so, it represented a major setback to the American nuclear weapons project. The successful Alamogordo test did not take place until July 16, 1945, one day short of a year after the Port Chicago explosion. Nuclear weapons were exploded in the air over Hiroshima and Nagasaki the following month, bringing about the end of the Second World War and providing an object lesson for Josef Stalin.

Where the Port Chicago naval weapons depot once stood, there is now the Concord Naval Weapons Station, a major loading area for the United States Pacific Fleet. The storage of nuclear weapons in barrow-like bunkers at the naval weapons station, while not officially acknowledged by the US government, is one of the most ill-kept secrets of our era.

VOICES IN THE WATER

by

BASIL COPPER

I

IT WAS LATE February when Roberts bought the mill. He was a successful artist and had long been trying to get out of London. The mill was a big place and one advantage was that it had already been partly converted into living accommodation. A lot more needed to be done in the way of renovation, but the price was right and Roberts snapped it up.

Another motivation was that his great friend Kent, an author, lived only a mile or so away. In earlier years Roberts had illustrated a number of Kent’s books and a lasting friendship had been formed during that period.

The estate agent, Cedric Smithson, a big, bluff man with an iron-grey moustache, who had first taken Roberts on a guided tour, was enthusiastic about the possibilities. It was not just the usual estate agent’s purchasing ploy, so Roberts was quick to catch the other’s reference points. It was also fortunate that central heating had already been installed throughout. Roberts had gathered that the previous owner had intended to make the mill his permanent residence, but his wife had left him for another man, and in the face of this personal disaster he had lost all heart in the project and had returned to London.