Live torpedo displays lit up the 1880 Dominion Exhibition

People flocked to watch a ‘pirate ship’ being blown to smithereens

The 10-day Dominion Exhibition of 1880 was in full swing in Montreal. There were displays of industrial machinery, farm products, flowers, even pets. There was horse racing, a lacrosse tournament and Highland games with “feats of strength, speed and endurance,” as the official catalogue put it. There were fireworks “on a scale unprecedented in the History of Canada.” There were band concerts, “Indian Ceremonies and Amusements” and a mammoth picnic.

And on Sept. 21, Day 7 of the exhibition, there was a singularly unusual event, strangely out of keeping with all this gaiety. “Torpedo displays” would be held in the harbour to illustrate “the startling effects of this dreadful system of Torpedo warfare.”

Torpedoes in those days were simply immobile underwater explosives with no ability to move like today’s weapon. Most often, they would be tethered at a harbour’s entrance to deter approaching enemy ships, or occasionally might stealthily be affixed to the hull of such a ship by intrepid divers.

It was the second option that would be demonstrated in Montreal.

Preparations directed by John Kennedy, the Montreal Harbour Commission’s chief engineer, had been underway for days. Then, that sunny Tuesday morning, people in their thousands began gathering along the harbour’s revetment wall; others flocked to windows and rooftops overlooking the water.

Steamers and sailing vessels in the harbour were decked out in colourful bunting. It was a sight “bright beyond description,” the Montreal Gazette reported. Nonetheless another, rather less attractive vessel proved the focus of all eyes.

It was a black, derelict barge anchored perhaps 800 metres off the foot of Place Jacques Cartier, designated a “pirate ship” for purposes of the demonstration. Three buoys were spaced out nearby. A little farther off — but less than the length of a football field away — could be seen the harbour commission tug Saint Louis.

Kennedy and his men put their finishing touches on the doomed pirate ship and retreated to the Saint Louis. The explosive charges, linked by wire to electric batteries on board the tug, were all in order.

Just after 11 a.m., a small warning explosion from beneath one of the buoys broke the calm, followed minutes later by a second and then a third blast. All then remaining was a much larger 70-kilogram concoction of common nitro-glycerine and gunpowder on the barge. Kennedy nudged his young son Willie. The boy needed no further urging; he threw the switch.

“From the surface of the river,” we reported, “rose an immense mass of water glistening in the sun; a second later, a dull, heavy thud was heard, the great white mass broke, and from its midst black spars, kegs, splinters, and fragments … of all kinds shot up into the air amid clouds of smoke, and after rising rained down on every side. … As the cloud parted, the keel of the pirate ship was seen bodily in the air, a short distance above the surface.”

The crowd on shore — as many as 25,000 strong — erupted in cheers, for it was wonderful entertainment. But at least one observer reacted more soberly.

In a long, anonymous essay in The Gazette the following day, he reflected that torpedoes were once regarded as “unchivalrous and cowardly trickery.” Many had seen them as “a vile substitute for the candid bravery and honest tactics of a noble profession … a breach of the rules that should guide civilized nations when at war … unmanly and unchristian.”

But the essayist wasn’t so sure. Leaving aside the question of whether war was justified in the first place, he concluded that inexpensive weapons like torpedoes might well be a good thing, especially for weaker nations needing protection from the battleships of the strong: having this “proper complement to the iron-clad, … the strong will be less likely to causelessly attack them.”

As it happened, the only victims of the Montreal harbour torpedo were easy to dismiss. “A large number of fish,” we reported, “chiefly large suckers, with one or two dory, were killed by the explosions.”