The Port Chicago disaster was a deadly munitions explosion of the ship SS E. A. Bryan on July 17, 1944, at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California, United States. Munitions being loaded onto a cargo vessel bound for the Pacific Theater of Operations detonated, killing 320 sailors and civilians and injuring at least 390 others. Most of the dead were African-American sailors.
A month later, the unsafe conditions prompted hundreds of African American servicemen to refuse to load munitions, an act known as the Port Chicago Mutiny. More than 200 were convicted of various charges. Fifty of these men—, called the "Port Chicago 50"—, were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to 15 years of prison and hard labor, as well as a dishonorable discharge. Forty-seven of the 50 were released in January 1946; the remaining three served additional months in prison. During and after the mutiny court-martial, questions were raised about the fairness and legality of the proceedings. Owing to public pressure, the United States Navy reconvened the courts-martial board in 1945—that board re-affirmed convictions. Those convictions stood until 2024, when the Navy posthumously exonerated all 256 men convicted during the courts-martial, including the Port Chicago 50.
Widespread publicity surrounding the case turned it into a cause célèbre among Americans opposing discrimination targeting African Americans; it and other race-related Navy protests of 1944–45 led the Navy to change its practices and initiate the desegregation of its forces beginning in February 1946. In 1994, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial was dedicated to the lives lost in the disaster.
Background
The town of Port Chicago was located on Suisun Bay in the estuary of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, approximately 40 miles by water from the Golden Gate. In 1944, the town was a little more than a mile from a U.S. Navy munitions depot, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, which was later expanded and renamed the Concord Naval Weapons Station. It is now called the Military Ocean Terminal Concord. The original magazine was planned in 1941 with construction beginning shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The first ship to dock at Port Chicago was loaded on December 8, 1942.
Munitions transported through the magazine included bombs, shells, naval mines, torpedoes, and small arms ammunition. The munitions, destined for the Pacific Theater of Operations, were delivered by rail to the Port Chicago facility and then individually loaded by hand, crane, and winch onto cargo ships for further transport. Most of the enlisted men working as loaders at Port Chicago were African-American. All of the enlisted men had been specifically trained for one of the naval ratings at Naval Station Great Lakes (NSGL), but the men were instead put to work as stevedores at Port Chicago. None of the new recruits had been instructed in ammunition loading.
Composition of African American personnel
At NSGL, the enlisted African Americans who tested in the top 30% to 40% were selected for non-labor assignments. Port Chicago was manned by workers drawn from those remaining. The Navy determined that the quality of African American petty officers at Port Chicago suffered because of the absence of high-scoring Black men, and that overall levels of competence were further reduced by the occasional requirement for Port Chicago to supply drafts of men with clear records for transfer to other stations. The Navy's General Classification Test (GCT) results for the enlisted men at Port Chicago averaged 31, putting them in the lowest twelfth of the Navy. Officers at Port Chicago considered the enlisted men unreliable, emotional, and lacking the capacity to understand or remember orders or instructions.
Black enlisted men at Port Chicago were led by Black petty officers who were regarded by some workers as incompetent and ineffective in voicing their men's concerns to higher authority. Petty officers were seen as having aims fundamentally different from those of their men—they were described later as "slave drivers" and "Uncle Toms". They and their men sometimes had an antagonistic relationship.
Captain Merrill T. Kinne—commander of the Port Chicago facility at the time of the explosion—had served in the U.S. Navy from 1915 to 1922 and then returned to the Navy in 1941 to be posted aboard a general cargo ship. Prior to his being sent to command Port Chicago, Kinne had no training in the loading of munitions and little experience in handling them. Loading officers serving underneath Kinne had not been trained in handling munitions until they had been posted to Mare Island Navy Yard, after which they were considered adequate to the task by the Navy.
Speed contests and safety training
In April 1944, when Captain Kinne assumed command of Port Chicago, the loading officers had been pushing to load the explosive cargoes quickly—10 short tons (9.1 t) per hatch per hour. The desired level had been set by Captain Nelson Goss, Commander Mare Island Navy Yard, whose jurisdiction included Port Chicago Naval Magazine. Most loading officers considered this goal too high. On a chalkboard, Kinne tallied each crew's average tonnage per hour. The junior officers placed bets with each other in support of their own 100-man crews—called "divisions" at Port Chicago—and coaxed their crews to load more than the others. The enlisted men were aware of the bets and knew to slow down to a more reasonable pace whenever a senior officer appeared. The average rate achieved at Port Chicago in the months leading up to July 1944 was 8.2 short tons (7.4 t) per hatch per hour—commercial stevedores at Mare Island performed only slightly better at 8.7 short tons (7.9 t) per hatch per hour.
There was no system at Port Chicago to ensure officers and men were familiar with safety regulations. Two formal lectures and several informal lectures were given to the enlisted men by commanding officers, but follow-up confirmation of retained knowledge was not performed. Safety regulations were posted at a single location at the pier, but not in the barracks; Kinne did not think the enlisted men would understand such lists. Later the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) responded to word of unsafe practices by offering to bring in experienced men to train the battalion; the Navy leadership declined the offer, fearing higher costs, slower pace, and possible sabotage from civilian longshoremen. No enlisted man stationed at Port Chicago had received formal training in the handling and loading of explosives into ships. Even the officers did not receive training: Lieutenant Commander Alexander Holman, loading officer at Port Chicago whose duties included officer training, had initiated a search for training materials and samples, but did not organize a training class before disaster struck.
Winch maintenance
Powered winches were used on cargo ships to speed the handling of heavy loads. One winch was operated at each of the ship's five cargo holds. During loading operations, the winches were worked hard and required maintenance to remain operable. Winch brakes—a safety feature provided for stopping the load from falling if the winch's main power was lost—were not often used by skilled winch operators, as loads could be more quickly maneuvered using power settings rather than by application of the brakes. Disused brakes sometimes seized up and stopped working. The winches on the SS E. A. Bryan were steam-powered and showed signs of wear, even though the ship was five months old.
On July 13, 1944, when the E. A. Bryan, operated by Oliver J. Olson & Company for War Shipping Administration, docked at Port Chicago, the ship's No. 1 winch brakes were found stuck in the "off" position. This meant the winch could be operated freely, but lacked critical stopping capability if steam pressure was interrupted. The ship's chief mate and chief engineer examined the winch, but it was not determined whether the brake was made operational. During loading operations on July 15 the winch at No. 2 hold began making a hammering noise. An application of grease quieted it through the night until its main bearing could be replaced the next morning. On the afternoon of July 17, a bleeder valve on winch No. 4 required repair. Albert Carr, a civil service plumber from Pittsburg, California, was called to replace it—it was his first day at Port Chicago. Carr pulled a broken nipple out of the bleeder valve and replaced both the nipple and the valve from new stock taken from Port Chicago's shop. While at work he witnessed a man accidentally drop a naval artillery shell two feet onto the wooden pier, but there was no detonation. Carr waited until the African-American winch operator tested the repaired winch and then left the pier, thinking that the operation appeared unsafe.
Munitions handling
The enlisted men were leery of working with deadly explosives, but were told that the larger munitions were not active and could not explode—that they would be armed with their fuzes upon arrival at the combat theater. Handling of larger munitions, such as bombs and shells, involved using levers and, crowbars from boxcars, in which they were packed tightly with dunnage—lifting the heavy, grease-coated cylinders, rolling them along the wooden pier, packing them into nets, lifting them by winch and boom, lowering the bundle into the hold, then dropping individual munitions by hand into place. This series of actions was rough enough that damaged naval shells sometimes leaked identification dye from their ballistic caps.
Commander Paul B. Cronk, head of a Coast Guard explosives-loading detail tasked with supervision of the working dock, warned the Navy that conditions were unsafe and ripe for disaster. The Navy did not change its procedures and Cronk withdrew the detail.
Disaster
The Liberty ship SS E. A. Bryan docked at the inboard, landward side of Port Chicago's single 1,500 ft (460 m) pier at 8:15 a.m. on July 13, 1944. The ship arrived at the dock with no cargo, but was carrying a full load of 5,292 barrels (841,360 liters) of bunker C heavy fuel oil for its intended trip across the Pacific Ocean. At 10 a.m. that same day, seamen from the ordnance battalion began loading the ship with munitions. After four days of loading, about 4,600 tons (4,173 tonnes) of explosives had been stored in its holds.
At 10 p.m. on July 17, Division Three's 98 men were loading E. A. Bryan with 1,000-pound (450 kg) bombs into No. 3 hold, 40 mm shells into No. 5 hold and fragmentation cluster bombs into No. 4 hold. Incendiary bombs were being loaded as well; these bombs weighed 650 lb (290 kg) each and were "live"—they had their fuzes installed. The incendiary bombs were being loaded carefully one at a time into No. 1 hold—the hold with a winch brake that might still have been inoperative.
A boxcar delivery containing a new airborne anti-submarine depth charge design, the Mark 47 armed with 252 lb (114 kg) of torpex, was being loaded into No. 2 hold. The torpex charges were more sensitive than TNT to external shock and container dents. On the pier, resting on three parallel rail spurs, were 16 rail cars holding about 430 short tons (390 t) of explosives. In all, the munitions on the pier and in the ship contained the equivalent of about 5,000 short tons (4,500 t) of TNT.
One hundred and two men of the Sixth Division, many fresh from training at NSGL, were busy rigging the newly built Victory ship SS Quinault Victory (also spelled Quinalt Victory) in preparation for loading it with explosives, a task that was to begin at midnight. The Quinault Victory had a partial load of fuel oil, some of which was of a type that released flammable vapors as it sat, or upon agitation. The fuel, taken aboard at Shell Oil Company's Martinez refinery mid-day on July 17, would normally be sluiced to other fuel tanks in the following 24 hours.
Sixty-seven officers and crew of the two ships were at their stations, and various support personnel were present, such as the three-man civilian train crew and a Marine sentry. In total, nine Navy officers and 29 armed guards watched over the procedure. A U.S Coast Guard fire barge with a crew of five was docked at the pier. An officer who left the docks shortly after 10 p.m. noticed that the Quinault Victory′s propeller was slowly turning over and that the men of Division Three were having trouble pulling munitions from the rail cars because they had been packed so tightly.