In Texas City, Texas, a busy industrial port between Galveston and Houston, an explosion occurred on the morning of Wednesday, April 16, 1947 that changed history locally and even globally. The shock of the explosion could be felt as far away as Louisiana, and the waves of anxiety and grief scarred many families in the Shreveport and Bossier area, including the Southerland family, as they awaited news of their brother, son, and son-in-law Robert D. Southerland.
Texas City, Texas had been a much sleepier town prior to World War II, but during the war, refineries and chemical plants and shipping brought an influx of people and jobs. In 1947, post-war, the plants had simply pivoted and pent-up demand was still being filled. One of these plants belonged to Monsanto Chemical, which, post-war, was making styrene, a component of synthetic rubber and plastics.
The Monsanto Texas City plant’s safety director, also referred to as their safety engineer, was Robert Southerland, a 1929 graduate of Bossier High School, who had played on the Bearkat football team with his older brother, Dell Jr. After graduation, Robert had worked in various positions related to the petroleum industry in Bossier City, including as a truck driver, clerk and bookkeeper and participated in the family business, Southerland Service Station on Traffic Street. In 1943, with his wife, Elsie Watson of Shreveport, and young son, Robert Jr., born in 1939, he moved to Texas City for the Monsanto job, reportedly after attending Centenary College to study chemical or petroleum engineering.
The Monsanto building and plant, in a former sugar refinery, was located just 300 feet from Slip 1 of the Texas City port. Docked in Slip 1 on the morning of April 16, 1947, was the container ship the SS Grand Camp of France, which was being loaded by local longshoremen with ammonium nitrate to fulfill a demand for fertilizer, as Europe worked to end its continuing wartime food shortage. There were some other items on board too: large balls of sisal twine, peanuts, drilling equipment, tobacco, cotton, and a few cases of small ammunition.
The explosive properties of ammonium nitrate were not yet commonly known at that time, and no special safety precautions were observed in its transport. Just after 8:00 a.m., several longshoremen went into the hold to wait for the pallets holding the 100-pound packages of the ammonium nitrate to be hoisted from the dock. Not long after, one of them smelled, and soon observed, smoke. However, the captain did not want to use any water to suppress a beginning fire because that would damage the cargo. The other methods the ship’s crew used were ineffective, and soon, flames were leaping into the sky in such unusually bright hues of orange and yellow that the ship’s fire attracted many spectators to the docks, including children. Texas City’s postwar schools were so overwhelmed with pupils that students attended school in shifts, thus the afternoon students were free to flock to the docks to witness the unusual flames of the Grandcamp fire.
Texas City’s small and underequipped volunteer fire crew showed up to fight the Grandcamp’s fire bravely, but in vain. The fire was too hot, and the heat evaporated the water they sprayed at it before it could even touch the flames. At 9:15 a.m., the SS Grandcamp, and its cargo of 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, exploded. The ship disintegrated, while sending the pieces as flaming projectiles to land hundreds of feet away. Also leveled were the dock and the neighboring Monsanto plant, and the flaming pieces of the ship set off a succession of oil storage tank fires, among other fires in the vicinity of the dock. These fires ultimately spread to the freighter wedged in a nearby slip, the High Flyer, also loaded with ammonium nitrate, which exploded into a nuclear-like mushroom cloud at about 1:15 a.m.
Thursday, igniting additional fires. It became the worst industrial accident in U.S. history, and resulted in an estimated 600 people killed and thousands more injured, and many other lives were changed forever.
Later that Thursday, the Bossier City Planter’s Press reported that Elsie Southerland had phoned relatives in the area the night before and said, “We are all O.K.” Sadly, whether Elsie’s original informant was incorrect or in the confusion, messages were crossed, a later, accurate article announced that Robert “Bob” Southerland was missing. Elsie later said she initially was informed her husband was recuperating in a hospital. It is possible that Robert’s name had been mixed up with that of his cousin, James Southerland, also of Bossier, and also a Monsanto employee in Texas City, who was injured during the disaster. Elsie, along with the FBI, and Monsanto officials, was busy visiting all hospitals, some of which were makeshift treatment centers that popped up to treat the massive numbers of injured, to try and locate her husband. Then, a couple of excruciating weeks later, in a makeshift morgue, the 34-year-old Robert Southerland’s body was identified. His death certificate was filed May 6, 1967.
The Monsanto company fire chief Walter W. Stephen, based at company headquarters in Anniston, Alabama, who travelled to Texas City at the first news of the Grandcamp explosion, arriving before the second explosion from the High Flyer, recalled in a speech to fellow firefighters or officials years later, during a rare moment when he decided to talk about the horrific disaster, what he knew of what would be Bob Southerland’s last moments. As safety engineer for the Monsanto Texas City plant, Bob Southerland was also chief of the plant’s fire department. With his department members, he was laying hose lines to Monsanto’s dock area several hundred feet from the ship. They connected their five-hundred-gallon pumper to a hydrant in a yard with two large brick and steel buildings, about two city- blocks distant from the Grandcamp. But Chief Stephen recalled,
“When the explosion occurred, these two buildings were no longer there and this pumper was picked up and thrown two hundred feet through the air. The entire Monsanto fire brigade, composed of men that I had trained and knew, their fine young chief, Bob Sutherland…and smiling Fred Atwood, their Assistant Chief, instantly went out of existence, along with the other heroes of the entire personnel of the Texas City and Republic Company [fire] departments.”
In fact, the fire in the area of the flattened Monsanto plant was not extinguished for several days, after an all-new, re-organized Texas City fire department, along visiting fire organizations and ultimately, a new Monsanto fire brigade, could put it out.
Having resided in Texas City, TX for four years, Bob Southerland had already become an integral member of the Texas City community, joining the local masonic lodge and junior chamber of commerce. His funeral was held May 3rd, 1947, at First Presbyterian Church in Texas City, where he was a member. Following the funeral, his body was shipped to Shreveport for a graveside Masonic ritual in Forest Park Cemetery.
On May 30th, 1947, Plain Dealing Progress newspaper in Bossier recalled Robert Southerland as a “peacetime hero,” along with the also recently-deceased Lt. Edward Teague, an Army Air Force pilot whose plane went down while stationed at a joint air base in Newfoundland, Canada. (See the History Center’s local history column of May 15, 2024, for this story). The article reported that Southerland had heroically worked to get the spectators of the Grandcamp fire away from the docks prior to the explosion that killed him, according to witnesses, and died trying to protect them, many of them children, as well as trying to aid the Grandcamp’s crew.
Stay tuned for an additional article on Bossier Parish ties to the horrific events in Texas City, Texas that started April 16, 1947. If you would like to add to or explore our collection of Bossier lives, including everyday heroes like Mr. Southerland, or his family who endured the unthinkable, please which is now within the new Bossier Parish Libraries Central Complex at 850 City Hall Drive, Bossier City, LA (across Beckett Street from the original History Center and “old” Central Library). We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org
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Images:
- Robert Southerland, Bossier High School football team photo, 1927.
- 1947 Texas City disaster: Heavy debris flew from the explosions at the docks, often igniting more fires. Photo source: US Army Corps of Engineers
Article by: Pam Carlisle
