On the morning of July 17, 1945, the SS Hamonic, a passenger ship on a Great Lakes cruise, caught fire while docked at Sarnia, Ontario.
In service since 1909, the SS Hamonic was one of the “Three Sisters” built by Collingwood Shipbuilding Company for the Northern Navigation Company, which conducted cruises on the Great Lakes.
At 8.30 a.m. a truck making deliveries to a nearby freight shed caught fire. Many of the passengers were still asleep. The fire quickly spread quickly from the shed to the Hamonic. Hamonic’s crew cut the ship loose from the dock, but the ship was already ablaze as it drifted away. In a desperate attempt to flee, Hamonic’s passengers jumped over the sides as the lifeboats onboard could not be launched due to fire damage. Another 50 passengers were rescued from the deck of the Hamonic by a crane bucket situated nearby. All 350 passengers survived 1,2, but many suffered injuries.
Three different St. John Ambulance Divisions were called to assist the injured: Imperial Oil Nursing Division No. 135, Sarnia Nursing Division No. 98, and the Sarnia Ambulance Division No. 63.
Members of the Ambulance Division responded to the dock. They assisted patients out of the water, provided first aid, and transported them to the hospital. Many of these patients were treated for burns suffered from the fire and from sliding down ropes to flee the Hamonic. The two Nursing Divisions also reported to the hospital to provide care to casualties. This included helping them contact friends and loved ones.3
Casualty numbers rose to 150 and overwhelmed the local hospital. St. John Ambulance set up an emergency hospital to augment. Fifteen members from the two Nursing Divisions were on duty there for two days.4
Hamonic’s sistership the SS Noronic would catch fire in Toronto Harbour four years later. Once again, St. John Ambulance responded in force to a maritime tragedy.
_______
1 John Rochon, The Sad Death of the Hamonic. The Sarnia Journal. November 21, 2014.
2 Some sources state that there was a single fatality.
3 Strome Galloway, The White Cross in Canada: 1883-1893, Centennial Ed. (Ottawa: St John Priory of Canada, 1983), 122.
4 Galloway, 123.
