It didn’t take Morpheus’s sweet kiss to unleash the nightmare in Santander. At about half past four in the afternoon of a peaceful November 3, 1893, the north of Spain shuddered when the bow of the freighter ‘Cape Machichaco‘ burst. The sulfuric acid and dynamite that were hidden in his cellar did the rest. ¡Boom! With the explosion, what was innocent cargo instantly turned into lethal shrapnel. From rifle bullets to sharp metal pieces, they were shot in the direction of the port, where a curious crowd had gathered in the heat of the arrival of the pride of the Ybarra Company.
That was a port tragedy; the largest at a civil level in the modern history of Spain. 590 people died and another 2,000 were seriously injured. Some mutilated, others burned. Santander was also battered. The explosion leveled 25 city blocks around the port; scars that only the work of months managed to hide. Magazine ‘black and white‘ she was speechless; It was enough for her to publish the snapshots of the debacle to convey her grief:
“Better than anything we could say describing the horrible catastrophe that occurred on the dock, the photographs that we offer our readers today give an idea of the terrible accident.”
catastrophic misfortunes
The origin of the ship is far from Spain. This 78 meter long –long– and 10 meter wide–beam steamship was forged in the English city of Newcastle back in 1882. The shipyard in charge of its construction, Schlesinger, Davis and Company, launched it under the name of ‘ Benisaf’. There is no denying that she was a wonder for the time; Her hull was majestic and could reach a speed of up to eight knots. This long list of benefits made the Ybarra Company acquire it in 1885 for 49,500 pounds along with three other ships. And, as was normal, when she arrived in our country she was rebaptized. Her new name was ‘Cabo Machichaco’.
Ybarra’s brand new fleet was destined for the transport of goods between Bilbao and Seville. There was only one stopover: the port of Santander. And the ‘Cabo Machichaco’ arrived in this city on October 24, 1893 in what, by all accounts, seemed like one more than a hundred voyages that had already been accumulated. The first mistake that was added to the long chain of fatal coincidences was that the ship was loaded up to the poop. The ship that preceded him had not been able to set sail the previous week and he had had to carry his provisions. At first it didn’t seem serious.
Thus, in its holds there were from nails to rails and cartridges. More than 1,600 tons of cargo in total. Although the most dangerous were almost two thousand boxes of dynamite –1,720– and 12 tons of sulfuric acid that the captain had had to stow on deck due to lack of space. The list was completed with small belongings, food, basic necessities… There wasn’t a free space, wow.
The ship, in the port of Santander
The first setback he faced arose on his arrival in Santander. ‘Cabo Machichaco’ had to overcome a quarantine due to the cholera epidemic that had broken out in Bilbao. Although this was not a major problem. What was fatal was the choice of the port. According to the regulations, ships carrying explosives had to dock on the outskirts of the city, south of the Maliaño docks or near the Magdalena peninsula. It was a way to avoid unpleasantness. But the captain did not report his cargo and, when he received permission –before the mandatory ten days that he had to wait due to the pandemic, by the way– he directed his propellers into the heart of the moorings.
madness in the harbor
Corruption for some, practicality for others, ‘Cabo Machichaco’ was moored at around seven in the morning in the very heart of Santander. And lo and behold, fate played its last card while the port workers unloaded some of the boxes of dynamite and many other items. Out of nowhere, a flame sprang up that grew until it became a fire. That was the germ of the disaster. More for sulfuric acid than for dynamite, by the way, since the latter needs a detonator and a primer to unleash its power, and not just high temperatures.
The disaster was forged in hours. The smoke was the perfect claim for the population, as explained Jose Fernandez Bremon in the magazine of the time ‘The Spanish and American Illustration’. Little by little, hundreds of onlookers gathered around ‘Cabo Machichaco’ as they strolled through the port. This was some kind of fairground attraction. At around four in the afternoon, the port authorities made the decision to sink the vessel to avoid further problems. The ‘Santander’ tugboat approached the hull and opened a leak. But it was already late. Half an hour later, the mixture of dynamite and sulfuric acid did the rest and the bow blew up. This is how the journalist narrated it:
«The authorities, sailors and people came to help extinguish the fire and a large number of curious walkers came to the pier. They spent in these works and the spectacle lasted about two hours, when a great flame arose from the ship, a formidable thunder rumbled, the smoke blackened the air, which was filled with black or inflamed fragments; those scattered like shrapnel wreaking havoc. The others set fire to fifty or sixty buildings, and the gases, expanded with terrible violence, threw houses to the ground, ships to the sinking, and corpses into the air. The earth trembled and the whole factory of the city».
Lateral view of Cabo Machichaco, in one of its journeys
After the explosion deafened the port, cries of despair began. Bremón narrated it with astonishment: «Ruins everywhere; wailing; people who fled without direction; destruction; heaps of formless bodies; fired limbs without trunk; burning apples; priests, some bloodied, helping the dying; and desolation in every way imaginable.”
As if that were not enough, the governor, the prosecutor and many other officials present died. «Doesn’t it seem like a work of magic to break the windows of the dining room of an inn, and half a human body penetrate through the window?». Santander froze.
Sad ending
The ‘Black and White’ magazine was even cruder. In addition to the images, which showed part of Santander destroyed by the explosion, it included a Time.news of the same Torcuato Luca de Tena:
«Impossible to give an idea of the number of victims caused by the formidable explosion; Such a hecatomb, the most horrible of those that have occurred in a long time among humans, cannot be measured by statistics nor can it be counted by the hospital admission book and by the casualties from the Civil Registry. To the corpses found we must add those rotting at the bottom of the bay; to the dead in the cemetery, the morally dead from the horrible nervous shock or from immense losses in family or interests; to those operated on who expire, the unbalanced forever and those who will die little by little without the public knowing or the journalists noticing».
The last scene of this tragedy occurred shortly after. On March 21, 1894 there was a new explosion in the wreckage of the stern. Two dozen workers in the port were killed. And, eight days later, the authorities dynamited what little remained of this ship to avoid further trouble. Santander’s history, however, had been marked by a black blur.