On the morning of April 16, 1947, shortly after 8 a.m., the hatch on the No. 4 hold of the French ship the S.S. Grandcamp was opened so that stevedores could resume loading a shipment of fertilizer bound for Europe.
It was the beginning of a beautiful, cool day, a breeze was coming out of the north, and Texas City was at work again.
Much of the rest of the country, still in the grip of a postwar recession, couldn't say that, but Texas City was different.
Along the waterfront, there was plenty of work for the town's longshoremen, and next to the wharf stood a hissing, steaming landscape of chemical plants and oil refineries that provided steady, good-paying jobs for much of the town.
With a population of 18,000, Texas City was nothing less than a boomtown, a place the hometown newspaper declared with every edition to be "the port of opportunity - the heart of the greatest industrial development of the South."
If anyone complained about the smell, they were told it was the smell of money and that they'd soon grow accustomed to it.
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