The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire

It is October 1918. Times are looking very grim indeed for the once mighty Ottoman Empire. Having already lost their once extensive European and African territories prior to the outbreak of the First World War, the Ottoman Turks had thrown in their lot with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914. It proved to be a fatal mistake. At first things went well for them, thwarting a British attempt to capture the Dardanelles Straits at Gallipoli in 1915-16 and capturing a British expeditionary force at Kut-al-Amara in southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). After that it all went downhill as the British Colonel T.E. Lawrence "of Arabia" led the Ottomans' Arab subjects in open revolt against their masters before the British themselves launched invasions from Egypt and Kuwait into the Ottoman provinces of Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia. By October 1918 the Ottoman forces in the Middle East were collapsing, having lost Baghdad, Jerusalem and Damascus to the advancing British. Facing the prospect of an enemy invasion of the Ottoman heartland of Anatolia (the area roughly comprising modern Turkey), the leadership signed an armistice with the allied powers on October 30th.

After the war the defeated Ottoman Empire was punished severely by the victorious powers. Under the terms of the 1920 treaty of Sevres her Arab territories were handed off to the British (Iraq and Palestine) and French (Syria and Lebanon). Anatolia was partitioned into various "spheres of influence" whilst the hated Greeks took over several western areas around the Aegean Sea. The Ottoman capital, Constantinople, was demilitarised and placed under international control. The humiliation of the former European superpower was seemingly complete.

The Rise

Anyone looking at the Ottoman Empire's dire situation in the aftermath of the First World War would have struggled to believe that, less than 250 years earlier, this defeated and demoralised nation had dominated south-east Europe, the Middle East and much of northern Africa. At its greatest territorial extent in 1683, the empire of the Ottoman Turks straddled three continents, stretching west to east from Morocco to the shores of the Caspian Sea and south to north from the Horn of Africa to the gates of Vienna. For centuries, Ottoman armies of Muslim warriors were scourge of European Christendom, sweeping Eastern Orthodox Christianity aside and spreading Islam deep into the heart of the continent.

The history of the Ottoman Empire dates back to the beginning of the 14th Century when the Sultanate of Rum, a state established in Anatolia by the Seljuk Turks, collapsed in around 1300. Anatolia had traditionally been dominated by the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire, the informal name given to the Eastern Roman Empire, which had been in existence since around 306AD when it split from its western counterpart (which collapsed in 476AD), until the Seljuks forced them out. The Rum Sultanate fragmented into a number of so-called "Ghazi emirates", one of which was ruled by Osman I. It is from his name that the name Ottoman was derived. Osman's emirate became the founding lands of the new Ottoman Empire, with he himself as the first Sultan.

Over the next century the Ottoman lands expanded across Anatolia, taking advantage of the terminal decline of the neighbouring Byzantine Empire. By 1400 they had expanded across the Dardanelles into Greece and the Balkans, surrounding Constantinople, the Byzantine capital. An invasion of Anatolia by the Timurid Empire bought more time for the Byzantines but it was only a matter of time before the Ottomans made an effort to capture the heavily-defended port city, which stood at the strategically vital crossroads between Europe and Asia. The time finally came in 1453 when Ottoman forces under Sultan Mehmed II laid siege to Constantinople and captured it, finally bringing an end to the 1000 year-old Eastern Roman Empire. The last Roman Emperor, Constantine XI was reportedly last seen throwing off his imperial regalia and charging headlong into the fighting, dying alongside his soldiers.

A victorious Mehmed II enters Constantinople.

The victorious Ottomans consolidated their control of Constantinople and made it their new capital, converting the main cathedral into the present Hagia Sophia mosque under Mehmed's orders. Nonetheless The Ottomans expressed toleration towards Orthodox Christianity and the Christian community accepted them in return, largely because of their historically poor relations with there Catholic counterparts in Western Europe. The Ottomans then spent the next century enjoying a period of impressive territorial expansion, advancing northwards deep into Europe as well as south into Syria, Palestine, Arabia and Egypt. The growing Ottoman dominance of the eastern Mediterranean sent alarm bells ringing in Europe, especially in Hungary and Habsburg Austria which were next in the firing line.

Under the rule of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) the advance into Europe continued unabated. His forces captured Belgrade in 1521 and had occupied most of the Kingdom of Hungary by 1526. The turning point came in 1529 when Suleiman attempted to capture Vienna, the Austrian capital. Ottoman troops laid siege to the city but were unable to take it before the onset of Winter forced them to retreat. Another attempt in 1532 also ended in failure. With their advance into Europe stalled, they turned east and captured Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, cementing Ottoman rule in Mesopotamia and providing direct access to the Persian Gulf. By the time of Suleiman's death in 1566, the Ottoman Empire ruled over fifteen million people.

Despite their emphasis on land campaigning, a major key in the success of Ottoman expansion was their naval strength. Ottoman fleets enjoyed a streak of crushing victories against Christian navies before coming unstuck at Malta in 1565. Their failure to capture the strategically important island from the Order of the Knights Hospitaller curbed Ottoman expansion in the Mediterranean. Christian naval supremacy was re-established following the Catholic victory at Lepanto in 1571.

The Ottoman and Catholic fleets clash at Lepanto.

The setback at Lepanto all but destroyed any remaining illusions with regards to the "invincible" Ottomans but the empire and its navy recovered quickly, continuing to expand albeit at a slower rate than had been seen in the days of Suleiman. The other European powers had begun to get wise to Ottoman battlefield techniques and were seeing advances in military technology that the Ottomans, stifled by religious and intellectual conservatism, were missing out on. Nonetheless expansion went on in North Africa and the Middle East, with the Ottomans taking control of the Black Sea and the Caucasus, reaching the Caspian Sea at Baku in present-day Azerbaijan. Ottoman expansion finally came to an end in 1683 when one final attempt to capture Vienna was thrown back by European forces. Vienna remained in Christian hands and the European powers were now ready to go on to the offensive.

The Fall

After the Ottoman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent in 1683 it did not take long for the rot to set in, although the next century-and-a-half is generally seen by historians as being a period of stagnation rather than decline for the Ottomans. Up until the 19th Century the empire's vast territories largely held up although some land on its northern fringes in Europe was lost to the Austrian Habsburgs, who were in the process of consolidating their ancestral holdings into their own vast multi-ethnic empire, which would go on to eventually become Austria-Hungary.

The real cause of the Ottomans' post-1683 slide into a second-rate European power was the regime's reluctance to implement the same reforms that were working wonders in other countries. As I have already mentioned, the Ottoman's were already starting to fall behind even before they reached their maximum territorial boundaries. The 16th Century revolutions in military technology that had taken place in other European countries, such as the development of firearms and improved artillery, had largely passed the Ottomans by. They were lagging behind in other areas too. Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450 but it would be a further forty-three years before the first one was set up in Constantinople by Spanish Jews fleeing from the Inquisition.

As the Ottomans' downward slide continued, their once-feared swordsmen, archers and Sephi cavalry were suddenly having a hard time when coming up against the Austrians' cannon and muskets. Religious conservatism at home meant that the Islamic  Caliph and his cohorts often rebuffed any attempts at political or military modernisation. By 1700 they had already lost Hungary and soon realised that the empire was no longer able to pursue its policy of aggressive expansionism and that they must, in Europe at least, go over to the defensive.

There were no serious attempts to reform the Ottoman military forces until the dawn of the 19th Century. Sultan Selim III was the first ruler to attempt to modernise the army along European lines but again the attempts were blocked by conservatives and reactionaries within the government, the Islamic clerical establishment and the army. Particularly strong resistance came from the archaic-minded and ineffectual leadership of the Sultan's personal bodyguards and household troops, the Janissary Corps. In 1807 the Janissaries staged a revolt and removed Selim from his throne and within a year the ex-Sultan was dead. The situation was not resolved until 1826 when Selim's successor Mahmud II massacred the troublesome Janissaries and then abolished them altogether. A major barrier to reform had been removed but by then it was already far too late, as the situation in Europe had already begun spinning out of Constantinople's control.

With the Ottomans preoccupied by the prospect of Austrian and Russian expansion into their Balkan territories, they were caught off-guard by the rise of an all new threat that came from within their own lands, regional nationalism. As the big guns of Europe squabbled who owned what territory, they gave little attention to the increasingly obvious fact that the little man was desiring to make a go of it on his own two feet. The first Ottoman territory in Europe to break away was Greece which declared independence in 1821, prompting a struggle that was not resolved until 1829 when Constantinople relented under British, French and Russian pressure and recognised the new Greek state.

The loss of Greece marked the beginning of the Ottoman Empire's final terminal decline. During the 19th Century the European colonial powers began poaching her African territories whilst yet more nationalist movements sprung up in the Balkans. The Ottoman regime, wracked as was by corruption, repression and inefficiency, was unable to do much about it, prompting people and publications to begin referring to the shrinking empire as "the sick man of Europe". The Ottomans were no longer in a position to initiate wars on their own, instead joining military coalitions beside other more powerful nations such as in the 1850s when they took up arms alongside Britain and France against the Russians in the Crimean War. The financial strain caused by that conflict drove the Ottoman's into serious debt and economic difficulties.

The terms of the peace treaty that ended the Crimean War also required that the Ottoman Empire give Muslims and non-Muslims equal status under the law but they did not implement this requirement fully and certain aspects of Islam's legal supremacy remained such as the rule that a Dhimmi (the term used to refer to a non-Muslim living under Sharia Law) would not have their testimony against a Muslim accepted by the courts, effectively giving Muslims immunity from prosecution for offences committed against non-Muslims. This demonstrated the regimes lack of genuine religious toleration and caused friction with the other European powers. It also exacerbated the problems in the Balkans where the predominantly Christian populations were being kept subjugated by Muslims who exploited their immunity status to terrorise the Christians, often with the full support of the authorities.

Despite the reluctance to give up Sharia Law there were some genuine attempts to modernise the empire during this period. The period of Ottoman history between approximately 1839 and 1876 is known as the Tanzimat and was marked by significant efforts to stem the tide of decline. A parliamentary system of governance was put into use for the first time whilst increased cultural rights and civil liberties were introduced as well as some concessions for non-Muslim or non-Turkish populations, although the aforementioned abuse of Muslims' protection under the law did much to negate the effects. Most crucial of all from the Ottoman point-of-view was a programme of "Ottomanisation" which set out to integrate the minority populations into Ottoman society and culture, hopefully suppressing any simmering nationalist or secessionist tendencies. Unfortunately for the Ottomans these changes, as with almost every other reform they attempted, simply came along far too late to stop the rot.

After another, rather more disastrous war against Russia in 1878, the Ottomans were forced to hand the island of Cyprus to the British as well as accept the independence of Rumania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, leaving them with but a mere rump of European territory sandwiched amongst these new ambitious countries. The situation in Africa was also looking bleak as the Ottoman administrations crumbled in the face of advancing European imperialism. The French took Algeria in 1830 followed by Tunisia in 1881. In 1882 British troops entered Egypt and the Sudan under the pretext of restoring law and order. Both countries remained nominally Ottoman territories but in practice had become British-administered protectorates. As the dying empire struggled into the 20th Century, it became obvious that Austria's interest had also not completely gone away.

In 1908 the Austro-Hungarian Empire set its sights upon the Slav-populated Ottoman territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Ottomans were in no position to fight for those lands and pulled out, allowing the Austrians to take over. This move greatly annoyed the new Balkan states, especially the Serbs who desired to someday unify the Slavic peoples into a single state. The Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the subsequent regional tension it caused would prove to be a catalyst in the eventual outbreak of war in 1914 but before that there was still some unfinished business. Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria founded the Balkan league with the intention of driving the hated Ottomans out of Europe once and for all.

Meanwhile things continued to go badly for the Ottomans. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 threw the empire into turmoil but did finally begin to bring reformist secularized thinking to the forefront of national politics. In 1911 the last directly-administered Ottoman territory in Africa, Libya, was lost to the upstart Kingdom of Italy. The following year, the Balkan League launched a surprise attack and the beleaguered Ottomans lost almost all of their remaining European territory, which the members of the league then divided amongst themselves. Some 400,000 Muslims, fearful of Greek, Serbian or Bulgarian atrocities, fled from the Balkans alongside the retreating Ottoman forces. The tiny province of East Thrace was the only land west of Constantinople that remained in Ottoman hands. By 1914 the once-vast Ottoman Empire consisted solely of Anatolia, East Thrace, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Mesopotamia and the western edge of the Arabian peninsula (including the holy city of Mecca). The stage was set for a final bloody showdown......

A New Nation

The Ottoman Empire's defeat in the First World War and the harsh terms imposed upon her by the victorious allies turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back. The run-down, corrupt and ineffective imperial regime was gone within five years of the end of the war as people at least realised that sweeping changes were needed in order to drag the traditionally backward-looking Turks into the modern era.

It was an outbreak Turkish nationalist feeling, however, that was responsible for setting the ball rolling. The allied occupation of Constantinople and, more significantly, the arrival of Greek troops in East Thrace and western Anatolia resulted in the creation of the Turkish National Movement. This new political organisation set out to evict the occupying powers and establish a new Turkish state free from the stifling atmosphere that symbolised the Ottoman era. The movement, led by former Ottoman army officer Mustafa Kemal, quickly turned into a full-blown revolution, leading to an outbreak of hostilities with the occupying forces.

The strength of Kemal's nationalist movement was such that the allies were forced to abandon the Treaty of Sevres and pull their forces out of the country. In 1922 the revolution succeeded in overthrowing the Ottoman government and the last Sultan, Mehmed VI was forced to abdicate and went into exile with his family, bringing an end to the house of Osman's rule which had been constant throughout the old empire's 600-year history. It also became clear that the Turks wanted their new nation to be secularised and free from the bindings of religious conservatism, leading to the abolition of the Islamic Caliphate as well. In July 1923 the Turkish National Movement and the allies negotiated a new treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne which finally brought about a resolution to the situation. A new Turkish state consisting of Anatolia and East Thrace would be established.

In October 1923 the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed, with Mustafa Kemal as the first President and the Anatolian city of Ankara as the new capital, signifying a break with the new country's imperial past. Kemal's leadership ushered in an era of major reforms that finally brought Turkey into line with its western neighbours, including a programme of secularisation, education, economic and social reforms. As a final break with the past, the new regime insisted that the outside world officially refer to the old capital, Constantinople by its Turkish name, Istanbul, putting a stop to the age-old western habit of still calling it by the old Roman name during the Ottoman period.

They got their wish.

The Man who Saved the World

Usually it takes something monumental to be realised as a truly great historical figure. Such a person is normally well-known for doing something brilliant that has truly benefited the world and the people within it.The likes of Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Ghandi and countless others leap to mind as being among that ilk for the immense contributions that they have made. Sometimes, however, it only takes a small act by an unknown person to truly do the world a favour.

The unknown person of which I speak is now an elderly man in his early 70s who is quietly seeing out his days in an apartment block to the north-east of Moscow, a retired soldier who, thanks to a decision he made nearly 30 years ago, warrants a far greater deal of appreciation from history than his anonymous lifestyle would suggest. That man is Stanislav Petrov, the man who saved the world from mutually-assured-destruction...

It is 1983 and the Cold War is getting too hot for comfort. the hawkish anti-Communist Ronald Reagan is in the White House and an increasingly paranoid-clique of elderlies surround the less-than-healthy Yuri Andropov in the Kremlin. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union are at their worst since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and there is a genuine sense of fear in the corridors of power in Moscow that the Americans are planning to jump them with a surprise nuclear attack. Although it was and remains standard US policy never to strike first with nuclear weapons, Andropov and his cohorts within the Soviet politburo and the spy agencies believed that President Reagan was capable of ordering a first strike and was planning to do just that. It was in the Moscow mindset both to expect an American attack and to react to it very quickly.

The fact that the Soviet military and political leadership were on hair-trigger alert coupled with the less-than-infallible nature of their early-warning systems made an accidental nuclear war a terrifyingly realistic prospect, although it remained largely unknown to much of the world's population at the time. Throughout 1983 relations continued to get more and more tense. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, much of Western Europe was engulfed by a storm of protest over American plans to install Pershing tactical missiles in West Germany. The Americans themselves were doing little to dampen down the tension. Things took a turn for the even worse on September 1st when Korean Airlines flight 007 strayed off course and entered Soviet airspace whilst en-route from Alaska to Seoul. The Soviet air force shot the plane down without asking questions, killing all 269 people on board, including a United States congressman. American public opinion suddenly took a dangerous swing against the Soviets.

President Reagan himself had already sent alarm bells ringing in Moscow when he described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" during a speech in Florida before going live on American TV to announce the launch of his Strategic Defense Initiative, which has become known to history as Star Wars. This idea involved using satellites to shoot down incoming Soviet missiles from space. If the Americans could put this concept into reality it would render the whole of Moscow's massive nuclear weapons stockpile obsolete. This further instilled within the Soviet leadership the belief that they ought to act sooner rather than later in order to avoid being outwitted by Washington.

This is where our friend comes in. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was serving in the Soviet Air Defence Forces right in the middle of this rather dodgy period. On the morning of September 26th 1983, less than a month after the Korean Airlines incident, Petrov was the officer on duty at the Serpukhov-15 operations bunker near Moscow. This particular bunker happened to house the command centre for the entire Soviet early-warning system, codenamed Oko (Russian for "eye"). Petrov's job was to observe the satellite imagery being fed to the big screens and report immediately to his superiors should any of the eyes-in-the-sky detect incoming American missiles. Petrov himself obviously did not have the authority launch a counterstrike but, given the dangerously high level of alert that the Soviets were operating under, such a response was only a phone call away.

The Mother of all Decisions

That particular night in the bunker seemed to be just the same as any other. It was just after midnight in Moscow whilst it was beginning to get dark in the United States. In the main operations room of Serpukhov-15 a bored Petrov and his underlings watched with forced interest as the satellite images showed the cloak of darkness advancing east to west across the North American landmass. Despite being well aware of the delicate international situation, nothing seemed out of the ordinary to the men present. They knew they had to be ready for anything yet few of them really believed that the Americans would possibly want to attack, effectively assuring their own destruction as well as that of the Soviets. At that moment the quiet was suddenly shattered when the piercing wail of the alarm rang out and the main screen suddenly turned white and a single word flashed up in red Cyrillic lettering:

LAUNCH

Petrov immediately sprung into action and checked the computer systems. They indicated that a single American missile was in the air. The young officer resisted the urge to fly into a blind panic and immediately suspected a false alarm. He was already aware that the early warning system was far from infallible and prone to mistakes. Either way, a single missile was simply not logical. If the Americans really were going to launch a first strike then surely it would be all-out, using every bomb and missile available to cripple them straight away and minimise retaliatory efforts. Nonetheless Petrov scoured the satellite imagery for any evidence of a missile launch flash occurring in the United States but the fact it was getting dark there made it difficult to see anything. He telephoned his superiors who, thankfully, also concurred that some form of computer error had taken place. Once his superior had hung up, Petrov overrode the early-warning system and shut down the alarm, bringing the situation abruptly back to normal. He and his colleagues simmered down and slumped back into their chairs, thanking themselves for averting a catastrophe. Oko, however, was not done frazzling nerves

Barely minutes after Petrov had shut down the system, the word LAUNCH suddenly flashed up on the big screen again, accompanied by the alarm. The computers were still detecting the same missile launch...... plus a second. There were now two American missiles in the air...

Three...

Four......

FIVE!

Petrov and his men stood frozen with horror. It now looked like the impossible was happening in front of their very eyes. The computer was showing five missiles inbound from the United States. This was it, they thought. Reagan had given the order to take out the Soviet Union. Surely now the only thing left to do was to call in the reports and recommend a full retaliatory strike. If the Soviets were to launch, they had to decide quickly. Leaving it until the inbounds could be confirmed by land radar (which could not see beyond the horizon) would limit Moscow's response time to mere minutes.

As before, Petrov checked the satellite images and was still unable to spot any missile flashes. He did not feel comfortable about phoning his superiors again, especially without further confirmation. He checked the computers again and found no further launches, still just the five. Once again Petrov began to doubt the system. Five missiles were a lot more than one yet it still did not make sense with respect to how the Americans had been expected to lauch an all-out strike. The decision on whether to call it in or not had to be taken right then and there. As the young officer wrestled with his conscience, history hung in the balance. After a brief hesitation he made his decision.

He overrode the system and shut off the alarm, without informing his superiors.

By following his good sense rather than following orders, this one man had effectively saved the world from a nuclear holocaust. One can hardly imagine the horrors that would have taken place had he instead decided to make that telephone call. A report of five inbound missiles would almost certainly have been enough to send the paranoid Soviet leadership over the edge. Soviet warheads would have begun bearing down on Europe and North America, prompting a full NATO counterstrike. By the time the Soviets would have realised the first launches were a false alarm it would have been far too late.

The Aftermath

In the end it turned out that Petrov's suspicions about the incoming phantom warheads were correct. The source of the false alarm was merely sunlight bouncing off high-altitude clouds over North America, which the Soviet satellites wrongly interpreted as being missile launch flashes. Petrov was vindicated but his superiors were left feeling rather embarrassed by the exposed flaws in the early warning system and they conspired to keep the incident under wraps. Petrov himself was never allowed to occupy such a sensitive role again and he ultimately took early retirement, suffering a nervous breakdown. He was never given any award or recognition by the Soviet or Russian governments for what he had done.

Knowledge of the Petrov incident only became known to the public after the fall of the Soviet Union (naturally). It has subsequently brought considerable public attention to the aged and reclusive Petrov, who continues to insist that he is not some kind of humanitarian hero and was simply doing his job. Nonetheless he accepted an award and $1000 from the Association of World Citizens "in recognition of the part he played in averting a catastrophe" (minor understatement there). He has also visited the United States and been honoured by the United Nations, although the Russian representatives there were only too eager to point out that Petrov alone could not have started a nuclear war. That may well have been the case but in my opinion, given the state of the world in September 1983, had that one man made a second phone call to his bosses on that night in the bunker then the world today would be a VERY different place.

The Great Fire of Newcastle & Gateshead

Contemparary engraving depicting the Gateshead/Newcastle fire of 1854

Events in history have often taught us important lessons, such as "Don't trust men with strange moustaches" or "Don't leave a burning paraffin lamp behind a cow when you're milking it, especially if you are a female immigrant Catholic which makes you ideal scapegoat material". In this particular case I suppose the lesson is "Don't waste your time making buildings fireproof if the stuff you intend to put inside them is more likely to catch than a gin-soaked haybale in a blast furnace". This is the story of the great fire/explosion that occurred in two English towns, Gateshead and Newcastle on October 6th 1854. It's a story that lacks attention compared with the more well-known city fires of the past such as London (1666), Chicago (1841), Moscow (1812) and a quake-ravaged San Francisco (1906). Nonetheless it was still just as deadly, causing 53 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

Background

By the mid-19th century, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gateshead has risen out of relative obscurity on the back of the Industrial revolution and were very much on-the-make. The coming of the railways had further boosted the growth of the towns, bringing in more industry. The two towns have always shared a very close relationship, facing each other across the steep gorge of the River Tyne, which at the time was alive and bustling with all kinds of shipping traffic. Newcastle in particular, with its station on the new East Coast Main Line between London and Scotland, was already pretty much the centre of everything in the north-east of England and was developing its own distinct architectural character and grand civic and public buildings to rival those anywhere else.

Gateshead, across from Newcastle on the south side of the river, had retained its tightly-knit community identity despite the influx of industry (and with it, poverty) and being partitioned by the construction of railway viaducts. The centre of life in Gateshead had long been the Medieval parish church of St. Mary, which overlooked the river from its lofty vantage point. Until the 1820s, when the town's growth prompted the building of more churches, St. Mary's was the only place of worship, marriage, baptism and funeral for the people of Gateshead and was thus firmly cemented in the affections of the locals. Although no longer in use as a church, St. Mary's still stands on its hill today, wedged rather uncomfortably between the Sage conference centre and the southern approach road for the Tyne Bridge. The fact it has survived the test of time is an achievement in itself but the continued existence of St. Mary's is all the more remarkable when you consider its close proximity to the events which I am about to tell you about. 

The old parish church of St. Mary, Gateshead

Although the Tyne today is famous for its abundance of bridges, there were only two crossings in 1854. The older structure was a low multi-arched stone bridge that linked the two quaysides. It was opened in 1781, replacing the earlier Medieval bridge which had been washed away in a flood. This bridge has since been itself replaced, making way for the for the Swing Bridge which opened in 1876 and still operates today. Just 100 feet upstream from the stone bridge stood the High Level Bridge, an ingenious double-deck construction designed by the eminent railway engineer Robert Stephenson and completed in 1849. Unlike the older bridge it was built upon high piers so that trains (top deck) and road/pedestrian traffic (lower deck) could cross the river without having to navigate the steep sides of the Tyne gorge. Stephenson's bridge still stands today, another fortunate survivor of the events of 1854, although the ageing structure needs constant TLC to keep it fit-for-purpose.

Anyway, enough background. Time to get onto the rather more interesting business of death and destruction. It is a tale that begins on the Gateshead quayside......

The Fire

The splendid new gaslit mill premises of Wilson & Sons stood by the river on Hillgate, just a few yards downstream from the stone bridge. Wilsons was a local firm of worsted (coarse wool yarn) manufacturers who had already lost their first mill on the site to a fire three years previously. Clearly they were of the belief that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Unfortunately fate has a habit of biting people on the backside, and this time it bit very hard indeed.

Wilson's mill was discovered to be on fire once again shortly after midnight on October 6th 1854. Both Newcastle and the North Eastern Railway Company dispatched their fire appliances to assist the Gateshead authorities who had already become overwhelmed by the spreading fire and the arrival of the customary crowd of sightseers and thrillseekers who we all know like to cause additional grief in these sorts of situations. Some of the braver attendees risked their lives attempting to salvage stock from the lower floors of the building but the vast quantities of oil present, used in the treatment of wool, ensured that the mill was destined to go the same way as its predecessor. Within two hours of the fire starting the building was a complete write-off but the fire was not finished yet and it already had set its sights on the building next-door.

The neighbouring building in question was a twelve-year-old seven-story bonded warehouse owned by one Charles Bertram. Mr. Bertram was obviously a lot more safety-savvy than the Wilsons in that he had built his warehouse as a double-fireproof structure with in internal steel frame and every possible fire precaution taken. Unfortunately all these fire-prevention efforts wer nullified somewhat by the fact that the building was stocked to the rafters with thousands of tons of highly dangerous and volatile chemicals, including sulphur and nitrate of soda. The warehouse's close proximity to the burning mill was all it took to ignite the contents before the flames even touched the building itself.

As molten sulphur began streaming from the windows, firefighters began abandoning the mill and instead focused their attentions on saving the warehouse, again in vain. One onlooker described the building as a "cataract on fire" as it was engulfed in one giant mass of sulphur-fuelled purple flame. More onlookers flooded to the scene and occupied the plentiful vantage points that Newcastle and Gateshead could offer. They gazed in awe as the growing fire cast its pulsing purple glow upon every prominent object around: the river, the ships, the High Level Bridge, the old castle keep, the ornate spires of St. Nicholas' Cathedral and All Saints, Newcastle. The whole thing was just as mesmerising as it was terrifying if not more so.

An artists impression of the fires as seen looking east from the High Level Bridge

Although the fire was certainly huge, it was of little genuine concern to those watching. It appeared to be confined to the two buildings and did not look likely to cause any further damage. Just another fire in all respects. Those onlookers from Newcastle even felt they could have a snigger at their neighbours' misfortune. Then, at just after 3am, events took an unexpected (and very loud) turn for the worst.

The Explosion

It is not known exactly what Charles Bertram had stored away in the basement vaults of his warehouse. All we do know is that whatever it was, it was responsible for what happened next. At approximately 3:10am the burning warehouse suddenly exploded with a force so great that it left a crater 50 feet wide and 40 feet deep. The ships on the river pitched as if on a rough sea and spectators on the two bridges felt them shake. People began to flee from the lower deck of the High Level Bridge as it "vibrated like a piece of thin wire", thinking that the monumental structure was going to collapse. The windows of St. Mary's church, located just up the hill from the fire, were shattered and the church itself almost shaken to pieces.

Words can barely describe the power of the blast that took place. Heavy debris were flung over the river and out in all directions, crashing through the roofs of buildings as far as three quarters of a mile away. People in North Shields felt the earth move and the blast wave blew out gas lamps in Jarrow. Even miners at work in Sunderland's Monkwearmouth Colliery, eleven miles away and at the time the deepest pit in the country, came up to the surface wondering why they had just been shaken off their feet. The sound travelled even further, with the explosion being heard over twenty miles out at sea. It was also heard clearly in Hexham, Alnwick and Hartlepool (twenty, thirty-five and forty miles away respectively). The light from the fires could be seen reflected in the sky fifty miles to the south at Northallerton.

The damage caused in the immediate area of the explosion was massive. The explosion had spread the fire outwards all over central Gateshead, engulfing any factories and crowded tenement buildings which had not already been blown down. Burning streams of sulphur ignited a shattered flour mill further east along the quay. Flaming projectiles launched over the river by the blast caused further fires to break out among the densely-packed buildings in the lower parts of Newcastle. Within a short time there were major blazes running back up the hill from the quayside around Butcher Bank, Pilgrim Street and George's Stairs. With all the local firefighters and their equipment focused in Gateshead (and therefore mostly dead/injured or damaged/destroyed) these fires were left to burn out of control.

The Newcastle fires burned themselves could threaten the city centre but the conflagration across the river continued to burn for hours, spreading further and further along the riverbank. St. Mary's was saved from the flames and the emergency was finally brought to an end, as is traditionally the custom, by creating a firebreak to block the advancing wall of fire. Everything was brought under control by the morning of October 7th, more than 24 hours after it had all kicked off at the Wilsons mill. Gateshead had been utterly devastated, with Newcastle suffering serious damage.

The Aftermath

The residents of Newcastle and Gateshead struggled to take stock of what had just happened to their towns. Those who returned to the High Level Bridge and looked out to the east from its lofty deck were greeted with 180 degree panoramic view of almost complete destruction, the likes of which had never been seen in the area before. Much of Gateshead had been blasted into oblivion, with virtually nothing left standing around the smoking crater where the bonded warehouse had once stood. People in Newcastle fortunate enough not to lose their properties to the fires arrived to discover random chunks of stone in the streets and huge timber beams upon the roofs of buildings, all flung across by the explosion over the river. An 18lb rock which had fallen through the roof of an opticians in Grey Street was still too hot to touch when it was discovered hours later.

A contemporary newspaper engraving showing the damage in Gateshead  

The damage in material terms was bad enough but it was the tragic loss of life that hit home the most. 53 people died in all, including some rather big names by local standards. John Dobson, the renowned architect responsible for creating Newcastle's neo-classical city centre had lost his son in the disaster. The flour mill owner William Davidson was also killed as was Charles Bertram, who presumably went up with his warehouse when it exploded. Along with the dead, it is estimated that between 400 and 500 people were injured. More than 200 poor families, mostly from Gateshead, were made homeless.

The relief efforts got off the ground quickly. A single benevolent fund was set up and subscriptions for generous donations were soon pouring in from all over the place, including:

• £600 from Gateshead Council
• £100 from the Lord Mayor of Newcastle
• £100 from Queen Victoria
• £300 from the residents of Alnwick plus similar donations from other towns
• £100 from the Duke of Northumberland
• £150 from the Bishop of Durham
• £200 from the Earl of Carlisle
• Various small donations raised from whip-rounds amongst the workmen and militias

Over £11,000 was raised overall, a lot of money for the time. No fewer than 800 families applied for assistance from the funds. By February 1857, most of this money had been distributed amongst them as well as out to other beneficiaries such as Gateshead Dispensary and Newcastle Infirmary. The two towns recovered quickly and were soon back on the road towards fulfilling their industrial potential. Memories of the disaster, however, would long outlast the damage it caused.