Leiden gunpowder disaster
The Leiden gunpowder disaster was an event in which a ship carrying hundreds of barrels of black powder exploded in the town of Leiden in the Netherlands on 12 January 1807. The disaster killed 151 people and destroyed over 200 buildings in the town. Historical background Background During the Napoleonic Wars, the Dutch city of Leiden was occupied by the First French Empire. The town—along with the rest of the Netherlands—was reconstituted into the Kingdom of Holland under the rule of Louis Bonaparte. Though ostensibly an independent nation, the new Dutch kingdom was heavily tied to Imperial France and functioned as a political satellite. As a result, the French and Dutch authorities feared that Great Britain and the Fourth Coalition (both of which were preparing for war with France) would invade the Netherlands. In late 1806, Holland began to stockpile arms and equipment in case of war. In December, an order from the government called for the production of 250,000 pounds of black powder for military use. As the majority of the kingdom's 12 gunpowder factories were located in Amsterdam and Zeeland, it was decided that convoys of civilian ships would be used to transport the vast quantity of explosives around the country; the final destination of the powder was the Dutch Army's arsenal in the town of Delft. In the first week of January 1807, the government hired three civilian ships to transport the first shipment of powder from Amsterdam to Delft. The captains of all three ships were vetted, and all three had previous experience transporting highly unstable black powder. However, the captain of one of the three ships (the Delfs Welvaaren, translating to Prosperity of Delft City), Adam van Schie, became ill before he set off for Amsterdam. As such, he dispatched his sons Saloman, Adam, and a servant (Jan van Engelen) to captain his ship in his stead. By January 6 all three ships of the convoy had arrived in Amsterdam and loading had begun. As the various powder factories in the city were not centralized, the ships were loaded individually. The Delfs Welvaaren was the first to be loaded, taking on 369 hundred-pound barrels of black powder. The barrels were covered with horsehair sheets to ward off an accidental ignition, and the ship's hold was sealed to prevent theft. The two other ships in the convoy were not filled as quickly, and so the government official managing the convoy ordered that the Delfs Welvaaren begin sailing ahead of schedule; the revised plan was for the ship to sail to Leiden, where it would idle for a few days while the rest of the convoy caught up. However, by the time the rest of the convoy was fully loaded, the cold January weather had frozen parts of the Amsterdam canal system, preventing the two remaining ships from rendezvousing with the Delfs Welvaaren. The Delfs Welvaaren arrived in Leiden on 10 January. The two van Schies, who had a sister living in Leiden, planned to spend the