Imperial Hamilton 1961 The 250-foot tanker "Imperial Hamilton" arrived at the Imperial Oil Company terminal on the St. Clair River at Samia, Ontario, on Sunday, September 3, 1961, to load gasoline. At 8:00 the following morning, an explosion that shattered hundreds of windows in the riverfront area and tore out a 150-foot section of the Imperial Oil dock rocked the city of Sarnia. The "Imperial Hamilton" had blown up! When finrefighters and curious residents rushed to the riverfront, they found that the stern half of the tanker had turned into a ball of fire, the flames being fed by four thousand barrels of gasoline that had already been loaded into the after holds of the tanker. It was late afternoon before the raging fire could he brought under control, and by then the "Imperial Hamilton" was nothing more than a burned-out hulk. Most of the thousands of spectators who watched the fire from the Samia waterfront or from across the river in Port Huron, Michigan, were amazed when they learned that none of the crew aboard the tanker had been killed by the explosion and fire. In fact, only five crewmen had been injured, and two of those didn't even require hospiralizarion. The destruction to the Imperial tanker was so complete that it was impossible for investigators to determine exactly what had caused the explosion. Imperial Oil officials speculated that the hot, humid weather of the early September day had prevented the gasoline vapors from escaping into the atmosphere. Instead, the highly flammable fumes collected in the empty cargo holds and possibly even found their way into work spaces and living quarters. Gradually, the tanker had become a gaseous bomb. All it would have taken to set it off was a tiny spark.