The fascinating, tragic story of Fr. William Roach and the Texas City disaster

On April 16, 1947, the cargo in an oceangoing vessel at Texas City, Texas, detonated, setting off a chain reaction of fires and explosions that killed 581 people. It was the deadliest industrial accident in American history. Among the casualties was a popular Texas City priest, Fr. William Roach.

In Sitting on a Keg of Dynamite, John Neal Phillips tells in riveting detail the fascinating and tragic story of “Fr. Bill” and the Texas City disaster.

The book’s title comes from a remark made by Fr. Bill himself, less than a month before the disaster. He was sitting on the front steps of his church one evening, looking out across the city’s industrial landscape marked by smoke and flares from chemical plants and refineries, when a couple in the parish drove by. When they stopped to chat, the priest said as he stared at the eerie scene, “I feel like I’m sitting on a keg of dynamite.” It was one of a number of hints that, in retrospect, appeared to foretell the coming cataclysm.

Based on clues offered in the preface and elsewhere, John Neal Phillips did not set out to write a Catholic story. His intention was to recount the disaster and its causes and effects. Growing up in Houston, the author had heard stories about the Texas City tragedy. The explosion was audible in Houston, and Phillips’ father had attempted to drive to the coast to assist when it happened. At the Catholic school he attended, Phillips had also heard stories about a priest who was among the victims. When, decades later, he began researching the episode for this book, he was drawn to the charismatic Fr. Bill, “a major figure linking most of the often disparate parts of this complex story.” Phillips decided to place the priest at the center of the narrative. It was a wise choice.

William Roach was born August 6, 1908, in Philadelphia, along with his twin brother, John. Bill attended Holy Spirit, a Catholic school in the suburb of Sharon Hill. So did John. Bill regularly got into trouble at school. So did John. During his time at West Catholic High School, Bill participated in competitive rowing on the Schuylkill River. So did John. Then, seemingly suddenly, the mischievous, irreverent recent high school graduate started to attend daily Mass and grew serious about his faith. Bill decided to become a priest. So did John.

Applying for seminary in the early 1930s—when most American dioceses had a surplus of vocations and a shortage of money—the penniless brothers were rejected by the dioceses of Philadelphia and Baltimore. Little Rock, Arkansas, however, was desperate for priests. Before they left for their road trip west, the pair secured a “letter of recommendation” from Mother Saint James, the principal of the school where they had caused so much trouble. Shortly before they arrived at the Arkansas seminary, curiosity got the better of them and they opened the confidential letter. “I cannot recommend these Roach twins for seminary,” the principal had written. She doubted that they had a priestly vocation, concluding, “I would recommend anyone else but the Roach boys.”

Bill shredded the letter and the two decided to attempt to gain entrance on their own merits. They persuaded the bishop of their sincerity and were admitted into St. John the Baptist Home Mission Seminary. But as the Great Depression deepened, the seminary in Little Rock faced the same financial realities as its eastern counterparts. After two years of classes, the brothers would be compelled to pay full tuition. They couldn’t afford it, so they returned to Pennsylvania for the summer of 1933. They searched for another desperate diocese in which resume their seminary studies that fall, and they found it in the Diocese of Galveston, which needed priests to serve its vast territory covering southern and central Texas.

Bill and John Roach were ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Christopher Byrne in 1939. John, more studious and orderly, went on to an illustrious career in the Diocese of Galveston, serving as a pastor in Houston and in various Church offices, including the director of Texas Catholic Charities. Monsignor John Roach would die in 1987 after 48 years of priesthood.

Fr. Bill’s first assignment was in the Hill Country north of Austin, a mission field of sparse Catholic population. The gregarious priest was totally devoted to his people. He practiced fasting and poverty to a remarkable degree. “He rarely spent money on himself,” one parishioner from this period testified. “He would give everything away.” This generosity extended to non-Catholics as well, with whom Fr. Bill tried to foster good relations—which was sometimes a challenge in this historically anti-Catholic section of Texas. During one encounter with a group of local Ku Klux Klan who were attempting to intimidate him, Fr. Bill defused the situation with humor. “Say fellas,” the cassocked cleric said with a grin, “Just because I’m wearing a robe around town doesn’t mean everybody has to.”

Fr. Bill soon became known as the “builder of churches” for his tireless labor constructing five new structures within his parochial territory. This didn’t mean merely overseeing design and fundraising; often it meant literally building, as he put his carpentry and construction skills to use on locally sourced materials to spare the resources of his working-class parishioners. He also tried to fill those churches, inviting people to Mass and even providing transportation by driving a bus around the countryside and collecting those who needed a ride. The bus was open to whites, blacks, Hispanics—even Protestants—thereby blurring the lines that tended to divide the area’s residents.

As World War II drew to a close, Fr. Bill prepared to depart the Hill Country. He was reassigned to Texas City, a burgeoning chemical and refining center on the coast at Galveston Bay. He arrived at the newly dedicated church of St. Mary of the Miraculous Medal in the summer of 1945, trading his previous world of ranchers and agricultural workers for a new one of longshoremen and office workers.

The priest’s reputation as an unusual combination of piety and jocularity preceded him. Some parishioners got word that a “saint” was on his way. This rumor elicited skepticism from some of them, including two teenagers, Maxine Montagut and Betty Laiche. But they were soon won over. The pair, previously lukewarm in their faith, were led deeper by the new pastor. Challenged to pursue sainthood through lives of selflessness, they both chose to become cloistered Dominican nuns. Phillips drew extensively on interviews with the two nuns, who are both now deceased. In a poignant gesture, he dedicated the book to their memory.

The monastery that Montegut and Laiche entered was another Fr. Bill project. Shortly after arriving in Texas City, Fr. John contacted his brother with a request from Dominicans in Michigan who were seeking to establish a presence in Texas. The priests collaborated on the effort, and in November 1945 the Monastery of the Holy Infant Jesus was founded outside the city of Lufkin.

The compulsively active Fr. Bill quickly became a ubiquitous presence throughout Texas City. He walked the streets of poor neighborhoods, reaching out to the suffering. He got to know employees and executives at all levels of the major companies: Pan American Refining, Carbide and Carbon, Monsanto, Tin Processing Company. He became a valued mediator between labor and management during disputes over pay and working conditions. The issue of industrial safety was about to explode in Texas City.

On Wednesday, April 16, 1947, fire broke out on the S. S. Grandcamp, a French ship berthed in the port’s north slip. Dockworkers were in the process of loading the holds with hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer for transport to Europe. The volatility of ammonium nitrate was not well understood at the time, or at least not well communicated to those involved in its handling and transport. At 9:12am, the cargo detonated. The explosion was felt a hundred miles away, and glass shattered in Houston, forty miles inland. Flaming fragments of the ship and its contents rocketed hundreds of feet, falling into warehouses and storage tanks and setting off more fires and explosions. “The port area,” Phillips writes, “was almost totally obliterated.” More than five hundred buildings in the city were damaged beyond repair.

When he saw smoke billowing from the docks prior to the explosion, Fr. Bill hopped in his car and drove from the church to the harbor. He parked in a lot close to the port and walked toward it. On the way he met a friend, a labor union officer, who was also converging on the scene. They were standing nearby when the Grandcamp blew up. Amid the chaos that followed, Fr. Bill was found walking, severely injured, and was transported to a hospital. He died there soon afterward.

In the wake of the disaster, the federal government enacted measures to ensure the safe handling of ammonium nitrate, but even today the popular fertilizer ingredient remains dangerous. In 2013, the town of West, Texas, witnessed a major explosion with thirteen fatalities, and ammonium nitrate was the main component in the devastating blast that destroyed part of Beirut, Lebanon, in 2020.

Texas City was rebuilt and is today a thriving port and petrochemical manufacturing center. St. Mary of the Miraculous Medal Church, Fr. Bill’s parish, still serves the city’s Catholics, now in a new church built in 2010.

Phillips deserves credit for unearthing the details of this remarkable story. His careful and thorough research of the disaster and Fr. Bill’s part in it provides a comprehensive timeline and navigates the sometimes conflicting memories of that memorable day. It is therefore surprising that the book contains some unfortunate errors, especially having to do with Catholic matters. The final chapter of the book, where the author attempts to place the tragedy in a political and theological context, is especially problematic. His characterization of the history of the Church’s engagement of social issues is marred by misleading generalizations and a few outright inaccuracies—most notably the puzzling statement that Rerum Novarum refers to “a series of papal encyclicals” rather than one, specific encyclical (Leo XIII, 1891).

But these are minor distractions from an otherwise engaging, moving, and thought-provoking narrative. Good history should tell appealing stories founded on solid research, and that’s what Phillips’ does. Fr. Bill Roach was a man deserving of a book, and I am grateful to Phillips for supplying one.

Sitting on a Keg of Dynamite: Father Bill, Texas City, and a Disaster Foretold
By John Neal Phillips
University of Oklahoma Press, 2022
Paperback, 260 pages