Broadside: Halifax’s Wartime Pilot Boat Disaster sheds light the mysteries surrounding a deadly WW2 marine tragedy in Halifax that was kept secret. The new book delves into the events of March 28, 1940, when a 5,000-ton freighter, the SS Esmond, rammed the port side of the boat Hebridean. Nine men were killed, including six harbour pilots. The book is the first for former TV journalist Rick Grant, 79, following a 40-year career with CTV News in Halifax. Grant called the mishap “the most disastrous moment in the more than 200-year history of professional harbour pilotage in Canada.”