Detective Nicholas Power was investigating a burglary in the fall of 1883 when he dropped by a hotel in the Canadian port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and learned of two suspicious American visitors who “slept late into the day and were out late at night.” Searching their room, he made a shocking discovery – suitcases packed with 100 pounds of dynamite and mechanisms for making a crude time bomb. If detonated, it was enough explosives to level the hotel and every other building on the block.
Fenian agents James Holmes and William Bracken had come to Halifax to sink HMS Canada, a British warship lying at anchor, killing as many of its crew as possible – including, they hoped, an eighteen-year-old midshipman. He was Prince George of Wales, Queen Victoria’s grandson, who would one day ascend to the throne as George V. For the first time, the terrorists behind a bloody bombing campaign to free Ireland from British rule had tried to assassinate a member of the Royal Family. The untold story of a foiled assassination attempt that could have changed the course of history.
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