Great Conflagration at Bordeaux.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 9, 5 January 1870, Page 3

Great Conflagration at Bordeaux.

Tho steamship Count of Hainault arrived in tho Garonne from Antwerp, having on board about 40 tons of petroleum and petroleum spirit, moored herself at one o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, about three miles below Bordeaux, and discharged her cargo into a couple of barges, one of which was laden with both spirit and petroleum, and the other with spirit only. The two barges remained at Lorment, about three miles below Bordeaux, having to convey their cargoes to the Gursol Docks at La Bastide, higher up the river, on the following morning. One of the men in charge of the barge named the Trinite, which had the petroleum spirit on board, after having lighted a torch, imprudently threw away a still burning luci fer match among the casks of petroleum, one of which immediately caught fire, producing a terrible explosion, by which the man who was the cause of it, and a Cus-tom-house officer who accompanied him were dreadfully burnt. In a few moments the barge was enveloped in flames, when the ropes which secured it to the shore, catching fire, snapped asunder, whereupon the burning mass drifted with the tide up the river, facing the general warehouses. Some small steamers, belonging to the port authorities, with sailors and tiremm on board, at got up steam and made for fie still burning barge, which they temporally secured with a chain, and then made efforts to sink it by pumping water into it, but fur a considerable time without avail. In the course of these proceedings, one of the steamers, the Mathilde, caught fire at the bowf. Eventually the commander of the life-boat Monte Christo, after the repeated orders of the captain of the port, succeeded in scuttling the barg-3 at the stern. A train of liquid fire coining from the barge was drifted in the direction of a mass of ships by the current, and speedily comma licated itself to them. Almost at the same moment, three or four vessels were discovered to be on fire, with no means at hand of rendering them the smallest assistance. Up till eleven o'clock the tide was coming in, and the floating fire rising with it. several other ships became ignited. Those most heavily laden were the first to suffer, as, there copper being nnder water, their wooden sides offered no resistance to the flames, whereas the unladen vessels, protected by their copper, for the most part escaped. In another couple of hours, with the tide still rising, half the ships in the port would have been destroyed. As it was, the returning tide did a considerable amount of mischief, as it carried out with it the floating fire, together with the remains of the burning barges, and portions of the ignited ships, which set fire to other vessels in their turn, until within the space of less than a couple of miles, something like 25 ships were to be seen on fire at the same moment. A strong S.E. wind which was blowing helped the destruction. Fourteen vessels, at half-past seven o'clock, were still in flames, or smouldering with their hulls almost burnt down to tho water's edge. The damage done is estimated by the port authorities at ten miliions of francs. Ten full-rigged ships, belonging to the port of Bordeaux, were completely destroyed. Six ships were also destroyed belonging to other ports, and numerous others were more or less damaged.