A BURNING STEAMER.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1931, 13 December 1913, Page 16

A BURNING STEAMER.

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE. The terrific heat which injiy be engendered in an iron or steel ship has been frequently home witness to by survivors who were finally driven to abandon these fiery furnaces. One of the best descriptions of a modern ship in the last- stages of destruction by fire was written for a British newspaper, the London "Leader," when the Hamburg American liner Patria was towed by tugs across tile English Channel after she was abandoned. As seen when about twelve miles o!f Dover, the burning vessel was thus pictured: "She- was ablaze from stem to stern, a huge floating furnace,- seething' and spitting forth tongues of fire, "which shot up and illuminated the dense volumes of black smoke, continuously emitted in clouds from her- holds. It was impossible to get- anywhere near the ship, owing to intense heat, but when we fell in with her two German tua§ still had bold of her by the bows with a great length of cable, and an English Cargo steamer was astern trying to steer liar.- The other steam ships kept about three hundred feet away. "Oil tho port side her hull was seen to stand out of the water. The whole sicle of the ship was in an intense white heat, so intense that tho steel plates were transparent, and you emiM see the ribs and framework of the shin on the inside of the hull quite distinctly. "While we were watching the burning vessel, the side above the water line suddenly burst open, and t.ho flames shot through her linl], the breach extending by tho molten metal, which ran hissing into the sea. . The vessc-l was a mass of fire, the only part- of tho shi).i which did not appear to bo absolutely at the mercy of the flames being a small space at tho forecastle. On. tho starboard side of the vessel . . > the decks of the ship could bo seen and seme idea of the extent of the devastation caused by the fire. All her deck was burned out, the metal, iio doubt, having become molten and fallen in." When within two miles of the shore, tho Patria sank stern first, shrouded hv the immense clouds of steam which,for a long time, continued to pour from tlio foi-o end of tho vessel.