THE ALASKA'S BURNED MAILS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3550, 24 November 1882, Page 4

THE ALASKA'S BURNED MAILS.

The secretary of the Post-office furnishes the following memo, regarding the burned mails for the United Kingdom, which left here via San Francisco in August last: —

The mails were put on board the steamer Alaska ab New York on the lltli of September, and were found to be on fire next morning at |9.30. Three officials from the New York Post-office investigated the case, and came to the conclusion that the fire originated in a bag from Sydney, and they kept a small tin box found in the ashes which had apparently held something combustible. The result of the clearing up on the voyage, the steamer being on the point of departure ■when the fire was discovered, shows that 13 ibags of the mails from >'ew Zealand, Fiji, Tasmania, and New South Wales were either wholly or partly burnt. Two of these were from Fiji, two from Tasmania, one from Sydney, and two from H.M. ships. There were collected of the remains—six bags of newspapers in good order, and one damaged to such an extent as not to be able to be dealt with ; one bag of letters good and one damaged, and two containing worthless fragments and ashes of valuable articles. There were found a gold and a silver watch, a chain and locket in a box, one ring in a box, two rin<»s loose, a brooch, and another ornament not specified ; £10 and a sixpence in money, two knitted shawls, and some other trifles of little worth. The mail from New Zealand to London and its suburbs was uninjured. The registered letters for London and all other places in England and Wales, except Liverpool, and 168 offices served through Liverpool were almost all burned. -As the letter bill of this mail was also burned it cannot be said how much ordinary correspondence suffered. Ho wever,an average weight of letters arrived safely. This mail originally contained 10,654 letters inclusive of 237 registered. The bags of letters made up of remains consisted of six bundles of New South Wales letters very little damaged, and about 1300 letters damaged from New Zealand and New South Wales. These were all whole enough to be enclosed in official envelopes at the General Post-office, and sent out for delivery. The returned letter department subsequently found 130 more capable of being delivered. Five registered letters from New Zealand were very much burned, but it is not said whether so much so as to prevent their delivery. It is supposed that one bag and its contents of letters from New Zealand were altogether destroyed, and if, appears that one bag of books and 31 newspapers were so much burned that only parts of the bags were left. Of the letters partly destroyed, but sent out for delivery from the returned letter office, three were registered and ten contained bills of exchange, money orders, &c. One of the registered letters was from " Minnie," of Pokeno Valley, and it contained money. There remain in the returned letter office 67 letters not able to be disposed of, and some photos, books, &c. There was found a money order, No. 8264, Auckland, on Peterborough, for one pound. All valuable property, remains, &c, will be disposed of by delivery to addresses and otherwise as quickly as possible. All correspondence going to England for transmission abroad is enclosed in the mail for London itself. On tin's occasion therefore it did not suffer injury. It is not stated in what proportion the mails for London pro per Glasgow, and Dublin suffered, or whether those for the two latter places suffered at all. It seems most likely that they did not.