FEARFUL EXPLOSION OF A TORPEDO IN SYDNEY.
Our telegrams a few days ago announced the occurrence of an accident from the explosion of a torpedo in the shop of Mr George Benthien, plumber, Phillip street, Sydney. The circumstances connected with the explosion are narrated as follows * — A few days ago some person connected with what is known as the Torpedo Corps, a branch of the Naval Brigade, sent to Mr Benthien a torpedo case, which had been made some.time before for the Government of New South Wales. This torpedo Mr Benthien had instructions to render watertight by pitching and soldering, Mr Benthien, who states that he had no idea of any portion of a charge remaining in the case, says a little before seven o’clock he put on the fire in his shop on the ground floor, facing Phillip street, two vessels, the one containing solder, the other being filled with liquid pitch. The torpedo, he says, he put within a few feet of the fire, so that it might become so far heated as to receive the more readily the pitch and solder. When the explosion took place Benthien says that Forster was standing over the fire and near the torpedo stirring one of the vessels in the fireplace, and that ho (Benthien) was standing alongside his bench, on the other side of the door from the floor, collecting his tools preparatory to setting to work at the torpedo, which he mentioned he had just touched with his hand, and found to be warm enough for the purpose. Near Benthien stood a boy eleven years of age. While the three occupants of the I'oom just mentioned were in the position described, the house was violently shaken, as if by an earthquake, and Foster was observed by Benthien amid a shower of pieces of brick and a cloud of dust, to be violently repelled from the vicinity of the fireplace, with his clothes all torn and covered, together with his face and hands, with pitch. Benthien, who does not appear to have received the slightest injury, when he had recovered from the consternation into which he had been thrown, picked up Forster, whose clothes were smouldering, and carried him to the water-butt in the yard, into which he thrust him to quench the hot pitch which had been thrown over him by the explosion. The boy who stood beside Benthien had, like hll A •
hiraselt, an almost miraculous escape from death. He escaped with a bruise on one of his legs from a flying piece of brick. Some notion may be gained of the violence of the explosion from the results. The front and sides of the chimney over the fireplace fell to the floor. Both windows were blown out, and portions of the glass, frame, and shreds of window-blind were to be found on the opposite side of the street. Portions of the bricks from the chimney were propelled violently against the opposite wall of the workshop, bringing down the plaster, and leaving indentations in the wall. The plaster wasdislodgedfrom the ceiling. The window of a back parlor which opens from the shop was also broken. Upstairs, plaster was brought down from the ceiling, and ornaments knocked down from chests of drawers and tables, and broken. In the front parlor over the shop, the mantle-piece—over t|he downstairs—was broken to piec.es, and the plaster all round it was rent from the floor to the ceiling. It is considered fortunate that the front door of the workshop was open ; had it not been so, it is conjectured that the explosion, being more confined, would have rent the house from top to bottom.
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Evening Star, Issue 3477, 15 April 1874, Page 3
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611FEARFUL EXPLOSION OF A TORPEDO IN SYDNEY. Evening Star, Issue 3477, 15 April 1874, Page 3
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