DISMASTING IRON SHIPS.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 79, 1 September 1874, Page 3

DISMASTING IRON SHIPS.

[From the Australasian.]

More cases are reported of iron ships coming into port dismasted. One such instance has occurred off the coast of Queensland, and two near the port of Newcastle. One of these happened to a vessel on her way from Auckland to load coal. But the other occurred to the noble vessel Chrysomene, which had left Newcastle for San Francisco with 2680 tons of coal in her hold. On the 2nd inst she was struck with a heavy gale, and buffeted about till the three masts were carried away to the deck. The Chrysomene, like many other vessels which have lately suffered this loss, was a new magnificent clipper-built ship. went out of port, we read, “ a perfect model of a merchant ship, and was towed into port a helpless floating log.” She had “all the modern improvements ” —and this is the result, she falls in with a gale, and her iron masts are screwed out of her as though they were rotten wood. The statement that the Chrysomene was “ the loftiest ship in the world ” would sug. gest over-masting as a possible cause of the disaster, but when we consider that the case is only one of a long series of similar casualties that have lately happened to new finely-built iron clipper ships on their first voyage, it becomes necessary to seek a cause that is common to all these occurrences. The common condition in which the weakness has to be sought would seem to be the material—iron. We appear entitled to regard this case as adding to the evidence of the unsuitability of iron fortbo maafa nf fullsparred clipper ships. By retracing the short history of the Chrysomene to its beginning we find another instance telling in the same direction. She was launched at about the same time as the ill-fated British Admiral, and the two ships were regarded as rivals by their builders and owners. They started on their first voyage within a day of each other. The British Admiral was dismasted at the outset, and had to put back to refit, and although the Chrysomene reached Melbourne more successfully, yet she, too, sprung her iron foretopraast on the way out. Certainly all these facts show the need of a thorough investigation, and the direction it should take is the suitability of iron for the purposes of masts for sailing ships.