Wool and Hemp Cargoes.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3700, 16 August 1906, Page 3

Wool and Hemp Cargoes.

COMMISSION OF ENQUIRY. MR SCALES’ EVIDENCE. Wellington, This Day. Speaking before the commission which has been appointed to enquire into the causes of fires in wool and hemp cargoes on ships at its sitting' yesterday afternoon, Vtr G. H. Scales said he nad been a 1 ship-charterer for about ten years, mcl bad had to do with wool, flax, ind tow cargoes. He always supervised the loading himself. Under •ertain circumstances he considered that wool, flax, and tow were iable to spontaneous combustion. The main cause was dampness. r t had been suggested that the last icasou was very wet, and that this iccounted for so many fires happening. Another factor suggested vas the higher value of wool, as .veil a'- flax and tow. He did not dunk the high price of flax and :o-.v was a Ycvor, . . Reiorx Yc wid of March ado,ooo baler .vere landed in Lon,' l on witho ' my fires, v, like the whole of tin. xapat Y kax and tow tu that tk:Y was sent away and arrived Homo without accident. Up to the time >f the first lire there had been sent iway 87,000 bales of hemp and ?i,ooo bales of tow... As to flax heating, many years ago they used o stack the fibre in the open after leaching and before scutching, ind no fires occurred with fibre so treated. . . He understood that the Wellington Harbour hoard officials had been instructed :o report any signs of dampness in the bales handled by them. In several cases bales got wet on the ■ailway trucks, owing to the trucks hemselves being wet when the load was put on at a siding. He did not cover the tow that was on the Pitcairn Island ; he never -overed any tow that he shipped. . The wool taken on that ship at Wellington had been dumped for some time. His cabled advice from London was to the effect that in the opinion of his advisers the wool was responsible for the fire, and not the tow. During the last bur or five years he had shipped 30,000 bales of tow on about 80 different vessels, and had never received any complaint as to its condition on arriyal. His shipments of course, only constituted part of the cargo.