DISASTROUS EXPLOSION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3761, 16 March 1907, Page 4

DISASTROUS EXPLOSION.

Brave Efforts to Flood

the Dock.

Condolence Messages.

Paris, March 14

A fragment of shell hurled from the battleship Jena, which was blown up in the Toulon dockyard on Tuesday, cut off an arm of Lieutenant Renaud, who was aboard the battleship Bouvet, in the next dock.

A bursting shell killed Lieutenant Roux while he was trying to open the sluice of the dock, but his six companions continued to work amid a hail of projectiles. KM. Thomson, Minister of Marine, attributes the explosion to a short circuit, which was possibly due to an explosion of compressed air breaking some electric wires. It is now officially announced that 407 out of a crew of 630, and 25 others who were aboard the Jena, are uninjured. There are 44 in the hospital, leaving 175 killed or missing. The Kaiser has sent his condolence with the French nation in the calamity. The British Minister for foreign Affairs (Sir E. Grey) has telegraphed sympathy on behalf of Britain.

Among the Jena’s explosives were 3880 melinite shells. Experts are amazed at the completeness of the destruction caused by fire on the Jena. Ten of the ship’s big guns were ruined, only the bow pair remaining unharmed.

Admiral Benthelot considers that the fall of a shell or torpedo, or any violent shock, would suffice to explode the powder in the magazine. Later Particulars. Paris, March 14. Twenty-nine of the Jena’s crew have died in the hospital. Fifty corpses were found piled in one passage. The Missiessy basin has been emptied, and the Jena is now lying on blocks supported by shores. The fore part is intact, but the after part is seriously damaged. An enormous hole, extending from the bottom to the starboard, enabled the gasses to escape. Otherwise the vessel would have been completely destroyed. The armour, screws and rudder are uninjured, but the iron floorings are twisted into strange shapes. The killed and missing are now estimated at 118.

All the European rulers telegraphed their sympathy to M. Fallieres.

The newspaper Debats suggests that the disaster was due to malevolence.

While the shattering of the dock gates flooded the Jena’s interior and prevented the explosion of the principal magazine, it drowned the helpless wounded on the lower decks.

It is expected the Jena will be repaired for coast defence or training purposes.

The Chamber of Deputies and the Senate adjourned to-day as a mark of sorrow.