DESTRUCTION OF A DYNAMITE SHIP.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1102, 29 May 1913, Page 4

DESTRUCTION OF A DYNAMITE SHIP.

Twenty people were killed, over 40 wounded, and two vessels sunk by the explosion of 300 tons of dynamite at the harbour at Baltimore, Maryland. The dynamite was being transferred from a lighter to the Alum Chine, a tramp steamer of 1.767 tons, belonging to the Alum Chine Steamship Company, of Cardiff. The lighter, with four railway trucks, was alongside the steamer, when a puff of smoke came suddenly from the hold of the ship. One of the crew noticed it, and ran screaming to the deck, followed b\ several of his companions. Fourteen of the crew leapt into the launch Jerome, which put off at top speed. The explosion came when the Jerome was 200 feet away. There was a deafening roar. Columns of flame shot up from every part of the vessel. Pieces ot machinery and parts of the hull weighing a number of tons were thrown 100 feet up into the air. Parts of machinery weighing many pounds were afterwards picked up three miles from the scene of the. explosion. Both the steamer and the lighter were completely destroyed and disappeared. Among those killed were a number of members of the crew of the steamer and several of the crew of the United States naval collier Jason, which was 700 feet away. Some saved their lives by jumping into the water, and others were thrown into the water by the force of the explosion. The upper works ot the collier Jason were swept away, and the vessel was riddled by flying fragments of metal. A box of dynamite was hurled through the air and fell on the upper deck of the Jason, where it exploded, killing several men and injuring many others.

Another box of dynamite exploded a$ it fell on the tug Atlantic, which burst into flames. Three men In the Atlantic were killed outright. In the city of Baltimore, the “skyscrapers” rocked as though in an earthquake. Windows were broken and chimneys were blown off houses a dozen miles away. Thirty wounded people were taken {o tfle BulUqjore hospital. The shock qf {he was felt in towns within a radius of ioo miles of Baltimore, and it interrupted the proceedings of the Hquge of Legislature at Dover, sixty miles away, where a speaker remarked : “That must have been an earthquake,"