TERRIBLE EXPLOSION AT SEA.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1033, 7 February 1882, Page 2

TERRIBLE EXPLOSION AT SEA.

I On Thursday evening, 16th November, I it was announced that a terrible diuI aster had occurred in the English I Channel. At 10 o’clock on WednesI day night the screw steamship Solway, I belonging to Messrs. W. Sloane and I Co., of Glasgow, commanded by CapI tain William Fry, with a crew of I nineteen hands all told, and fourteen I passengers, bound from Glasgow to I Bristol and Swansea, with a general I cargo on board of whisky, oils, rum, I sugar, oats, and flour, put into KingsI town Harbor. Her foremost bridge I and fore main deck were burned down. I Six charred corpses lay on the burnI ing steerage deck, and five other passengers are supposed to have been lost, either by being burned alive or drowned in their attempt to escape from tho blazing vessel. The ship left Belfast on Tuesday, after having put in there on her voyage from Glasgow. All went well until the ship was near Rockabill, off tho Sherries. A barrel of naphtha oil then burst on the fore main deck. The oil ran along tho deck to the steerage part of the vessel, I where it came in contact with the fire, and in another moment the doomed vessel was in flames, the mast and fore main deck burning fiercely. The utmost consternation immediately prevailed, and, to heighten the terror of I tho situation, the sea was running mountains high. Six of the passengers who were in the steerage when the explosion took place were literally enveloped by the flames, and before the unfortunate people could escape from the fire that surrounded them their shrieks of terror and screams of agony were silenced in a terrible death. The rest of the passengers and crew—some of them fearfully burned—fled to the stern of the vessel. A boat was at once launched, and, losing dread of the sea in their terror at a worse fate impending, they put off towards the shore. The scene on board, as described by one of the survivors, was one of the most awful, probably, ever witnessed. Those who remained strove to subdue the fire, and succeeded in keeping the flames somewhat in check. In the midst of the dire distress which prevailed a steamer came in sight, and tho crew of the burning vessel exploded rockets and burned blue lights as a token of the extremity of their condition ; but the steamer, it is re-

lated, passed on unheeding the signals. From that time till the evening the ship lay in the midst of a heavy sea exposed to the fury of the storm, and with its crew manfully fighting the flames, which threatened to burn the vessel to the water’s edge. Between five and six o’clock a pilot boat, attracted by the signals of distress, put off from shore to the assistance of the Solway. A pilot went on board, and the vessel was then steered for Kingstown Harbor.