EXPLOSION DESTROYS YACHT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 835, 2 December 1929, Page 1

EXPLOSION DESTROYS YACHT

Captain Killed: Five Injured

DISASTER TO SCIENTIFIC VESSEL

DEATH and chaos followed a disastrous explosion on the American scientific yacht, Carnegie, lying in Apia Harbour, Samoa. At 1 o’clock on Friday afternoon, while the ship was fairing on supplies of petrol, there was a terrific explosion and the vessel burst into flames. The Carnegie burned to the water’s edge.

PJAPTAIN J. P. AULT, leader of the] party, died from shock shortly afetr, and a cabin boy named Kolar is missing. .He is believed to have been burned to death. Five members of the crew are in hospital at Apia suffering from shock and burns. The tragedy overtook this famous scientific research yacht on the eve of her visit to New Zealand. The explosion occurred without warning while the tanks were being filled with 2,000 gallons of petrol. Only money and some records were saved, the yacht being completely wrecked. The ship’s articles and all scientific instruments were lost. SMALLER BOATS BURNED The disaster involved five small vessels moored near the Carnegie. These caught fire and were beaefied, but all were destroyed. The Carnegie was bound on a southwesterly course to the Great Barrier Reef at about the latitude of Brisbane, and had called at Apia to replenish her petrol and general supplies. Petrol was loaded on Friday morning and the work was resumed in the afternoon. At 1 p.m. the liose was connected and the petrol had begun to flow into tbe tanks. Captain Ault was sitting reading on a deck chair about 20ft from the spot where the petrol was being taken, aboard and the members of the crew were distributed about the vessel. When the explosion occurred Captain Ault was blown into the sea. He was rescued but died from shock on the way to the hospital. The chief engineer and a mechanic were severely burned about the arms and face, and three seamen were injured, one being hurled into the sea. No one was seen smoking prior to the accident. The missing cabin boy was in the after galley at the time. The United States warship Ontario is proceeding from American Samoa to Apia and will assist. TOUR CUT SHORT The tragic explosion has cut short a tour planned to extend over a period of three years, during which time the Carnegie was to cross the waters of every ocean from the Far North to ihe Antarctic. The vessel was expected at Lyttelton this month and her arrival was looked forward to by New Zealand scientists. Interviewed by The Sun last week, Mr. H. F. Skey, director of tbe Christchurch Observatory, said: “The visit is being eagerly awaited by our staff. Captain Ault, in charge of the Carnegie, is a man of vast experience and the work he and his companions are doing is becoming more and more valuable as the years go by. Previously their work was confined to magnetic and electrical observations but now they carry out extensive ocean soundings which are of great use to mariners.”

Owned by the Carnegie Institute . at Washington, the yacht was a “nonmagnetia"vessel built of wood, held together with bronze nails. Out at sea and away from any trace of magnetic ; influence her crew made observations with a view to throwing some light on the involved problems of the relationship between magnetism and electricity; also the phenomena of the auroras and of radio transmission. ROUTES RETRACED On her last cruise the Carnegie rei traced many of her former routes for the purposes of scientific comparison.

Leaving the Potomac River in May, 1928, the Carnegie proceeded to Hamburg. Much was done near the Orkney and Shetland Islands, and the ship worked her way to the entrance to Hudson Strait. In August, 1928, the Carnegie made a quick run down the mid-Atlantic to the South Sargasso Sea, arrived at Panama, by way of the Caribbean Sea, in October. The Carnegie remained in the South Pacific until January of this year, when she began a five months’ voyage across the Pacific to Japan. The northern summer was spent in the North Pacific, and the vessel worked her way southward. After calling at Lyttelton the Carnegie was to cruise through the Antarctic Ocean, circling the South Atlantic and calling at Capetown, whence | she was to make a survey of the ■ Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Arabia and the Malay Sea. After calling at Fremantle in September, 1930, she was to turn to “the Antarctic once more, making a second visit to Lyttelton in November. A cruise through the I Tongan and Rarotonga Groups was to be followed by a circuit of Cape Horn and a call at Buenos Aires, after which the Carnegie was to complete her survey of the North Atlantic and return to Washington in July, 1931. MARINER-SCIENTIST

Captain Ault, a university graduate, was born in Kansas in 1881. He studied magentism in the Baker University, taking a master’s degree in the University of Columbia in 1909. It was not until he was 24 years of age that he first saw the ocean. While at the Baker University he had acted as magnetic observer for the United State Coast Survey, and in 1905 he made his first ocean trip on the Geodetic Survey’s ship Bache down the eastern coasline of the United States to Panama. Later he assumed command of the Carnegie, and from 1914 to 1917 he made several voyages. In May of last year he set out from Washington at the head of a party of 25, comprising seven scientists, besides himself, and a crew of 17.