CARGOES SAILORS DREAD.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 10 February 1917, Page 3

CARGOES SAILORS DREAD.

At first sight it would seem that dynamite was a cargo to be carefullyavoided. But from the sailors point of view there arc far more dangerous loads. He dreads, for instance, a cargo of sugar. Put hundreds of tons of cane sugar in casks in the hold of a vessel and let the ship steam through a belt of hot weather. The odour is sickening. The sailors cannot get the sweet taste out of their mounths. They crave vinegar or lemonjuice —anything sour. They lose their appetites, and are always glad when a voyage on which the cargo was sugar is over. Coffee is as disagreeable as sugar as well as being verydangerous. Cotton is a really dangerous cargo. If a little oil happens to touch raw cotton the reult is what is called spontaneous combustion. A single bale of cotton saturated with such an oil as boiled linseed, and lying at the bottom of a hold, can be compared only to a slow match attached to. a bomb. Acids and other chemicals form dangerous cargoes. Carbide of calcium, for instance, is more dangerous than dynamite. Acetylene gas is made from this chemical, and the gas is constantly given off if the product is exposed to air. Shipmasters dislike carrying drums of aeid where they cannot be reached readily. A Chilian'ship put in at the Falkland Island leaking badly. Her cargo was made up of drums of acid and chalk. The acid had leaked from the drums and mixed with the chalk, forming carbonic acid gas in the hold. This gas is deadly and the crew could not make repairs. Meantime the acid lias gathered at the bottom of the hold and eaten away the iron frame of the ship.