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Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 466, 26 April 1890, Page 4

It is often stated that dynamite will not explode when fire is applied to it, but only by the action of a detonator. The crew of the Liverpool barque British Monarch, which took fire while on a voyage from Hamburg to Sydney, were wise enough not to trust to what is often said about this explosive. There were 10 tons of dynamite on board the vessel, and the crew, as soon as they discovered the fire, tried to get at the explosive to throw it overboard. They could not do this, and then they wisely took to their boat, remaining by the ship. The boats put off from the ship about 4 p.m. on November 20th, and at 1 a.m. the next day the fire reached the dynamite, and an explosion of a terrible kind followed. A loud report was heard, and pieces of the burning ship were shot up in the air so high that some of the officers of the whaling barque Canton, being 130 miles olf, saw pieces of the burning wreck dropping through the air, which they at first thought were falling meteors.