SIX HUNDRED IN DANGER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 17 May 1907, Page 2

SIX HUNDRED IN DANGER.

A THRILLINC-i MOMENT. Hut for i lit; fact that the tiilf ill the River Wear was running in, and not out one day last February, a calamity overshadowing that of the Berlin would hara hail to be recorded from Sunderland. Kugineering experts who witn .-sSed a wild scene oil Wearmouth Bridge make the statement. A crowd of six hundred men, women and children gathered in.the centre of the viaduct that spans the River Wear to a height of a hundred feet above -the water, to watch the passage down l'iver of jjjov'a(iiiin of eight thousand tons, newly bnil bv Sir ,Ins. Laing and Pons for thcltali-

.an emigrant trade. The vessel had two great steel funnels and was nearing the bridge to pass beneath it.

I Just as it neared, tlios in command of the ship saw that one "thing had been unlliought of. The funnels were too tall to clear the bridge. They must strike, and strike in the very centre, where the crowd cheered all unconscious of danger. The discovery was made 100 late. Engines .wel'e reversed, ami everything done that one could sngge-t to stoptlie way of the vessel. But the next moment the viaduct swayed. Would it give More the tremendous impact of the pressure and hurl its freight of -ix hundred souls a hundred feet on the straining deck below and into the river? The crowd in that instant realised ilawful danger, and there was a \rj'<l stampHle for either end of the bridge. ' Happily it was the funnel that gave [ way. With a rending roar like arl.il- | lery the steel rivets that held it to tiie deck were drawn out, and th mammoth cylinder heeled over. The bridge wassaved. But, any til," experts, had the vessel not Iveu going against the tide; had the pressure of the river been beliind j( at the tone of the collision the bridgel i would not have withstood the impact. '