SHIPS STOPPED BY SMOKE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 281, 21 November 1908, Page 3

SHIPS STOPPED BY SMOKE

I A 10,000 ton ship stopped by smoke ! = Sounds strange, doesn't it 1 I Vet this is precisely what happened :he other day at Quebec to the Alhvn liners, Corsican and Corinthian, the Dominion liner, Ottawa, and several other big ocean-going .steamers. The fore>t fires that have recently been raging in Canada, had swathed the St. Lawrence River in so thick a blanket of smoke that its navigation was rendered impossible for the time b'- n;:. •Such an occurrence is very unusual. ,; i course ; but it not absolutely uii;mycedented.

For instance, in September. VMM, a dense black pall of smokf from clki burning Baku ott-Ueids overspread ;.H the southern portion or the Caspian Sen, so that even the regular mail services of .steamers from anil to that imJ portant port haa to be suspended ror I several days. Ouluth, too, at the head

of Lake superior, has, on at least three ■occasions, been rendered unapproachable for shipping owing to smoke from forest

fires. The most extraordinary example, however, of what smoke, when present

in sufficient quantities, can accomplish in the direction of delaying and disorganising shipping, was afforded in August, 1883, when the -lavaian archipelago was darkened by the practically simultaneous eruption of no few«r than thirty-one of its forty-six volcanoes. Such was the extent and denseness of

tile pall on this occasion, that the sun was blotted out over an area of wore tlmn a thousand square miles. Six hundred ships were "smoke hound" for •periods vaiyjnp from three days to as many .weeks. And when at length the black cloud lilted, it was found that most of the lighthouses in the straits of Sunda and elsewhere had been swallowed up by tidal waves, the danger to navigation being thereby, of course, greatly increased.