The Queerest Fare.

Waipukurau Press, Issue 9, 26 January 1906, Page 2

The Queerest Fare.

Everybody knows how a London hospital once caught fire from a glass of water on the window-sill. The sunlight passing through the water got condensed, and turned the tumbler into a burningglass, which fired the bedclothes of a patient. But there was a stranger fire than that on the Wellesley training ship at Shields. The writer remembers the chief officer reporting to the captain that theship was on fire. • Where ?’ asked the captain. ‘ Starboard bill boards afire, sir. Now, this was apiece of. timber right outside the ship which could not catch fire, but it did. The bill board is a projecting timber on each bow, a heavy mass of oak, protected on top with an iron plate, and its purpose is to receive the fluke of the anchor as it hangs from the cathead lashed home. Theie had been rain, then extreme heat. The oak was rotten under the iron plate, mere touchwood, and the heat of the iron kindled it into a glowing, mass of incandescence, sending up clouds of smoke. The ship had actually been dangerously fired by spontaneous combustion on the outside.