IS SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION POSSIBLE?

Auckland Star, Volume XII, Issue 31, 6 February 1891, Page 3

IS SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION POSSIBLE?

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Under the above heading, I have read with considerable interest your report of the discussion of the Harbour Board on the fire, cr rather its cause, on board the ship Leading Wind. I presume Mr Niccol is, or should be, from hia business as a shipbroker, thoroughly acquainted as to what are and are net considered dangerous cargoes in an underwriter's point of view, and Mr-Macfarlane, who I believe is a member of an old shipowning firm, should be equally well posted ; yet neither seems to speak "with any decision, and agree to ask for a Government commission. Very possibly the Commissioners appointed to hold the inquiry may know a good deal less on the subject than either Mr Niccol or Mr Maefarlane, skill on the principle oi Hoyles' advice to the novibiated whist, " When in doubt play a trump." ib may b3 useful to ask for Government help, that course being so much in fashion.

Thab excellent authority, Stephens, on stowage, in tha article devoted to spontaneous combustion, gives amongst a list of some scores of ordinary articles of commerce as being liable to spontaneous combustion, flax. This Hat contains amongst others, flour, oatmeal, cofi.6, guano, bones, bonedusb, and even " iron-pyrites," and iron recently raised from long-continued submersion in salt water. Spontaneous combustion arises either from the absorbtier, of moisture, by decomposition, or by the evolution of gas.

The spontaneous combustion of vegetable substances is one full of interest to the judicious inquirer amongst a shipping community like Auckland. Chemists tell us that ib is a deviation from the ordinary course of nature, and when spontaneous combustion ecciirs in vegetable substances, in every instance either phosphorus or one of its combinations, or a vegetable essential oil, is present, when the light fibrous matter fires. Our townsman, Mr Pond, withoub the aid of a Government Commission, could soon inform the underwriters if either or both of these are present in the flax as ordinarily shipped from here, There aro many vegetable substances which by torrefaction acquire an increase of property to ignite spontaneously, bub as torrefaction means the acb of drying by fire, we might as well say a house ia burned down by spontaneous combustion when a careless housewife, leaving a towelhorse full of clothes in front of the fire while she goes out to her Saturday night's marketing, returns to find Superintendent Hughes'- men in charge of the deom of her home. If the bulkheads of a steamer's stokehole become heated to excess, or steam pipes passing through her hold throw off considerable heat, doubtless our flax will fire, but thab is not spontaneous combustion, bub bad stowage of the master or his nominee, the stevedore. Ask Mr Poland, of Tuakau, one of our best and most successful local flax millers, if the fires that have occurred on his property have been from spontaneous combustion. He will tell you, " No," and he has had flax in all conditions of moisture closely stored and stowed. As to the Albert-street warehouse fires, I think one was traced to carelessness, the second may have quite possibly occurred from the same cauee, or from ono of the window panes concentrating the

San- rays, bub neither cause i s v_ taneous combustion ol cue uax. From childhood I have been mu-h. amongst shipping, and as necessarily followed heard much about bcstion on ship-board, and had to do with sundry cargoes of flax and tow, conveyed in bulk from the Baltic to London ami ! other ports. Anterior to the present de. v.lopment of steamers, many cargoes of flax were brought annually from Riga aud Archangel to the consignment or ti__ Writer's friends of Brickport, Dorset. Froni this little port—being a bar harbour r.nd dilScult of approach during certain wind. —vassals often had much delay beyond the ordinary passage. I never heard cf a ship., cargo being fired, although 1 have known many cases ot damage through getting wet and in some instances rotting. Mr John Bennett, of Stone Bros., a Brickport man, might perhaps be able to bell us something on this head. Tha leading London shipbrokera in tho fiax trade were Messrs Hoffmann and Scheme, and Messrs Seldon, Lyndall, and Co. I never heard from them an authenticated case of a cargo of fiax being tired by its own inherent combusbion. I think' Mr Nearing, the stevedore, hit the true cause when he called the attention of a gentleman who was smoking alongside the damaged flax on Monday last, to the danger he was causing. Hard tobacco cut, into coar39 flakes was considered such a source of danger in the old sailing troop ships, that the men going out in them were compelled to have tin covers to their pipes, and! believe ifc is so now on board H.M. transports. Here smoking goes on by clerks, carmen, and everybody on the wharf. A bit of "Derby ignited, may lodge in a bale of flax, and after apparently lying dormant for days ] cauae a conflagration liko thab of ! bhe Leading Wind, and our principal article of export get blamed for it, thereby causing- an increase in rates of freight and insurance, to the great and permanent injuryof che port and its trade,.fulfilling the old proverb, " Give a dog a bad name and it sticks to him." Hoping more influential pen 3 than mine may ventilate the matter and protect our trade, —I am, etc., O. T. Heaene. 75, Queen-street.