INCENDIARISM FEARED

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 124, 21 November 1931, Page 13

INCENDIARISM FEARED

LOSS TO INSURANCE

COMPANIES

(Received 21st November, 1.30 p.m.) LONDON, 20th November.

It is estimated that London marine insurance companies will lose £.600,000 on the Bermuda, in addition to £450,000 through the fire in the West Indies lust June.

The "Daily Express" says that incendiarism is believed to have caused the destruction of the Bermuda, which had the most Javish and extravagant accommodation of any ship afloat. Slid was built for unique traffic—the carriage of American millionaires between New York and the West Indies iv order to escape Prohibition.

The Bermuda, a luxury liner, maintained a regular service between New York and the Bermudas, a distance of 650 miles, leaving New York on Saturday, and arriving at her destination on Monday morning. Last year, in the height of the seasonal trade, she caught fire, bridge and superstructure being burned away. The fire broke out in an elevator shaft, necessitating flooding of tlio stern tanks, and the ship sank at the pier at Hamilton.

The Bermuda had her passenger accommodation and lay-out designed by the same naval architect that planned the accommodation of the Aorangi, and therefore has much in common with the Union Company vessel. The Bermuda is a quadruple screw motor vessel of 19,086 tons, built by Workman, Clark, and Co., Belfast, in 1927, and fitted with four sets of four-cylinder twostroke Doxford engines.

In a meeting of the Purness-Withy Lines some months later the chairman stated that bo clue to the cause of the fire hnd been found, and incendiarism was suspected.