FERRY ABLAZE

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 131, 30 November 1936, Page 10

FERRY ABLAZE

FIVE MEN TRAPPED

HEROIC RESCUE WORK

FOUR LIVES SAVED

(From "The Post's" Representative.) j SYDNEY, November 19. ,' Fire destroyed the Manly ferry ( steamer Bellubera while it was at the , company's repair wharf at Neutral i Bay, Sydney Harbour, and of five workmen who were trapped in her, one died from.his injuries, two suffered severely from suffocation and burns, and the other two were also injured. ' The Bellubera's destruction represented a loss of £60,000 to insurance com- , panias. ' ! The fire broke put about 3.30 p.m. on : Monday, when, without warning a blast of flame burst through the decks amidships, driving the captain and two : deck hands over the side. Police and firemen fought the fire, and displayed splendid heroism when they plunged into the red-hot steel hull to the rescue of the men who were trapped below. While employees worked desperately to cut through the steel sides of the vessel, with oxy-acetylene blowlamps, a small band of firemen, led by an officer in an asbestos suit, fought its way through smoke and flame until the imprisoned men were reached. The five workmen spent 50 minutes ir the engine-rooms and were almost suffocated by the fumes. The fire swept through the whole of the upper works of the Bellubera, leaving a burnt-out shell. The first Diesel-electric driven ship in Australia, she was little more than a hulk within a couple of hours. The man who died was Robert Findlay, a fitter. The other workmen were Sydney Tight, Andrew Rae, Sidney Cronshaw, and L. S. Maxwell. ORIGIN A CIGARETTE BUTT. At first it was thought that the fire originated in the fuel oil in the ferry, but it is now fairly clear that a burning cigarette butt thrown into a heap of j debris started the blaze. Whatever the cause, the Bellubera was ablaze from stem to stern within a few minutes of the discovery of the fire, and a column of black smoke was shooting hundreds of feet into the air. Employees '^working on the wharf were driven bqck by a sheet of flame which set the timbers of the wharf on fire under their feet as they retreated. The master, Captain Dahrn, was on the bridge when the fire began. To escape he had to lower himself by a rope from the bow. The five members of the engine-room staff, who had been attending to the Diesel electric engines, had no chance to escape. They came up the narrow companion way leading from the engino-room, but were driven back. In a few minutes the walls and floor became almost unbearably hot. Maxwell struggled through a narrow doorway into the .adjoining auxiliary engineroom. He found a porthole above him, and managed to reach it and bring his head out into the open air. His appeals for help could be heard on the wharf. a When the chief fire officer (Mr. Richardson) and the second officer (Mr. Beare) arrived, they, found that the ferry was burning so fiercely that no one could board it. The water supply at the wharf was not strong enough to be of any real value, and employees at the wharf, who had made a gallant attempt to check the fii • when it first broke o •'. had to abandon their hoses. PUSHING INTO THE FLAMES. Nearly fifty firemen were still at work. 'he wharf is under a cliff, inaccessible by ordinary means, and the fire engines had to be left at the top of (he clifT. More than a quarter of a mile of hose was laid down to reach the wharf from street hydrants above, and an engine acted as a relay pumping station. The cries of Maxwell could be heard above the roar of the flames, and two fellow-employees took an oxy-welding plant vinto a dinghy and rowed to the seaward side of the Bellubera, in the hope that they would be able to cut through tlie steel plates. It was soon obvious that they would never complete the work in time. Thousands of tons of water, poured into the ferry near the point where it was thought the men were imprisoned, had made a laneway into the flames. District Fire Officer Griffiths donned, an asbestos suit, fitted with respirator, and went into the blaze. The suit had never previously been used in this way. The firemen gathered round as the white-clad figure climbed over the side of the wharf and pushed forward into the blaze. He had not gone far when he was recalled. "He was willing enough to go," said the chief fire officer, Mr. Richardson, afterwards, "but it would have been sending him to certain death." A few minutes later, when the flames had died down a little, Griffiths and three other firemen \ made another attempt, and this time were successful. In the interior, their lamps showed four men lying unconscious on the floor. "I still don't understand how they lived down there," said one of the rescuers. "The smoke was so thick it was impossible to see. We stumbled around in the darkness, with our lamps hardly penetrating the gloom, and found two of them huddled together, one lying a few yards away, and the other unconscious over a dynamo. Findlay was unconscious and in a bad way. One of the others was moaning, 'Air. give me air.' It was terrible work getting them out. Griffiths stripped off his asbestos suit so that he could move more freely. Two of the men were heavy, and we had to use a rope to get them up the companion way. The only one who did not seem to be seriously affected was Maxwell." HOW THE MEN WERE TRAPPED. Cronshaw told a graphic story of his experience. "I only hope that Ido not live to go through such an ordeal again," he said. "The five of us were overhauling the Diesel engine and the first we knew of anything amiss was the gradual dimming of the electric lights. Suddenly smoke gushed down the coi>ianion way leading to the engine-room. Instinctively I made a rush for the companion, but was driven I back by a further rush of smoke. It was fortunate that I was, as most certainly had the others followed me, we would have been trapped on the companion, and nothing could have saved us. As I crawled back from the 'companionway I began to feel faint, but remembered that it is always best to throw yourself on your face when there is danger of suffocation by smoke. But I could get no relief. The heat was terrific and the smoke overpowering. I 1 could feel myself 'going off.' There was no time to think, and I seemed to I have no energy. Suddenly everything I went black and I can remember nothing until I woke up on a stretcher." The Bellubera was the first Austra-lian-owned ship to1 be equipped with full Diesel-electric drive. Originally a steamer, she was laid up for six months while the drive was converted. The job was completed in March, and. when the vessel was placed on the Manly service soon afterwards, it was shown that the new machinery had increased her speed from 14 to 16 knots. The Bellubera was built In Sydney in 1910. Her gross tonnage was 499.