BATTLING FLAMES AT SEA

Evening Star, Issue 20032, 24 November 1928, Page 19

BATTLING FLAMES AT SEA

EPIC OF PACIFIC [From Odr Own Correspondent.] VANCOUVER, October 31. With seven of her crew painfully burned 1 mid scalded, the Blue Star Line steamship Trojan Star, in charge of Captain G. A. Griffiths, arrived in port at Vancouver with a harrowing story of tiro on board, while the vessel was off tiio California coast on the night of October 12,William P. Tennison, of Hull, England, a fireman, was burned to death, and Ids body buried at sea. Tho fire broke out at 6.20 p.m., when an oil jet burst in the stoke-hold, trapping eight men of the engine room force in a wall of flame that sprang up in an instant. Second Engineer Sydney P. Houston and Fireman- James, according to tho * ship’s officers, were chiefly responsible for tho safety of the engine room crow. Seeing that olio way to safety on deck was barred, Houston led tho men into, the bilges under tho boiler. Tho flames roared above them, and for three hours and thirty minutes they lay thcro_ in oil and water, with the plates growing hotter, and the water in which they lay steadily approaching the boiling point. Janies, by his cheery conduct and singing of songs, aided his comrades while awaiting rescue. Tennison went temporarily insane from the heat, and rushed back to tho engine room again where he succumbed. Only by an act of Providence were the flames stopped. A big steam pipe in the stoke-hokl burst, pouring a dense cloud of steain into the compartment, filially smothering the fire and permitting the deck men to reach the imprisoned engine room crew who were smeared front head to foot with fuel oil, soaked in water, blistered, and partly gassed. They all subsequently recovered, and, in true British fashion made little of their terrible experiences, taking that as part of their life on the geean.