Stowing Frozen Meat.

Manawatu Standard, Volume 4, Issue 118, 25 April 1883, Page 2

Stowing Frozen Meat.

(Christchurch Press.) The train from Belfast, consisted of eight car loads of frozen sheep; numbering 1535 carcassos. The moat chamber was m readiness, the engineer, Mr Scott, having run the temperature down to 20 deg. of frost (10 above zero), and the work of putting m the whole shipment occupied two hours and a half. The railway cars that carry the cargo over the seventeen miles from the freezing works to the ship, are specially constructed, and have a double lining with sawdust packing between the walls of the car. Every care was taken to make them as nearly air-tight as. possible. When the carcases were discharged, each carcase wrapped m white calico, they certainly had all the stark and stiff chaaracteristics that have bean claimed for them, and were as hard and slippery as blocks of ice. The hold of the steamer m which they were stowed is also a double lined compartment, 6in of charcoal being laid between the wooden walls. There is, moreover, a limn; of tin, it being necessary that the place should be not only air*praof, but verminproof. The carcases are stowed fore and aft, oue on top of the other, and stacked up as close to-gether as it is possible to pack them, the fir st carcase or " Foundation stone of. _the_ mutton -£abrioa.i.ion,?'-<CTB oomw one caUed^t, was laid m the after corner of the chamber on the port side, and the first twenty or so side by side. Then came the first tier, and so 6n, until the eight car loads were disposed of. The lumpers who had the honor of stowing the first shipment made no spacial preparation for the work by putting on extra clothing, and though for the first five or ten minutes they did not feel the cold , the change of climate soon after began to -impress them with the reality of its presence.and make them long for something warmer. When the room m the main hold is nUeuVthe hatches, which are 12 inches an thickness, will be closed down, and the 8000 or 9000 sheep will become a solid, frozen mass. The filling of a smaller room with special stores for passengers will then be proceeded with, and another room with more frozen sheep, and finally the small room just off the engine room filled with ship's stores. The frigid section of the ship will then be left to the mercy of the Haslam refrigerator, which is to constantly blow into it an atmosphere that leaves the wonderful engines at 60deg below freezing point.