A SERIES OF DEATHS DUE TO ASPHYXIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9142, 25 August 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

A SERIES OF DEATHS DUE TO ASPHYXIA.

A telegram from Madras reports an extraordinary fatality at sea. On June 16, soon after the steamship Clan Macintosh had left Socotra, a series of deaths due to asphyxia occurred on board. The steward, accompanied by the butler and a boy, entered the store-room in the port hold for the purpose of issuing stores, leaving a man on the second deck to receive the stores as handed up. The first three had hardly reached the store-rom before they were asphyxiated by poisonous vapours emanating from the hold, and the man above was also

overcame and fell. A fireman saw this man fall, and reported the matter to the second "officer, who immediately descended the nold with a lighted lamp. This was extinguished, and the officer, overcome by the gas, fell down. The chief officer then descended, and found the body of the second officer. He had it hauled up with slings, * and followed it. He then descended again and endeavoured to rescue the others, bub -fell dead. The second and third engineers, ""two quartermasters, and several natives, * sifter recovering the bodies* were with difficulty revived.