BOILER EXPLOSION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 606, 15 September 1883, Page 8

BOILER EXPLOSION.

On Tuesday afternoon shortly after 1 o’clock an explosion of a most alarming nature was heard in many parts of the city, the shock being felt from one end of it to another ; and, being a maritime people, the citizens naturally cast, their eyes seaward, many being under the impression that the noise proceeded from a man-of-war firing a salute on anchoring in the bay, and that it was, therefore, a mere sound, signifying nothing very particular. As no vessel, however, was to be seen at anchor in the harbor, with the exception of the barque Oxford, conjecture was for a time rife as to whence came the noise. In an incredible space of time, however, word arrived that a steam-engine boiler had burst in the wood and coal yard of Mr S. Brown, Tory-street. Rumor for once was correct, for on reaching the spot it was ascertained that the boiler of a portable 4J-h.p. engine had burst, but that, fortunately, beyond the havoc the affair had caused in the yard and its immediate neighborhood, and the consternation naturally occasioned thereby, but little harm bad been done. There was really little to be seen beyond a demolished corrugated iron shed, some twisted boiler plates, and a conglomerate of firewood and broken machinery. Mr Samuel BrowD, the proprietor, who was absent at the time of the occurrence, referred our representative to his foreman, Mr W. Gray, who courteously supplied us with all the particulars at his command. He stated that he was not only in charge of the yard, but had also the .care of the boiler and engine. At 12.30 he knocked off work for dinner. He observed at that time that the glass was all right, but, as was his custom, be put more water into the b Her, and, after again inspecting the glass, he turned off the water, and went to take the order of a Mrs Farrell who was entering the yard. Mr Gray states that he had scarcely entered ihe shed, where, his desk is situated, when the explosion occurred, and he had barely time to drag Mrs Farrell towards him when a wheel of a cart, which was standing in the yard, whizzed pa3t and then fell at their feet. The escape was marvellous. The spokes of the wheel, with but few exceptions, were sent flying about the shed, whilst a portion of the tire was twisted into a very fair semblance of a cork-screw. Even a more providential preservation from death than this has to be recorded in the case of an employd in the yard named William Hardcastle. The latter states that his boy brought him his dinner, and he took the lad with him into the engine shed, where he intended partaking of his meal. Some unaccountable impulse, however, pertuided him to go into the shed where the retail orders are taken, and he had only just sat down wheu the explosion took place. Had Hardcastle occupied the seat he usually took for his meal, he, together with his sou, would undoubtedly have been blown to atoms. There can be no doubt that Mrs Farrell, Messrs Gray, Hardcastle, and the son of the latter, owe their lives to the simple fact that a cart was directly in a line between the boiler aud themselves, which, while it was blown to pieces, diverted the fragments of iron into another channel. The sawing-shed, and its valuable imported iron benches, was simply a mass of ruins. The tables and cast-iron legs are snapped into a hundred pieces, whilst the fly wheels are broken off short. The yard ivas, but with one exception, surrounded with piles of firewood and heap 3of coal, ranging in height perhaps a distance of 12ft, and but for this a deplorable loss of life must have attended the occurrence, as the neighborhood is a densely populated one. A portion of the boiler plate was found lying curled up like a piece of bent tin at the foot of a large mass of firewood 30ft thick, half of which it had, however, displaced. Here was the furnace door, a massive plate with its great hinges and bolts, a rugged, ugly mass of iron, which, but for the resistance, would inevitably have errried death to many a home, whilst 20yds off, curled up like a piece if brown paper, lay a boiler plate thick. The man-hole door of the boiler was fouud in a paddock 50yds off, wbikt other and lighter portions of the boiler were picked up in the yard of a house nearly 100yds away from the scene of the explosion. The residents in the vicinity state that the explosion was like an earthquake, aud one old gentleman stated that he believed the millennium had arrived. He was found sticking to his td° or ) post several hours after the affair, waitirg for the full fruition of that happy event. The destruction of window glass iu the immediate vicinity must prove a source of unqualified gratification to the glaziers. The shop-front of Mr Moyes, grocer, reaiding opposite to the scene, has been shattered almost to atoms, whilst the sashes and window paces of many of the private houses in the neighborhood bear testimony to the severity of the shock. No fewer than thirteen full sized panes of glass in the Princess Theatre Hotel, in Tory-street, about 100 \ards off, were demolished. Doubtless an inquiry will be held into the explosion ar.d the whole of its surroundings. It is stated freely that the boiler which yesterday exploded had not been inspected officially for the last two or three years, though this is not very likely to prove correct.