Another Frozen-Meat Experiment.

Otago Witness, Issue 1583, 25 March 1882, Page 23

Another Frozen-Meat Experiment.

The barque Mataura, which has arrived at Lyttelton, is fitted with refrigerating machinery, and she is to come on to Dunedin in order to load carcases from here in tho same way as the ship Dunedin did. Concerning her arrival the Christchurch Press says :—: —

When she was last here Captain Brown was in command. He has since been transferred to another of the Company's ships, and Captain E. H. Greenstreet, formerly an officer on board the Waimate, is now her master. The Mataura has, since she was here last, been

fitted with refrigerating engines, and is to load at Dunedin a number of carcases of sheep for the Old Country. Captain Greenstreet states that the working of the machinery on the voyage out in no respect interfered with the speed of the ship, nor was any perceptible difference found from the circumstance of having the large house containing the boilers on the deck. The machinery was kept going for an hour or two every day throughout the voyage, and a test refrigerating chamber was thus kept at from 20 to 50 degrees below ■ freezing point. Some - few packages of English fresh fish were thus kept in good .condition, and birds and fish captured on the voyage were popped into the freezing compartment, and at once became imperishably frozen. The .dry-air refrigerator on the Mataura is .known ,a#i Haslam's patent, not Bell and Coleman's, and she is said to be the only 1 sailing ship afloat which has been fitted with this patent. (The,wellknown steamships Orient^ Catania, Garonne, and Catalonia are fitted with Haslam's dry-air refrigerator, and nearer home the Meat Preserving, Company of Dunedin has adopted this particular refrigetator. The space available for a chamber onpoard for carrying prepared sheep and cattle is equivalent to 250 tons. The compartment is" rendered completely air-tight by linings of wood, charcoal, brown paper, &c, in all to the thickness of nearly a foot.'' The engines on Monday, when the ship caline in, looked perfection, and their chief overseer, Mr Scott, says, what is no doubt true, that' they are as near perfect as the hand of man ' 'could make them, working like clockwork. Everything, moreover, is duplicated in" the' \vay of fittings, in case of a breakdown.' 1 The! consumption of fuel, were it necessary to rftn the engines constantly, would be about 20 tons per diem, but the temperature is readily' kept low enough in any latitude by workinga few hour* per day. ■ . ' ' ' ' •"' '.