The Locomotive - Lighthouse Survival Blog

178 THE LOCOMOTIVE. [December,
graph that was taken a short time after it occurred. The entire building, it will be
seen, was transformed into a mere shapeless mass of ruins. The exploded boiler was
located on a level with the sidewalk, about oO or 40 feet back of it, and nearly opposite
the center of the mass of debris. It was composed of five courses of sheets, and was-
torn into three pieces, the lines of fracture running circularly around the middle sheet,
just inside the girth joints. The front end, consisting of the head and two courses-pf
the shell, appears to have passed tlirough the front of the ruined building somewhere
between the second and third floors. It then passed across Fourteenth street, striking a.
division wall between two tenement houses, and falling down to the sidewalk. Its final
resting place is shown in Fig. 2, which also shows the damaged wall where it first
struck. Several persons were in the exposed room on the second floor, and they doubt-
less owe their lives to the fortunate accident of the fragment striking against the divis-
ion Avail between this tenement and the next one, as already mentioned. Indeed, it is
not unlikely that the entire front wall of this house would have fallen out, had the
boiler struck it fairly.
The rear end of the boiler, consisting of the back head and two courses of sheets,
was projected with equal force in the opposite direction. It crashed through a sixteen-
inch brick wall, and was stopped by a similar wall in the rear of a Fifteenth street
building.
The middle sheet of the boiler, including the dome, was thrown into an adjoining-
basement.
One of the newspaper accounts says that " one of the men killed was the engineer,
whose carelessness must have caused the explosion." Sergeant MuUin, of the Police
Bureau of Inspection, is also reported to have declared it "'evident that an overpressure
of steam, greatly in excess of what the boiler was licensed to carry, [i. e. greatly in
excess of 90 pounds,] had caused the explosion." The first of these suppositions is of
course wholly gratuitous, as the rej^orter, so far as we could learn, had no evidence toshow
that the engineer had not discharged his duties faithfully. So far as Sergeant
Mullin's theory is concerned, we may say that although the pressure may have exceeded
that allowed by the police board, it does not seem to us necessary to assume that it did,
for the explosion can be sufficiently accounted for even if the pressure was within its
normal limits. We do not wish to be understood as criticising Sergeant MuUin in the
least, as his opinion, if correctly quoted, was given immediately after the explosion, and
probably before he had had an opportunity of examining the fragments of the boiler
carefully.
An examination of the middle sheet of the exploded boiler showed what was in all
probability the cause of the explosion. On the outside of this sheet there was an area
about 12 inches wide and 18 inches long, which was corroded to such an extent that in
places the metal was not over a tenth of an inch thick. The corroded place was near
the dome, and, judging from the general course of the lines of fracture, it was undoubt-
edly the point of initial rupture. The cause of this explosion, therefore, may be said ta
have been external corrosion of the shell.
The exploded boiler was 18 feet 8 inches long and 44 inches in diameter, with 46-
tubes, and a dome 28 inches in diameter and 24 inches high. In addition to the loss of
human life, some thirty horses were either killed outright, or so much injured that they
had to be shot ; and the total loss from the explosion may be summed up somewhat as
follows : Seven persons killed and ten injured, thirty horses killed (valued at $5,000),
$20,000 loss on the building, $10,000 loss on the grain and feed stored in it, and $5,000
loss on machinery. This makes the total estimated property loss $40,000.