The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-15 00:00:00

THE EXPLOSION ON BOARD THE
GREAT EASTERN.

THE ADJOURNED INQUEST.

WEYMOUTH, SEPT. 14.
To-day, at two'clock, the adjourned inquiry into
the cause of this melancholy disaster was resumed
before Mr. Henry Locke, the Coroner for Dorset,
at the Town-hall, Weymouth. The investigation
appear,c!d to excite no great amount of interest, and
the court was almost empty throughout the entire

proceedings.
Mr. Joh.o Scott Russell, in compliance with a
wish expreosed by the Coroner, came down from
town to attend the inquest.
Mr. Jan acckson, foreman to Mr. Russell, and
'under whose suilerintendence the machinery of the
paddle engines 1, vas fitted, was also present, and
Mr. M'Lennan, ti'e chief engineer of the Great
Eastern. The attnidance of Captain Harrison,
who, of course, has invortant duties to perform on
board the ship, was disnensed with by the Coroner.
Mr. Newman (of Fresiifields and Newman) at-
tended to watch the case' with Mr. Scott Russell.
At the commencement of the proceedings Mr.
Leverson, the solicitor to the company. said he
wished to correct an error w -hich bad appeared in
some of the papers to the effect that he (Mr. Lever-
son) had stated at the previovs inquiry that Mr.
Scott Russell had had ample notice to attend the
opening of the inquest but had not done so. In fact,
what he had stated was exactly the reverse—
namely, that Mr. Scott Russell had had no notice
of the inquiry; that he was at the give in London,
on the company's business, and could.. not possibly
have been in attendance.
After a few words from Mr. Scott fLussell, who
explained the cause of his unavoidable tAbsence,
The Coroner said that, on the opening of the in-
quest, he at once considered that it was a ca se which
ought to be adjourned, in order that the jur v might
have the assistance of some of the surveyo-ro from
the Board of Trade. He had accordingly corzunu-
nicated with the Board of Trade, and received a
letter in reply the previous day, which stated that
it was impossible that Captain Robertson, the Sur-
veyor-General, could attend the inquiry before Sa-
turday next. He therefore thought that, under
these circumstances, it would be most advisable that
the jury should have the benefit of the experience
of these officers, and, with their permission, he
would adjourn further proceedings till Satur-
day morning at nine o'clock. He (the Coroner)
trusted that both the company and Mr. Scott Rus-
sell would be ready on that occasion with any evi-
dence which could throw the smallest light upon
the causes which had led to so disastrous an acci-
dent.
One of the jury said that they hoped every effort
would be made to discover the man who had turned
off the cock or valve which led from the standpipe
into the stokehole.
Mr. Scott Russell said it would be proved by wit-
nesses that the cock of the valve was open on Tues-
dayy, and when the vessel left the river on Wednes-
da.
Mr. Leverson intimated that the company were
in no degree responsible for what had taken place,
and the evidence adduced had established this on
the company's behalf. He had no desire to call
further evidence unless wished for by the Court.
The Coroner said it was most likely the jury
would like to examine Mr. M'Lennan, the chief
engineer.
The inquiry was then adjourned till Saturday

morning.
The interest evinced by the public in this part of
the country in all relating to the ship seems as great
as ever. During all yesterday, though it blew al
severe gale from the south-west, accompanied by
heavy rain and sometimes thunder, the steamboats
bringing visitors to the vessel were densely
thronged. Nearly 6,000 persons paid their half-
crowns to go on board, and promenaded the deck
all day, defying the squalls of wind and rain with
an endurance worthy of a better cause. The scene
of the explosion, as far as it could be viewed from
the deck, is the great centre of attraction, and as
the monstrous fragments of ironwork have now been
got up from the stokehole and placed on deck,
enough evidence is given of the fury of the explo-
sion to satisfy the most eager curiosity. Mr. Not-
tidge, of the London Stereoscopic Company, who has
been on board from the first time of starting, in
order to get good pictures of the vessel, has photo-
graphed this mass of ruins most successfully.
From these pictures the public will be enabled to
gain a fair idea of the force of the explosion and
the sweeping destruction it occasioned. Owing to
the haste in which the account of the catastrophe
was necessarily written, f omitted to mention that
in the morning following the occurrence a subscrip-
tion was raised among the visitors on board for the
benefit of the sufferers and their families, and £124
colleoted in the course of a few minutes. Since
that day several benevolent persons have forwarded
small sums to the ship to be applied to the same
charitable purpose, and this, with the sale of photo-
graphs, which were given for the purpose by Mr.
Nottidge, have swelled the sum to nearly £l4O.
The repair of the damages inflicted by the ex-
plosion has already commenced, Mr. Scott Russell
having contracted to restore the whole for £5,000.
If it. should turn out that either of the forward
boilers has been injured, £5,000 will scarcely suffice
for the entire restoration. From the fact of there
having been no escape of steam from either of the
boilers at the time of the explosion, when there
was a pressure on each of 221 b., it is believed that
they have escaped without material injury. The
mere joinery of the cabin fittings and the redecora-
tion of the grand saloon can, and doubtless will,
soon be completed. With the ironwork, however, it
is a different affair. All this must be executed in Lon-
don from the working drawings of the vessel and
sent down piecemeal by rail to Weymouth, where it
can be bolted together an board the ship. Mr. Scott
Russell's contract is to finish the whole ship in
her former state as she left the river within three
weeks.

(From the Morning Post.)
There has been a sort of tendency for some time
past to mystify the public by spurious scientific
twaddle. It matters little what the occasion—
from the poisoning of an individual to the bursting
of a funnel-casing one beaten path must be pursued
for gaining public acquiescence in a dogma, or
leading judgment astray from the safe ground to
which plain common sense would have led it.
By this time every London newspaper has had
some account of the calamity on board the Great
Eastern. In the hurry and anxiety of writing on
the spot trivial errors of description may have
occurred, and it would have been hardly fitting to
scrutinise the scientific accuracy of a mere para-
graph at any time. When a leading contemporary,
however, affects to throw light on the catastrophe
in all the dignity of a long article, set up in large
type, it is as well that the public should not be
misled.
Such a journal yesterday made a discovery of
great scientific importance. It is no less than this
—superheated steam (by which readers are to
understand steam heated up to a minimum of five
hundred pounds pressure to the inch) is resolved
into oxygen and hydrogen gases ; which gases, in
their turn, on being brought into contact with a
mere hot iron (without flame, be it understood),
immediately combine, with explosion. Anything
more utterly absurd would be difficult to conceive,
and might be safely left to the derision of every
dabbler in science, from mechanics' institute-men
downwards. We advert to it as illustrative of a
peculiar type of judgment aberration very preva-
lent now-a-days, and perhaps best termed scientific
bamboozlement.
Why, in the name of Archimedes, should our
contemporary go so far out of hie way to make the
astounding physical discovery signalised yesterday
in large type, to the end of explaining' a calamity
(an accident, mark, we do not feel justified in call-
ing it), when the origin, the progress, and the
finality of that catastrophe lie within the compass
of a nutshell ? Why, indeed, but this ; somebody
(we know not who, and. had rather not know, for
then we could not be so outspoken)—somebody does
well to prate about abstruse physical conditions,
however silly and impossible, causing, to the best
of his ability, the wordy gossip to go forth, in order
to turn the public aside from the real point at
issue, and to prevent their asking, with sharp, clear
voice—Whose duty was it to see to the efficiency of
the machinery before the starting of the Great
Eastern ? That is the first question to be propounded.
It is a simple question, and should elicit a direct
answer. Who furnished the donkey engines ? is the
next question. Direct replies having been elicited,
short work might be made of the examination.
There is only one veiled secret in the matter, only
one, and that is not a philosophical secret. If our
c ontemporary has made the discovery that super-
h rated steam be spontaneously resolvable into its
constituents, oxygen and hydrogen, the two recom-
bining under the contact of mere hot iron, we would
suggest the British Association, now sitting, or the
It( vs-al Society, as a fitting place for publishing it,
an a gaining acquiescence. The public don't want
to connect that discovery with the blowing up of the
Gr at Eastern's funnel-casing in any sense. They
watit to know, in the first instance, on whom the
rPsponsibility of superintending the machinery of
that :me mnificent but ill-used ship devolved. They
want to know, in the second place, whether bursi-
itw sooner or later would not be the inevitable re-
sult of stopping the stand pipe as it was stopped,
and isolating the water in the funnel-casing from
all c, om narmication with the boiler. Granting this

(and there is no disputing it), there rests on some
one, NN Te ki low not whom, a fearful responsibility.
It is n of ilifficult to recognise in the progress of

this matter the influence of two separate tendencies.
One, to make things pleasant as between the com-
pany and the public ; the other, to promote confu-
sion, by importing extraneous speculations into a
matter which is clear to ordinary common sense.
Explosion under the conditions given was sooner or
later inevitable. It was a preventible calamity,
which some one ought to have prevented. The
public voice demands his name. Half a dozen
human lives are already at his door, and but for the
merest chance, it might have been half a hundred.