The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-24 00:00:00

Looking down from one of those eminences upon
the bridge, the river, and the surrounding build-
ings, all swarming wiih countless multitudes, but
swathed in the same deep fiery glow, it made one
of the most terrible spectacles ever witnessed in
England. Probably at no time—even during the
Great Fire of London—was there ever seen such a
mass of flame and heat as roared and seethed so
dreadfully on Saturday night along the south side
of the river. All the small boats on the Thames
were, of course, obliged to keep close over to the
Middlesex shore. The intense heat rendered this
necessary, but there were other dangers as well. As
warehouse after warehouse caught, the barrels
of saltpetre and tar with which some were
stored exploded, and came pouring forth in
streams of liquid fire, which floated out upon
the water in great sheets, and broke up at last
into little islands of flame, which went drifting
up the river. All the vigilance and activity of the
Thames Police was necessary to beat and scatter
these out as they floated through the bridge. But
all these exertions would have been in vain to check
the devastation which must have been caused by
these floating masses if the remains of the ships
burnt earlier in the evening had not acted as a kind
of breakwater to their movements. The great mass
therefore of this liquid fire gathered round the frag-
ments of the hulls, and kept their charred ribs
glowing. At a little after 12 o'clock the fire had
burnt quite through to Tooley-street. A huge
granary lower down the river, supposed to be fire-
proof, became apparently red-hot, and the flames
could be seen whirling round and round through
the stories till at last they found a vent through the
reef, and, belching upwards for a few minutes in
one great pyramid of sparks and fire, left only the
hollow glowing walls standing. Still the flames
continued to spread, not only down the river, bat
backwards through Tooley-street towards Bermond-
sey and the railway. After 12 o'clock a great many
additional engines came in from distant parts of the
country, but they would have been powerless even
to check the spread of the flames but for the trifling
change we have mentioned in the wind, which kept
the great mass of sparks and heated air out over the
river. But for this half Bermondsey would have
been laid in ashes. Soonafter midnight an immense
line of wall, facing the river, the shell of the ware-
house in which the fire began, fell outwards with a
hideous crash. The scene it disclosed was absolutely
appalling, and the sudden glow of heat could be felt
far out upon the river. Moored alongside Chamber-
lain's wharf was a small sloop, which, as soon as
the wooden sheds took fire, was looked upon as
doomed.tt first might be perceived upon the cor-
dage of the rigging a few small specks of fire, like
little blue blisters,which gradually became largerand
larger, until they ran into one, and the mast began
to blaze. Then on the sides of the vessel, and then
upon its deck, other little blue blisters burst out
where the heat of the burning wharfs had ignited the
tar, and very:soon the sloop was all on fire from stem
to stern. While she was burning, there came a
barge, with flowing sails, borne on the rising tide.
The eddy drew it too near the conflagration ; the
heat—which scorched the faces of people standing
on the landing-stage at Billingsgate—was insup-
portable, the three men on board became alarmed,
they lost all control of themselves, the barge drifted
inland, while they raised their hands and shouted
for help. A boat rowed out and took these three
men off, and in less than two minutes their barge
lay with its broadside to the river of fire next the
shore, and was blazing from one end to the other.
Later in the night a small skiff, rowed by a single
man, was drawn close upon the vortex of fire in the
same way. Another boat ran out, took the man eff,
and conveyed him to a place of safety ; but it is said
that a second boat, pulled by a single rower, which
went inshore with the same object, met with a diff-
ferent fate, being itself drawn in too far. The man
was rendered powerless by the heat, he lifted his
hands for help as the man had done he had thought
to aid in saving; but he had gone too far to be res-
cued, and it is rumoured that he and his boat were
both burnt together. Then there was a second barge
ignited by the floating, blazing tallow, but that being
further removed from the heat, was scuttled, and so
took no great harm. It should be added that when
the boatmen took the three men off the barge a tre-
mendous cheer burst forth from the spectators, and
almost drowned for a time the roar of the fire. In-
stances like these created an intensity of excite-
ment which can hardly be imagined by those who
were not witnesses of the scene.
While Chamberlain's Wharf was in full blaze it
was feared by many that St. Olave's Church and
Topping's Wharf would follow ; but fortunately, a
vacant piece of ground interposed, which no doubt
saved both. On the other hand, however, Hay's
Wharf, it became evident, had caught in the
roof, through which dense clouds of smoke and
sharp spires of flame were darting. The iron
shutters for a long time kept in the fire here
except at intervals, when it forced its
way upwards ; it must have been at least an hour
after the top floor was blazing before the
fire 'descended to the floor below. After that the
others followed, but the difference in the progress
of the flames here and in the non-fireproof building
was remarkable. So tremendous a degree of heat
rendered the supposed fireproof qualities of the build-
ing of no avail in this instance, when everything
iron became redhdt ; but with anything like an
ordinary emergency to contend with there cannot
be a question that this great pile of building would
have been perfectly safe. As however it was thought
it might yield, a large body of men had been em-
ployed earlier in the night in removing goods from
the lower floors, and this was done to a considerable
extent, but many casks of oil or tar so removed
upon the turn of the tide were drifted within reach
of the fire, and in turn added to its intensity.
When Hay's wharf was included the river sweep
of the conflagration must have beer. 300 yards,
with a deep foreground of blazing oil and tallow.
The higher the tide rose the wider became the sheet
of flame, as cask after cask of tallow melted and
rolled, liquidwise, into the Thames.
As the tide rose attention became fixed upon the
dock at the end of Hay's wharf, for the spectators
were anxious upon two points—first, they wished
to see if there was any possibility of escape of the
two vessels lying there, close to the walls of the
fireproof but fire-filled buildings; and, secondly,
they feared that the fire would leap the narrow
chasm of the dock, seize on Beal's wharf, and then,
as must have happened, burn down a great extent
of wharfage property beyond. After midnight,
when the waters had risen sufficiently high, the
screw steamer was towed out amid the cheers of the
onlookers, and 10 minutes later two tugs drew out
an American bark, just as the iron shutters of the
buildings fell out of the side next the dock, and the
conflagration shot forth its fiery tongues, amid
bursts of cheering and hand-clapping such as old
Father Thames has seldom heard. And this rescue
was none too soon. For hours one of the floating
engines had been playing on the external wall of
this building and on the rigging of the bark alter-
nately, but despite this the little blue blisters which
heralded the destruction of the sloop and the barge
had shown themselves on the cordage of the main-
topgallantmast, and once the rigging at that point
' was fairly in a blaze. The well-directed hose, ho w-
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it now became clean that on the river side the fire
had done itc worst. With a gap at each end, it
could do no more in that direction, and in Tooley-
street the land engines had shut it in ; so that, be-
sides the buildings compreeohnesnisdteindg
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Casks of tallow vet remained to melt, while num-
berless bags of saltpetre and casks of oil and tur-
pentine, with hundreds of tons of cheese, butter,
sugar, and bacon, were yet unconsumed. And still
the people came in fresh thousands to view the sight.
Dawn found London-bridge still thronged with
cabs, omnibuses, carts, waggons, and vehicles of
every description. Peripatetic vendors of ginger
beer, fruit, and other cheap refreshments abounded,
and were sold out half a dozen times over. Public-
houses, in defiance of Acts of Parliament, kept open