The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1901-10-17
The Cargo Turned to Tafy.

From the Toledo Bee
Here is the story of a ship that start
ed with a cargo of sugar and reached
her port with a cargo OF taffy. The sea
has no other story quite like it, or none
that has ever been recorded. The snip
was the Charing Cross, from Rosario,
Argentine Republic, and the strange
metamorphosis in her hold was not dis
covered until she arrived at her dock
in London
The cargo-31 coo bags of sugar-was
slowed away in four different compart-
merts of the ship, and the work of un-
loading begun on the day following her
arrival. The ship and dock hands rap
idly cleared the first, second and
fourth holds without experiencing any
difficulty, but when they came to un-
load No. 3 they found that the sugar
there had become one solid block of a
dark brown subStance-tWelve thou
sand bags, equal to one thousand tons
of sugar had been converted into taffy.
The mass was as hard marble, and
it was found impossible to unload it In
the usual way. The hard substance
was firmly attached to the sides of the
vessel, and had encompassed everything
else in it's grip. SO nothing could be
done but dig the stuff out
A body of forty men. using picks and
shOvels, was employed in breaking up
the taffy berg in the hold of the ship,
and after thirty days labor the men at
length succeeded in clearing away the
last bit of taffy.
to unload the other three hatchways,
containing the major balance of the
cargo, the minimum rate at which a
shipload of sugar can be discharged
being fifty tons a day per eight men.
But the combined efforts of forty men
engaged in clearing out the taffy pit
in the ships mold could not turn out
more than five tons day.
The determination of the CONCEALED
mass to resist the onslaught OF the
forty men resulted in the breaking of
about one ton of iron tools of all sorts.
including wedges measuring three feet
long which got twisted and bent ] Ike
so many limp candles; pickaxes, whose
strong points got fiattened out; chains,
the strong links of which snapped in
two; great iron bolts that got splintered
like clothes pegs. and huge crowbars
that got bent like hairpins- If these
twelve thousand bags of sugar had not
got converted by the mysterious agency
into taffy their removal from the ship
would have cost only s165, but in the
present instance the cost OF digging out
the hardened stuff cost $3.50
The sugar market has lost twelve
thousand bags of fly fancy" as sugar
is called at the docks, but CONNECTION
ers and brewers have bought the taffy,
giving s35 q ton for it, or less than
half its original value. All together.
the making Of that thousand tons of
taffy means a loss of $4,000 in the ag
gregate but the ship has become IA
NOUS, for the Charing Cross is now re-
ferred to as the s'taffy ship.''
The cause of the ira nsform9 ton can
not be discovered. The sugar was
loaded in tropical wea Their. and those
particular bags which went wrong must
have contained sugar which was in an
abnormally moist condition The hold
in which it was stored is just abaft the
engine room and subject to great heat
The subsequent change of temperature,
from torrid to frigid ATTITUDES, helped to
solidify the mass.