Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1902-05-15
Hoods ~C0rS0DQriLId

not so bad as most of them. When the fire
came W. were going to our posts. Eve are
engineers) to weigh anchor and get out.
When we came up we found the ship all
afirc, and fought 1t forward until three
o'clock. when the Suchet came to our res
cue. We were then building a raft"
Ben" Benson, the carpenter Of the
Roraima said:
Il was on deck, amidships, when l
heard an explosion. The captain ordered
me to up anchor. | got to the windlass
but when the fire came i went into the
forecastlc and got my buds When |
came out | talked with Captain Muggah.
NIT. Scott, the first officer. and others.
They had bean on the bridge. The captain
was horribly burned. He had inhaled
flames and wanted to jump into the sea.
tried to make him take a life preserver.
The captain. who was un1ressed jumped
overheard and hung on TO a line for a
v'hile. Then he disappeared"
Gus Linder, the quartermaster of the
steamer, who is horribly burned and can
scarcely talk. confirmed this.
Francisco Angelo. who speaks poor Eng
fish, vividly described tho on rush of the
fire. He says the captain was a very
brave man. too brave to die burned up.
Angelo further asserted hat the storm of
IRE lasted not more than five minutes.
Joseph Beckels, a seaman, who is 90 years
of age and is SO frightfully burned that he
cannot live. having inhaled flame, said
that he was the last man to see the captain
VINO was then trying to reach a floating
mattress.
Other men of the Roraima who were res.
cued are Salvador Aiello and Joseph SUI
sino.
From the Italian ship Teresa Lovico sew
eral men We're saved, but they are in a
frirhtful state. except Jean Louis Pruden
of St. Pierre. Although on deck and un-
protected. he was little burned. Prudon
says there was first an awful noise of
explosion and then, right away, a cyclone
of smoke and fire, but such was the awful,
poisonous. hooking nature of the smoke
that it burned worse than the fire. When
it struck people they fell dead. The cy'
clone of gas tore the masts out of ships,
blew up and sunk some of them. soon af-
forwards came A wave of IRE bigger tlaf
the smoke cloud.
THAT cloud continued Prudent, was
bigger, it seemed, than the mountain
THE fire burned the city everywhere at
once. Near me | saw only dead men; but
on shore | saw men and women rushing
back and forth amid the flames for ar
hour. Then came that choking smoke ano
they would drop like dead flies.
The explosion, smoke ana ire all CANT
and went in three minutes; but the city
burned for three hours, Then every house
was finished and nothing alive Was left.
Some mon from the sinking ships go
to the shore, but they were burned VI
there.
A no time were there any earthquakes
hui big stones were rained down and fire
fell like rain for Il long time"
In a separate Fart Of the hospital were
found several persons saved from Carbe'
village, four miles from st. Pierre.
HOT SEA INVADED THE LAND.
The village Urine south OF st. Pierre wa!
almost entirely burned and almost all tn'
inhabitants were killed. One of the sur
vivors of Urine. who will die, says Nh
sea, boiling hot, invaded the land. 81!
women whose bodies are one solid burn ar
writhing in another ward of the hospital
Ten women severely burned from Irrin'
were brought in and four of them hay,
died. 1t is doubtful IL any of the six still
alive can recover.
An evidence of the swiftness of the on
slauEht of the fire is found in the fac
that none of the victims was blinded, al
though the oyelids of most of them al
nearly burned through. All those save
except the engineers of the Roraima ar
, poor sailors and Martinique negroes. n
one knows how the passengers Of tn
! steamerS persisted and 1t is impossible I
: get a fun list of the vessels lost, TIL
cable repair ship Grapplcr was lost wit
all on board, as was the French Vesse
Tamaya. There were IS or 20 vessels in tn