The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 27, 1898, Page 5

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 189S. HARVEST OF DEATH AT THE EAPLOSIO! SACRIFICES TEN LIVES Poriion ‘offtithe Plant Demolished and Burned. Workmen Crushed Un- der the Debris and Incinerated. Eight Charred Bodies Recov- ered From the Smoking Ruins. GOVERNMENT A LOSER. Manufacture of Smokeless Powder Delayed at a Critical Period. Special Dispatch to The Call O0000000000000000 THE DEAD. James Miller. Ernest Marshall. Luther Marshall. C. A. Cole. H. C. Butler. E. Jennings. - E. Gilleran. Guy Fagan. Carlyle Ross. Charles Miller. CO0CoO0000002000C0CQ 000R00000000000000000000 ©00000000000000C0000000 SANTA CRUZ, April 26.—At 5:15 this T portion of the Califor- wder Works blew up. There a 21 terrific exy fons and ¢ of the catastrophe mind. People a few mo- | ay to the fearful that | urred, and any instant 1 calamity. rted iter were on the catastrophe, awful had oc ous that at t be an add 1 the w L it hr st ne when the sky was lighted by roar of flame, the ; wr and dull nses of thos ght up by of what had ned back, and were spared a | 1 description could hardly | There had been destruction | rst 1 a tt startlec 1 death. he 1 wder mill canyon was one | sea of fire. Amid the blinding timbers | and rapidly lick flames there did | n¢ n to be a vestige of the Cali- | o Powder Works remalning. s s from gun cotton were falling | in showers to_the ground. As one neared the ne of the explosion, | , ple of timber and gal- zed fron were strewn about in sion. half hour before this had been one | busiest spots 1in California. man and boy who could work | mills were engaged, and car- | mason and builders were en- g the works Zight bodi aken from the debris, nearly all charred beyond recognition. s have been dead are: James Miller (the | foreman), Ernest Marshall, Luther M st Jennings, Charles Mil- ler and Guy Fagen. All of these were employed In the smokeless plant. Charles Cole, a carpenter, working a hundred yards from the building, first reported missing, is dead Gillman, a stonemason, on his way home from the works, was struck by a falling rock and was found dead. Among the wounded are: Mike Noon, who received a cut on the head; Dr Congdon, who went to attend the | wounded and was struck on the back | by a flying rock; Willlam Burge, styuck by a piece of falling rock and horribly cut on the fac Bert Rea, working | outside, struck by a rock on the back | of the head and knocked scnseless. In | falling he struck h elbow, which w tractured. George Sutton, wounded b falling timber; J. W. Nelson, carpenter, cut on forehead and right hand frac- tured So great is the confusion that even now there s a conflict as to the num- ber and identity of t! tim: The fire spread all over the ¢ o v nyon, and the lling timbers were as fire- brands, which ignited the brush in all directions. The men were soon at work. The powder mills village is about a quarter of a mile down the creek from the scene of the explosion. Here, nes- tled in a canyon, in a lovely spot. is a villz of about twefty hou and a schoolhouse. This is the place of resi- dence of many of the employes of the works. The entire village was in flames, fire destroying what escaped the shock. The escapes of the women and children from falling timbers were miraculous. The home of Mr. Johnson is in ruins, Mrs. Johnson and the children just es- caping from the falling roof. The boarding-house w 50 knocked to pleces. Mrs. Margaret Worden, the boarding house keeper, was struck by a plece of flying glass While running out of her house, and was cut severely on the top of her head and had her left ear nearly severed. The two lodging- houses were soon in flames, while the residences of G. H. Dennett, J. ooney, Mr. Maners, Mr. Welch and others o eorh | tell the tale. | smokele Santa Cruz Powder Works, the Scene of an Explosion Which Cost Ten Lives. many of the workmen losing all their clothing and personal belongings. ortunately the powder works do not keep a s of the product on hand. a special train | left for the eight s of over forty prismatic powder for th pac and all the oth- er mills have all windows broken. loyed at the works were 170 men elve-hour shiftt it homes Cf Supe ar.d Wilba working t intendent ton Pe in nd window muc in the were destroyed by the terrific The l.aval Reserv have re- Just turned from the pow s, where they have been fire. The; from the quickly br : . m 1all and Ernest b 1 s found on the side hill, the other in the creek. In one of the mills that exploded | work had commenced only last Sunday, the b The £ just being c tement in Santa Cruz high and the streets have b s 0f peop cut explosior who ch has his story clegrams by the score are being sent by the men who ped to friends telling them of their uil 2ds of cords of wood used in > manufacture of charcoal for powder has been burned. Wilbur Huntington Jr. w at work | within 100 feet of the plosion paint- ing a house. He w twirled off the ladder and when he struck the the contents of the painted his face red. paint bucket had take the place of those destr be commenced immediately. take long. The work der will go right on w ved will It will not »f making pow- thout interrup- tion. There are a large number of mills. An eye-wi‘ness to the e-losion say: that all that co.ld be se w whirling of clouds of smoke, then a tr mendous explosion. Then could be seen the iron roofs, timbers, pieces of ma- chinery, iron pipes in the air and next the falling to the rth, and the flames which devoured e thing before them. All the buildings and debris were on fire. Another witness on the front por le; d he was seated h of the navy smoke- s building, 300 : ards from the rifle s building, which was the first as the men emplc E. Miller, Carlyle it 2 shall anc ) uther Marshall—w All were in the buflding at the time of the explosion. The next b lding was the shotgun or Handley’s smokeless, as Handley, on hearing the ran from the building it 1s called. rst explosion, vhere he was at work znd had only got a short distance from it when it exploded. He as miracul asly saved and was soon at the village to meet his wife, who had come from town almost frantic to find what had been his fate. The guncotton warchouse is sunposed | to have contalned between three and four tons of guncotton, one of the worst explosives known. This created the t flame: 1 when it 1y of the explosions, nt off the flames shot . affording a tremendous anc hi~h in the air, acle. w last and hardest shock of the ex- plosion was that of the vacuum dryer. Here is where the shotgun smokeless v ~vder is dried by a new process. new smokeless powder bullding, which was near by, and w under construc- tion, was destr [ ult of the concussion of the explosion. There was no powder in it. The amount of powder exploded will never be khown, but it reached into the thousands of pound The powder is shipped to the Government as quickly as manufactured, a fact which render- ed the disaster less appalling than it might easily h.ve been. The scene ‘at Wessendorf & Staffler’s undertaking parlors is a ghastly one. Here are the bodies of eight of those who lost their liv Of the eight only two are recognizabl:. The first one brought in was that of Edward Gil- leran, killed b f ng brick while on his way to his house. by his son. Only one body of the seven who were He was found Kkilled in the actual explosion s recog- rizable, that of Luther Marshall. He is the only one whose head is on the trunk. All that remains of two of the vietims could be placed in a kat, At first there was wild talk that the exyplcsion was the work of a panish spy, but there seems no ground for this belief. The works were carefully guarded, and the men had worked un- der such pressure that it is supposed some of them got careless. At begt, the danger of accident at a vowder-mjll is always recognized, and no means of | Werks' at this ground | The work of erection of new mills to | SANTA CRUZ POWDER WORKS t5 S\ AR A the army smokeless plant upon the east | but Uncle Sam doesn’t use it to any side of the rive All the main powder | extent. In all th guns of the army works, black powder works,.the brown | and navy, from the one- sunders to the prismatic and navy smokele were | 13-inch g eithe smokeless” or saved, nor were they at any time in| “brown p ic” powd.r is used. any danger. Had it not been for the new Krag-Jorgensen army fie northe wind the explo eless pot.der and the would have been confined to the first for the big mortars is ed stuff made in a certain house altogether. The acecident hap- o : pened in the dry guncotton house. Fi- not a powder manu- nancial loss is nothing to the loss ff _ in. Americ ide from the of life, being from $18,000 to $20,000. | California Powder W« and the Du- The works will be rebuilt immediately, | Donts, that has been able to make o and there will be no delay whatever in | Pound of powder for the G ernment, filling Gov Several of thos rnment_contracts. N competition and would give a big pow- der contract to any firm at any time. The makine of both the and the brow.. prismatic powde job requiring more delicate han is often demanded a manufacturing I3 powder is a prep ine and gun-cotton, the projortion: fering for the “rmy and navy res ively in accordance with the differing 1 were born and reared in Santa Cruz, and known by all from childhood. There are many sad hearts in this city to-night. - A NATIONAL CALAMITY. Leaves the Government But One Source of Powder Supply. in It is hard for the average clvilian | to re ze the significance of the de- |theories of the ordnance experts of the sl of the California Powder | tWo departments and formulae count s critical time—thas. it | fop i, might one take one of Marion that Uncle Sam has left until and’s recipes and expect to beat an perienced old wench at making ad, or read a book and try to com- yete with an old cellar-master at mak- at ¢ e apC sstablis] ing and aging wine. The powder must that ‘,r> the Dupont establishment and just so many degrees of heat with theguas 7= fe Tt must act during the course Isn't the composition of all powders ‘ of a few thousandths of a second with me the works are rebuilt but one solitary | the | urce of powder supply for all -y guns of the army and nav in well known and can't almost any of | a steady and regular increase of power the powder factories of America buckle | that knows no fitful energy. Every to and rush out powder according to ! ounce of the big charge must be burned the formula in next to no time?|during the few thousandths of a sec- Couldn’t the Government sharps go to | ond which the shell t:es in reaching | mixing nitro-glycerine and things by | the muzzle, and it must not all be ex- the ton in no time? ploded while the projectile is two or No thev couldn't Common black | three feet from the muzzle. It must y'to ~t or make, ] develop just so much energy at the powder would be e and | muzzle and it must do and be a lot of other things to a nicety. These things coiae with delicate and certain manipulations like the making of rare wine. A degree of heat a sec- | ond of time, a pound of pressure and | s0 on at various stages of manipulation have their sure effect. All this applies as well to the " rown prismatic or “slow burning” powder. . This is wholly different from the smokeless powders, and in composition is practically the same as black pow- der except that the charcoal 1s not charred so much, the brown color being due to the fact that the change from Yet the preparation of this half-char- coal is a delicate operation in which an instant of time or a degree of heat has an effect, and when after various man- ipulations the whole composition reaches a big and costly hydraulic press, the 250 or so automatic move- ments which the press makes per min- ute are affected by a slight change of hydraulic pressure with a consequent result on the quality of the powder. Not so very long ago an employe of the Du Ponts thought he had mastered the secrets of powder-making, and he induced a wealthy milk-dealer of Phil- adelphia to back him in making powder for the Government. They got a con- tract easily powder. When it was tested by the Government sharps at Indian Head it was found that about half way between the breech and the muzzle there was an undue expansion, which tended to swell the gun at that point. The problem was too much for the expert, and no powder was sold to the Government. Any one can get the formula for Government_powders, and anybody al- most can gét a powder contract with Uncle Sam. Almost anybody can mix a mess of stuff according to recipe, that will go off in a gun,-but the fact remains that but two firms in America | have been able to make powder fit for | Uncle Sam to use on an enemy, al- | though the prices are tempting—35 | cents a pound for brown powder and 83 | cents for smokel in million-pound lots. An expensive plant and long ex- perience are among the things required. WILL SOON RESUME WORK. Plant May Be in Operation at the | End of a Week. PORTLAND, Or., April 26.—Captain John' Ber: ingham, presidemt of the California Powder Works, who is now in Portland, received the first news of the accident at 7:35 o’clock this even- ing, as he was leaving the rocm. His information was meager, | being nothing beyond tke fact that the army snokeless powdc magazine had been blown up and ten lives lost. Cap- tain Bermingham said: “We have a contract to supply the | Government with 3,000,000 pounds of smokeless powder, and in order to asten its manufacture the working was largely increased. The pow- a being turned over to the Gov- agents as rapidly as made, nnot say how much has been ed, although a large amount had Work will be resumed as speedil as pos ible. We have b cting new mach aery, and .s soon as the wreck is cleared away we will start up again. Of course I cannot say how soon, but I think in about a week, for under the present circumstances it is highly important that we should keep right on with the manufacture, It may be even necessary for us to in- crease our present capacity.” - | force deliver been shipped. GOVERNMENT’S LOSS. Filling of a Monster Contract for Powder Delayed. The secretary of the Califc.nia Pow- | der Works, J. B. Nesmith, was seen last evening, but knew very little about the explosion. “We have had very meager reports of the accident hcre,” he said, “but what we have heard leads me to be- lieve that only one of the plants was | blown up., That was the mill in which was rmanufactured the army smokeless powder, and was. of course. the one most needed just now. We have a large order to supply the Government with the army smokeless and the brown | prismatic powder. The plant in which | the latter is manufactured was not in- | jured, if the report I have received is true. “I can sive no figures as to the averting it has yet been devised. the flat were In ashes in a few minutes, The explosion was confined solely to THE EXPLOSION AS IT APPEARED T O EYE-WITNESSES. wood to charcoal was arrested earlier. | enough, and made some | dining- | amount of powder ordered by the Gov- ernment, as that is a state secret; but to fill it will require running the plants at full force for many months to come. When the blowing up of the Maine was reported to the authorities and war threatened in the middle of February we first received the Government order and immediately began to fill it. We put on an extra force of men and just about doubled the capacity of the works. A great deal of powder has already been turned out and trans- ferred. to the Government, but a large amount is still to be manufactured. We are at the present time making exten- sive additions to the plant and these are about completed. When the new mills are in working order we will be | able to turn out about four times as | much powder as we did before the Government order was given to us. ‘As soon as we heard of the explosion William C. Peyton, the assistant super- | intendent of the works, took a special | train to Santa Cruz to personally in- | vestigate the accident. As nearly as we can tell the explosion took place | about 5:30. | _“Of course the accident will hamper | the works to a great extent, but if it | is no worse than has been reported to us there will be but little time los With the Government contract on our hands it is of course absolutely nec=23- | sary for us to rebuild immediately and the worz will be pushed forward as rapidly as possible. “As to the cause of the explosion that would be merely a matter of con- jecture and probably never will be known for certain. In accidents of this | kind where men are killed it is gen- | erally those who did not survive who know the most about it. When we be- gan the work for the Government twci- ty-five deputy United States Marshals | were detailed to guard the plant aud | they have been on duty constantly | since the latter part of February to| | prevent any attempt to blow up the| | works.” | The president of the company, John | Bermingham, is in Seattle at present | and was promptly notified of the ac | dent. Several of the gentlemen em- | ployed ‘in the offices of the works were | interviewed and their statements were | similar to those of the secretary. None of them had any theory to offer as tc the cause of the explosion, and all seemed to think that the accident would | only delay the work of supplying the ‘Go\'ernment with powder for a short | time. RELIEF FOR RICHMOND. | The members of the Point Lobos Im- | provement Club were in somewhat of a happy frame of mind last night in conse- quence of progressive reports recefved | from all of the standing committees ex- | cept that on transfs This committee | reported that Mr, Vining had refused to grant transfers from the Geary-street | road to the Third. This is considered a great injustice to the residents on the line of Geary street, inasmuch as they alone are compelled to pay two fares to get to the San Jose depot or to the Mail Dock, while the residents of other portions of the city are accorded transfer privileges. ore ent Fletcher reported that the Street Superintendent had promised to have the sewers flushed. A movement is on foot with hopes of success to have a sewer run through A street from Fifth avenue to Eighth, which will drain Park schoolhouse, in which there are sixty-five children. This is the street immediately west of the French Hospital, on which there is no sewer. Chairman Felix McHugh reported that the Park Commissioners had promised to make the necessary opening into the park at First avenue during the coming sum- mer. —_—————— J. J. O'BRIEN & CO., Murphy Bldg., Mkt. & Jones. sell “STANDARD" shirts’ | — ee————— | Parliament of Women. REDLANDS, April 26.—The Women's Parliament of Southern California con- vened in fifteenth annual session this morning. About 200 were present. Stir- ring papers were read by visitors from all over the United States.. The session will close on Wednesday afternoon. STATE BOARD 0F EDUCATION A Committee: Named to Take Up the School- Book Question. Friends and Foes of the Present Series Lock Horns in Debate. Spectal Dispatch to The Call. SACRAMENTO, April 26.—The pro- ceedings of the City and County School Superintendents were disturbed by a slight riffle this morning, and 't came as a relief to the lagging spirit and monotony of the convention. 4t was on the question of changing the annual meeting of the County Board -f Edu- cation to semi-annual meetings. Lin- scott of Santa Cruz, in the course of his remarks, said: “The younger members of this con- vention will live to see the day when the county examining boards will be abolished entirely. We are not ripe for it now, and we older ones 1..2v not live to see it, but the time is not far distant when our teachers will be taken entirely from the great universities and normal schools. Let us not stand .n the way, I pray you, of this advance and improvement. It is bound to come.” Harrell of Kern arose and said: “While the gentileman from Santa Cruz is praying to this convention not ‘ to stand in the way of abolishing the county boards, I trust he will include in his invocation tle request that our normal schools may turn out teachers who are competent to take charge of our schools.” Following th little episode came the school book question, and it arose in a most unexpected manner. The conven- tion was passing on the section which provides that no change of text-books must be made at any other time than “in the months of April, May or June of the year in which the change is to be | made. vas made striking out the month of April, and upon a di- ision it carric Linscott of Santa Cruz, who has so far been the ‘* torm center” of the con- vention, created uother commotion by declaring that the amendment directly affected the State series. Mr. Nielsen of Santa Rosa advised the ¢onvention not to be led by the ex- citement of the hour, and offered a resolution that a committee of five be appointed by the chalr to express the opinion of this convention relating to the proper place and use of the State text books in the public schools of Cali- | fornia. | When the question was finally put, the motion to appoint the committee prevailed by a vote of 29 to 24. Presi- | dent Black then appainted the follow- ing committee: Neilsen, Erleuine, Lin- scott, Bailey, Chymonds. While the vote to send the magter to | a committee was a temporary victory | to the enemies of the L'ate serles, it is believed that when the report is made the cdnvention will sustain the pres- ent law There are 3000 persons in Great Britain who pay tax on an income of more than | £10000 a year. 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