Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/750

730 approaches, the men have orders to stop the machinery, leave the houses, close the doors, and cease all work until it has passed over. But the best security for the safety of the factory is that the workmen are a body of steady, industrious, intelligent men, and bear so high a character that a dismissal is a rare event, though it is the penalty of any breach of a necessarily strict code of rules.

The powder manufactured at Waltham is carried down the river Lea to be stored in the great magazines at Purfleet. A useful lesson can be learned from the method of transport. The gunpowder is conveyed in barges specially constructed for the purpose. They are about half the length of an ordinary canal-boat, and are covered with a semicircular roof, with a door at the side, which is kept closed, except when the boat is being actually loaded or unloaded. Every powder-barge is considered a magazine, and the same rules apply to it as to the Government magazines. No fire or light is allowed on board; nothing but powder is to be placed in the hold; and no one is allowed to enter it without wearing the ordinary magazine shoes. In this way it may be said that every chance of an explosion is carefully guarded against. It would be well if the same method of transport were used on canals where(as on the Regent's Canal) gunpowder is being continually carried to and fro. The extra expense of having special barges would not amount to one-hundredth part of the loss caused by an explosion.

We have also to consider the transport of gunpowder by road. It is said that it is a common thing for cart-loads of gunpowder to pass through the crowded streets of London, sometimes several carts closely following each other, and crowding together if there is a block in the traffic. This is unquestionably a very dangerous practice. It would be well if carts laden with any considerable quantity of gunpowder could be prevented from entering the streets of a town; but in many cases this would be impossible. The transport, however, might easily be rendered much safer, by forbidding gunpowder-carts to pass along the streets except during a few hours in the morning, allowing only covered vans to be used, and fixing certain intervals within which no van should approach another. Finally, powder should never be packed in the light kegs used by some manufacturers, which are continually liable to leak, for loose powder is always exposed to ignition by any one of a hundred accidents. There are cases recorded of explosions having taken place through powder leaking from a tumbril, and forming a train upon the ground, which was fired by a spark struck from the shoes of one of the horses drawing it. Good, strong barrels should always be used, and they could of course be returned when empty.

After the Regent's Park explosion there were some fears expressed as to a possible explosion at Purfleet, where about 50,000 barrels of gunpowder are stored in five large magazines. If five tons on board