6 M E M I R N T H E 



science to have it ascertained wherefore their efforts to produce an explosion by 

 similar ingredients, were unsuccessful.* To the occupants of the store it was 

 important, since they were liable not only to ill opinion and legal prosecution as 

 above stated, but likewise to a deprivation of their claims for insurance. Fortu- 

 nately for them, in opposition to the opinions and experimental inferences o( 

 several chemists who were consulted, tending to extend or confirm the idea, that 

 gunpowder, illegally and most culpably stored, must have been the cause of the 

 catastrophe, the opinions of Silliman and Hayes, and other eminent chemists, were 

 called forth, tending to sanction the inference that the result might be due to the 

 reaction of nitre with contiguous merchandise.! 



9. I owe it to my friend, Augustus A. Hayes, to state, that I might have adopted 

 the more general impression, had it not been for his inferences and experiments 

 made with the view of accounting for the explosion of a vessel, loaded with nitre, 

 while lying at anchor in the harbor of Boston. It was ascertained by this able 

 chemist, that when, by an experiment made in his laboratory, between one and 



By this it appears that there were in all more than a million of pounds of merchandise in the store, of 

 which about one-third was nitre. 



RECAPITULATION, 



150 boxes and 58 hogsheads Sugar, gross weight, 

 16 barrels Molasses, 

 2-3 cases Indigo, 

 14 " Lac dye, 

 1799 bags Saltpetre, . 

 1-2 ton Cannel Coal, 

 8 casts Madder, 



32 bags Mustard seed, 

 299 " Sumac, 



6 bales Hides, . 



5 " Safflour, 

 10 bundles Twine, 

 21 bales Raw Silk, . 



33 " Gunny bags, 

 3232 bags Coffee, 



136 cases Shellac, 



127,183 

 8,182 

 7,028 

 3,468 

 3-t'7,20'7 

 1,200 



13,176 

 5,213 



48,701 

 4,102 

 1,526 

 1,806 

 3,242 



16,079 

 391,049 



41,968 



Nitre, 

 Merchandise, 



1,021,040 

 347,207 



673,833 



* With means furnished by the Councils, five eminent chemists made several experiments upon a large 

 scale, in order to ascertain the efl'ect of igniting nitre with such combustibles as were associated with it in 

 the store of Messrs. Crocker and Warren ; yet in no instance could they produce detonating reaction. 

 The activity of the combustion never surpassed that degree of rapidity and consequent violence which 

 may be designated by the word deflagration. 



f The opinions of Silliman were given at length in a Report submitted to a (Committee of the City 

 Council, at whose instance it had been prepared. 



