40 
GUNPOWDER : ITS MANUFACTURE AND 
CONVEYANCE. 
By A. HILLIARD ATTERIDGE. 
A LITTLE before five o’clock on the morning of the second 
of last October, a train of four barges was being towed by 
a steamer along the Regent’s Cana], in the north-western dis- 
trict of London. The second of these barges was laden with a 
miscellaneous cargo, packed in such a manner, and containing 
such elements, that the barge was really a very efficient kind of 
torpedo. In her hold there were about five tons of gunpowder 
and a quantity of benzoline in kegs. This benzoline may be 
described as a very volatile species of petroleum. At ordinary 
temperatures it gives off a highly inflammable vapour, and this, 
when mingled with the air in certain proportions, becomes 
explosive — the explosion running through it at the rate of 
about two feet per second when it is confined in a tube. In the 
case of the barge on the Regent’s Canal, the cargo was closely 
covered with a tarpaulin, to protect it from the weather. From 
the moment, then, that this covering was put on by the barge- 
men, the vapour given off by the benzoline began to accumulate 
in the hold, and mingle with the air confined in the spaces 
between the various packages of the cargo. Thus the hold 
gradually became filled with a fiery explosive atmosphere, and 
all that was wanted to produce an explosion was contact with 
flame. In the little cabin, at the stem of the barge, a fire was 
burning, and there was an aperture in the bulkhead, or parti- 
tion, which divided the cabin from the hold. Through this the 
benzoline vapour entered the cabin, and the air in it was soon 
as vitiated as that under the tarpaulin in the hold. It was 
ignited by the fire; the explosion, beginning in the cabin, ran 
forward in a few seconds to the bow, and fired the gunpowder 
stowed there. 
Everyone knows what followed. Half London was awakened 
by the report, which was heard for miles around — to the north- 
ward as far as Finchley and Enfield, to the southward as far as 
