Cause of Death on Navy Death Record - Portsmouth Dockyard

[StevieB]

Hi,

I hope the group can help me with this one.

I have been struggling with a couple of words that have been entered as the cause of death for my 2x Great Grand Uncle Richard Bryant in the Navy Death Records.  He died due to an accident in Portsmouth Dockyard.

I can read the following:

"asphyxia - caused by steam travelling *****  *****  from Jetty into hold of lighter"

A "lighter" is a type of flat-bottomed barge used to transfer goods and passengers to and from moored ships.

I have attached the whole document and an enlarged section of the test in question.

Two red dots marks the entry on the whole document.

Your thoughts will be much appreciated as usual.

Steve

[ColinBignell]

The first bit is 'Asphyxia - caused by steam travelling crane', which would probably have moved along the dock on rails and be used for unloading the lighter. The next word might be fumes, which could possibly be carbon monoxide produced by a coal fired boiler that was burning without enough oxygen. However, the latter is merely a guess, based upon asphyxia being the cause of death.

[cath151]

There is a report of an inquest into the death of Richard Bryant aged 57 resident Copnor,  in Portsmouth Dockyard (Hampshire Telegraph 8th October 1915)
Quite a long piece but he was a crane driver and died when his crane toppled into a barge whilst loading.
Available FindMyPast or British Newspaper Archives.

Cathy

[bbart]

The inquest is in the Hampshire Telegraph 08 October 1915

Sadly, the ink is very faded for the first word or two at the start of each line.

The bulk of the article is to do with who was at fault, in particular to who put too much weight on; who signaled for the crane to start, etc.  It gave the impression that rarely were any safety measures in place.
In the end, the death was labelled accidental.

A few highlights for the actual accident:

Richard Bryant, age 57, living at 3, Tokio-road, Copnor
- was working on a portable locomotive crane weighing 155 tons, maximum life of 2 tons.
- was hoisting iron plates from a barge
-weight was so heavy that the crane toppled onto the barge (according to fellow worker)
-crane on wooden rails, but neither dogs nor grapples holding wheels to rails.
-when crane started lifting, the weight pulled it over, and it fell onto the barge pinning the deceased underneath the boiler.
- attending physician said there were very serious injuries, and death was due to (faded ink, looks like asphyxiation) from shock.

Edit: Sorry Cathy, but I had already typed it, so posted anyway!

[StevieB]

Hi all,

Many thanks for your help, it is greatly appreciated.

I can now see the word "crane" and wonder if there should be a hyphen between the word "crane" and  "fumes" as it then makes a little more sense.

My local history center has free access to the British Newspaper Archive, so I will look up and print the article that appeared in the Hampshire Telegraph.

Thanks,

Steve

[ColinBignell]

I can now see the word "crane" and wonder if there should be a hyphen between the word "crane" and  "fumes" as it then makes a little more sense.

Fumes was purely a guess, based upon the cause of death, the fact that steam boilers produce carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide and that the hold of a lighter might today be considered a confined space, requiring special working procedures to avoid the risk from fumes collecting.

However, in light of the coroner's report, it seems the death was due to compression asphyxia, so I withdraw fumes as a suggestion. I can't make the word out to be falling, but that would fit much better with the report.

[StevieB]

Hi all,

Just a message to complete this topic.

With the assistance of the staff at the local History Centre, we were able to take a high resolution print of the article and through post processing in Photoshop were able to recover the lost words.

I have attached a pdf of the article for those who took an interest.

Many thanks for your help,

Steve