Firemen from Central station rushed to the Woosung Road Jetty, North Soochow Road at 2.25 p.m. yesterday, when a fire on beard two junks 15 minutes, although dampening down was required in order to prevent re-ignition of the damaged bales.
The cause of the fire is unknown, but before the crews of the affected junks were aware of it, the flames had spread to nearly every one of the 300 bales involved. Notwithstanding a strong southerly wind, which threatened to get the flames to spread to junks near by loaded with straw and cotton, the fire was under control within a few minutes, thus averting a conflagration of some magnitude, At about 3 p.m. three Chinese members of the Harbour fire brigade arrived on the scene on foot since they had found it impossible to get the fire-float to negotiate Soochow Creek in view of the congestion caused by innumerable junks, lighters and other craft. They did not take part in fire fighting operations.
After the flames had been extinguished, the cotton was unloaded and taken to a godown where it was being closely watched last night, since it was held possible that the soaked bales might catch fire again.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.