
The engine room oiler, Manhattan Bridge, suffered fatal injuries and the second engineer suffered severe burn injuries when a furnace explosion occurred on the vessel’s auxiliary boiler. The oiler and engineer were attempting to restart the boiler after it had suffered a flame failure cut out.
The boiler had tripped out several times due to flame and ignition failures earlier in the day and had been successfully restarted by the second engineer.
Following the accident, waxy deposits, sufficient to cause intermittent fuel supply problems, were found in the boiler’s distillate fuel supply filter.