While at anchor at Sandy Point, Punta Arenas, Chile on Apr. 26, 1881 waiting to take on coal, an explosion occurred on the new screw sloop HMS Doterel, half a minute later a second more powerful explosion destroyed the ship and sent her to the bottom. The entire episode took about three minuets, but it would take over a year
to discover what had caused the loss.

When the few survivors returned to England they told of the explosions, but had no real explanation of the
cause. The captain had maintained that the first explosion had been a boiler explosion or that there had been
an explosion of coal gas in the bunker, this caused the explosion of the forward magazine and in turn the loss
of the ship.

Many questions about what caused the first explosion were raised, and one kept being brought up over and
over. O'Donovan Rossa, an Irish terrorist living in New York, claimed that the Doterel was blown up by his
group of dynamiters, a claim he made several times. He explained that the ship was sabotaged while at the
Chatham Dockyard where she was built and that two other unnamed ships had been similarly rigged. He claimed that a "dynamite torpedo" which was shaped to look like a piece of coal, had been planted into the bunker at
the shipyard, and that when it was finally used it caused the first explosion. Because of the design of the ship
the forward magazine exploded seconds later. Almost every high official discounted this claim and it does not appear that it was ever taken seriously by anyone except Rossa.

The inquiry which was held focused on the boiler and the possibility of a coal gas explosion, and finally in
Sept. 1881 determined that it was a coal gas explosion and that no blame could be attached to the crew for
the loss. There were few crew to blame anyway as less than twenty of the one hundred and fifty-six man crew
had actually survived. The result was in and no further questions would be asked, however a strange twist of
fate was about to happen.

On Nov. 22, 1881 there was an explosion on the battleship HMS Triumph, a strange coincidence had her just
off the coast of Chile at the time of the blast, but several hundred miles from where Doterel had gone down.
A crewman opened a paint storage cabinet using a candle as light to find what he was looking for, the candle
ignited fumes from a new chemical, xerotine siccative, which caused a powerful explosion killing two men and
burning several others, a third man died a few days later. This in itself was just another unfortunate shipboard
accident and not much was thought of it.

The next day on board HMS Indus at Devonport Caulker's Mate Ford, a survivor from Doterel, was watching a
man paint a chest and noticed a distinct smell. He asked the painter what he was using and he was told "This
is xerotine siccative the stuff that caused the explosion on board the Triumph". Xerotine siccative is a patent
drier used as an additive in paint which causes the oil to thicken and solidify (dry) quickly, in the new ironclad
ships it was added to the paint used between the double bottom hulls to prevent corrosion, however the fumes
from this chemical were highly explosive and did not dissipate in closed environments as later experiments would prove. His inquisition into the smell would bring out the truth of what happened to the Doterel.

He went to the authorities and explained to them that the night before Doterel exploded two seamen were sent
down below to bring up two blocks, there they found a jar containing about eight gallons of a liquid which was
unmarked and unknown to them. In the course of moving it the jar cracked and the liquid began leaking out.
It gave off a distinct odor, the same odor Ford could smell on Indus.

Later in the evening a 1st Lieutenant could smell the odor seeping up from below and asked Ford to look into
what was escaping the following morning. It was then that he smelled the chemical for the first time. The next
morning Ford sent two men below to locate and clean up what ever was escaping from below, the two men
returned with an earthenware jar which was leaking this chemical. They put the contents into a can and threw
the jar overboard and Ford was informed that the chemical had seeped into the bilges and had run under the forward magazine. He instructed them to go below and clean it up.

The two men went back below and appear to have broken a standing rule, no open flames below decks. Ford
said he did not see them take a naked flame below, but that it was not out of the question that they did, after all
there was very little light below and they may have found the lanterns to be of little use in the areas they were
working. A second witness Carpenter Baird testified that he had seen them take a candle below and he was
sure this was the cause of the explosion.

After this stunning testimony several tests were carried out by the Admiralty and it was found that xerotine
siccative was a very explosive chemical and by late January 1882 it was removed from all ships as a dangerous explosive and it's use was discontinued. The tests took until October of that year, but they confirmed that the
explosion was caused by the chemical. If it were not for Mr. Ford's nose we may never have learned the true reason for the loss of Doterel.