The standard technique for controlling and eliminating such fires on steamships was to increase the rate at which the coal was being removed from the bunker and put into the steam engine boiler in order to increase the rate of draw-down of the coal pile, Essenhigh explains. When the firemen reached the smoldering fire they would just shovel it into the boiler and the problem was solved.
Of course, all that shoveling makes for a lot of steam, resulting in the need to increase the steaming rate and quicker cruising.
Historical records show that on leaving dock each of the six of Titanic’s coal bunkers were only about half-full with 800 tons of coal. Based on laboratory experiments on coal burning rates done at Sheffield University in the 1950s, Essenhigh estimates that at full throttle, the Titanic’s coal supply would have been dropping at about an inch per hour. If that is correct, a festering fire halfway down the coal pile would have been burning up at about the same rate as it was being drawn down and would not have been reached and removed by the time of the iceberg collision. There would still be a reason for the speed on that fateful night.
“It’s very speculative,” Essenhigh admits. But not far fetched. Smoldering fires in piles of coal even today is a common thing – and there are even records from fire control teams at the ports of Southampton and Cherbourg that such a fire was burning onboard the Titanic.
“This was a chronic problem,” says Essenhigh of coal fires on all coal-fired steam ships and even in coal fired power plants today. “If the fire is there you know it’s there and it’s very difficult to get it out.”
Text for this article was taken from a GSA press release.