228 - Sir Frederick Abel [March 13, 



suited for preventing dangerous accumulations of gas in the coal- 

 bunkers as distributed over the various parts of the ship in the different 

 classes of vessels composing the Eoyal Navy. 



The committee instituted a very careful inquiry, and a series of 

 experimental investigations, including the firing of explosive gas- 

 mixtures, in large wrought-iron tanks in the first instance, and 

 afterwards in one of the large bunkers, empty of coal, in an old man-of- 

 war which afforded some comparison with the condition, as regards 

 the relative strength or powers of resistance of the surroundings, and 

 with the position, relatively to the ship's magazine, of the par- 

 ticular bunker in the Doterel in which it was thought the explosion 

 might have originated. The results of these experiments could not 

 be said to do more than lend some amount of support to the belief 

 that effects of the nature of those ascribed to the first explosion in 

 the Doterel might have been produced by the ignition of a power- 

 fully explosive gas-mixture, contained in the middle- or athwart-shij^'s 

 bunker of the ship. The committee's experimental investigations 

 for ascertaining the best general method of securing the efficient 

 ventilation of the coal-bunkers in different classes of men-of-war 

 was, however, of considerable advantage in leading to the general 

 adoption of arrangements in H.M. ships whereby the X30ssible accumu- 

 lation in the bunkers of gas which may be liable to be occluded from 

 coal after its introduction into them is effectually prevented, and the 

 occurrence of the kind of accident guarded against, of which there 

 are several on record, due to the ignition of explosive mixtures 

 which have been produced in coal-bunkers. 



Although the inquiry instituted by the court-martial in August 

 1881, into the loss of the Doterel was apparently very exhaustive, 

 some significant facts connected with the existence of a supply of 

 xerotine siccative in the ship, which appear to have had a direct 

 bearing upon the occurrence of the disaster, only came to light acci- 

 dentally in January 1882. A caulker formerly on the Doterel, but 

 then employed in the Indus, recognised, while some painting was being 

 done in that ship, a peculiar odour (as he called it, " the old smell ") 

 which he had noticed in the lower part of the Doterel the night before 

 the explosion ; on inquiry as to the material which gave rise to it, he 

 learned that it was due to some of the same material, xerotine siccative, 

 that had caused the explosion in the Triumph. Upon this being com- 

 municated to the authorities, an official inquiry was directed to be 

 held, and it was then elicited that the very offensive smell due to 

 the crude petroleum spirit of which this xerotine siccative mainly 

 consisted had been observed not only by this man (who in his 

 evidence before the court-martial had not alluded to the circumstance), 

 but also by several others in the Doterel, between decks, the night 

 before the explosion ; that, on the following day, a search was made 

 for the cause of the odour, and that a jar containing originally about 

 a gallon of the fluid, which was kept in a space at the bottom of the 

 foremast together with lieavy stores of various kinds, was found to 



