100 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Art. VII. — On Fires in Goal-ships : Their Causes and 

 Prevention. 



By J. C. Firth. 



[^Read before the Auckland Institute, 6th July, 1896.] 



Fires on coal-ships have become so frequent, and are 

 attended every year v^dth so great a destruction of property 

 and so great a loss of life, that public attention is at last 

 aroused to what is becoming a national calamity. Papers 

 have been read on the causes of these fires before both learned 

 societies and shipping associations ; chambers of commerce 

 have been appealed to ; the Imperial Government set up a 

 Eoyal Commission to inquire into and report upon them ; 

 and quite recently the English Board of Trade was appealed 

 to on the matter. But, notwithstanding these efforts, no 

 available means have yet been found for effectually dealing 

 with fires in coal-ships, for their number is increasing year by 

 year, and it is not too much to say that the word "failure" 

 best represents to-day the position of the inquiries into both 

 the causes of these fires and their prevention. So great has 

 the pressure of these calamitous coal-cargo fires become at 

 Newcastle, N.S.W., that it is almost impossible to insure a 

 coal-cargo, and the cancelling of coal-charters is reported to 

 be frequent at that port. It is not surprising, therefore, that 

 the Government of New South Wales has set up a Eoyal 

 Commission to report upon them, which is now sitting. 



Now, under such circumstances, it will be readily believed 

 that I should not have ventured to deal with this serious and 

 important subject, but for the circumstance that for more 

 than seven years my inquiries and investigations have been 

 concentrated upon a somewhat kindred subject — the causes of 

 fires on frozen-meat steamers, and their prevention. At the 

 commencement of these investigations on the spontaneous 

 combustion of charcoal I found myself in a very small 

 minority, consisting of Sir James Hector, of New Zealand, 

 F. C. Moore, Esq., president of the Continental Insurance 

 Company of New York, Sir V. Majendie, H.M. Chief Inspec- 

 tor of Explosives, London, and a few eminent chemists. 

 That very small minority has steadily increased, until it pro- 

 mises in no very long time to become a majority in the 

 belief that fires on frozen-meat steamers are mainly caused by 

 the spontaneous combustion of the charcoal with which they 

 are insulated. 



My pronounced success in these investigations has em- 

 boldened me to direct my attention to the causes of fires on 



