74 DETAILS OF NAVAL DESIGN FROM JUTLAND. 
I was struck, in hearing this valuable paper, by the fact that so many of the matters 
touched on are matters which have been questions of discussion and controversy in all navies 
for a great many years. 
The question of fire is perhaps one of the most important. Some of us will recall that 
after the war between China and Japan in 1894 the question of fire became very acute. 
Battleships in those days had more joiner work than the ordinary passenger vessels in these 
days, and when they got afire they burned like tinder. Whereupon we made an endeavor to 
remove all possible woodwork from our ships, and inside of two or three years we had prac- 
tically no joiner work, and no wooden decks except the weather deck, and that has been our 
practice ever since. We thought we were fairly safe against fire. 
Then the war between Russia and Japan came along, and we had the battle of Tsushima 
Straits, and we had dreadful accounts of what happened to the Russian ships from fire. We 
heard from the Russian side that the ships got afire on the outside, because of the paint taking 
fire. That was a very disquieting statement, but fortunately it was not true. We did our 
best, those of us responsible for building the sh ps, in the endeavor to set paint on metal on fire. 
We could not do it with a blow torch. We exploded a number of shells in heavily painted 
steel compartments and they refused to catch fire. When you consider that the major por- 
tion of paint is already an oxide, a product of combustion, and the paint itself is a thin film 
on a metal surface which absolutely prevents combustion until the steel has been heated red 
hot, it does not seem reasonable to believe that the paint should catch fire. 
Nevertheless, during the last war, the question of paint catching fire was very acutely 
considered. We had information that one of the combatants had scraped all paint above the 
water line off his warships. I remember that one very valuable member of the General Board 
was exercised about it, and he recommended that, in the case of our ships, all of the paint 
above the water line be removed. About that time he went to sea in command of a ship, and 
some wicked people in the department recommended that he be allowed to remove all the 
paint above the water line from his own ship, which ended that idea. 
While there is no question that at the Battle of Jutland and in other battles there was 
a great deal of fire, I think you will find it was largely a case of ammunition fires. 
I remember distinctly reading a letter from one of the English officers in one of the 
battles in which he remarked casually that at a certain stage they had had a cordite fire. He 
left his station to help put it out and then returned after it was out. The fact that there were 
cordite fires was brought out by Commander Howard. 
I think one of the examples reported by Commander Howard was very remarkable. In 
more than one case shells penetrated a turret and killed every one in the turret, but did not 
explode the magazine. It is possible, of course, that the English vessels which blew up were 
blown up from that cause; in fact, this seems one of the most probable causes. I recall 
about 1893, when we were straining every nerve for rapid target practice, we had one or 
two similar occurrences where the turret burned out but not a single magazine exploded. We 
thought we were exceedingly lucky then, and it looks as if someone was exceedingly lucky 
in the Battle of Jutland. 
The question of gas brought out by Commander Haward is very interesting. We 
heard about the time we went into the war that gas shells were going to be used_at sea. Asa 
matter of fact, they were not used, but we were very much interested, and we set to work 
and made a large number of gas masks, the best we could get out, so that we were very soon 
fitted out on our ships with gas masks. 
