46 SAFETY OF LIFE FROM FIRE AT SEA. 



are regarded as a prime essential for the safety of the ship, and I believe that owners and 

 managers of vessels in the United States to-day are keenly alive to this fact; and, more- 

 over, that officers and crews of American steamers fully appreciate their responsibility in 

 this regard and live up to it. 



Mr. W. D. Forbes, Member of Council: — Having had experience in installing sprink- 

 lers and testing them, I will say that I do not think that the operating conditions of a sprink- 

 ler system aboard ship and on shore are comparable. I agree with Mr. Berry that the panic 

 resulting from the opening of a sprinkler and the flooding of a state-room would be serious. 

 I thoroughly believe in a system, which is an old one, in which an electric indicator shows 

 where there is excessive heat, and the use of perforated water-pipes controlled by valves in 

 the engine room affords infinitely better protection than can be obtained by any automatic 

 system. A dry-pipe system is of very little value in shore work under most conditions. The 

 real value of the sprinkler is to put out an incipient fire — you can spit on a match, which is 

 blazing, and put it out. That is the theory of the automatic sprinkler. In the modern fac- 

 tory and similar buildings the automatic sprinkler system is of great value, where the water 

 can reach the fire and put it out quickly, but in cargo vessels, vessels whose holds are filled 

 with boxes and things of that sort, the water is not apt to reach the fire early enough to pre- 

 vent a conflagration. That is the fundamental idea of the sprinkler — to put out the fire 

 quickly. Therefore the flooding of the compartment is of very great importance. 



I had the pleasure of meeting Captain Inch, of the S. S. Volturno, a few days after 

 he arrived in New York, after the burning of his ship, and I spoke to him about sprinklers. 

 He said that no amount of water could have possibly stopped the conflagration, although 

 it was discovered early, on account of the position of the cargo protecting the fire. I think, 

 Mr. Chairman, that the automatic sprinkler system is not as practical on board ship as the 

 perforated pipe system. 



Mr. John A. Stevens, Member: — I wish to be recorded as being heartily in favor 

 of the maximum protection of human life and property at sea by the most complete auto- 

 matic sprinkler system which can be devised, in both passenger and cargo vessels, and I be- 

 lieve that we have reached a state of civilization where we can demand such protection. 

 Further, most of us are willing to pay the additional price for our transportation which 

 would be necessitated by such an innovation. 



Mr. I. G. HoAGLAND, Visitor: — In discussing the question of water supplies to auto- 

 matic sprinkler systems in ships, it should be remembered that the word "automatic" has a 

 double meaning. The sprinkler device itself is always automatic in approved automatic 

 sprinkler systems, and inside buildings the water supplies are always automatic in approved 

 systems. In ships the sprinkler devices would not be less automatic if the water supplies 

 were controlled manually, and while such an arrangement would not be, strictly speaking, an 

 automatic sprinkler system, the advantages of the arrangement would be that the sprink- 

 lers would find the fire, as it were, and just enough heads would open over the area of the 

 fire to allow a sufficient discharge of water to control the blaze. Such a way of controlling 

 fires is in sharp contrast to the usual method of extinguishment by submersion, by raising the 

 water up to the fire and flooding the flames. It is obvious that water discharged through au- 

 tomatic sprinklers above a fire will control a fire with much less expenditure of energy and 

 water than by partially sinking a ship to reach the heart of a blaze. 



