Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Unseen footage of Titanic wreckage released for film’s 25th anniversary" video.
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@oswaldcobblepot502 It was known that a small fire was smoldering in one of Titanic’s coal bunkers at the time she departed Southampton on April 10. It was caused by spontaneous combustion.
According to leading firemen Frederick Barrett and Charles Hendrickson,
work to dig out the coal to get to the fire did not start until the first watch began after the ship left Southampton. It was not until sometime on Saturday, April 13, the day befor the accident, when the fire was finally put out. According to Barrett, in addition to digging all the coal out, they also played a hose on it.
The most effective way to fight a bunker fire is to dig out as much coal as
possible to get to where the fire is. The application of water would be to prevent it from spreading further and to extinguish the fire once it could be reached. Even today, “water alone is the most common extinguishing agent for a silo or bunker fire” in coal-fired electric generating power stations.
However, water would never be used to wet down coal in a non-burning bunker because wet coal is much more prone to oxidize quickly,
generate heat in the process, and eventually ignite spontaneously.
Spontaneous combustion fires in coal bunkers were not unusual occurrences on board steamships of that day. In fact, according to Rule No. 248 of the IMM Company’s “Ship Rules and Uniform Regulations” that was in effect at the time:
248. Examination of Coal Bunkers. – The respective senior engineers of
each watch, before going off duty, must go through the coal bunkers, and
note their condition on the log-slate, and should there be any signs of
spontaneous combustion taking place, they are at once to report same to
the Chief Engineer, who is immediately to notify the Commander. All coal
should, as often as possible, be worked out of the bunkers.
Hendrickson reported that the paint on the bulkhead was 'off' and that he 'brushed it off and rubbed black oil over it.'
Barrett made it very clear that the bunker space on the starboard side of the ship aft of watertight bulkhead E that separated No. 5 boiler room from No. 6 (the starboardside bunker space marked ‘W’ in the diagrams) was emptied out because of the fire.
Coal burns at a fixed temperature with a given supply of oxygen. Lacking a good draft of air to feed the fire, the coal would only smolder at some relatively low temperature. There would have to had been a good draft of air feeding the fire if it became so hot as to make the steel bulkhead actually glow red. In that case, a lot of coal would have been burnt, and a lot of fumes would have been produced.
But this apparently was not the case. Spontaneous ignition of coal in a bunker usually begins deep down where the coal absorbs oxygen and gives off hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and some
aerosols under rising temperatures. With no real draft of air in the bunker, coal will ignite and smolder at about 750°F. Since the bulkhead was riveted tight around its edges to angle iron which was riveted to the hull and decks, thermal expansion caused by heat
from the fire would cause the bulkhead plate to bulge outward to relieve the stress. After cooling back to room temperatures, it would remain somewhat dented as observed. But to get that bulkhead, which was made of mild steel, to glow red hot, would take atemperature of about 900°F or more from a fire being fed with a good draft of air.
Despite the drama that some subsequent newspaper accounts wanted people to believe, it certainly was not a raging blaze that was completely out of control.
Metallurgical analysis on bulkhead plate similar to that used on Titanic was heated to about 1,200°F so that it became red hot. The plate was bounded to other pieces modelling the shell and floor plates by riveting it to angle iron pieces which in turn were riveted to the other pieces. The results showed the bulkhead plate had distorted by about 6 inches, and the rivets holding the plate would only have been stressed to only 10%-20%
of their failure load. Even if the bulkhead was first heated red hot and then cooled down by sea water or water from a fire hose, it would not affect the low temperature propertiesof the bulkhead. The conclusion of modern day forensics is that the bunker fire would not have weakened the watertight bulkhead sufficiently to cause it to collapse.
The statements by, Frederick Barrett and Charles Hendrickson, comfirming when the fire was put out, are from the minutes of the Britisn Inquiry. The rest is from a detailed study by metallurgists.
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