Fuel

The end of back-breaking, face-blacking coal

This Naval History is a continuation from: "The Screw"

It is worth while, to bring one other aspect of this history up to date, even if only to show how a "policy" which is founded upon an attitude of mind, which often persists about any change. We have seen how, there have been strong "hands off the old way" schools of thought.

How hardly the Round Ship died, how the authorities clung to and wouldn't let the Wooden Ships go, how they persisted in keeping the "Sail." Nor do we maintain that the Authorities were in the wrong.

The security of Britain is not a ball to be tossed lightly in the air; and the fighting fleet of Britain, whatever its form, is and always has been the main bulwark of our Countries security.

So it should come as no surprise, to find that in the early years of the twentieth century, the problem of oil-fuel as opposed to coal came up for consideration, and in some respects it resembled the Sail-Steam problem all over again.

As the claims of Oil thrust themselves forward, they could no longer be denied. So it was tried out in the smaller ships first; and then they converted some of the larger ones; then arranged for a system in which either form of fuel could be used. They then installed oil-burning apparatus, while insisting that it be readily reconvertible to coal.

It was only, when the merits and the reliability of oil were established beyound reasonable doubt that the Authorities were content to give way. Then the back-breaking, face-blacking evolution of the "Coaling Ship" passed into history.

The Screw

Our masts were imported

The main argument of those who fought most strenuously against this last "propulsion" change had not been based on efficency, but on a means of attaining an end, especially one that is convenient but possibly improper.

The men who opposed the Steam and favoured the Sail, thought they may have been right in being in no great hurry for the change. But they were probobly wrong, when they used what was their favorite argument-that the abolition of sail would ruin the Country and the Empire by robbing us of our lead and our experience. But It did no such thing.

We had to begin afresh, and to master new science. And this we did, and on the whole, we did it very well. We gained from the change, and for one important reason. The Sail always implied masts, and masts which were adequate for our great "line" ships-were, unlike oak, they were not home grown.

Pines of the necessary strength, length and straightness seldom if ever came from these islands. At first, we obtained them from the American Colonies, but when we lost this source of supply in the 1770s, we were forced to the dangerous alternative of obtaining them from the Scandinavian States and the Baltic.

This might well have proven to be our downfall; and our opponents were quick to recognize the fact. Thrice-in 1781, 1801, and again in 1806-our arch-enemy France sought to slay every root of our naval supremacy, by embracing the Baltic States in an alliance, to bring them into an "Armed Neutrality" against us which would deny us masts.

Cordite too came very largely from that area, and its absence would have much the same paralysing effect upon us. Such a peril we could not view lightly, and every time the threat appeared we were forced to take instant drastic action.

We were relient on foreign products

If Sail depended upon those foreign-produced commodities, masts and cordites, Steam depended on coal; and in coal we were notoriously rich. On the long view, when we scrapped masts for coal, or Sail for Steam; we placed ourselves in a much healthier position.

But now came "Coal to Oil," and here the long-term benefits might be said to swing against us once more. Here was the core of the Anti-Oil school's opposition. Coal is a home product; but all oil must be imported!

The question was. Can the enemy sink our tankers in sufficient numbers to cut us off from our supplies of the precious fuel-oil. If so we would be as helpless as we were with our Wooden Ships, when they were becalmed, but now without masts and ropes. That was perfectly true.

The answer was, perhaps, that our modern economy was such that, once the enemy can completely cut off any one section of it, he is probably in a position to cut off all of it, or at least enough to make our ruin a certainty anyway.

Because we now relied too much on goods imported from overseas for almost all of our necessities. Our enemy could ruin us if he can cut off our oil supplies, but he would equally have ruined us if he could cut off our food, our munitions or other raw materials.

There remained, it must be owned, a hard core of thruth in the connection of the Anti-oil school. But it does not follow that it will remain like that. There is no certainty that "Coal to Oil" is the possible last transition. Which it is probably not.

May we not revert to the theories of the seventeenth century, and propel our engines-or our ships without engines, if it comes to that-by means of explosives? And even if this does not occur, there is endless scope for development of synthetic oil, and even, as wartime probing has shown, for possibly the discovery of unknown oil treasures under our own soil.

We can have no reason to suppose that Progress, which refused to stop in the 1820s for the convenience of the British Admiralty and people, will do any such thing now.

The continuation of this Naval History will be: "Old for New"

Fuel Old For New

"Pirates Trilogy" $20