The use of water and steam as fire extinguishers is frequently abortive, and causes unnecessary damage to the cargo; but nowadays there are scientific appliances which are much more effective for extinguishing outbreaks that may occur on board ship, and these are recommended for use at the ports and docks. In 1906, the New Zealand Government appointed a Royal Commission to inquire into the causes of fires occurring on ships which carry such commodities as wool, flax and tow. Besides recommending that every ship engaged in the carrying trade of this nature should be fitted with a chemical fire-extinguishing system, the Commission reported that the cause of fire in the case of flax and tow would seem to have been usually other than that of spontaneous combustion, but the very nature of these articles makes them especially liable to fire from extraneous causes. With regard to wool, however, there was evidence for supposing that spontaneous combustion does take place.

A steamship problem of an entirely different nature is that which concerns the commissariat department. In the olden days, when travellers were accustomed to remember that they were voyaging on a ship, matters were fairly simple and straightforward; but now that the ship has become a floating hotel, and the passenger expects to live quite as well as, if not more luxuriously than, on shore, the problem of being able not merely to feed two or three thousand people for a week or longer, without being able to touch port, but to supply most of the dainties which are only found in the best equipped land restaurant has assumed large dimensions. The days when salted meat was the staple sustenance of the sea traveller have long since gone, and to-day even the steerage passengers are catered for in a manner that is at least humane, even if it is scarcely luxurious. All this has been brought about by the influence of more comfortable living ashore, as well as by the keen competition between the rival steamship companies to hold out alluring incentives to the potential passenger. The work in connection with the culinary department has grown so enormously as to necessitate the employment of mechanical contrivances wherever possible. Thus, for instance, on some of the Atlantic liners the coffee-mills instead of being turned by hand, are driven by steam-engines and electromotors. Ingenious boiling apparatuses for eggs; machines for cutting meat, for mincing, whipping cream, straining, dish-washing and drying without the need of using towels, making bread, filtering water and many other purposes are employed, and the perfection of these minor machines is scarcely less admirable than that of the engines whose sole service consists in propelling the ship across the ocean. Some of the Norddeutscher Lloyd steamships have recently availed themselves of a new invention for carrying live fresh-water fish, so that they may come fresh to the table. This innovation was first made on board the Kaiser Wilhelm II. The fish-tanks are placed on the awning deck, where ocean passengers are able to have the singular experience of catching alive at sea such fresh-water fish as trout, carp, pike and tench.

The ventilation of a steamship also presents a problem that is not always capable of easy solution. Indeed, ship-ventilation presents difficulties that do not arise in the case of shore-buildings, and this is to an extent due to the fact that there is only a limited space available for the ventilating apparatus. Mechanical fans are much employed for both the stokehold and the quarters of the passengers, being driven by electric motors. The efficient ventilation of the store-rooms, which contain nowadays such quantities of perishable foods, is also effected by this means. On cattle-ships, especially in hot climates; in giving air to the holds of grain ships, and, in fact, on the steamship generally, a thoroughly capable ventilating arrangement has long since been found to be a necessity rather than a luxury. But there is a difficulty with regard to the ventilators themselves on board ship. If they are left open for the air, it is also possible for some fool or criminal to throw down a lighted match or cigarette-end, and so ignite dangerous vapour that may be below deck. After the disastrous fire on the liner Sardinia when off Malta, in 1909, the Board of Trade inquiry made clear the cause of the catastrophe, namely that inflammable matter had succeeded in reaching the cargo space where chemical action had generated dangerous vapours. There was only one way in which fire could have reached this dormant danger, and that was by means of the ventilators. The reader will probably recollect that the ship was carrying Moorish pilgrims at the time, and that they had been cooking food at one of their braziers, and some believe that a hot cinder was blown down a ventilator and so arrived in the hold, with the result that is now common knowledge. The possibility of such a thing occurring again, however, is now obviated by a patent weather-proof ventilator, which is so constructed that access to the holds cannot be reached by anything else than air. Neither rain nor sea can get down, still less any inflammable matter.

Thus, one by one, problems arise to thwart the hand of man, but only to be overcome by the latter through patience and the knowledge which comes after much thought and actual experience. Not merely in seaworthiness, nor in the matter of speed, has the steamship reached what even the most blasé must call the limit, but the same enterprising spirit which has brought this about has also provided that comfort is also of an importance that demands the most detailed attention. Whether in return for all this care and trouble the passenger is proportionately grateful is another question altogether.

INDEX

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Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.