Records of Steam Boiler Explosions

by Edward Bindon Marten

Fig. 3.

Fig. 4.

Fig. 5.

Fig. 6.

Fig. 7.

There is no doubt that many of the early explosions were from faults of construction. The stronger materials now used were then found so difficult to manipulate that others easier to work were chosen, and often the shape of the boiler was only selected as the one easiest to make. The early boilers were made of copper or cast iron, with leaden or even wooden tops, and of the weakest possible shape. Such was the boiler used by Savery, shown in [Fig. 3], and the Tun Boiler and Flange boiler, [Fig. 4] and [Fig. 5]. The very fatal explosion in London in 1815, referred to by the parliamentary commission previously named, was of a cast-iron boiler, which failed because one side was too thin to bear the pressure, as the casting was of irregular thickness. The steam being at that time used only at or below atmospheric pressure as a means of obtaining a vacuum by condensation for working by the external pressure of the atmosphere, so little was pressure of the steam thought of, that boilers were proposed and it is believed were actually constructed with hooped wooden shells, like barrels, and internal fireplaces and flues of copper; and even a stone chamber was named as being a suitable shell for a boiler, with internal fireplace and copper flue passing three times the length of the inside and out at the top, like an ordinary stove and piping. These boilers must have been something like the sketches given in [Fig. 6] and [Fig. 7], and were intended to be exposed only to the external pressure of the atmosphere.