“Go; and we’ll have a posset for ’t soon at night, in faith, at the latter end of a sea-coal fire.”—Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I., Sc. iv.
That the fuel was received at first with disfavour appears from the fact that in the reign of Edward I. the nobility and gentry made a complaint to the king objecting to its use, on the ground of its being a public nuisance. By the middle of the seventeenth century the use of coal was becoming more general in London, chiefly owing to the scarcity of wood; and its effects upon the atmosphere of the town will be inferred from a proclamation issued in the reign of Elizabeth, prohibiting its use during the sitting of Parliament, for fear of injuring the health of the knights of the shire. About 1649 the citizens again petitioned Parliament against the use of this fuel on account of the stench; and about the beginning of that century “the nice dames of London would not come into any house or roome when sea-coales were burned, nor willingly eat of meat that was either sod or roasted with sea-coale fire” (Stow’s Annals).
For many centuries therefore we have been drawing upon our coal supplies, and using up the mineral at an increasing rate. According to a recent estimate by Professor Hull, from the beginning of the present century to 1875 the output has been more than doubled for each successive quarter century. The actual amount of coal raised in the United Kingdom between 1882 and the present time averages annually about 170 million tons, corresponding in money value to about £45,000,000 per annum. In 1860 the amount of coal raised in Great Britain was a little more than 80 million tons, and Professor Hull estimated that at that rate of consumption our supplies of workable coal would hold out for a thousand years. Since then the available stock has been diminished by some 3,650 million tons, and even this deduction, we are told on the same authority, has not materially affected our total supply. The possibility of a coal famine need, therefore, cause no immediate anxiety; but we cannot “eat our loaf and have it too,” and sooner or later the continuous drain upon our coal resources must make itself felt. The first effect will probably be an increase in price owing to the greater depth at which the coal will have to be worked. The whole question of our coal supply has, however, recently assumed a new aspect by the discovery (February 1890) of coal at a depth of 1,160 feet at Dover. To quote the words of Mr. W. Whitaker—“It may be indeed that the coal supply of the future will be largely derived from the South-East of England, and some day it may happen, from the exhaustion of our northern coal-fields, that we in the south may be able successfully to perform a task now proverbially unprofitable—we may carry coal to Newcastle.”
The coal-fields of Great Britain and Ireland occupy, in round numbers, an area of 11,860 square miles, or about one-tenth of the whole area of the land surface of the country. Within this area, and down to a depth of 4,000 feet, lie the main deposits of our available wealth. Some idea of the amount of coal underlying this area will be gathered from the table[2] on the next page.
This supply, amounting to over 90,000 million tons, refers to the exposed coal-fields and to workable seams, i.e. those above one foot in thickness. But in addition to this, we have a large amount of coal at workable depths under formations of later geological age than the Carboniferous, such as the Permian formation of northern and central England. Adding the estimated quantity of coal from this source to that contained in the exposed coal-fields as given above, we arrive at the total available supply. This is estimated to be about 146,454 million tons. To this we may one day have to add the coal under the south-eastern part of England.
| Coal Fields of— | Amount of coal in millions of tons to depths not exceeding 4,000 feet. |
| South Wales | 32,456 |
| Forest of Dean | 265 |
| Bristol | 4,219 |
| Warwickshire | 459 |
| S. Staffordshire, Shropshire, Forest of Wyre and Clee Hills | 1,906 |
| Leicestershire | 837 |
| North Wales | 2,005 |
| Anglesey | 5 |
| N. Staffordshire | 3,825 |
| Lancashire and Cheshire | 5,546 |
| Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Northumberland | 18,172 |
| Black Burton | 71 |
| Northumberland and Durham | 10,037 |
| Cumberland | 405 |
| Scotland | 9,844 |
| Ireland | 156 |
It is important to bear in mind, that out of the 170 million tons of coal now being raised annually we only use a small proportion, viz. from 5 to 6 per cent. for gas-making. The largest amount (33 per cent.) is used for iron-smelting,[3] and about 15 per cent. is exported; the remainder is consumed in factories, dwelling-houses, for locomotion, and in the smaller industries.
The enormous advancement which has taken place of late years in the industrial applications of electricity has given rise to the belief that coal-gas will in time become superseded as an illuminating agent, and that the supply of tar may in consequence fall off. So far, however, the introduction of electric-lighting has had no appreciable effect upon the consumption of gas, and even when the time of general electric-lighting arrives there will arise as a consequence an increased demand for gas as a fuel in gas engines. Moreover, the use of gas for heating and cooking purposes is likely to go on increasing. Nor must it be forgotten that the quantity of tar produced in gas-works is now greater than is actually required by the colour-manufacturer, and much of this by-product is burnt as fuel, so that if the manufacture of gas were to suffer to any considerable extent there would still be tar enough to meet our requirements at the present rate of consumption of the tar-products. Then again, the value of the tar, coke, and ammoniacal liquor is of such a proportion as compared with the cost of the raw material, coal, that there is a good margin for lowering the price of gas when the competition between the latter and electricity actually comes about. It will not then be only a struggle between the two illuminants, but it will be a question of electricity versus gas, plus tar and ammonia.
While the electrician is pushing forward with rapid strides, the chemist is also moving onwards, and every year witnesses the discovery of new tar products, or the utilization of constituents which were formerly of little or no value. Thus if the cost of generating and distributing electricity is being lowered, on the other hand the value of coal tar is likely to go on advancing, and it would be rash to predict which will come out triumphant in the end. But even if electricity were to gain the day it would be worth while to distil coal at the pit’s mouth for the sake of the by-products, and there is, moreover, the tar from the coke ovens to fall back upon—a source which even before the use of coal-gas the wise Bishop of Llandaff advised us not to neglect.