Venting of coal fire aboard the Titanic

You mean the bunker fire? I don't think it would have vented to anywhere. There were only two ways into the bunker; through the coal chutes from outside the hull and through the bunker doors in the stokehold. It wasn't a raging fire or anything, I don't know that it would have generated that much smoke. And at any rate, the passengers were traveling on a coal burning ship and living in a coal burning world. They were probably fairly desensitized to the smell.
 
I’m surprised it wasn’t that bad. A recent theory as to the rate of speed and the ice field was that the bunker fire was worsening and there was an attempt to make New York sooner.

If it was that bad, I would think they would have headed to Halifax or somewhere much closer.
 
Everyone, especially clickbait sites, are always grasping at straws to implicate this or that in the sinking. Sometimes it's the quality of the steel, sometimes it's the bunker fire, sometimes it's the lack of binoculars. None of it stands up to serious scrutiny. Bunker fires were a common occurrence; they had established protocol to manage such an occurrence. They knew it was burning before Titanic left port and didn't consider it serious enough to delay their sailing date. Plus they put it out before striking the iceberg.
 
MrBojangles said:
I’m surprised it wasn’t that bad. A recent theory as to the rate of speed and the ice field was that the bunker fire was worsening and there was an attempt to make New York sooner.

If it was that bad, I would think they would have headed to Halifax or somewhere much closer.
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The theory that the bunker fire was a major problem is incorrect. Ships often sailed with a bunker fire. The fire would only be a smoulder and not a raging fire.
 
Ajmal Dar said:
The theory that the bunker fire was a major problem is incorrect. Ships often sailed with a bunker fire. The fire would only be a smoulder and not a raging fire.
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Yes you are correct. Coal fires were just part of the business of using coal. Even today at many coal fired power plants they have a routine for dealing with coal fires in their storage ponds. We dealt with it all the time where I worked. Same with the cotton farmers where I lived growing up. They had to monitor the piles/stacks of cotton because of spontaneous combustion. Cheers.
 
Steven Christian said:
Yes you are correct. Coal fires were just part of the business of using coal. Even today at many coal fired power plants they have a routine for dealing with coal fires in their storage ponds. We dealt with it all the time where I worked. Same with the cotton farmers where I lived growing up. They had to monitor the piles/stacks of cotton because of spontaneous combustion. Cheers.
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Steven,

It's great that you can confirm this with real, live experience of coal fires. That Senan Moloney character did a documentary a few years ago and claimed that eye-witnesses saw a raging fire in the bunker. Seems like he just wanted to make some money to my mind.

I do not have your knowledge, but am I right in assuming that in order to get the bunker coal to really blaze, air would have been needed to be pumped into the bunker, hence why the coal only smouldered? I read that the BoT inspector, Mr. George Carruthers? inspected the fire, wasn't worried, and his advice was to douse the smoulder with water.

Best regards,

Ajmal
(Nottingham)
 
Yes it would have needed a steady supply of air to to support anything above just smoldering. When a coal fire was detected we would just put a water cap on the pond to halt the fire. But with the coal situation on Titanic they probably wouldn't have wanted to douse it with water because of the coal shortage they had going on. I don't know if that was the case. But like it has been mentioned many times it was nothing they weren't use to. Raking out the good coal to use was a pretty standard practice from all that I have read in the days of coal powered ships. Cheers.
P.S...For us to flood our coal with water was no problem as we were an experimental coal slurry plant. Our coal was pumped to us in a slurry of 50/50 coal and water mix. We spun the water out with centrifuges before injecting it into the boilers. Boilers/fireboxes don't like wet soggy coal. Makes big clinkers. As for Sean Molony I have liked a lot the stuff he has done on Titanic. I'll just say I think he missed the mark on the whole coal fire thing. Cheers again.
 
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MrBojangles said:
My guess is after reading responses to my thread and other news articles and literature, is that this claim is nothing more than sensationalism.
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Dear Stephen,

The bulkhead collapse theory is sensationalism peddled by the questionable Seanan Molony in his tacky documentary about this subject a couple or so years ago. Its amazing what some people will claim to make money. I think the documentary appeared on Channel 4.

His claims are laughable (that White Star was negligent in letting the Titanic go to sea and likewise the Board of Trade inspector, I think his name was George Carruthers) and offensive to the families today whose relatives died on the Titanic.

The compartment where the bunker smoulder, not a fire, took place was holed and so were several compartments to the stern of this compartment.

Therefore, compartments to the stern of the compartment where the bunker fire occurred were filling up with water anyway, so what does it matter of part of the bulkhead cracked. The ship was doomed anyway. If it did cleave, I doubt there would be a wholesale collapse of the bulkhead as it had strenthening pillars across it's whole length, so in reality, only a small part of the bulkhead would have cleaved, so I think.

Check the layout of Titanic's compartments and you will see this. I can't remember their numberings off the top of my head.

Maybe more learned people can correct me if I am wrong.

All the best,

Ajmal
 
According to others who have studied the subject more in depth than I have, the fire was extinguished on the morning of April 14. They had emptied the coal bunker and moved or burned the contents of the bunker. That gave the Titanic a slight list to port at the start of the accident. So any attempt to link the coal fire and the sinking is unsupportable. As others have pointed out, such fires were just part of using coal. It might seem significant to those not used to the idea, but it was by no means an emergency situation. And they were not traveling fast because of it, they were just traveling at a good speed for the class (as in the same speed as Olympic would have under the same crew).
 
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