Towards the end of Tono Bungay, a novel written by H. G. Wells and published in 1908, the failed but enterprising engineer George Ponderevo undertakes a desperate prospecting voyage to a remote island along the coast of West Africa where he hopes to find a potentially commercial radioactive material known as ‘Quap’. It is, according to his source, ‘a festering mass of earths and heavy metals, polonium, radium, ythorium, thorium, carium, and new things too. There’s a stuff called Xk – provisionally. There they are, mucked up together in a sort of rotting sand.’
Unsurprisingly perhaps, extracting this hazardous cargo from its location beside a malarial swamp proves onerous, the men going down with fever and their hands breaking out in sores. However, the destructive properties of Quap are only fully realised during the homeward voyage when the material starts corroding the very timbers of their ship, the brig Mary Maud: ‘I firmly believe the water came through the wood’, reflects Ponderevo. ‘First it began to ooze, then to trickle. It was like trying to carry moist sugar in a thin paper bag. Soon we were taking in water as though we had opened a door in her bottom.’ Forced to abandon his ship and the Quap to a watery grave, the captain complains: ‘It was not a cargo any many should take’.
Quap is perhaps English literature’s finest example of a corrosive cargo. Although Wells’ story is fictitious, the material he speaks of was not entirely so. As described, Quap seems to resemble ‘Pitchblende’, a composite radioactive substance then being experimented on by among others Marie Curie. In fact, the Polish-French physicist would receive the Nobel Prize for her work in isolating the chemical element Radium from this material, known today as Uraninite, only a year after the release of Wells’ book.
The idea of a ship being literally rotted by its cargo may seem fanciful, but in the 19th century hazardous cargoes were commonplace, and the leading cause of ship losses was, and still is today, cargo-related. These pages examine some of the most potentially lethal of these materials.
Hazardous cargos are ‘goods which by their very nature, or in certain circumstances, may potentially impair human welfare, vessel, and cargo safety, certain marine uses, and the health of the ocean and coastal environment.’ [1] Among the most obvious examples are: inflammable liquids and solids, including those liable to self-combustion; oxidising substances, which can fuel an existing fire; and others whose effects may be poisonous, infectious, corrosive or explosive. In addition, a number of seemingly benign materials are prone to dangerous shifting, expanding or liquefaction when transported in bulk.
It is of course axiomatic that most cargo-related disasters at sea occur in combination with other factors such as weather and sea conditions, and/or human error, most commonly those made in the loading and stowage of goods or through the poor design or upkeep of the vessels themselves.
Indisputably the deadliest cargo of the 19th century was coal. Although seen today as a dirty fuel, coal was the main driver of the industrial revolution, having numerous commercial uses as a solid, liquid or gas. From coal, one could produce coke for smelting metals, coal tar for preservatives and pesticides, coal gas for heating and street lighting, and carbolic acid for perfumes and medicines.
British production of this raw material grew rapidly throughout the late 1900s, peaking shortly before the Great War at almost 240m tons per year. Much of this coal was mined in the northeast of England and in South Wales, and a large proportion was exported either to other countries or to the British Empire’s far-flung coaling stations. In 1911, for example, 33m tons alone was exported through ports in the Northeast, while a further 25m tons left Welsh ones.
The world’s first screw collier, the John Bowes, had been built in 1852, but coal continued to be transported by sailing ships in the early 20th century. These ships had to contend with a number of hazards including slippage and the build-up of noxious and flammable gases. However, the greatest danger posed by coal was its potential to self-combust. Due to an exothermic reaction with oxygen, certain grades gheat when in contact with moisture; an ever-present danger when being transported at sea. The process of self-combustion was concisely explained in a Times of London article reporting on a Royal Commission into the problem in 1876:
‘The development of heat in coal cargos is due to chemical changes which certain substances occurring in them undergo through the agency of atmospheric oxygen. The best known of these substances are those combination of sulphur and iron known as iron pyrites. The presence of moisture in the air promotes the oxidation of pyrites… accompanied by the development of heat, which may accumulate to such an extent as to lead to ignition.’ [2]
The problem of oxidisation could be exacerbated by the breaking up of coal during shipments, especially through ‘speedy’ industrial loading methods. On sailing ships, self-combustibility had the potential to destroy a vessel if the source was not quickly extinguished. As a result, colliers often had glass prisms inserted in their decks to detect fires below. These also allowed daylight to enter the hold and reduce the need to oil lanterns; another potential source of ignition.
According to the Commission, the problem of self-combustion principally affected ships carrying loads of 500t or more undertaking ‘tropical voyages’ to the west coast of South America, San Francisco, and to Asiatic ports. Although such shipments amounted to only 4% of the total in 1874; 1,181 out of a total of 31,116; they accounted for almost 60% of the maritime ‘casualties’; 51 ships being lost or damaged. Three specific examples were mentioned; the Euxine, Oliver Cromwell and Calcutta. All had been loaded at the same time at Newcastle and lost on route to Aden. The Euxine had achieved a particular notoriety due to the fact that some of her crew had resorted to cannibalism after being left adrift in the South Atlantic for 23 days.
Shipboard coal fires were so common in the late 19th century, that even Joseph Conrad had endured one while serving as second mate aboard the old barque Palestine in 1883. This maritime trauma was incorporated into his 1898 short story Youth, the author renaming his berth the Judea. Conrad describes the vessel, shipping ‘a wretched 600-ton cargo of coal’ from ‘a northern port’ to Bangkok, as ‘all rust, dust, grime – soot aloft, dirt on deck.’ (The author’s 1915 novel Victory also featured coal as part of its plot.)
The real ship had left Newcastle on 29th November 1881. Damage from winter gales and a serious leak had prevented the ship from leaving British waters until the following September. On 11th March 1883, a fire was detected deep in the hold while the vessel was traversing the Bangka Strait, east of Sumatra. The ship became, according to Conrad’s novelisation of the event, ‘enveloped in languid and unclean vapours, in a lazy cloud that drifted to leeward, light and slow; a pestiferous cloud defiling the splendour of sea and sky.’
There followed a futile four-day battle to douse the fire. At one point, a violent explosion of coal-dust left the deck ‘a wilderness of smashed timber’, ‘the mainsail blown to strips’, and the second mate burned and bloody. ‘You should have seen them!’ says Conrad’s alter-ego Marlow of the Judea’s defeated crew. ‘Some were in rags, with black faces, like coal-heavers, like sweeps, and had bullet heads that seemed closely cropped, but were in fact singed to the skin.’ Conrad and his fellow seamen abandoned ship, safely reaching shore at the settlement of Muntok a short time later. Watching the last moments of the Palestine in his literary imagination, the author remarked: ‘she burned furiously, mournful and imposing like a funeral pile kindled in the night, surrounded by the sea, watched over by the stars.’
Coal fires were still an issue in the early 20th century. In 1905, the crew of the full-rigger British Isles, carrying coal from Wales to Chile, had successfully fought such a fire, temperatures in the hold reportedly reaching 200 degrees Fahrenheit before the source was located and extinguished after four days of desperate travail.
A year later, the British barque Itata caught fire while loading at Newcastle, NSW. The ship was in the process of loading an equivalent tonnage of coal to offset her 300t cargo of Potassium nitrate (saltpetre), an oxidizing compound used in explosives. With the latter accelerating the burning of the former, the ship was reduced to a ‘charred derelict’ in less than an hour:
‘A jet of flame shot up from the hold below, and then disappeared for a few seconds; then the jet became a torch and the big hold began to burn with increasing fierceness… In ten minutes, waves of fire and smoke were rolling out of the vessel with such fury that nothing could save her.’ [3]
The quick actions of the harbour pilot and captain enabled the fire-engulfed vessel to be moved away from the wharf and beached on a nearby sandbank before she exploded. Luckily all crew had been safely taken off by the time she blew up. The wreck, however, continued to burn for a week.
[1] Chircop. A (1988) ‘The Marine Transportation of Hazardous and Dangerous Goods in the Law of the Sea – An Emerging Regime’, Dalhousie Law Journal, 11(2)
[2] ‘Spontaneous Combustion of Coal’ The Times, 17th August 1876.
[3] The Sydney Morning Herald 13th Jan 1906
Bow Creek to Anatahan 