what in the heck

“The obvious question you might come up with at this point is, “why can’t you just put out the fire?” That’s because of the incendiary nature of coal. In general, a coal fire is extremely difficult to deal with under the best circumstances. If you had all the resources in the world and a good deal of space to work, they can be impossible to put out. Aboard a ship in tight quarters, it gets even more difficult.

An example of the difficulties with a coal fire would be the coal fire in Centralia, Pennsylvania. This fire broke out in a mine in the Northeast United States and has proven impossible to put out. How impossible you ask? It’s been burning since May 27, 1962.”

Holy shit

“Another issue that has always caused confusion was the Titanic’s speed. It was running at full speed when crossing the Atlantic Ocean, even when there were warnings of icebergs in the area. There were rumors that the ship was trying to break some kind of speed record, but the Titanic was not built for speed. This mammoth ship was a luxury liner. Molony indicates that this could have been caused by the fire-fighting activities.

In order to fight the fire, the stokers had been shoveling the burning coal into furnaces to burn the fire away. If the stokers had been shoveling as much coal as possible that could be the reason for the speed of the ship. As excess coal was burnt, the engines would work harder, generating speed. The stokers had been shoveling coal into the furnaces nonstop for 3 days fighting the fire during the maiden voyage. Molony thinks this is the reason why the ship was going at full speed when it hit the iceberg.”

Wow that makes *so much sense.*

I saw this article and just assumed it was political satire. What the fuck.

Ditto. What the fuck.

( DuPage County Register, 26 Apr 1912, Fri, Page 7 - I found this in the Snopes article on the subject)

Dilleys’ report was in newspapers in 1912; how did this not get into the massive cultural memory of the Titanic? I’ve heard accounts of how it sunk at least 10 times and never about this.