5 ms·

I find it incredible that they maintained a fire for 15 years, just from wood from the shipwreck.

by lazyant 11y ago

saalweachter 11y ago
It is indeed incredible, given the tiny wood supply, but maintaining a fire continually has historically been a very common practice. Simply put -- starting a fire is a pain. The easiest way to light your own fire was off your neighbor's fire; the easiest way to light a fire when traveling was to preserve a smoldering ember of your previous fire and carry it with you.
- kbenson 11y ago
  Yes, but like the parent comment I would not expect a single ship's wood, of which a portion was used to make a 33-foot raft and some must have been lost to sea or be in unreachable locations to be sufficient to keep the fire going for 15 years. I suspect there were other sources, such as the shrubbery, or dried seaweed, or something. That they would have any original wood left to burn at that time to even make it look like they've been using it as a primary source for 15 years seems amazing to me.
  - jkot 11y ago
    Remote islands are usually filled with several tons of bird droppings
  - madaxe_again 11y ago
    Bear in mind that the ship was likely made of heavily pitched timber, which will have had a very high energy density. Also, ships are big. You'd be surprised how much lumber goes into one. For instance, the hull would be feet thick towards the keel.
  - mixmax 11y ago
    It just so happens that over the last 2 winters I've been burning a scrapped wooden boat in my fire stove so I know how much fire you get out of a boat. The boat in question was a 15 meter long oak on oak boat. It lasted 2 winters for 2 homes with a fire stove, and we didn't even burn it all. There's an amazing amount of wood in a boat, particularly around the keel. The framing, keel and other structural elements are made of really heavy timber. On top of that good wooden boats are (were..) built of slowgrown oak that is incredibly dense. One large piece would last for 6-8 hours in my stove and give off a lot of heat. It doesn't seem unlikely to me that a 25-30 meter boat would last for 15 years if you the goal was primarily to keep the fire going, only getting it really big/hot when needed.
    - rsync 11y ago
      "It just so happens that over the last 2 winters I've been burning a scrapped wooden boat in my fire stove" Well played, sir.
      - kbenson 11y ago
        Definitely (but not as well as this[1], which is pure gold). I left it open that I could be wrong, and I'll graciously accept the word of someone with real boat burning experience that my expectations are way off. ;) 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
  - saalweachter 11y ago
    The orders of magnitude don't look so bad. Some quick Googling puts the weight of three masted schooners at 300-400 tons; a cord of firewood weighs 2 tons, so that's between 150 and 200 cords of firewood. Some of that was reused in the escape-raft and some of it was presumably unrecoverable, but if they were able to recover 25% of it, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 cords of firewood, or around 3 cords per year of the 15 years. 3 cords is a reasonable amount for a house to use for heating in a heating season in the US. That's less than a year, but you're probably burning it faster than you would if you were carefully husbanding a fire and occasionally using it for cooking or warmth or light. So it's totally plausible (which is good, considering it happened), but the numbers are close enough that I couldn't guess whether you'd expect the average shipwreck in similar circumstances to run out of wood after ten years or have enough for a hundred, without having more information about the burn rate in this particular situation or how much wood they actually were able to recover.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  One word: driftwood.
mitchtbaum 11y ago
Another long running fire (1,545 years!) still burns today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazd_Atash_Behram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazd_Atash_Behram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_temple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_temple

I find it incredible that they maintained a fire for 15 years, just from wood from the shipwreck.

by lazyant 11y ago

I find it incredible that they maintained a fire for 15 years, just from wood from the shipwreck.

It is indeed incredible, given the tiny wood supply, but maintaining a fire continually has historically been a very common practice. Simply put -- starting a fire is a pain. The easiest way to light your own fire was off your neighbor's fire; the easiest way to light a fire when traveling was to preserve a smoldering ember of your previous fire and carry it with you.

kbenson 11y ago
Yes, but like the parent comment I would not expect a single ship's wood, of which a portion was used to make a 33-foot raft and some must have been lost to sea or be in unreachable locations to be sufficient to keep the fire going for 15 years. I suspect there were other sources, such as the shrubbery, or dried seaweed, or something. That they would have any original wood left to burn at that time to even make it look like they've been using it as a primary source for 15 years seems amazing to me.
- jkot 11y ago
  Remote islands are usually filled with several tons of bird droppings
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  Bear in mind that the ship was likely made of heavily pitched timber, which will have had a very high energy density. Also, ships are big. You'd be surprised how much lumber goes into one. For instance, the hull would be feet thick towards the keel.
- mixmax 11y ago
  It just so happens that over the last 2 winters I've been burning a scrapped wooden boat in my fire stove so I know how much fire you get out of a boat. The boat in question was a 15 meter long oak on oak boat. It lasted 2 winters for 2 homes with a fire stove, and we didn't even burn it all. There's an amazing amount of wood in a boat, particularly around the keel. The framing, keel and other structural elements are made of really heavy timber. On top of that good wooden boats are (were..) built of slowgrown oak that is incredibly dense. One large piece would last for 6-8 hours in my stove and give off a lot of heat. It doesn't seem unlikely to me that a 25-30 meter boat would last for 15 years if you the goal was primarily to keep the fire going, only getting it really big/hot when needed.
  - rsync 11y ago
    "It just so happens that over the last 2 winters I've been burning a scrapped wooden boat in my fire stove" Well played, sir.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      Definitely (but not as well as this[1], which is pure gold). I left it open that I could be wrong, and I'll graciously accept the word of someone with real boat burning experience that my expectations are way off. ;) 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
- saalweachter 11y ago
  The orders of magnitude don't look so bad. Some quick Googling puts the weight of three masted schooners at 300-400 tons; a cord of firewood weighs 2 tons, so that's between 150 and 200 cords of firewood. Some of that was reused in the escape-raft and some of it was presumably unrecoverable, but if they were able to recover 25% of it, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 cords of firewood, or around 3 cords per year of the 15 years. 3 cords is a reasonable amount for a house to use for heating in a heating season in the US. That's less than a year, but you're probably burning it faster than you would if you were carefully husbanding a fire and occasionally using it for cooking or warmth or light. So it's totally plausible (which is good, considering it happened), but the numbers are close enough that I couldn't guess whether you'd expect the average shipwreck in similar circumstances to run out of wood after ten years or have enough for a hundred, without having more information about the burn rate in this particular situation or how much wood they actually were able to recover.
sandworm101 11y ago
One word: driftwood.

mitchtbaum 11y ago

Another long running fire (1,545 years!) still burns today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazd_Atash_Behram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazd_Atash_Behram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_temple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_temple