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Paint, oil, tar, grease, hydraulic fluids, stores of any kind - steel won't burn, but all that stuff does and there's plenty of it. Even museum ships smell rich
by throwanem 6y ago
Paint, oil, tar, grease, hydraulic fluids, stores of any kind - steel won't burn, but all that stuff does and there's plenty of it. Even museum ships smell richly of volatiles. Go into an unventilated space on a hot day and it's not hard at all to imagine a fire.
Compartmentalization is much more for controlling flooding than fire, although it can help slow down (but not stop) the spread of fire throughout a ship. It sounds a bit late for that in this case, and setting watertight integrity also requires people to physically close and dog hatches which likely can't even be survivably reached at this point.
- neverartful 6y agoSteel can indeed burn (although it's not a fuel/combustible). Anyone who's done any blacksmithing with coal will most likely have first-hand experience of steel burning.
- throwanem 6y agoI guess just about anything will burn in oxygen if you can get enough heat into it to ignite it, sure. That's why I said the steel won't burn, not that it can't burn. I don't think a fire aboard a ship would be likely to manage it, although a specialist in shipboard fires may know better.