FIRE MENACE AT SEA

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 August 1932, Page 10

FIRE MENACE AT SEA

NEW PREVENTION STEPS. The setting up of a sub-committee of shipowners and shipbuilders to confer with the Board of Trade with regard to the prevention of fires on passenger ships is obviously one of the consequences of the International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea, the fire prevention clauses of which are not yet in force (states the London “Daily Telegraph”).

The matter extends back somewhat further than the actual Convention, however, for it is now some five or six years since the Liverpool Underwriters’ Association called at tention in its annual .report to the ex cessive and unexplained numbers of shipboard fires, while at the Vichy Conference of the Internationa) Marine Insurance Union in 1931* :* resolution was adopted calling the at tention of all national shipping institutions to the serious menace of fire at sea.

Underwriters, as those on whom the cost of shipboard fires ultimately falls, are. in fact, largely the insti gators of the present campaign, and while it is noticeable that on the sub committee now appointed, no representative of the marine insurance market is mentioned, the announce ment that the list is not to be considered final leads to the hope that at least one representative of underwriters will eventually be elected. When it is considered that in recent years marine underwriters have had to bear claims for enormous amounts as a result of fires on the Norddeutsclier Lloyd giant steamer Europa, the French liner Paris, th? English motor-liner Bermuda, and, more recently still, the total loss of the Messagei'ies Maritimes liner Georges Phillipar, these specific accidents, representing in the aggregate a. loss of at least £4,000,000, it will be realised how important from a purely commercial point of view it is that passenger ships should be better protected against the fire peril. It is true that shipowners already do all that is within their present pow. ers to make their ships fire-proof, as well as seaworthy, but in underwriting circles, at any rate, it is felt that until there is some official standard if fire-resisting arrangements, the campaign for the prevention of shipboard fires will make little headway. The suggestion is that if the classification societies, such as Lloyd’s Register, were to include the surveying of ships with the fire peril in view, just as now surveys are held to en- ■ sure stability and seaworthiness, an; important step towards greater safety from fire at sea would have been taken.