COAL FOR NAVY

Grey River Argus, 5 December 1938, Page 8

COAL FOR NAVY

ADMIRAL’S PLEA. LONDON, October 16. A plea for a return to coal burning in British warships is made' by Admiral Sir Reginald Hall in a pamphlet issued yesterday by the British Coal Campaign. “Our men of war,” writes the Admiral, “are entirely dependent on oil for power to move at all; a large proportion of our mecantile marine is similarly fired, so that one can say with little fear of contradiction that our sustainer freedom of movement on the sea is dependent on the good will of those Powers from whose territories the essential oil comes.” In our present state of liability to “foreign sanctions,” the phamphlet continues, we have been compelled to rely on reserves of oil storage to a vast extent; tank* farms abound, and all are fair objects of attack from the air.

But storage will not last for ever, and in the event of war we must be prepared to continue to keep our reserves up to strength. This involves the use of tankers, which are “one way ships.’’ They must go to the end of the pipe line or other source of supply empty, and are useless for/ any other purpose, such as bringing food or raw materials home. With all but a few ships burning coal, the pamphlet points out, good coal had to be exported from this country for the use of our ships. This gave more employment to tramp steamers, which, by earning outward freight on coal cargoes, succerXully competed with foreign ships for home-ward-bound cargoes. “With modern methods,” the Admiral says, “coal can be burnt as economically and with the same consistency as oil.”