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Tragedy on High Seas Triumph of Wireless
Fire at Sea: The Saga of the Volturno
We now have all the facts obtainable concerning the fire on the steamship Volturno until an official investigation shall go deeper into the matter. We have here a combination of raging flames and raging billows. Attempts to launch boats from the burning vessel met with disaster. Those that were not smashed or overturned did not survive the high seas. The only two that floated did so but temporarily. Nearly all of the loss of life was in connection with the small boats in efforts to escape before the steamships summoned by wireless began to gather. The experience of the Volturno shows that even with boats on hand safety is not insured, because in storms boats are practically useless.
While for the emergency of a sinking ship in calm weather an ample supply of lifeboats must be provided, actual safety cannot be secured until we have ships that won't sink and won't burn. Whether we shall ever reach such an ideal we do not know. The strengthening of ships, the construction of more solid bulkheads dividing the ship's compartments, goes on. With the sort of cargo that the great passenger fliers usually carry it is quite likely that a fire discovered in any one compartment might be confined to that locality. If, however, a fire is to be accompanied by explosions, a problem is presented that is serious, for explosions have a way of wrecking every safeguard.
Captain Inch, of the Volturno, who acted the part of a fine and courageous commander throughout the ordeal, professes not to know how the fire started. Probably he has no exact information, but we imagine that he can guess, for it seems that the vessel carried considerable inflammable material as a portion of her cargo - chemicals and chemical products that offered every opportunity for a rapid spread of the flames and for explosions. That there were explosions is conceded.
It is unfortunately a part of the ocean trade that such stuff must be carried, but it is not necessary that ships engaged in a passenger service should do the carrying.
As a result of the Titanic disaster legislation looking to a greater safeguarding of passengers was enacted, but the case of the Volturno affords a new point of view. It would be well to prohibit passenger ships from taking inflammable and highly explosive material aboard as part of the cargo. Such stuff should be relegated to the freighters. Steamship managers ought to have enough common sense to make their own regulations in this regard, but we now see that they do not always do it. Therefore there should be drastic legislation on both sides of the ocean.