When the boat’s on fire, weighing up different plans
of action is nowhere as good as dousing the flames
ILLUSTRATION CLAUDIA MYATTFIRE DOWN BELOW
TOM CUNLIFFE
N
ot long ago, I found myself sailing on the East Coast
with a crew of fellow writers assessing a smart modern
yacht. Below decks, the vessel was entirely without
charm. Plastic gleamed whitely between plywood
panels and the only coloured fittings were a conspicuously
mounted set of fire extinguishers. The main sources of boat fires
are the engine room and the galley, but my shipmates and I didn’t
do much cooking. We also motored as little as possible, so we
were stacking up the odds against a visit from the fire brigade. It
was only when I stubbed my toe on a shrewdly sited red canister
that it struck me I hadn’t been involved in a fire afloat in decades.
As I limped up on deck, we were reaching through the lee of a big
oyster smack with a noble whiff of Stockholm tar wafting from
her rigging, reminding me of a different experience aboard a
rough-and-tumble wooden cargo vessel.
I suppose if the ship’s cook had been more fastidious the fire
would never have happened, but he was a relaxed sort of chap
who bore his cross with grace. He didn’t even complain when the
deck gang used his stove to warm up pitch for stopping the
chronically leaking deck. I mentioned the techniques involved in
this procedure in a recent Bosun’s Bag article, so I won’t repeat
them here. Suffice it to say that, in an ideal world, a dedicated and
well-protected burner is set aside specifically for heating what is
known in the trade as Jeffery’s Marine Glue. No such luxury came
our way, however, and the galley’s jumbo-sized two-burner primus
provided the only available heat source. The boys weren’t over-
careful about spillage as the job dragged on,
and the cooker was soon spread with highly inflammable material.
So were the pitch kettles. One of these was left at full blast longer
than it should have been while its custodian took a break for
a smoke. Silently, the bottom of the kettle ignited. The breeze
blowing down the ventilators fanned the flames which were
picked up greedily by the bituminous mass on the burners.
The cook looked on in horror as the integral paraffin
tank began to glow. An explosion seemed imminent, but
the impecunious commissariat aboard this vessel meant that
emergency equipment including fire extinguishers was conspicuous
only by its absence. Nobody could find a bucket now that it reallymattered and the crew were scarpering up the ladder when the
mate came dancing onto the scene. Taking the crisis literally in
both hands, this quick-thinking man swaddled his fists in wet tea
towels, spat on them for good measure and ripped the blazing
cooker off its mountings, complete with tank. He didn’t need to
call “Gangway” as he galloped up the steps to the deck, ran to the
rail and hove the whole fiery calamity over the side. As it subsided
into the water with a hiss, a bubble and a cloud of steam, the
skipper crept out from behind the doghouse and glowered at our
saviour, muttering something about trashing a perfectly serviceable
cooker. The mate didn’t care. He had no eyebrows left, and the
crew were rewarded for their carelessness with a cold dinner.
In 2019, it seems unbelievable that any ship would not have
a properly maintained fire extinguisher or at least a blanket close
by the galley, but we have come a long way in 50 years. For sheer
spectacle, none of the boat fires I have since experienced have
approached the image of the mate careering past the main fife
rail bearing his flaming burden like a giant Christmas pudding,
but the most recent one drove home a very different message.