Copyright Jim Thomson 2013 Safety In Engineering Ltd Learning from Ignorance – Pressure Vessel Failures since the 19th Century “Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.” Brandon Mull “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Martin Luther King, Jr. This note presents a brief history of pressure vessel integrity from the first Industrial Revolution to the present day. Developments in the integrity of pressure vessels have been in progress since the second half of the nineteenth century; however, for many decades, this progress was largely empirical with designers and operators learning from accidents (their own and others’). Today, the frequency of catastrophic pressure vessel explosions is extremely low, but historically the rate was very much higher, because the fabrication of high-pressure steam boilers preceded a robust understanding of their failure mechanisms. This modern day reduction in catastrophic failures has been due to a number of very significant improvements: Improvements in the operational control of pressurised boilers Improved methods of steel production Improved methods of non-destructive examination The development of reliable, high quality welding techniques Improved understanding of the mechanics of metal fracture. THE SULTANA DISASTER, TENNESSEE, 1865 Confederate General Robert E Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S Grant at Appomattox Court House on 9th April 1865, thus ending what still remains one of the bloodiest wars in world history. The American Civil War has been described as one of the first Industrial Wars, a precursor for the even bloodier affairs in the twentieth century. On both sides, mortality rates amongst combatants were comparable to the First World War. Estimates vary, but about three-quarters of a million soldiers died. Tactics and consequences were similar to the First World War – trench warfare with massed assaults, defended by men with repeating rifles, leading to mass slaughter. With the arguable exception of the Crimean War (1853-1856), the American Civil War was the first major conflict to be carried out in the era of photography, and under the watchful eye of what we would now call “the news media”. Although only a few primitive photographs exist from the Crimean War, very many photographs exist of the events of 1861 to 1865. During the Civil War, large numbers of prisoners were taken on both sides. Confederate prison camps such as Andersonville and the much smaller Cahaba (both of them in Georgia) gained notoriety. Andersonville in particular held some 45000 Union prisoners, of whom about one-third 1 | P a g e Copyright Jim Thomson 2013 Safety In Engineering Ltd died from malnutrition and disease, including dysentery and scurvy. Conditions were primitive. A small stream flowing through the camp was used for all purposes. There was no shelter apart from a few tents – the men were held within a bare stockade with only a few square feet each, exposed to the elements. Both sides claimed that the others were maltreating their prisoners of war, leading to a spiral of retributions where conditions became even worse. Photographs of survivors taken at Andersonville in 1865 are reminiscent of better-known photographs of survivors of Belsen concentration camp in Germany in 1945 – the Union prisoners that were fortunate enough to remain alive until the surrender of the Confederacy were starving and skeletal, barely alive. (The Andersonville Commandant Henry Wirz was subsequently tried for murder and hanged on 10th November 1865. He was the only Confederate official to be executed for war crimes.) Cahaba prison camp had a much lower mortality rate than Andersonville1. It was much smaller (intended for less than 700 prisoners), and it had relatively good sanitation, a prison hospital, and a humane commandant, the Rev Dr Howard Henderson. However in July 1864 a new commandant was appointed, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Jones, whose intention was to see the “God-damned Yankees” suffer. By late 1864, its population rose to over 2000 and conditions deteriorated, and it became the most overcrowded prison on either side of the war. Rations dropped and rats and lice increased. The camp then suffered serious flooding in March 1865; but shortly after, as the war ended, Jones announced that the prisoners were to be released. Exchanges had been arranged to repatriate soldiers from both sides. These exchanges took place at a neutral site near Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, which had been under Union control since the Battle of Vicksburg in the summer of 1863. Prisoner repatriation was achieved by means of paddle-steamers travelling up and down the Mississippi River between the Union and the Confederacy. One of the paddle-steamers contracted by the Union government to carry out prisoner repatriations was the SS Sultana, a wooden steamship registered at 1719 tonnes with a legal capacity of 376 passengers and a crew of 852. The Sultana had stopped at Vicksburg to take on passengers, but also for some quick, temporary, urgent boiler repairs: its boiler had a section of bulged plate removed, and a thinner piece of plate was riveted on in its place. The repair work was completed in about thirty hours. 1 For a description of conditions in Cahaba prison, see http://www.historynet.com/surviving-a-confederate- pow-camp.htm 2 There have been several books written about the Sultana tragedy. See, for example, The Sultana Tragedy: America’s Greatest Maritime Disaster, Jerry O Potter, Pelican, 1992 2 | P a g e Copyright Jim Thomson 2013 Safety In Engineering Ltd Fig 1: This very grainy photograph of the over-crowded paddle-steamer Sultana was taken at Helena, Arkansas the day before the disaster. Vicksburg on 24th April 1865 was full of released Union prisoners of war from both Andersonville and Cahaba. Many of them were weak from their incarceration, and all of them were desperate to board the Sultana to travel north. The exact numbers who boarded the Sultana are unclear but it seems likely that more than 2000 passengers were on board. Decks and berths were packed. The Master of the Sultana, Captain JC Mason, was also a part-owner. He was paid $5 for each enlisted man and $10 for each officer he took on board. The Sultana set sail from Vicksburg on 24th April, stopping briefly to take on more coal at Memphis, Tennessee, some 250 miles north. Some 8 miles north of Memphis, Tennessee at 0200 hours on 27th April 1865, grossly overloaded and fighting against a strong spring river current, its boiler exploded and destroyed much of the ship. Burning coals set fire to the remaining superstructure which burned right down to the waterline. Of those who survived the explosion and fire, many died of hypothermia or drowned in the cold water, and many others later died of burns. Exact numbers have never been reliably established, but it is likely that more than 1500 people died, with fewer than 800 survivors. Captain Mason was one of the dead. The official enquiry concluded that the boiler had exploded because of poor repair work, combined with low water level and ‘careening’, that is, the water was sloshing around in the boilers, creating hot spots in the boiler which then were suddenly cooled as the water sloshed back, thereby causing thermal strains. However, as often occurs in accidents, there were conspiracy theories: it has been suggested that a ‘coal torpedo’ – a bomb disguised to look like a piece of coal – had been placed in the coal stock as an act of sabotage against the victorious Union forces. President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated by the actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on 14th April 1865, a few days after General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Booth 3 | P a g e Copyright Jim Thomson 2013 Safety In Engineering Ltd fled to Maryland where, twelve days later on 26th April, he in turn was shot and killed by a Union soldier. The assassination of President Lincoln and the search for John Wilkes Booth put the American press into a feeding frenzy. The final part of the Sultana tragedy is that it was almost completely overlooked in the newspapers by the killing of Booth on the day before the explosion. In a similar way to reporting of the deaths of the writers Aldous Huxley and CS Lewis, who both died on the same day as President John F Kennedy nearly a century later, the Sultana tragedy was almost lost in the coverage of John Wilkes Booth’s death. In addition, the nation was just tired of slaughter, and keen to start its long, slow healing process. The deaths of Lincoln and then Booth were post- scripts. The nation didn’t want to hear about yet more mass death. The US loss of life in the Sultana accident was greater than in the Titanic, Lusitania, the USS Arizona (at Pearl Harbour) or the USS Indianapolis (in 1945), and it remains the greatest-ever US loss of life in a maritime disaster. Despite the scale of the loss, the Philadelphia Inquirer dealt with the event in less than two hundred words in its 29th April edition. Fig 2: The Philadelphia Inquirer, 29th April 1865 4 | P a g e Copyright Jim Thomson 2013 Safety In Engineering Ltd BOILER EXPLOSIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS IN BOILER TECHNOLOGY DURING THE FIRST INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Coal-fired steam power was the motive force of the first Industrial Revolution, driving railways, ships and factories. However, with this new technology came a new risk; exploding steam boilers became regular and inexplicable events. Boiler explosions of the sort that was commonplace in the 19th century are now so rare that even the term ‘boiler explosion’ has subtly changed its meaning.