OIL FUEL AND THE EMPIRE jf' D. HENRY FOUNDER OF " THJE PETROLEUU WORLD " AND AUTHOR OF 'BAKU; AN EVENTFUL HISTORY," " THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OF OIL TRANSPORT; THE EVOLUTION OF THE TANK STEAMER," ETC HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS, DIAGRAMS AND ORIGINAL DRAWINGS Printed by BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD. LONDON AND TONBRIDGE And Published at 22-23, Great Tower Street, London, E.C. 1908 IT /"i^pz:. Printed by ^ P" Bradbury, Agnew &. Co. Ld. London and Tonbridge. poelished at 22 & 23, Great Tower Street, London, E.C. Bl July, 1908. TO THE OIL MEN OF THE DOMINION OF CANADA WHO MADE THE FIRST OFFER TO S0PPLY COLONIAL OIL FUEL TO THE BRITISH NAVY ^ £IQUID fuel is already substituted for coal in many steam- ships. When sufficient quantities can ,be obtained it has many obvious advantages over coal. At present it does not appear that adequate supplies are available. Competent authori- ties, here and abroad, are giving attention to this question, and to the development of supplies. If the want can be met at prices justifying the use of liquid fuel there will undoubtedly be a movement in that direction." Sir William H. White, Chief Constructor at the Admiralty, in 1899. Thomas Gibson Bowles, in a lively letter to Tke Times, mR.in 1900, hit the Admiralty hard for reducing " a fleet-in- being to a fleet in building," and denounced " the persis- tent refusal seriously to entertain or examine the matter of oil fuel." In July, 1904, Mr. Bowles asked whether the oil fuel experi- ments in warships had been satisfactory. Oil, he added, would carry a ship twice the distance coal would, but he doubted whether we could get a sufficient supply. Mr. Fretyman said It was an important question, to which a great deal of attention had been paid, but he did not think it would be in the interest of the service if he were to go into the matter. * EXPERIMENTS with oil fuel have been steadily prosecuted ^ w^ with constantly encouraging results. The problem which ^^ the Navy has to solve in the use of oil fuel is a much more difficult one than that which the mercantile marine has had to solve, because oil fuel can be of no use to the Navy, as com- pared with Welsh steam coal, unless the combustion can be brought to such perfection as to render the fuel practically smokeless." Lord Selborne, First Lord of the Admiralty, in the Navy Estimates, in 1903. ^ "^^HIS question has for some years been receiving the attention I^ of His Majesty's Government. The Governments of the ^^ self-governing Dominions are actively exploring their oil- bearing areas, and at the present time the oil-bearing strata of the Island of Trinidad are being surveyed by a geologist, while in several other areas, especially in West Africa, important investiga- tions are being carried on." Lord Elgin's reply to a correspondent who pointed out that the British Empire ought to be the greatest producer of petroleum in the world, and suggested that as the matter was one concerning the prosperity of our Colonies the Government should take steps to develop the petroleum-producing industry in those possessions where the oil was known to lie in large quantities. Nem York Herald Staff PUoto.\ [May 2oi/t, 1908. J. D. HENRY. AUTHOR'S NOTE • | HE proofs of this book were read on a western run ^ across the Atlantic, and this note of explanation is being written at Detroit on my way back to New York after a visit to the new oil fields of Southern Canada. Last autumn I published a book on the marine branch of the oil distributing business, and at the beginning of this year I started on the present volume in the hope that I would be able to finish it before I set out to visit some of the oil fields of the Empire. I mis- calculated the time necessary for the production of a work of this kind, but was able to save the situation by placing the responsibility of publication on the shoulders of my colleagues and giving a free hand to Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew & Co., the printers of all my works on oil. Considering the importance of the subject, this ought not to be the least useful of my books, and I hope the publishing results will show that there is room for a work of this kind in the associated literatures of petroleum and engineering. Only these two further explanations : that the criticisms of oil fuel by Rear-Admiral Evans appeared in The North viii AUTHOR'S NOTE A merican Review, and that I am under obligation to Mr. Goulichambaroff, of St. Petersburg, for Russian literary assistance, to Mr. F. Rushton Ablett, my colleague, for the practical interest he has taken in the burner section, and to Mr. Blanchard, a clever marine artist, for several original drawings. Detroit, June ist, igoS. — — CONTENTS AUTHOR'S NOTE (p. vii). EXPLAINING THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH THIS WORK HAS BEEN PRODUCED. PAGE OF QUOTATIONS (p. vi). NAVAL AUTHORITIES AND POLITICIANS. INTRODUCTORY (p. i). GENERAL SURVEY OF THE IMPERIAL AND NAVAL ASPECTS OF THE SUBJECT. SECTION I. (coal versus OIL.) HIGH PRICE OF OIL FUEL—ITS ECONOMIC .\DVANTAGES OVER COAL IN OIL-PRODUCING COUNTRIES—CO.\L STATISTICS—THE LESSONS OF THE TEXAS, LOUISIANA, AND OKLAHOMA OIL FIELDS WORLD's OUTPUT OF OIL—THE SUPREMACY OF COAL UNCHALLENGED—SECTION II. (price and supply.) why BRITISH SHIPOWNERS AND MANUFACTURERS HAVE LOST FAITH IN LIQUID FUEL THE SHELL company's PRICES IN ig02 TANK STEAMER FREIGHTS AND THE PRICE OF OIL—THE ATTITUDE OF SHIPOWNERS X CONTENTS THE PREDICTIONS OF TEXAS BOOM TIMES : MR. OWEN PHILIPPS, M.P., AND SIR FORTESCUE FLANNERlf—AUTHOR'S FORECAST IN I902—THE DANGERS OF GUARANTEEING CON- TINUITY OF SUPPLY PETROLEUM EXPLOITATION A NEED OF III. (thE CASE THE TIMES—PRICES ; A FORECAST—SECTION FOR OUR OIL-PRODUCING COLONIES.) ENGLAND'S NEGLECT OF HER OIL RESOURCES BRITISH CAPITAL AND ENTERPRISE TO DEVELOP AN IMPERIAL SUPPLY—WHAT CANADA COULD HAVE DONE EIGHT YEARS AGO NEGLECTED BY THE MOTHER- COUNTRY WANT OF ENTERPRISE IN DEVELOPING IMPERIAL OIL FIELDS THE ONE QUESTION : THAT OF SUPPLY, WHICH ENGLAND CAN ANSWER BETTER THAN HER RIVALS MARVIN AND THE OIL FIELDS OF BURMAH RUSSIA'S GREAT PETROLEUM ASSET IN THE CAUCASUS BRITAIN'S ONE AND ONLY IMPERIAL OIL FIELD LIQUID FUEL AND THE QUESTION OF TWO- STANDARD SUPREMACY SECTION IV. (thE BRITISH ADMIRALTY AND ITS WELL-KEPT SECRETS.) A NAVAL ASSET OF IMMENSE VALUE SECRET TRIALS OF THE CRUISERS BEDFORD AND ARROGANT—THE STEAM-RAISING EQUIPMENT OF THE YEAR's ADDITIONS TO THE NAVY THE ADMIRALTY AND THE SMOKE BOGEY—COAL BANISHED FROM THE SMALLER SWIFT SHIPS OF THE NAVY—SECTION V. (tHE ADMIRALTY AND FAST TANK STEAMERS.) FAST COALING COLLIERS ADMIRAL CLEVELAND ON OIL AS THE FUEL OF THE FUTURE NO DIFFICULTY IN OIL BUNKERING AT SEA—WILL OIL BEAT COAL IN BUNKERING TESTS ? SECTION VI. (tHE EXPLORATION OF THE OIL FIELDS OF THE EMPIRE.) A WORD OF CAUTION QUESTIONS OF IMPERIAL SUPPLY AND STORAGE THE ADMIRALTY AND PRO- PETROLEUM IDEALISTS—THE IMPERIAL IDEA IN DANGER OF BEING WORKED FOR MERCENARY ENDS THE BRITISH NAVY LEADS THE WORLD IN THE USE OF OIL FUEL. TAILPIECE: THE "TERRIBLE PRICE" PAID FOR COAL. CHAPTER I. (p. 29). THE GROWTH OF A GREAT INDUSTRY. EARLY HISTORY OF THE USE OF OIL AS A FUEL—THE WORKS OF CREW AND BRANNT—NEED FOR AN ENGLISH-WRITTEN RECORD CONTENTS xi OF HISTORICAL FACTS—THE START IN THE SIXTIES—ROUGH- AND-READY EXPERIMENTS IN AMERICA—WHY BAKU SHOULD HAVE BEATEN AMERICA GOULICHAMBAROFF AND AMERICAN PIONEERS NATURAL GAS NEAR THE ETERNAL FIRES EXPERI- MENTS AT HOLY ISLAND^THE WASTAGE OF OIL AT BAKU NOBEl's huge OUTPUT OF OIL REFUSE—THE RUSSIAN MINISTRY of marine and american experiments the birth of black town england's early appreciation of foreign developments experiments at woolwich arsenal Richardson's apparatus—rival inventors : aydon and SPAKOVSKY ; examination of their claims THE PLAGIAR- ISTS OF THE CASPIAN MR. H. H. VIVIAN, M.P., ON OIL AS A STEAM GENERATOR ; STATEMENT IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN t866—THE ISHERWOOD EXPERIMENTS OF 1867 KAMENSKY's PIONEER PULVERISER THE VISIT OF LENTZ, OF BAKU, TO ENGLAND THE EQUIPMENT OF CASPIAN STEAMERS TO BURN OIL FUEL THE FIRST OIL-FIRED FLEET OF WARSHIPS IN THE WORLD OIL-FIRING OF RUSSIAN LOCOMOTIVES LUDWIG NOBEL'S PULVERISER—COMBUSTION PROBLEMS URQUHART'S EXPERIMENTS ON THE GRAZI AND TZARITZIN RAILWAY RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT EXPERIMENTS AT SEVASTOPOL ATTEMPT TO COMPETE WITH NEWCASTLE AND CARDIFF COAL BLACK SEA FLEET AND OIL FUEL MARVIN'S PREDICTIONS AND TESTIMONY. TAILPIECE : EARLY INVENTORS AND THE MODERN MECHANICS OF OIL BURNING. CHAPTER II. (p. 55). EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY, FRENCH AND ITALIAN EXPERI- MENTS, AND NOTES ON THE SCOTCH SHALE OIL INDUSTRY. HIGH AMERICAN AUTHORITIES PRONOUNCE AGAINST OIL FUEL ON OCEAN-GOING VESSELS THE USE OF PETROLEUM AS A FUEL FOR STEAMERS DECLARED TO BE HOPELESS EXPERTS IN CONTROVERSY—OIL FUEL FOR LINERS ; THE CASE OF THE — xii CONTENTS ETRURIA—THE STANDARD ESTABLISHES A LIQUID FUEL BRANCH (1886)—UNSUITABILITY OF THE LIGHTER OILS OF THE NORTHERN AMERICAN FIELDS FOR FUEL PURPOSES EARLY EXPERIMENTS IN FRANCE—TORPEDO BOAT TESTS—THE VIEWS OF M. BERTIN—ITALIAN EXPERIMENTS—PRICE OF RUSSIAN MAZOOT IN ITALY AND FRANCE THE BRITISH OIL- FIRED TANK STEAMERS BAKU STANDARD AND JAMES BRAND A " PETROLEUM FOUNTAIN " NEAR EDINBURGH—SCOTCH SYSTEMS OF OIL FUEL BURNING THE HENDERSON BURNERS ONE TON OF TAR EQUAL TO TWO TONS OF ORDINARY COAL. TAILPIECE: MARVIN (1888) ON THE FUTURE OF OIL FUEL. AND E. R. STEUART ON THE CRUDE FROM SCOTCH SHALE.