Re: Why Big ships?

Thatotherguy wrote:

> No house is ever absolutely sealed.  A ship is.  And a ship probably
> doesn't have a perfect air envelope to start with (people have already
> been breathing it and whatnot).

I just took a course about fires last week, so I can clear up some
misconceptions here (although if there are any firefighters on the list,
I'm sure they can do a better job than me). Sometimes fires do erupt in
areas that are almost completely sealed (this is when backdraft
situations can occur: as soon as new oxygen is added to the mix you get
a huge explosion). Now when this happens the fire doesn't just put
itself out. First, by the time this has happened the fire has already
burned enough to reduce everything in the room to ashes (and this is
with a lot less oxygen than we would be talking about with an air
envelope). Second, the fire doesn't actually use up all of the oxygen.
Enough of the oxygen is replaced by other gases to keep open flame from
burning, but everything in the area will continue to smolder and
ultimately be destroyed. With the size of a ship's air envelope a fire
that was left unchecked would completely destroy the ship given time.
Even if the fire was belowdecks, and the belowdecks area was completely
sealed off from the rest of the air envelope, the fire would completely
gut the ship, and make its structure untenable (this is much more
comparable to the situations in RL which cause backdrafts).

> I would have to check my rules for that but I don't see those tiny
> fires that might not even catch as the fires SJ rules cover.  SJ rules
> fires I consider to be the big blazes.  Like when the sails catch or a
> lantern full of oil falls on the deck.

This I totally agree with. With the type of timbers used on a ship, it
would not be easy to start a fire. Of course, once a fire *was* started
you would have to put it out fast and make sure that it really was out.
Otherwise, it could smoulder in unseen places (even inside damaged
timbers) for days before it suddenly becomes a disaster again.