Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Trials of Welsh and Mixed Coals . . .

The Welsh coal makes more ash than ours does, but ours clinkers more than it does. The furnace door ventilation is reported to cause a gain of 4 per cent in economy and a reduced boiler efficiency of 3 per cent. with the Newcastle coals, while the same causes a loss of 8 per cent in economy, and 15 per cent in efficiency with the Welsh coals.

The general result of these experiments, we regret to say, is favourable to the Welsh steam coals and adverse to our Newcastle coals. It will be observed no allusion is made by the Newcastle journal to the results in smoke, no hope had been entertained upon that score.

At the present moment coal from the Aberdare pits is used by all the great transatlantic steam companies, both English and Foreign. It is shipped to the depots of the steamers that ply on the Pacific, that carry the West India mails which start from Southampton or Marseilles for the Mediterranean, and from Suez for India. It is used on the rivers of India and China, and is navigating the Suez canal. It is taken at ports which have coalfields as near as at Cardiff, and where a difference of 7s. per ton cannot overcome the intrinsic merits of the fuel. It has placed itself upon the Admiralty lists of all the great powers of Europe, and is sought after by all the younger and smaller kingdoms because of its adoption by the older.

With the recent discovery of coalfields in points far and wide within the Empire, it continues to be preferred and purchased for the most distant Government depots. This is the result of the protracted trials to which Welsh and north country steam coal have been subjected throughout 30 years. Trials on the grandest and most efficient scale, which began with every advantage on the side of the northern production, and concluded without leaving it one with which to continue the contest against the production of South Wales. Trials which were not conducted with scientific aids and under unpractical conditions, but which subjecting it to the rough test of utility, with ordinary boilers, ordinary men, all weathers and in all waters, and against keen competition throughout 30 years, established for it a name and fame wherever steam navigation is highly developed.

This we believe to be the most conclusive evidence of superior value that could by possibility be obtained. Scientific analyses and experiments have their value and their results are incontestable. But after all it is the practical test which rules the market, and without it scientific names and data may be flourished with no effect.