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

The Cardiff Times had a special reporter present, during the interview, and it was elicited from Sir F. Gray that the trials that had taken place at Keyham were merely preliminary to further practical trials which were about to take place at sea, and that the tenders issued for the mixture a were simply to carry this project into effect.

It was urged by the Welsh deputation that the only really conclusive and practical way of settling the question would be to send two sister ships across the Atlantic with a cargo of each coal respectively, that the two ships should then take in the opposite description of coal for the return voyage, and that a comparison of results would leave nothing more to be disputed. This excellent suggestion was demurred to as inconvenient and expensive, but its superiority to any other mode of settling a practical question like this is manifest.

We come now, however, to relate the fortunate issue of such practical trials as the Admiralty did make.

So many complaints came home from steam ships of war that the mixture was again abandoned. Thus the question remained until the preceding year, when for reasons quite inscrutable renewed instructions were given to supply Northern and Welsh coal mixed in proportions of one-third and two-thirds.

It is not that any alteration has taken place in the relative values of the two coals, for if there had been a deterioration in some of the qualities shipped from South Wales the best description of north country steam was rapidly diminishing, while the best seams worked in the Aberdare Valley retain the same high position given them in the report of Sir Henry de la Beche and Dr. Lyon Playfair.

Whatever could be proved on paper as to the value of a mixture, it requires little consideration to perceive that the use of two coals in certain definite proportions by ships of war under ordinary circumstances is, as we have already hinted, an impracticable and impossible proposal ; but the Admiralty seem bent upon working this lode to its finish — urged on by the persistent representations of the North of England coal trade and their Parliamentary representatives.