Another advantage of fuel oil is that materially increased speed can rapidly be attained, for, with fuel oil fired furnaces, the ship’s boilers can be forced to nearly 50 per cent. above normal rating without that great strain on the personnel which would be essential in burning coal under forced draught. Then there is the great saving of labour effected when burning fuel oil, the stokehold staffs being reduced by quite 90 per cent. The fuel oil is automatically fed to the furnaces and mechanically fired, the maximum heat of the oil burners being attained within a few minutes of starting. But the absence of smoke when the battleship is proceeding at full speed is, perhaps, one of the most important advantages which the use of fuel oil gives to the units of the fleets employing it. The emission of dense volumes of smoke, which are ever present on a coal-fired vessel, is quite absent when fuel oil is used, and this advantage is twofold, for not only does it prevent the giving away of the location of the battleship, but it also renders its own gun-fire more efficient. The advantages attendant upon the use of fuel oil for naval vessels are, in the main, also strikingly apparent when oil is adopted for the mercantile marine. It is many years ago since the oil tankers of the “Shell” Transport and Trading Company, Ltd., commenced to do the voyage regularly from the Far East to this country and back without an intermediate port of call. To-day, practically every oil tanker afloat burns fuel oil. But, of recent date, fuel oil has reached wider application by reason of its being adopted on many cargo and passenger vessels, and, had the European War not considerably hampered ordinary shipbuilding construction, we should have seen ere this a number of the largest vessels crossing the Atlantic exclusively running on oil. In fact, arrangements have been made whereby many of our Transatlantic lines will operate exclusively on fuel oil, which will be taken on board in the United States. [Illustration: TAKING OIL FUEL SUPPLIES ON BOARD]