I served 2.5 years of my time on a wartime built 3 cylinder Doxford, and the other 1.5 years on a 4 cylinder Doxford. In the year of build for the 3 cylinder
1943/1944 , I was there 1953 and found the earlier vessel built on the lines of an Empire vessel was very subject to Scavenge fires , the later vessel was more or less average for that type of engine. We used to stop at least once every 3 days to let them burn out , when the usual procedure was just to slow down and reduce the I would imagine the air (0xygen) and fuel to feed the fire.
It took us 98 days for a passage B.A. to Japan via stops at Durban and Singapore , needless to say outside of port limits to patch up and finished up arriving Japan on two cylinders , which many modern day engineers say is impossible to do. However being a 16 year old deck apprentice I can vouch it was done , as one of them was lifeless everyday that I went down the engine room to get the domestic and sanitary water tanks pumped up. Incidentally there was no home made H2O in those days nor air conditioning. Cheers JS