3. Your friends in The Royal Navy are poor guys, I agree. I would go so far that with conventional cotton clothes, they wouldn't have survived. So you can choose what to wear after such a horrific fire accident: Your synthetics for a lifetime or your last shirt...
Remember that over a certain percentage of skin burnt, you just die.
I'm talking about the ones who survived, in this case. Their skin injuries were completely avoidable, if they had been wearing cotton.