<P> During the 17th century a number of advances in mining techniques were made, such the use of test boring to find suitable deposits and chain pumps, driven by water wheels, to drain the collieries . </P> <P> North American coal deposits were first discovered by French explorers and fur traders along the shores of Grand Lake in central New Brunswick, Canada in the 1600s . Coal seams were exposed where rivers flowed into the lake and was dug by hand off the surface and from tunnels dug into the seam . About 1631 the French made their fur trading post at the mouth of the Saint John River their main post in Acadia and started construction of a new fort . The main residence at the fort was designed with two 11 foot wide fireplaces which were stocked with wood and coal from up river . As early as 1643, the French were sending coal and other supplies to the British colony at Boston . </P> <P> The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the 18th century, and later spread to continental Europe, North America, and Japan, was based on the availability of coal to power steam engines . International trade expanded exponentially when coal - fed steam engines were built for the railways and steamships during the Victorian era . Coal was cheaper and much more efficient than wood fuel in most steam engines . As central and Northern England contains an abundance of coal, many mines were situated in these areas as well as the South Wales coalfield and Scotland . The small - scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand, with extraction moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial Revolution progressed . </P> <P> As steamships traveled overseas from the industrialized countries of Europe their need for coal served as trigger for coal mining to start at various locations across the globe . An example of this is the coal mining in Zona Centro Sur, Chile, that began as a response to the arrival of steamships to Talcahuano . </P>

Why coal came to be the dominant fuel source during the industrial revolution