truck used by railway porters in handling trunks. It is perhaps a little
smaller than the average of the latter, and somewhat more "squattily"
built. After the "technique" of picking up and dumping one's sack is
mastered, it is by no means difficult to handle, the main point being to
trundle it as nearly as possible on the "balance," so that a minimum of
strength is wasted in keeping the barrow from "sitting up" and "sitting
down." Once these details are understood, any fairly strong man or boy
should be equal to the physical exertion of coaling for two or three
hours at a stretch without rest. A short, sturdily built man is at
something of an advantage over a tall one, as the latter has to stoop
considerably to bring his "centre of effort" behind his load.
The wheeling of the sacks, from the point where they are left in a
tottering pile on the deck to the opening of the chutes down which their
contents are dumped to the bunkers, is the most important stage of
the operation, for the way it is carried out makes all the difference
between a fast and a slow coaling. Obviously, then, it is to the
organisation of this "traffic" that the greatest attention is given.
Since a battleship is primarily made for fighting, the facility with
which coal may be taken aboard is necessarily a secondary consideration.
Between turrets, hatches, and various other obstructions on the decks,
the route by which a coal-sack is wheeled to a chute is always a devious
one. Part of it usually runs across open deck, where "double-track
traffic" is possible; at other points the way may be so narrow that only
a single barrow can be wheeled through at a time, and even that only
when carefully steered. To avoid the latter "necks," the returning
"empties" must, if possible, find an alternative route, or, if this
is not practicable, going and returning barrows must be "flagged"
through by turn, as on a congested stretch of city street when half
of it is torn up for repairs. The same sort of thing occurs where the
track of the loaded barrows crosses that of the returning empties. In
both instances it is customary to give "loads" the right-of-way over
"empties," the latter watching their chances to push through in the
frequent "gaps" in the traffic of the former. It is in the "control" of
the traffic at these points, and on the quick-wittedness of the men in
keeping out of each other's way and avoiding a jam, that a great part of
the secret of speedy coaling lies.
But perhaps we can learn more about it by taking our barrow and falling
into line. The frost-silvered metal handles strike a chill to the
fingers straight through your woolly mittens; but don't worry on that
score--your own animal heat will more than even-up the balance by the
time you have kept your place in line for ten minutes. The last of a
pile of sacks has just been trundled away, and, to the scream of the
winch, another "cluster" is rising slowly out of the hold to take its
place. The scoopmen are falling into their stride by this time, and from
now on you can expect them to be sending up a fresh "boquet" every forty
or fifty seconds. That your barrow wheels may have a fair run, a man
with a scoop pushes aside the lumps of coal which have fallen out of
the last sacks, and another man shovels them up and throws them into a
half-filled sack hanging to the rail. There is a warning cry of "Stand
clear!" and the cluster of sacks plumps down upon the deck with a heavy
thud.
Even while it is still in the air two men have seized corners of the
swaying mass and pushed it along so that it lands in the centre of
the rather restricted working space in this particular corner of the
fo'c'sle deck. At the same time, one of them frees an end of the wire
cable, and, as the boom retreats, the two help to make it run smoothly
out through the beckets at the mouths of the sacks. At the release of
the encircling grip of the cable some of the sacks begin to topple over,
but before one of them has fallen to its side (which would, of course,
result in the spilling of a good part of its contents), quick-footed
barrowmen have pushed their trucks under them, and they are held
sufficiently upright to retain their loads. A tug or two from one of the
"loading" men sets a sack straight on a barrow, and the man behind the
latter--watching from the corner of an eye to keep from fouling another
load--backs quickly but carefully out, executes a dexterous right-about,
and trundles off on a trot along the track to the nearest chute.
After three or four barrows have been pushed impatiently past you (the
wheel of one of them over the toe of your sea-boot), you suddenly
realise that the dump is no place for "Alphonse and Gaston" tactics,
and decide to shove in on your own. Your timid advance, however, proves
too slow to head off a more pushful mate in a "sou'wester," and he gets
the "lip" of his barrow under the sack you had marked for your own. You
edge back politely to make an exit for him and his load, and lo!--two
other "vultures" pounce in upon the pair of remaining sacks and roll
away with them. You jump back towards safety at the "Dump Bosses'" shout
of "Stand clear!" step in the scoop of the man who is brushing up the
"crumbs," stumble against the man who has charge of the sack on the
rail, and in sitting down manage to thrust your barrow between the legs
of one of the men who is humouring the fresh "boquet" of coal-sacks
into place. So perfect is your _camouflage_ of overall, sou'-wester,
and sea-boots, that none of these hasty individuals whose activities
you have inadvertently interfered with recognises you as an officer and
gentleman in disguise, and each of them (without arresting a single
motion) curses you fluently in the picturesque persiflage of the sea.
You salve your barrow as best you can, and stand by for the withdrawal
of the "strop," which is your signal for action. In your eagerness you
fail to give the "lip" of your barrow that "finessive" safety-razor
sweep along the deck which experience subsequently teaches you is
the proper way to get under your "White Man's Burden," and give the
tottering sack you are nose-diving for a vigorous dig--just the same
kind of a dig that the keen-edged "lip" of the barrow you have stepped
in front of gives you on your Achillean tendon. The sack totters
drunkenly and sludders down upon the deck; you reach the same--less
directly, but with greater impact--by caroming off the barrow which has
slashed your heel.
A spilled sack--in clogging the nicely adjusted coaling machine--always
has the germ of a jam lurking in it, and only the two or three stout
fellows who buck their laden barrows straight through the mess you have
made--by clearing the last of the sacks away a hair's breadth before the
next "boquet" descends upon them--avert disaster now. Luckily, they are
able to swear and work at the same time, and, by plying their hands no
less vigorously than their tongues, save the situation.
The man who throws the "crumbs" into the sack on the rail is less busy
than the other dump hands, and he it is who finds leisure to insinuate
that you ought to go to some place where they have no coaling to do. You
have no time to consider whether he means--the place you would mean if
you were in his place; for your honour is at stake now, and, scowling
with grim, coldly calculative determination, you stand for the third
trial. Neither too coy nor yet too impulsive this time, but by the
exercise of such common sense as is still at your command, you press
quietly but firmly toward the cluster of sacks and--by lifting your
barrow bodily and jerking it sidewise for a few inches--manage to align
it fairly evenly in front of a bulging bag of coal dust. It appears to
require about as much effort on the part of one of the "load" hands to
wriggle it aboard as it does on your part to tip back your barrow to
something like a balance. But the fact remains that you _do_ have it
stowed, and are ready to get under weigh.
It is the "coldly calculative, set-jaw" spirit which carries you
through the next stage with fair success. It is no easy task to do
your "right-about" on the slithery deck, but now that you are a "load"
instead of an "empty" a tendency to help you on your way is at once
in evidence. A couple of "empties" are edged back an inch or two to
give you clearance, and a "load" accelerates to avoid giving you a
"sideswipe." Where the deck slopes up under the elevated midship guns
the petty officer who stands there to wave the traffic down the proper
passage gives your sack a friendly kick to keep your barrow from losing
weigh and checking the pushers crowding close on your heels.
You debouch to open deck on the port side and are about to push on in
the wake of the man just ahead, when the corner of your eye catches the
motion of the left-hand of the "traffic officer," and--with the going
easy on the down slope--you execute a neat eight-point alteration of
course and bring up smartly in front of an open "man-hole" just in time
to replace a man who has dumped his sack and ducked out of your way.
Unluckily, you have had no chance to study the "technique" of this
operation, and it is not surprising that you run too close and dump
your sack so that it falls with its mouth a foot beyond the hole and
disgorges a part of its contents on the deck. As a consequence, the two
men working here have to drag the sack back before emptying it, where
(if you had dumped it properly) they would only have had to lift it by
its corners and allow the coal to run out down the chute. Of course,
they tell you what they think of you, and while you are answering that
you are sorry for your mistake and will know how to avoid it next time,
a sharp dig from an only half-checked barrow "lip" on your already
wounded "Achilles tendon" helps to drive home the rule that--while there
is no ban on talking, swearing and singing to your heart's content--the
action of the tongue should not be allowed to paralyse the action of the
feet.
The man ahead of you has disappeared at a trot, and in your eagerness
to overtake him you lift the handles of your barrow too high, with the
consequence that the first lump of coal that gets under the wheels
brings it up standing, and you "telescope" against it. The lesson this
drives home to you, together with the one that sinks in following the
jam you create by your slowness in plunging through the procession of
"loads" which must be passed in getting back to the dump, just about
rounds out the basic essentials of your barrow-pushing education. You
have learned how to keep out of the way; the rest is largely a matter of
handling your barrow in a fashion to make the work easier, not only for
yourself, but for the others whose operations "dovetail" with yours.
The work in the holds of the collier and the bunkers of the battleship,
while perhaps a shade less strenuous physically than barrow-pushing, is
a deal more dusty and unpleasant. Four holds are worked in the average
collier, and in each of these are about thirty men. These work in six
groups, each of which fills and stacks one "cluster" of sacks. The men
alternate in holding sacks and shovelling. Special instructions are
given that the sacks shall be completely filled, and that no pieces
of coal too large to go down the chutes to the bunkers should be put
in them. A maul is kept handy in each hold for smashing such lumps. A
minimum of a dozen sacks are hoisted at one time, and occasionally this
number is increased by two or three.
The coal dust is the unpleasant feature of working in the holds of
the colliers, but even there it is nothing to the bunkers, where one
actually feels it grinding between his teeth from the moment he enters.
The coal falls in a steady stream from the chutes, the dust flying from
it like the spray from a waterfall. There is no electric wiring, and
the lights are open flares, good ventilation making the danger of an
explosion from coal "damp" negligible. The men who work here shovelling
the coal away from the chutes and passing it on toward the lower
bunkers--would make the average chimney-sweep look like a white-winged
angel. There is no way to avoid inhaling the settling dust with every
breath, and I could well believe a red-eyed imp o' darkness (whom I
found blinking like a bat in the sunshine after the collier had cast
off) when he told me that he would be tasting the "bloomin' stuff for
the next week."
The more one sees of coaling the more he marvels at the extent to which
the human element enters into its success. A crew that is not both quick
of foot and quick of wit will never have more than a mediocre coaling
record. If a man has not both, when he is not getting in the way of his
mates, he will be losing a few seconds here, and a few seconds there,
until these run into minutes in the course of two or three hours.
Multiplied by five or six hundred--the number of the men at work--it may
well make the difference in a coaling rate of many score of tons per
hour.
A keen interest and pride in the work is also a _sine qua non_ of fast
coaling. No ship in which there is not the best of feeling between the
men and officers will ever maintain a high coaling average. Under the
stimulus of imminent action, or when preparing to weigh anchor for
some favourite port, things will move quickly, but the rate will not
be maintained when the regular grind resumes. Indeed, slow coaling
is, perhaps, the commonest form of "silent protest" on the part of a
dissatisfied crew, and a ship which maintains a steadily depressed
"curve of coaling" is generally credited with being due for a general
shake-up of personnel.
THE STOKERS
Except for the actual lift she receives from a wave, a battleship
rolling in a beam sea moves a good deal like an inverted pendulum, so
that one feels a minimum of motion when he is down against the skin of
a lower hold and the maximum in the foretop. The transition had been
a sudden one for me that morning, for the Gunnery Lieutenant, who had
been initiating me into the secrets of "Director Firing" in the foretop,
brought me back to the main deck and turned me over to the Senior
Engineer, who had volunteered to show me what "rough weather" stoking
was like.
The big ship was wallowing with that ever-disconcerting "hang" at the
end of a roll, such a pause as one never experiences in an ocean liner
which (with no heavy guns and only light upper works) needs no great
amount of time to make up its mind as to whether or not it is worth
while going to the trouble of getting back on an even keel. As we put
one reeling steel ladder after another above us in our descent, the roll
decreased as the tumult of crashing waves was stilled to muffled jolts,
and, with a flight or two still to go, we were steady enough on our
feet to have both hands free to lift the heavy air-tight "flap" of the
boiler-room.
As I ducked under the "flap" the chill, damp, clammily clinging air of
the decks above was assailed by a sharp blast which, however hot and
dry, was still (at least in comparison with the heavy atmosphere of the
higher 'tween decks spaces) fresh and invigorating. Although far from
an earthly paradise in a ship on an equatorial run, the stokehold of a
battleship that is battened down against heavy winter weather is in some
respects the most comfortable spot aboard her.
Certainly the half-dozen brawny fellows who sat or lounged against
the steel bulkhead of the half of the boiler-room into which we had
descended did not look to be having anything like so bad a time of it as
an equal number of oilskinned seamen I had seen but a few minutes before
bracing themselves against the seas sweeping the icy forecastle deck
as they tried to repair a smashed ventilator. Grimy they were, to be
sure, but otherwise there was little about them to suggest the sweating,
stripped-to-the-waist, in-to-the-last-gasp stoker of romance and popular
fancy.
To one who has pictured the stoker as a gaunt-eyed demon steadily
shovelling coal under a boiler for four hours, the first glimpse of a
stokehold of a warship that is in no great hurry to get somewhere will
come as a good deal of a surprise. The place is neither especially
dirty nor especially hot. Neither the letting the coal slide down by
its own weight from the encompassing bunkers nor the cracking up of the
occasional lumps which are too large for even combustion raises as much
dust as the dumping of a single sack upon one of the upper decks.
The footing on the grilled steel plates of the deck is firm and sure,
and, as I have said, there is less motion in the stokehold than in any
other part of the ship. It might conceivably happen in destroyers, but
the stories of men half-roasted from being thrown against the furnace
doors in storms do not originate on battleships.
But let us see how these comfortable, easy-moving chaps manage to handle
the fuel sufficient to send twenty-five or thirty thousand tons of steel
hurtling through the seas with so little apparent haste or effort. The
running back of a sliding steel door brings a stream of coal running out
of one of the bunkers, coal which, dumped from sacks into the entrance
of a chute on one of the upper decks, has worked its way downward by
gravity as that beneath it has been fed to the furnaces. This stream
is caught in a "skip" of steel, shaped like the half of a cylinder and
capable of holding something like a couple of hundredweight. Sliding
fairly easily over the grilled deck--pushed by one man and pulled by
another--the "skip" loads are dumped evenly along in front of the twelve
doors which open--four to each--to the three furnaces under the boilers
occupying this half of the stokehold. Now we come to the actual stoking.
A bell suddenly clangs, echoing sharply from the steel walls, and
instantly two of the lounging figures quicken to the alert. One scoops
up a shovelful of coal and the other steps forward and rests a hand on
the lever running to one of the furnace doors. A second or two later,
as a number shows on a dial at the side, the latter pushes the lever
sharply, and the door is pressed upwards, revealing a glowing bed of
fire running back out of sight under the boiler. The shovel is already
swinging forward as the door rises, and, missing that steel plate by a
fraction of an inch, its contents are discharged--with a quick "wristy"
motion which scatters the coal evenly over the fire--into the furnace.
As the shovel is drawn back the lever is released, permitting the door
to fall shut of its own weight. With all possible speed another scoop is
filled with coal and the operation repeated once or twice more according
to the speed which it is desired to maintain. Then the two men relax
and stand at ease until another clanging of the bell heralds the number
of the next furnace to be fired. Then the door is lifted and the coal
thrown in as before, the operation going on until each of the twelve has
received its two, three, or four shovels, when--always subject to the
indicator on the wall--it begins over again.
If a lump of coal is larger than a man's fist it is cracked up before
being thrown into the furnace. As the stoker swings his filled shovel
toward the opening door his trained eye is looking for two things--a
pronounced hollow in the bed of coals, or a spot in which the duller
glow tells him the combustion is considerably advanced. If neither is
visible he gives his shovel a very sharp side flirt and spreads its
contents just as widely and evenly as he possibly can. If he observes
a hollow he endeavours to even it up with fresh coal. A burnt-out spot
also receives fresh fuel, and if there is evidence of the formation of a
crust of "clinker," this may be marked for a subsequent cracking up with
the "slice," a long steel bar which serves the purpose of a poker. Every
effort is bent toward maintaining a smooth, evenly burning bed of coals
under all of the boiler.
Automatic regulation of stoking is no new thing in warships, and was
even in use on the latest of the Atlantic liners running before the war.
The machine most commonly in use by the British is the "Kilroy," and its
object is to raise a given amount of steam with a minimum of coal and
physical effort.
Thoroughly to understand its workings one should go first to the
engine-room, from where it is regulated. The order for a certain speed
is sent from the bridge to the engine-room, and the engineer sets his
"Kilroy" so that the stoking shall proceed at a rate calculated to
produce the necessary steam. The dial of the machine is numbered from
"3" to "12," and the number he turns the indicator to--say "7"--rings up
the numbers of the furnace doors in the boiler-room at a rate which will
ensure that each shall be stoked every seven minutes.
The number of shovelfuls of coal to be thrown in at each stoking is
determined by consulting first the telegraph from the bridge (which
registers in both the engine-room and stokehold) and a table which each
stoker knows by heart. The dial of the telegraph is marked as follows:
"Keep Steam," "Stop," "Slow," "Half Speed," "Full Speed," "More Steam."
The table referred to gives the number of shovels to be thrown on at
each stoking to fulfil the direction on the telegraph. Thus "Slow" calls
for from two to three shovels of coal, "Full" four to six, and "More
Steam" from six to eight.
This plan gives perhaps the most perfect control of stoking possible
without mechanical handling of the coal, and that is hardly practicable
on shipboard. Practically all modern coal-burning ships carry a small
supply of oil fuel, which is, however, generally used very sparingly and
kept for raising steam pressure quickly in great emergency.
It was while I was being initiated into the technique of stoking by
shovelling coal under the boilers at the rate indicated to keep the
steam at "Half" that a change of course brought the swinging seas dead
abeam and set the ship rolling even more drunkenly than before. After
failing to hit the "dark spots" and "hollows" two or three times as I
staggered to the roll, and once even missing the furnace door itself,
one of the stokers, taking compassion, relieved me of the scoop and put
the trouble right with half a dozen quickly tossed shovelfuls.
I was frankly glad to work over to where I could take a "half Nelson"
round a bar by the starboard bunker, for the way the open mouth of the
furnace was suddenly jumping up at me in the lurches was something more
than disconcerting, especially after one of my fellow stokers had told
me that his scarred forearm was the result of having once been pitched
forward against a red-hot door of the furnace under a destroyer's
boiler.
It was easy to see that stoking the furnaces of a ship with a 25 to
30 degree roll is no job for a novice. Keeping one's balance without
holding on to something was difficult enough all of the time, and there
were intervals when it was a sheer impossibility. Yet the inexorable
gong rang out its warnings just the same, and when the number of the
door to be stoked slipped into place on the dial, the particular stretch
of glowing coals commanded by that aperture had to be fed willy-nilly.
With the coal "skip" doing a dervish dance from one end to the other of
the narrow space, and with even lumps of the coal itself indulging in
punitive expeditions on their own account, the waiting stoker needed all
the quick-wittedness and shifty-footedness of a bull-fighter combined
with the nicety of balance of a tight-rope walker to carry on at all.
Yet carry on he did, and with only less clocklike a regularity than the
imperturbable "Kilroy" itself.
A heavy slam-banging from the opposite end of the boiler-room indicated
that things were not going quite so smoothly there, and edging
cautiously along I was presently able to get some hint of the cause from
the words of a volubly cursing stoker who limped out to tell me that the
"blinkin' skip 'as took charge." Rubbing a bruised shin and glowering
balefully from a blackened eye which appeared to have bumped against a
boiler, he explained, in language more forceful than elegant, that some
unpractical theorist had encouraged them to experiment with wheels on
the side of the skip with the idea of making it easier to push about
over the coal-cluttered deck. This had turned out a very satisfactory
"safe-in-harbour" expedient, but the increased mobility which had been
so useful in fair weather had proved its undoing in foul.
In the picturesque language of the sea, it had "taken charge," and so
effectually that one swift, straight rush to starboard, followed by a
"googly" progress back to port, put every man who, either by chance or
intent, barred its way more or less _hors de combat_. When I peeped
gingerly round a corner the sight I saw was vividly suggestive of those
good old days of mass play American football when a burly half-back was
bucking the line of his demoralised opponents.