EARLY DAYS OF STEAM

Evening Post, Issue 28, 1 August 1936, Page 24

EARLY DAYS OF STEAM

(By "Spunyarn.")

Probably the engine-room of the very. latest turbine liner with quadruple screws needs as much nerve and skill as canvas used to exact in a gale. There was a mere chief engineer, in war-time, who let slip an electric bulb, and it burst on the engine-room plates! This was the first day at sea. A new greaser standing near cried out, and leaped at the noise.

"Here, my lad," admonished the chief, "that won't do. You may hear something louder than' that."

The greaser mumbled in shame, "I know, sir. I only thought she'd gone up."

Then it came out that the man had been torpedoed three times, and the last occasion was only a few days before he joined.. He had paused to dry his clothes, and here he was again. The chief forgave him—he himself the week before had landed after 300 miles in an open boat with only shirt and trousers.

They are like that. We may safely assume that we may depend on the men .of the ship. They have not changed from what they were.in the brave old days. Only their task has been _ revolutionised; but they manage it and the intricate appliances of their day as well as their fathers understood square-rig and the way of the wind.

In" some important particulars■'**le men really have changed; they are better men—not as seamen, only as civilised beings. Once there was a term "packet-rat." The man who was called that was a mariner, but uncivil. He has vanished, and we need not regret it. He was the creature of an age that was rough at sea, because civility there was then all but impossible. The work of the men of the sailing packets could be extremely dangerous, says a writer in the "Morning Post." They lived in a make-shift way, as outlaws on a frontier. Lives were cheap, and if a man survived he had to be strong, skilful, and lucky. The mortality rate of those fellows was that of warfare; the way they lived determined a short life if they never went overside or fell from aloft. They took it all with the recklessness of pioneers, and like men on the frontier they were peculiar and rude. As Melville said of such men in the fifties, they were heathen, and told "tales 'of-, terror in words of mirth." They are more welcome in tall stories than as messmates. ■

And perhaps "the men below". in\the first steamer packets, and through-the days of the coal-burning furnaces— not all gone yet—were.mostly on the rough side. The stoker had a name, and he had earned it. He needed strength and ( deftness for' his work, and particularly 'he' needed endurance. Most people, most strong men, would have dropped, after a'very brief and bungled spell with his shovel, in that heat, and at that speed.

When the Atlantic records were being broken in the days before oil fuel and turbines, the scene about the furnaces and bunkers was no place for the faint-hearted. ' Its nearest resemblance—so we are credibly informed— is one we will not name. The heat was blasting, and the banging and clanking of metal in the drive towards the last top knot was as loud as triumph below for victorious sin.

Doubtless exaltation over the fact that they were getting the last ounce out of her and that she was whacking her record kept her men a bit above themselves. They went on till they dropped. They had pride in it. But it was exhausting. ; The reaction did not make for civility. Stokers evaporated their sap before the fires, so when they were free and idle for a few hours they replenished. It was when they were getting themselves ready for the next bout that they were noticeable and rebellious; while they were helping to break recprds they were unseen and unheard.

. That generation of men is passinghas all but gone. Oil-burning furnaces have done more than give a*» better head of steam with less fuss. They have brought about a gentler breed of men. The heat below is not unbearable. There is quiet instead of uproar. No more the banging of iron doors and the rumble of trolleys. No more heaps of searing slag, and no flying cinders. A woman may stand and look on. There is no hurry, either. The watch stands by peep-holes, gauges, and controls, to be sure that the immense organism is functioning as it should.

The watch is smaller, relatively. Thousands of tons of coal have not to be carried from bunkers and thrown evenly over fires, nor fires raked, nor ashes disposed of. The oil flows from reservoirs to the jets. There is no "black squad."

But more than deftness and endurance have to be given when there are so,;many valves and controls, so vast a puzzle of pipes and wires, so much electricity and power about in an endless succession of chambers in which the quiet indicates nothing to a layman of its high potentiality. More knowledge and quicker wits are called for. Nobody would doubt that environment makes a difference who remembers the old forecastle crowd and the

THE MEN WHO FED THE FIRES

black squad, and compares them with the men who have taken their places. And if the difference is doubted, then let the curious ask to see a list of the books which the "hands" of a big steamer today are likely to be reading between watches. That ought to convince anyone that, compared with the men who run a liner, the> crews of other days, though real sailors, were different.