DOOM OF THE STOKER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 28 November 1907, Page 6

DOOM OF THE STOKER.

MECHANICAL DEVICE FOR NAVAL BOILER ROOMS. IMPROVED FIKING. London, October 2. The days of the naval stoker are numbered. Within a few years the picture of men in the stokehold, stripped to the waist, "stoking, shovelling madly, keeping a head of steam," will be a thing of the past, and the only men in the boiler rooms of ships of the Royal Navy will be those whose duty it is to superintend the working of machinery which will perform the work of the present-day stoker much more economically and efficently. One of the chief causes of this is, of course, the introduction of oil fuel, which is now supplied to all new ships as an auxiliary to coal, and which is burnt exclusively in the latest torpedo craft. In the latter ships, it has been possible to reduce the usual stokehold complement by about two-thirds. But oil is not the only force making for the elimination of the,stoker. The Admiralty is now experimenting with a mechanical apparatus which will largely dispense with manual labour in feeding coal to the furnaces. The torpedo gunboat Sharpshooter, attached to the Naval Engineering College at Devonport, has been placed at the disposal of Messrs. Hodgkinson and Co., the manufacturers of the apparatus. So far, the trials have been very success-

fuL The coal is fed through shots above tbe furnace doors. The fire-bars, controlled by a small engine, move backward and forward, takininwith each movement a supply of coal, which is evenly distributed over the area of the grate, while the return movement ejects the ashes. The degree of heat in the furnaces and the consequent head of steam can be perfectly controlled by increasing or diminishing the speed of the engine. The experiments ehbw that not only is a considerable amount of labour dispensed with, but that the coal, owing to iU more even and regular distribution, gives much better calorific results than when it « roan-handled. There is practically no smoke from the funnels, and none of that flaming which is such a detrimental feature of some of our destroyers and torpedo-boats.