The Topeka state journal., 1899-07-12

ness now holds you in its embrace; the
heat seems to increase and the noise is
deafening. All around you are parts of
the towering engines moving incessant-
ly, some of them slowly, others so
quickly that the eye could not follow
them. If the ship is at that moment
running full steam ahead" at the rate
of nineteen to twenty miles per hour,
you will see the machinery during it's
busiest hours. Her screw measures
twenty-five feet in diameter and makes
eighty-six rotations per minute, or
5,16O per hour. Each rotation drives
the vessel twenty eight feet ahead
She covers in one minute 2,4OS feet.
You hear these figures, leaning
heavily against the iron wall. Then
you proceed further along the, bridge,
and suddenly, through an opening in
the transverse wall, find yourself oppo-
site the sister engine, which is in full
motion. There is the most interesting
spot in the whole ship. The pale man
at the switchboard, if he chose to dis
obey orders telegraphed to him from
the commanders bridge, could hurl you
into eternity almost at any moment.
Further down into the interior of the
mighty ocean monsterl Is it possible
that the heat could still increase? One
hundred and ten degrees you. now count
on the thermometer. As you proceed
the engine men become more numerous
and more herculean in build. The
greater the heat the greater the power
of resistance and endurance required OF
those forced to stand it.
AT the present time ninety-seven
steam cylinders are active the guide
will tell you. You crawl down another
story, on a ladder narrower even and
hotter than the other. You are in hells
mouth. Darkness all around you; only
here and there a small electric flame to
show you the way. You are just twen-
ty-five feet below the water line; the
officers on the bridge are ninety feet
above you.
Presently you reach the very bottom
of the ship and face the fiery eyes of
the long row of furnaces. each s'eye''
bearable heat. The small space be-
tween the iron wall and the mouths of
the furnaces is enlivened by a hundred
men or more swinging mighty shovels
and irons. They are the stokers and
trimmerS.
Clad only in fragments of trousers
and a wOolen shirt, these Pariahs of the
steamship world work with clocklilze
precision. Their faces, breasts, hands
and arms are covered with SCOT a
quarter of an inch thick-so thick that
the perspiratiOn, running from their
heads in streams, leaves no marks.
Every half minute each furnace must
be fed, which means temporary in
crease of the prevailing heat by about
eighty degrees; and the normal tenn
perature in which these poor beings
breathe is a hundred and twenty-five
degrees, sometimes more; less only un-
der extraordinary circumstances!
shines into the stokers' quarters, and
the ventilation, though of superior
quality in the new ships, is necessarily
INADEQUATE. Think of the dust pro-
duced by handling the immense quanti-
ties of fire material. The ship, most
likely, swallows 120 carloads of coal on
each trip. The furnaces are placed side
by side like so many tuns, each meas
uring three and a half by ten and a
half feet.
When a furnace is opened the current
of air finding an outlet often ap-
proaches two hundred degrees in tenn
perature. Still the stOkers have to
stand it and work in this Internal at
mosphere eight hours per day, if not
longer.
The mortality among this class of
workers is greater than that in any
other sort of employment; heat strokes
are very frequent in the furnace rooms
and many a stOwaway, discovered after
the ship left harbor, has died after un-
dergoing coal shOveler's duties only a
few days or hours.