St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1912-07-17
The BLACK SQUAD.
Grimy VuIcans That Feed the
Fires on Ocean Liners.
HEROES OF THE sTokEHOLD

buSSS MVdSlS " T1man GFtI FTaC-
ticaIly Brave Death Every Time They
Face the BIistering Soaring Blasts of
Heat From the Glowing Furnaces.
An inferno, all smoke and heat and
fire and nakedness, is the stokehold of
an ocean liner. As you enter it, pick
ing your way over the burning ashes,
the hot blast from the furnace mouths
smites you in the face; it scorches your
eyes and sears your lungs with every
gasping breath you draw. Your i'm
pulse is to turn and fly. Life seems
impossible in such an atmosphere.
And yet the inferno huns with life
and strenuous. almost savage, industry.
Opposite the huge boilers, quivering
with suppressed power, like so many
chained giants, are the figures Of men
as if carved in ebony. glistening with
the sweat that streams from every
pore. They are working furiously,
with muscles swelling and knotting as
if they would burst through their
sheath of skin-humans in quick sue
ceeding poses of fierce labor which
would delight the eye of the sculptor
and battle his skill.
Gathering up a shovelful of Goals,
each man propels them with a quick
forward thrust of the body into the
white hot heart of the furnace and
with a dextrous turn of the wrist
spreads them evenly over the fire.
Then, quick as the eye can follow, an
other shovelful succeeds and another,
as if life itself hung on the breathless
swiftness of the sequence.
Such is the stokehold in which the
vulcans of our mammoth liners and
battleships feed the greedy furnaces,
which keep the propellers revolving to
the tune of twenty knots and more an
hour-the men of the ''black gang"
who, clad in trousers almost as black
as their grimy bodies, and with filthy
Sweat rag loosely knotted round
their necks, toll thus for four hours
at a stretch, until the last "ounce" is
taken out of them, and they crawl
back to their quarters for a well earn
ed eight hours of rest
If a fireman faints, overcome by the
heat and exhaustion, he is quickly laid
aside in some corner, with a little
tepid water dashed on his face, and
there he is left until he comes round, .
while his fellows ply shovel and ''slice"
(the latter to clear the fire periodically
from refuse) with a fercer energy than
before, adding the fallen mans labor
to their own. The moment he re-
covers consciousness he struggles to
l. -, - se 81
again. $50 off watch?" Not he! He's
as good a man as any, and the fireman
never knows when he's beaten.
To call such men heroes is no abuse
Of an often misunderstood word. They
are not only the last word in human
grit and pluck-for your fireman will
die rather than give in-they are he
roes who face death every time they
enter the stokehold. as lightheartedly
as other men would sit down to their
dinners. At any moment a fusible
plug may fly, boiler tube collapse, a
gauge glass may splinter, and the cap
tain may have occasion to regret
that some good man or other has fall
en- victim to his duty.
His ship may be sinking, the thrush
ing water swirling knee deep over the
plates on which he is standing, but no
thought of the boats and an escape to
life is for him. He must stick to his
post until the last fire is drawn and if
he has time to. race up the escape lad
der to the boat deck we'll and good. If
not-the odds are all against him-he
goes down, a mute. inglorious" hero,
to his death. 1t is all part Of the days
work for which he draws his meager
pay. with a cheerful acceptance of the
fact that his life will be short and GER
tainly not merry. for you find few
stokers who have passed their forty.
fifth birthday.
1t is not only that the fireman's mus
cles and stamina must bear this inhu-
man strain. He must watch the gauge
glasses with the keen eyes of lynx to
see that the line Of bubbling beads
never rises above or falls below the
level that denotes safety. He must
know his boilers as jockey knows his
mount; which of them requires coaxing
and which requires forcing to stimu-
late its sluggishness, for boilers, it is
said. have as many whims and caprices
as woman
On the whole, the stoker is no un.
amiable man. He may growl at his
food. though he often fares like a
fighting cock" aboard; he may have
vocabulary which would make the av-
erage bargee green with envy. but he
will laugh you to scorn if you suggest
that his work is too hard and that he is
not "game" to the observation-disclosures
Answers