New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1912-07-17
THE [: BLACK SQUAD.
Grimy vuIcans That Feed the
Fires on Ocean Liners.
HEROES OF THE sToKEHoLD.

These Models Of Human Grit Prae-
tieaIIy Brave Death Every Time They
Face the eIistsrins 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 q shovelful Of Goals,
each man propels them with 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 AZ black
% their srimy bodies, and with filthy
sweat rag loosely knotted round
their necks. toll thus for four hours
ut stretch. until the last ''ounce" is
taken out Of them. and they crawl
back to their quarters for q we'll earn
ed eight hours of rest. ,...
II 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 fiercer energy than
before, adding the fallen mans labor
to their own. The moment he re-
covers consciousness he struggles to
his feet, seizes the shovel and is at it |
again. "Go off watch" Not he! He's |
as good 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,
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
lie is for him. He must stick to bis
post until the last fire IS drawn and II
be has time to race up the escape lad
der to the boat deck well and good. II
not-the odds are all against hin-ho
Doaa down. q "mutA tnal0riodo" hscA