Arizona republican., 1918-11-04
STOKING THE BOILERS
 OF BIG BATTLESHIP
(From Popular Mechanics)

Except for the actual lift she re- ceiyes from a wave, a battleship roll ing in a beam sea moves 8 good deal like an inverted pendulum, so that one feels a minimum of motion when he | is down against the skin of a lower hold, and a maximum in the foretop. | The transition had been sudden one | for me that morning, for the gunnery ! lieutenant, who had been initiating me into the secrets of director firing in the foretop, brought me back to the main deck and turned me over to the senior engineer, who had volunteered to show me what rough weather stok- ing was like. AS we put one reeling steel ladder after another above us in our descent, the roll decreased as the tumult of crashing waves was stilled to muffled jolts, and, with flight or two still to go, we were steady enough on our feet to have both. hands free to lift the heavy air-tight flap of the boiler room. To one who has pie tured the stoker as a gaunt-eyed de- mon steadily shoveling coal under a boiler for four hours, the first glimpse of the stokehold of a warship that is in no great hurry to get somewhere will come as great surprise. The | place is neither especially dirty nor especially hot. Neither the letting the coal slide down by it's own weight from the encompassing bunkers nor the cracking up of the occasional Jumps which are too large for even combus- tion, raises as much dust as the dump l ing of a single sack upon one of the upper decks. The running back of a sliding steel door brings a stream of 1 coal running out of one of the bunkers, coal which, dumped from sacks into the entrance of one of the upper decks, has worked its way downward by 1 gravity as that beneath it has been 1 fed to the furnaces This stream is caught in a skip of steel shaped like the half of a cylinder. and capable of holding something like a couple of hundredweight, sliding fairly easy over the grilled deck-pushed by one man and pulled by another-the skip loads are dumped evenly along in front of
 the twelve doors which open-four to
 each-to the three furnaces under the
 boilers occupying this half of the
 stokehold. Now we come to the actual
 stoking
 A bell suddenly clangs, echoing
 sharply from the steel walls, and in
 stantly two of the lounging figures
 quicken to the alert. One scoops up a | SilONcIlu Ol COdl anu lHe OlH6I steps
 forward and rests hand on the lever running to one of the furnace doors
 A second or two later, as a number
 shows on dial on the wall, the latter l pushes the lever sharply and the dool , is pressed upward. revealing a glow ing bed of fire running back out oi
 sight under the boiler. The shovel is
 already swinging forward as the dool rises, and, missing that steel plate by a fraction of an inch, it's contents art } discharged-with a quick "wristy" mo.
 tion that scatters the coal evenly ove]
 the fire-into the furnace.
 It was while I was being initiated into the technique of stoking by shov cling coal under the boilers that {
 change of course brought the swing
 ing seas; dead abeam and set the shiI rolling even more drunkenly than be fore. After failing to hit the "darl spots" and 'hollows" two or thre, i times az I staggered to the roll, ant F once even missing the furnace doc itself, one of the stokers, taking com
 passion, relieved me of the scoop an,
 put the trouble right with half dozel quickly tossed shovelfuls. was frank E ly glad to work over to where I coul, f take a half nelson" round bar b the starboard bunker.
 A heavy slam banging from the op r. posite side of the boiler room indicat r ed that things were not going quit so smoothly there, and edging eau Il tiously along. I was presently able t get some hint of the cause from tn
 words of volubly cursing stoker, wh limped out to tell me that the "blinkir r skip as took charge" Rubbing
 bruised shin and glowering balefull 2 from blackened eye which appeare a to have been bumped against a boile
 he explained. in language more force 2 ful than elegant, that some impractics
 theorist had encouraged them to eS Q pertinent with wheels on the side the skip. with the idea of making P easier to push about over the coa 2 cluttered deck. In the picturesqu
 language of the sea, it had take l. charge" and so effectually that or
 swift, straight rush to starboard, fo e lowed by a ''googly" progress back e port, put every man who, either 1 n chance or intent. barred it's way mol
 or less hors de combat.
 Id Straight down the one-in three il to cline from the port to the starboal
 bunkers lolloped the Juggernaut, dasl l. ing the protesting anatomies of u m stokers to the left and right as it wer
 Splitting blood and oaths indiscrim
 nately, one man clung to it all u
 way, however and he also it was VI