Coal bunker

“ Every boiler has four furnaces in each end, which give eight to each fire-room, or a total of thirty-two. The two boiler compartments are separated by a water-tight bulkhead, and by a deep, broad coal-bunker. At the sides of the ship are also coal-bunkers, which supplement the heavy armor-belt by the protection of a mass of coal twelve feet in thickness—in itself a not inconsiderable earthwork, which might arrest the fragments of a bursting shell that had succeeded in piercing the armor. No casualty of naval combat can be worse than the penetration of high-pressure boilers by heavy shells. ”

“ I don’t wish to be wearisome to the benevolent reader, but I want to put his finger, so to speak, on the inanity of the objection raised by the expert. A bunker is an enclosed space for holding coals, generally located against the ship’s side, and having an opening, a doorway in fact, into the stokehold. Men called trimmers go in there, and by means of implements called slices make the coal run through that opening on to the floor of the stokehold, where it is within reach of the stokers’ (firemen’s) shovels. ”

“ The fourteenth stair leading to the engine-room is not taken, but there's an exhaust pipe passes under it, and it becomes too hot to sit on. There is room for two in a coal bunker which should be empty by to-night ”

“ The objection has been raised against longitudinal coal-bunkers, that they are not so conveniently placed for the firemen. A large force of "coal passers" has to be employed in wheeling the coal from the bunkers to the front of the furnaces. This, of course, entails an increased expense of operation.
The use of transverse coal-bunkers must be regarded as one among many instances, in which the safety of passenger ships is sacrificed to considerations of economy and convenience of operation. ”

“ Hastily I scattered the kindling over the cold furnace bars, then slid several buckets of coal out the nearest bunker door, carefully maneuvering them through the slush and ice across the flooded floorplates to avoid slopping the sea water which reached nearly to the tops of the buckets, in on the coal. Seizing then a shovel, I started to heave coal into the furnaces, an awkward job, for getting the shovel into the tops of the upright buckets was difficult, and naturally I dared not dump the coal out on the floorplates first. ”

“ It had been shovelled into a sack of coal, hoisted in the latter to the deck, dumped into a chute, finally to work out of the bottom of a bunker into the stokehold and be thrown under the boilers. A man can make the descent from the deck through an empty bunker to the stokehold without great discomfort, but would hardly survive being shut up in the former for long with the coal. ”

“ Ned hastened off while the two officers remained in grave consultation on the bridge.
“Nasty situation, Briggs,” said Captain Dunham.
“Very, sir. The storm makes it all the worse. It is dangerous work in the bunkers in such weather as this. There’s some fear, too, of the [141] coal sliding as the men get it out, even though we’ve got it timbered.”
“Then your plan is to empty the bunker?”
“If necessary, sir. Half-way measures will be no good in a case of this kind. We shall have to get the coal out from below till we reach the fire. ”

“ The coal lies near the outlet, and by a little skilful manipulation it is made to run out upon the stokehold floor handy for the fireman's shovelling. But as the consumption goes on, and the "face" of the coal recedes from the bulkhead, the trimmer's work grows rapidly more heavy. His labour knows no respite as he struggles to keep the fireman's needs supplied. And there is no ventilator pouring down fresh air into the bunker. ”

“ These conveyors have automatic self reversing trippers, which distribute the coal evenly in the bunkers. For handling different grades of coal, distributing conveyors are arranged underneath the bunkers for delivering the coal from a particular bunker through gates to the downtake hoppers in front of the boilers, as hereafter described. ”

“ There were, for instance, twenty-four double end and five single end boilers, each 16 feet 9 inches in diameter, the larger 20 feet long and the smaller 11 feet 9 inches long. The larger boilers had six fires under each of them and the smaller three furnaces. Coal was stored in bunker space along the side of the ship between the lower and middle decks, and was first shipped from there into bunkers running all the way across the vessel in the lowest part. From there the stokers handed it into the furnaces. ”

“ There you can see the flags of a dozen nations flying from ships that have put in for fuel. Thanks to the war these ports are in the center of the world's great trade routes and thus, geographically and economically their position is unique for bunkering and for export.
The price of bunker coal is a key to the increased overhead cost of world trade, as a result of the war. The [Pg 69] Belgian boat on which I travelled from the shores of the Congo to Antwerp coaled at Teneriffe, where the price per ton was seven pounds. ”

“ All requirements that have been given can be approximated for space necessary in the hull. It is established that the ship carried about 75 tons of coal and 25 cords of wood. The coal would take up from about 1,700 to 1,850 cubic feet of space, and because of its weight it would have to be bunkered alongside the boilers in the lower hold, where there would be ample room, in the reconstruction, for two bunkers, each in excess of 30 square feet in cross section and about 28 feet in length for a single boiler; one third more bunker space, in length, would be required for double boilers. ”

“ Kittitas, King, and Pierce counties, in the order named, have been the principal coal-production areas in the State. Most of the coal mined has been consumed locally, the bulk of it going to railroads, domestic use, coke and gas manufacturing, and the bunker trade for steamships. The coal deposits of Washington include almost every type, from subbituminous to anthracite; and, though coal-mining has declined to some extent in recent years, it is hoped that in the near future the industry will be stimulated by new uses of coal and its by-products. ”

“ Such stores as cloth and made-up wearing apparel go in the lower hold, and there are also nearly all the magazines, guncotton, and torpedo-heads, if the ship carries them.
The coal bunkers on the Osprey were located between the engines and boilers and the hull of the vessel, at a point a little abaft of midship. Thus the coal afforded protection to the machinery from projectiles aimed at the most vital part of the ship. Such inflammable liquids as oil and alcohol are never stowed below. ”

“ The pros and cons being discussed—I had too much respect for the calibre of certain guns on shore, to throw any shells across the windows of the council-chamber—it was decided that coal was not contraband of war, and that the Sumter might purchase the necessary article in the market.
But though she might purchase it, it was not so easy to get it on board. It was hard to move the good people on shore. The climate was relaxing, the rainy season had set in, and there was only negro labor to be had, about the wharves and quays. We were four tedious days in filling our coal-bunkers. ”

“ The marines and the men of the powder division were on the turrets and other places to expedite things. Down in the coal bunkers the engineer division were put at stowing the coal away smoothly and evenly. The bunkers on such occasions in the tropics are veritable black holes and the men have to be relieved frequently.
Jack makes the best of a bad job, and coaling ship illustrates this. The men got out their old coal stowing clothes that once were white and theoretically still are white. ”

“ The boiler house floors are, in general, framed with transverse plate girders and longitudinal rolled beams, arranged to suit the particular requirements of the imposed loads of the boilers, economizers, coal, etc., while the engine-room floors and pipe and switchboard galleries are in general framed with longitudinal plate girders and transverse beams.
There are seven coal bunkers in the boiler house, of which five are 77 feet and two 41 feet in length by 60 feet in width at the top, the combined maximum capacity being 18,000 tons. ”

“ A hundred women and girls, wearing one scanty garment reaching to the knees, are in line, and commence at once to trot on board in single file, each one bearing a bushel basket of coal upon her head, weighing, say sixty pounds. Another gang fill empty baskets where the coal is stored, so that there is a continuous line of negresses trotting into the ship at one port and, after dumping their loads into the coal bunkers, out at the other, hastening back to the source of supply for more. ”

“ The bulk of the coal can also be got to the stokeholds without opening any of the doors in the main watertight bulkheads—a point of very great importance when the vessel is in action. In addition to the coal bunkers below the protective deck, reserve bunkers are arranged on the slopes of the protective deck up to the height of the main deck over the length of the machinery spaces amidships, the total capacity being approximately 2000 tons, which is sufficient to give the vessel a very large radius of action. ”

“ There are twelve boilers, six on each side, each with a blazing furnace, which has to be opened at regular intervals to put in new coals, or to be poked up with long iron rods. This is the201 duty of the poor wretches who are doomed to this work. It is hard to believe that human beings could be got to labor under such conditions, yet such persons are to be found. The work of stoking or feeding the fires is usually done by Arabs, while the work of bringing the coal from the bunkers is done by sidi-wallahs or negroes. At times some of the more intelligent of these are promoted to the stoking. ”

“ A minimum of a dozen sacks are hoisted at one time, and occasionally this number is increased by two or three.
The coal dust is the unpleasant feature of working in the holds of the colliers, but even there it is nothing to the bunkers, where one actually feels it grinding between his teeth from the moment he enters. The coal falls in a steady stream from the chutes, the dust flying from it like the spray from a waterfall. There is no electric wiring, and the lights are open flares, good ventilation making the danger of an explosion from coal "damp" negligible. ”

“ The stokers, stripped to a gantline, and digging out for daylight, are in much the same position as those passing up ammunition, save that they seldom, if ever, get a lull in their work in which to indulge their thoughts. Those trimming the coal in the boxlike bunkers have perhaps the most unenviable task. Breathing in a thick haze of coal dust, black from head to foot, they work on at full pressure in these veritable black holes, without the chance of hearing any news of what is going on "up topsides." ”

“ Whilst all the explosives mentioned in this article are more or less suited to blasting in mines, so far as their propulsive force is concerned, yet the use of each and all is attended with great danger in a coal-mine, and for the following reason: coal, being of vegetable or organic origin, is constantly giving off numerous gases, the most dangerous of which, under ordinary circumstances, is methylic hydride or marsh-gas, known in mining districts as fire-damp. It is of an inflammable nature; and when it becomes mixed with from seven to ten times its volume of air, it is highly explosive. ”

“ A large number of boys, known as trappers, are employed in opening the doors to all comers, and in carefully closing the doors immediately after they have passed, in order that the current may not circulate through passages along which it is not intended that it should pass.
The greatest dangers which await the miners are those which result, in the form of terrible explosions, from the presence of inflammable gases in the mines. The great walls of coal which bound the passages in mines are constantly exuding supplies of gas into the air. ”

“ But let us see how these comfortable, easy-moving chaps manage to handle the fuel sufficient to send twenty-five or thirty thousand tons of steel hurtling through the seas with so little apparent haste or effort. The running back of a sliding steel door brings a stream of coal running out of one of the bunkers, coal which, dumped from sacks into the entrance of a chute on one of the upper decks, has worked its way downward by gravity as that beneath it has been fed to the furnaces. ”

“ The necessity for using the coal as a means of protection from shot and shell leads to the bunkers being subdivided into a host of "pockets" holding but a few tons and communicating with each other deviously. The work of getting the coal passed from one to the other of these is far worse than anything of the kind in the Merchant Service, as much worse as is the firing under forced draught for a Belleville boiler than the steady supply of fuel to a well-equipped, natural-draught stokehold of any of our great merchant steamships, where Belleville boilers, thank God, will never be used. ”

“ Probably no industrial operation excites more widespread interest, when accorded publicity, than the mining of coal, and that because of the dangers which attend it. The annual list of victims buried beneath a falling roof, or mangled by runaway cars, causes little comment, but every now and then the world is startled by an appalling catastrophe in which hundreds of men lose their lives. From the early days when growing industry demanded more coal, inventors have been busy devising all sorts of safety appliances for the miner. ”