The largest steamers require over 150 men to work the furnaces and machinery, and the attention given is hard and unremitting. In some of the fast Atlantic greyhounds the strain is terribly severe, especially when the sea is beginning to run high. The rollers may be but 20 feet, yet these are quite high enough even for a splendid ocean racer to contend with and yet maintain her speed.
Now her bows are pointing sky high, and her stern is deeply submerged; now she takes a header plump into the trough of the sea, and the engines race round; the propeller is suddenly raised out of water. But blow high, or blow low, on she goes, and the engineers are always busy. The furnaces roar with ceaseless rage. For days and nights the fires are kept at glowing heat. A forced blast maintains the draught; the steam condensed back into warm water is supplied to the boilers; half-naked men work hour after hour to rake the fires, clean them, pile on the fuel, and keep the most powerful head of steam the boilers can stand.
When the furnace doors are opened tongues of flame leap forth, and the heat is enough to make a man sick. But with head turned away, the stoker stirs up the fire with his huge “slice” or fire rake, and cleans out the clinker clogging the bars.
Then on go the coals! One layer, shot in from the shovel with unerring precision and skilful experience, right at the back; then another just in front of the first, and so on till the long furnace is filled. Bang! the furnace door clangs, and the man reels away, sick and exhausted, with tingling eyes and heaving chest. Then coal has to be brought from the bunkers to the furnaces, tons of it per day, and if the ship rolls too much for the barrows to be used, the fuel must be carried in baskets.
There is an engineer in charge of each stoke hole, and two on the platform in each engine room; as a rule, the staff are on duty in turns—four hours out of every twelve. But if the weather be bad they may have harder times.
No matter how hot the machinery becomes, the engineers must not reduce speed, except it be to prevent disaster. Oil is swabbed on in bucketfuls, so to speak, but at every thrust the polished steel may gleam dry and smoking. Then on goes the water, as if there actually was a conflagration, and meantime a mixture of oil and sulphur is dabbed on. The water flies off in steam, so hot are the bearings, so terrific the friction of the incessant speed; and at last, down comes the reluctant order, wrung out of the chief like gold from a miser—“Slow her down.”
It is done—dampers are clapped on furnaces, steam pressure dropped a little, and engines reduced to half speed; the three great cranks of the high, intermediate, and low pressure cylinders move round easily, and the tremendous noise gradually sinks to a murmur, compared with the previous rush and roar. The machinery cools. But when quite safe, on is piled the speed once more, and again the cranks fly round, and the mighty engines work their hardest to drive the mammoth ship through the surging green rollers.
So superbly are these marine engines built, and so excellently are they maintained, being continually overhauled, so as to be kept in the pink of perfection, that, as years go on, they seem to “warm to their work” and do even better than at first.
On the completion of the 200th round voyage of the celebrated “White Stars,” Germanic and Britannic, about January, 1894, they seemed steaming as regularly and as fast, or faster than ever. Thus, on the 198th outward trip of the Germanic, in September, 1893, she made the fastest westward passage, but one, she had ever accomplished. During their lives, it was said these vessels had maintained remarkable uniformity in speed, and each vessel had steamed 200 times 6200 nautical miles, that is nearly a million and a-half statute miles, with the original engines and boilers—a performance, in all probability, without parallel in the world.
Those people who care for figures may be interested in knowing that the Britannic had been 91,741 hours under steam, and 85,812 hours actually under weigh. Her engines had made 280 million revolutions, and maintained an average speed of 15 knots, or 17¼ statute miles an hour, while she had burnt 406,000 tons of coal. During their nineteen years of life the two vessels had carried 100,000 saloon, and over 260,000 steerage passengers, in safety and in comfort.