Then comes the great anomaly—the immense gulf that divides the two classes of men. As I have said, the merchant-ship engineer knows no superior on board the ship except the master. He deserves the best treatment, the best pay, and the greatest respect; and he gets them. His work cannot be made lighter, it must always be full of danger and toil, but all that can be done by way of mitigation of these onerous conditions is done. On the other hand, the E.R.A. in the Navy is a nobody. His pay is trivial compared with his congener in a merchant ship, he gets no respect from anybody, the youngest officer in the ship is his despot, whom to answer back means degradation and loss of pension, and he is berthed and fed much as a fireman is on board a merchant steamer; so that he continually smarts under a sense of injustice, and looks with longing and envious eyes upon his chums who, wiser than he, have gone into the Merchant Service. More than that, he knows full well that there are no reserves of E.R.A.'s, there are not nearly enough of them to man properly the ships that are now afloat; in case of an outbreak of war with a European Power, huge bribes would be offered to merchant-ship engineers to come and help in the Navy; knows, too, that not one of them would come without being rated as an officer, and receiving all the deference due to an officer in her Majesty's service. And so he may find himself, after years of the most arduous experience, ruled by a nephew who was a babe in arms when he served his time, who has all his life been engaged in one steady occupation on the same kind of engines, never hurried, never bullied, and probably with a sea experience of one-third of his uncle's, the E.R.A.
Therefore, because of these reflections and this knowledge, the E.R.A. is continually warning youngsters from the home shops not to enter the Navy by any means. The Merchant Service is the place for them if they want to be treated properly; the Navy is a place where they will never be anything else but a "dirty Tiffy," looked down upon by the youngest blue-jacket, and liable to be docked of many years' hard-earned pension for pointing out a mistake to an officer who, instead of accepting expert information gratefully, reports them for insolence.
I trust that these remarks about the E.R.A.'s may not be considered malapropos, remembering the great importance of the subject; remembering, too, that in the engineer of to-day we have not a mere mechanic, a man with no thought beyond his day's work and the receipt of his wages. I am afraid that the importance of the engineer, especially at sea, is insufficiently recognized by non-engineers. Every class of the community is benefited by the work of the engineer, and in modern sea-traffic he is, as Kipling has finely said, the kingpin of the ship. He cheerfully takes upon himself a burden of toil and danger such as the ancient world never knew—takes it, too, with the full consciousness of what he is doing; holds himself ready at any time to sacrifice his body for the safety of those whom he is serving,—and the least we who are thus served can do, is to recognize his value to the full.
For my part, I look upon the modern marine engineer as the true nineteenth-century hero. Some day I hope that a roll of honour will be drawn up, giving a list of heroic deeds performed by engineers out of sight, unostentatiously, just as a part of their duty. It would be an inspiring record; and from no source would more details be drawn than from the engine-rooms in the Navy, where, as has been abundantly proved, the engineer is thought but little of; so little, indeed, that all his efforts to obtain some meed of official recognition are at present in vain. Good for us that this does not obtain in the Merchant Service. There the engineer is estimated by his shipmates at his proper worth.
THE FIREMAN AND TRIMMER.
It is a standing mystery to me however men can be found who are willing to become the firemen of marine boilers. Use dulls the edge of apprehension, of course, and in time the mind refuses to be impressed by the sense of imminent danger. Whether on the battle-field or in the stokehold this is so; but apart altogether from that, the nature of the work is such that I always wonder what the state of a man's mind can be who is willing to undertake it, or who, having undertaken it, remains in such a business. The engine-room of a large steamship is a terrible place, with its infinite suggestions of incalculable forces exerting themselves in orderly ways under the steady control and guidance of man; but there is a sense of exultation, of high satisfaction, in the realization of their own powers that goes a long way towards compensating the engineers for the dangers they confront, the discomforts they undergo; and where, as in the Mercantile Marine, their high abilities and undaunted courage are fully recognized, their treatment in pay and provisioning and accommodation as good as can be got, they have also something which atones for a great deal of physical suffering. Yes; I can understand a man choosing to become a marine engineer. But a fireman! The very thought of such a life is terrifying. The sailor in his watch on deck at night is seldom called upon to do anything but stand quietly at the helm or on the look-out. If he be a man of any observation, he may hold sweet communion with Nature, may meditate in the sweetest solitude in the world, gazing out upon the ever-beautiful face of the deep. In any case he may smoke, or doze undisturbed by any call to duty, except some shift of wind calling for trimming or setting sail. It is a pleasant mellow time for the sailor, the night watch at sea.
The fireman is called with the sailor at eight bells. Hastily putting on his shirt, trousers, and boots, he descends by many iron ladders past grim walls of iron that glow with fervent heat, and give out a vibrant hum, telling of the pent-up power within. Down, down he goes, until at last he stands upon an iron floor slightly raised above the very bottom of the vessel. Over his head there is a circular opening, down which comes a steady draught of cool air—that is, if the ship be in regions where the temperature will allow of the air being cool. At any rate, this air is fresh. It is conducted below by the intervention of those huge bell-mouthed ventilators, which are so prominent a feature of every steamship's deck equipment. In front of him towers the face of the boiler, that now claims him as its slave for four hours. It is ornamented by divers strange-looking taps and gauges and tubes, with the use of which he must be familiar. And it has a voice, an utterance that, while not loud, is so penetrating that soon it seems to a novice as if it were reverberating within his skull. It is the speech of imprisoned steam that finds no outlet by any channel except the one provided for it, the complaint of the awful giant who is rending at every square inch of his prison walls in the one supreme, never-ceasing effort to escape. It is utterly disregarded by the fireman: doubtful, indeed, whether he even hears it, or is in any way conscious of it, for it is more to be felt by the whole of the nerve centres than merely through the ears. His concern is with the three vast throats that occupy the lower third of the boiler. And there is no time to be lost. Seizing a shovel, he lifts with it the latch of one of the doors, and flings it wide open with a clang. The ship may be rolling furiously, tumbling to and fro with that peculiarly disconcerting motion that seems to a landsman the subversion of all principles of uprightness, but he must balance himself somehow. With legs spread wide apart, he stands upon that slippery iron floor, stoops, and peers within at the roaring cavern of almost white-hot coals. His trained eye can see just how they are burning; where clinkers are forming, whether perfect combustion is going on, or certain expert manipulation is necessary in order to make it do so. If all is satisfactory he shifts his position slightly sideways, so that he can swing his shovel on one side to the bunker door, at the sill of which a heap of coal is lying, fill it, and then, with a peculiar stroke, send its contents broadcast over the lambent surface of the furnace bed. The mere shovelling of coals into a fire has no relation to the careful, intelligent stoking of a steamship's furnaces, as engineers are never weary of saying. There is as much difference between a good fireman and an incompetent one—although the latter may work far harder than the former—as there is between a good and bad carpenter, or any other skilled worker.