Hand firing boats

[hayhugh2]

The wheelsman did indeed wheel the whole watch. Even with electric steering (only one to have iron Mike (auto), the auto was only used out on the lake. In the rivers, making or leaving the dock or locks you were in hand gear.

[Guest]

Hand to scroll to the right to find January 2009. Great photos. Really capture shoveling coal into a boiler. The wheeling pictures are something else, too. Did they have Iron Mikes on these ferries, or was the wheelsman holding the wheel for the whole watch?

The trip was back and forth across the Straits of Mackinac. Why would they need to have Iron Mike? They were at the dock a lot loading and unloading rail cars, so it's not like the wheelsman was at the wheel all the time. It's not like an ore boat where the wheelsman was at the wheel all the time.

[Guest]

Hand to scroll to the right to find January 2009. Great photos. Really capture shoveling coal into a boiler. The wheeling pictures are something else, too. Did they have Iron Mikes on these ferries, or was the wheelsman holding the wheel for the whole watch?

[Dave F]

Darryl, I do not see a way to provide a link.
Go to the Great Lakes & Seaway Shipping (http://www.boatnerd.com) home page.
Click on Photo Galleries.
Click on The Historical Perspective Gallery.
Scroll down to January 2009 and click on the Chief Wawatam photo.
There is one hand firing photo on Page 1, five on Page 2, and two on Page 3.

[Darryl]

Dave F., I can't find those boiler room pictures. Can you put up the link?

[Pete in Holland MI]

I have no experience firing a freighter, but I do own a 102 year old steam tractor and on occasion, do fire with coal. My grates are small by comparison to a freighter (26" x 44").

The phrase passed on to me is to "fire little, fire often". To burn correctly and cleanly, the grates need to be kept covered with 2-3" of coal (golf ball size). Too little and a dark spot appears due to the coal burned up and the grates showing, letting cold air thru. Dark spots can also come from too much coal, and it won't burn properly, and just smolder, thus produce little heat. This requires doing a quick check every time coal is added, and to only add to those areas needing it.

The grates need to be sliced (compare to a spatula sliding under the coal fire) to break up the klinkers, which will seal up the grate surface and reduce combustion air flow thru the grates. This happens every half hour or so.

Ash levels under the grates need to be maintained too. Too many ashes that are allowed to raise up and touch the grates will cut off the underside cooling air, causing grates to overheat and warp. Too often, I see fireplace grates that have suffered this same result.

With a good induced draft and properly managed fire, the smoke is nearly transparent. Shut the engine down till it naturally burns, and smokes something fierce.

Ships, for the most part, are naturally aspirated, sometimes helped with a blower, or sometimes, a pressurized boiler room. Increasing the air flow to the fire makes it burn hotter and, if properly managed, cleaner.

A good burning coal fire is indensely hot. Far hotter than a wood fire. Standing in front of an open firebox door wears you down very quickly.

Hope this helps some......

Pete

[Dave F]

For those who may not have seen it, photos of the Chief Wawatam were posted to the Historical Perspectives Gallery in January, 2009. There are some wonderful photos showing Firemen stoking the boilers.

[Jonah]

I have had the honour of hand firing the RMS Segwun several years ago.
To say this is hard work is not an understatement and this is a definitely skilled job. Ad understanding of the relationship between the bridge (communications!), fuel, fire, heat transfer and steam production are a must!

[Lakercapt]

Correct me if I am wrong, but the "bombing" part of the word comes from the fact that you have to accurately hit (with shovels of coal) specific parts of the grates to fill burned out areas and prevent excessive build up of coal in other areas inside the fire box (coal build up makes clinkers - a type of crust that must be broken up by tools).
This leads to some interesting shovel tricks to launch the coal in different directions and distances.
You just don't keep shoveling coal into one spot.

you are spot on as the coal had to be pitched into certain areas not just shovelled in

[eddyfitz]

I was a fireman for 9 months and as we were heading cross-lake from Milwaukee to Grand Haven, Mich when the CRISPIN OGLEBAY lost all power on our 8-12 evening shift. At this point our stokers were no longer working. As we started drifting I glanced over and saw my coalpasser, we will call him Jim, asleep in the cornerer. Jim had been "up the street" in beertown and was not in any shape to be of any help.

I gave a loud yell for him to grab the "banjo" and start shoveling wence he tossed, burped and rolled over and was of no help to me. I gave a loud yell to the engine room as I was not an expert, i.e.a 20 year old fireman, and Arnie the 3rd Engr with the graces of the Chief sent me over the Oiler to keep the stem up. He had just made his Oiler position so was quite familiar as to what I was going thru.

The next day as we pulled away from the dock I waved to Jim as he was boarding a taxi as he had been releived of his coalpassing duties and would head back to Toledo to catch another ship.

[Alex]

Please keep the postings coming! Contrary to what movies show of hand firing, whether it's a locomotive or a boat, I bet there was an art to it.

[Coalburner]

Correct me if I am wrong, but the "bombing" part of the word comes from the fact that you have to accurately hit (with shovels of coal) specific parts of the grates to fill burned out areas and prevent excessive build up of coal in other areas inside the fire box (coal build up makes clinkers - a type of crust that must be broken up by tools).
This leads to some interesting shovel tricks to launch the coal in different directions and distances.
You just don't keep shoveling coal into one spot.

[Lakercapt]

I did it for a very short period when there were several firemen took ill. We had nine of them plus three trimmers.
There were three scotch boilers with three furnaces each.
The previous watch would allow one furnace on each boiler to burn down and you would clean it out of clinker that might have built up. this between keeping the other two furnaces going. The steam pressure would drop below the "Blood" 220psi during this period and the ship slow down.
The trimmer would dump the ashes using a hoist that worked off the vacuum of the main condenser.
Shoveling the coal into the furnace was an art as it had to be put in a certain way to allow for good combustion. By the way if you had a metal belt buckle you turned it sideways as it go very hot.
The trimmer kept the firemen supplied with coal.
It was a miserable job and I was glad to finish doing it.

[geysir]

What does hand bombing mean?

A slang term for shoveling coal by hand into the boiler instead of having an automatic stoker.

When I was a youngster my folks shoveled coal by hand into our home's furnace. My rich relative had an automatic stoker that moved the coal from the pile into the furnace.

[rocky]

What does hand bombing mean?

[A Guest]

Anyone work aboard the hand bomber Chief Wawatam ?

[Darryl]

Steinbrenner ran a fair number of coal boats (since he got them from the other lines that were letting them go) into the 1970s.

There were hand bombers in the fleet, but I didn't work on one. I did work on two coalburners. One with two broken stokers, and I was a wiper so I did a fair amount of shoveling coal into the boiler and shooting ashes, and later I was made a fireman for a short time. Crewing them probably was hard back then, but they were fine to work on.

When in port for a long period of time, you couldn't shoot the ashes, so after you dumped the ashes you raked them out on deck into a big, big pile. The boat was made around 1905, so that was quite an experience.

[geysir]

In 1973 the hand-fired, 600-foot Kinsman Independent left the Soo heading to Duluth at the same time as Steinbrenner's other hand-fired coal burner, the Joe Morrow. The boats were even for quite some time until the Independent got up to 9 mph and slowly walked away for the win. Not a fair race since the Independent had two firemen on each watch and the Morrow only one. After the 4-8 watch on the Independent the bigger fireman always had eight eggs for breakfast while the "little" guy would only have six.

[Alex]

Hi Don, will you mind explaining more? Maybe share what you liked or the challenges there were.

[don668]

I was a fireman in 1954 on the Richard Lindabury, a double-handed hand bomber and in 1957 I was a fireman on the A. T. Kinney which was a single handed hand bomber.