Fireman (steam engine)
A fireman, stoker or boilerman, is a person whose occupation it is to tend the fire for the running of a
Nautical
The
Large coal-fueled vessels also had individuals working as coal trimmers, who delivered coal from the coal bunkers to the stokers. They were responsible for all coal handling with the exception of the actual fueling of the boilers.[citation needed]
The Royal Canadian Navy had coal-fired ships, the last of which were replenishment ships. All marine engineers in the RCN, regardless of their platform (CPF, 280 or AOR)[clarification needed] are nicknamed stokers.[citation needed]
In the
Railways
On
Whoever was responsible for fire-starting would clear the ash from the firebox ashpan prior to lighting the fire, adding water to the engine's boiler, making sure there is a proper supply of fuel for the engine aboard before starting journeys, starting the fire, raising or banking the fire as appropriate for the amount of power needed along particular parts of the route, and performing other tasks for maintaining the locomotive according to the orders of the
Mechanical stoker
A mechanical stoker is a device which feeds coal into the firebox of a boiler. It is standard equipment on large stationary boilers and was also fitted to large steam locomotives to ease the burden of the fireman. The locomotive type has a screw conveyor (driven by an auxiliary steam engine) which feeds the coal into the firebox. The coal is then distributed across the grate by steam jets, controlled by the fireman. Power stations usually use pulverized coal-fired boilers.[citation needed]
Notable stokers
Vladimir Lenin, disguised as Konstantin Petrovich Ivanov, escaped to Finland in 1917 on train 293 from Udelnaya Station. Hugo Jalava, a co-conspirator and the train's driver, helped to further conceal Lenin by having him work as his stoker. Jalava later recalled that Lenin shovelled with gusto as he fed the engine, making the train run fast.[6]
There were approximately 176 stokers on board the coal-fed ocean liner
Simeon T. Webb was the fireman on the Cannonball Express when it was destroyed in the legendary wreck that killed engineer Casey Jones. Jones's last words were "Jump, Sim, jump!" and Webb did jump, survived, and became a primary source for information about the famous wreck.[11][12]
KFC founder Colonel Sanders worked as a railroad stoker when he was 16 or 17.[13]
A 14-year-old
Depictions in popular culture and art
Art
- coal bunkers and stokeholes.[citation needed]
Events
- Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson acted as stoker on the steam locomotive No. 60163 Tornado while performing a Race to the North against Richard Hammond and James May. It was an homage to the historical Race to the North, a rivalry between British steam engines, trains and men of different companies between London and Edinburgh.[citation needed]
Film
- The lead character Bill Roberts (George Bancroft) in Josef von Sternberg's motion picture The Docks of New York (1928) is a stoker.[citation needed]
- The lead character in Aleksei Balabanov's 2010 film The Stoker, Ivan Matveyevich Skryabin, is a stoker.
Literature
- The first chapter of Franz Kafka's novel Amerika (published posthumously in 1927) is entitled "The Stoker".[citation needed]
- Mat Burke, a principal role in Eugene O'Neill's play Anna Christie (1921) is a ship's stoker.[citation needed]
- Yank, the protagonist of Eugene O'Neill's play The Hairy Ape (1922), is a stoker on a ship.[citation needed]
Music
- "Casey Jones”, a song by the American rock band the Grateful Dead, is about a railroad engineer who is on the verge of a train wreck due to his train going too fast, a sleeping switch man, and another train being on the same track and headed for him. The last two lines of the song reference the train’s fireman: “Come round the bend, you know it’s the end. The fireman screams and the engine just gleams.”
- "Stoker Dreams" and "Stoker Love" are songs by the Russian indie group Chimera.
- The RMS Mauretania (1906) is remembered in a song, "The fireman's lament" or "Firing the Mauretania", collected by Redd Sullivan.[15] The song starts "In 19 hundred and 24, I ... got a job on the Mauretania"; but then goes on to say "shovelling coal from morn till night" (not possible in 1924 as she was oil-fired by then). The number of "fires" is said to be 64. Hughie Jones also recorded the song but the last verse of Hughie's version calls upon "all you trimmers" whereas Redd Sullivan's version calls upon "stokers".[i]
Notes
- ^ A stoker shovelled coal into the furnaces of the boilers. A trimmer worked in the coal bunkers, bringing more coal forward as the nearer coal was used by the stokers. A boilerman was a more skilled role, with some responsibility for managing the operation of the boiler.
References
- ^ YouTube. Firing A Steam Locomotive, 1947 Educational Documentary for WDTVLIVE42, West Virginia.
- ^ "Water tender". The Free Dictionary. Retrieved February 2, 2010.
- Naval History & Heritage Command. May 19, 1999. Archived from the originalon September 16, 2012. Retrieved February 2, 2010.
- ^ "Boiler Technician, Machinist's Mate Ratings to Merge" (PDF). Navy.mil. U.S. Navy. Retrieved 2009-01-19.
- ^ "UP:Past and Present Job Descriptions".
- OCLC 987423968.
- ISBN 978-1-905026-71-5.
- ^ "Titanic Sinking Engine Room Heroes". gendisasters.com.
- ^ "Titanic". UCO.es. p. 1.
- Crew of the RMS Titanic#Engineering crew
- ^ "The Historic Casey Jones Home & Railroad Museum in Jackson, Tennessee – Celebrating 50 Legendary Years! 1956-2006". Casey Jones Home & Railroad Museum. Archived from the original on May 28, 2006. Retrieved June 28, 2016.
- ^ Hubbard, Freeman (1945). Railroad Avenue. McGraw Hill.
- ISBN 978-0-9855439-0-7. Archived from the original(PDF) on September 21, 2013. Retrieved October 1, 2013.
- ISBN 9780807097762.
- ^ Hugill, Stan in Spin, The Folksong Magazine, Volume 1, # 9, 1962.
Further reading
- "Titanic's unsinkable stoker". BBC News. Northern Ireland. March 30, 2012.
- Huibregtse, Jon R. (2010). American Railroad Labor and the Genesis of the New Deal, 1919-1935. University Press of Florida.
- Walter Licht (1983). Working for the Railroad: the organization of work in the nineteenth century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691047003.
- Orr, John W. (2001). Set Up Running: The Life of a Pennsylvania Railroad Engineman, 1904-1949. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
- Tuck, Joseph Hugh (1976). Canadian Railways and the International Brotherhoods: Labour Organizations in the Railway Running Trades in Canada, 1865-1914. University of Western Ontario. Dissertation.