Heizraum der Olympic

1911 · Boiler Room · Work 200 of 1,871

Heizraum der Olympic, 1911, Boiler Room

The stokehold of the Olympic with double ended boilers facing each other across the plates, firemen swinging shovels into open furnace doors, heaped coal, ash hoists and water gauges on the bulkhead.

What it was used for
159 furnace doors: 24 double-ended boilers with six furnaces each and five single-ended with three, spread over six boiler rooms (British Wreck Commissioner's Report of 1912 on her sister Titanic; the layout from "The Shipbuilder", 1911). Her sister Titanic mustered 159 firemen and 73 trimmers for them (Encyclopedia Titanica), in watches of four hours on and eight off; the trimmers shovelled the coal in the bunkers and barrowed it to the boiler rooms. Testifying under oath before the US Senate in 1912, Bruce Ismay gave, for the Titanic, "perhaps 620 to 640 tons" of coal a day at 70 revolutions, "about 820 tons" at full speed, and 6,000 tons of coal aboard leaving Southampton.
What was new
What was new was that the rhythm was set from above. "The Shipbuilder" described Kilroy's Stoking Indicator in 1911: the engineer set the regulator to the rate of firing he wanted, and electrically operated indicators, one for each boiler, gave "visible and audible intimation to the fireman at the exact moment when each furnace is to be fired". Where the fireman had held the timing, the machinery now held it. The barb: in 1912 the Olympic's firemen turned the safety question against the company. According to titanicofficers.com, on 24 April 1912 285 firemen, greasers and trimmers left the ship with only three exceptions, because they judged the Berthon collapsible boats newly brought aboard to be unfit; on 5 May 1912 the Portsmouth Police Court found, against 53 seamen who had then left the ship off Spithead, "wilful disobedience" under the Merchant Shipping Act 1894 proved, and dismissed the men without penalty.

Further reading