Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

Fantasy Football Challenge - Library of Books for Football Fanatics

Fantasy Football Challenge presents
Young Knights of the Empire

68 of 87

of the best description for six weeks while doing the journey out. The crew, of course, live forward, and, including seamen, stokers, engineers, stewards, etc., they number about 300 men. On the navigating staff of officers, quartermasters, and look-out men depends much of our safety at sea. Then down in the depths of the ship are the engineers and stokers, who make the ship go. Our chief engineer, like all chief engineers, is a Scotsman, and he loves and takes a pride in his engines, and is glad to show them. In Rudyard Kipling's song of the chief engineer, he describes him as looking upon his engines as almost the work of God, in their wonderful power and intricate working. * * * * * IN THE ENGINE ROOM. And it is indeed an impressive sight to stand below these great monsters of steel and watch them faithfully and untiringly pounding at their work, all in order, and exactly in agreement with each other, taking no notice of night or day, of storm or calm, but slinging along at all times, doing their duty with an energetic goodwill which makes them seem almost human--almost like gigantic Boy Scouts! The great steel shaft which the four pistons keep driving round is nearly 100 yards in length, and carries the big bronze screw propeller at its end, which thrusts the ship along. There are two of these, one on each side of the ship, which is therefore called a twin-screw vessel. There are four cylinders to each shaft, and the same lot of steam is used, passing from one cylinder to the other, beginning with the small high-pressure cylinder, which it enters at its highest strength, something like 250 lb. to the square inch, and ending with the big low-pressure cylinder, where the pressure is only about 5 lb. Then there are numbers of other engines. One for condensing the salt water from the sea and making it into fresh water for the boilers. This is done by boiling up the salt water so that the watery part of it becomes steam, while the salty part remains behind as salt; the steam, when cooled, becomes fresh water, and is then fit to be used in the boilers to make steam. * * * * * THE STOKEHOLD. Then we go into the stokehold among the mighty boilers. Here are powerful, grimy men at work getting coal out of the coal bunkers, and shovelling it into the furnaces. It sounds easy to shovel coal on to a fire, but it takes a lot of practice to get the knack of stoking a fire properly, and a lot of strength and skill to throw great shovelfuls quickly and well into the right part of the furnace. The stokers work in gangs for four hours at a time, under "leading stokers," whose duty it is to see that the proper pressure of steam is kept up in the boilers by the heat of the fires. Anyone who has travelled on an ocean-going steamer will know the sound which comes up from the interior of the ship every twenty minutes or so, which sounds like a rataplan being hammered by someone for his own amusement. This is in reality the signal which is given by striking iron with a shovel, and can be heard by the men all over the stokehold, telling them to stoke up their various fires. Besides the main engines there are pumping engines for supplying water to the boilers and to the various parts of the ship. Then there are ice-making machines for keeping the food-storage rooms cold, and electric dynamos for supplying electric light all over the vessel, and for use in the laundry. * * * * * THE LAUNDRY. This is an interesting department. Here all the bed sheets, towels, tablecloths of the ship, and the linen of passengers are washed, dried, and ironed by machinery. The linen is put into a circular "drum" full of soapy water and whirled round and round till well washed. It is then partly dried by being put into another metal tub, which is whirled round by electricity at such a pace that the water flies out of the clothes. These are then put into a kind of mangle between hot steel rollers, which squeeze out any water that remains, and at the same time so heats the things that they come out quite dry and ironed into the airing-room, where they receive a final drying in hot air.

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