NAVY’S STOKERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 April 1938, Page 10

NAVY’S STOKERS

HOW THEY ARE TAUGHT, Of the 112,000 officers and men provided for the Royal Navy under Vote A of the Navy Estimates for 1937, no fewer than 21,395, or about 19 per cent., are stoker ratings, says a writer in the “Sunday Observer.” Next to the men of the actual seamen branch, who number 37,274, they represent the strongest branch of the Service. The days have long since passed when stokers were sometimes men of little education or knowledge beyond that required for the back-breaking work of shovelling coal into the furnaces of coal-fired boilers. That task may have demanded little more than brute strength, a great deal of knack, and superb power of endurance to withstand long hours of arduous labour in the none-to-pleasant conditions of an old-time stokehold. Nowadays, with practically all of his Majesty’s ships burning oil instead of coal, the advance in propelling machinery, the advent of superheated steam and internal combustion engines, and the general all-round complication in every type of machinery, a far higher standard of knowledge is necessary. More often than not recruits for the stoker branch are young men who possess a definite bent for, or interest in, mechanics, or have been in some sort of mechanical employment ashore.

Provided they are up to a certain physical standartband can pass a simple educational test, men are entered after reaching the age of IS for 12 years’ service, followed by another period of ten years if they wish to qualify for life pensions in their forties.

On first entry they are sent to the •Royal Naval Barracks.at Portsmouth, Chatham, or Devonport, where they are provided with uniform and initiated into naval life by a “disciplinary course” lasting eight weeks. This course, common to all new entries who do not pass through one or other of the training establishments for seamen boys or artificers, consists of drill and physical training, with lectures and practical instruction in such matters as naval routine and tradition, the upkeep of kit, and their general duties in a ship-of-war at sea.

While still accommodated in the barracks, stokers then undergo another eight weeks’ technical instruction in the mechanical training establishments at the three home ports. At Chatham, when I visited it recently, about 100 young men from many parts of the country were going through this final part of their preliminary training before being drafted to sea. They join, I was informed, .at the average rate of about 14 a week. . Each class is taken throughout its course by the same instructor, and the training, if short, is essentially practical. and thorough. The men are first taught with stones and a dumriiy furnace, how to lay fires in and stoke an old-fashioned, coal fired boiler. This is followed by explanations and practical demonstrations of the various types of boilers and their fittings; the use of oilfuel, and the lighting up of and raising steam in oil-fired boilers; the functions and running of the auxiliary machinery, dynamos, and evaporators; the actual stoking of' 1 a coalfired boiler; and the working and upkeep of reciprocating engines turbines, internal combustion engines, and the like. The last week of all is spent in electrical work.

“NEVER FOUND WANTING.” The instruction is mainly concentrated upon teaching the men the elements of their work, the use of simple tools, and what they must expect to find in the stokeholds of his Majesty’s

ships at sea. Their future progress depends entirely upow themselves. They are eligible, after more advanced courses in the mechanical training establishments, for promotion to leading stoker, stoker petty officer, and chief stoker, while a limited number who show special intelligence and mechanical aptitude are earmarked for future advancement to mechanician after further courses ashore. Of the mechanicians, a few subsequently rise to warrant and finally to commissioned rank.

The stokers’ work, which is almost •entirely out of sight to laymen, ipay •be different from and less spectacular than that of the seamen, though stokers also are trained in the use of small arms and for various duties on deck'. It is as well to remember, too that it is no longer the sailors, but the officers and men of the engineering departments of his Majesty’s ships who manage the motive power that carries chose ships to the. positions in which they are required in peace and in war. In the course of time, reciprocating engines have given way to turbines, and oil fuel has taken the place of coal; but ever since steam superseded sail, it is their pride, and the Navy’s pride,

that, no matter what may be asked of them, tile officers and men of the engineering department have never been found wanting. They nfever will.