HIDDEN HEROES.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13744, 6 April 1915, Page 3

HIDDEN HEROES.

There is no man in H.M. Navy to-day more deserving of our good wishes than our unassuming friend the stoker. Seldom sharing in any* glory that is going, seldom indeed thought of at all, lie in certain contingencies which, unfortunately, have already materialised in this war, has been drowned miserably, like some rat in its hole, while stacking staunchly to his post. As far as hard grinding labour is concerned, peace or war makes little real difference to the black squad in the coal hole of the great leviathan. It is perpetual shovel and fire, trim and stoke; but what does very materially affect the stoker's comfort is the latitude in which, his vessel may happen to be. Thus, in the Red Sea, where the thermometer may register 96deg. on deck, away down in the bowels of the great ship; at a dizzy depth from the uppper decks, the temperature will easily reach 120. It is a marvel to the landsman —aye, and to the decksman as well—that men can be got to "stick it"—to use a nautical term —under such atmospheric conditions, for let the outer air be ever so stifling, the greedy furnaces will demand not an ounce less coal or attention. It might naturally be thought that stokers as a class 7 must suffer very much physically. Possibly many years of such labour will compel a man to take his leaving ticket at an age which ought still to see him hale and hearty,! but it is a strange, almost unaccountable, fact that the stokers of our navy are an especially fine body of men, who take prominent part in any naval sports going, and compare most favourably in avoirdupois as well as in physical oondition with the Jacks and even the-; Joes, of a ship.

When a stoker of the Mercantile shipping service finishes a shift he flings himself down for a wellearned rest in the first handy place that presents itself, but in His Majesty's Navy it is obligatory upon him that, whenever a watch is over, he must bathe and change his clothing. Thus, when naval stokers adjourn to mess, instead of the black oily squad one might expect to see, there sit down to dinner a sleek, well-groomed body of fellows a y s fresh as paint. It may not be generally known either that., though the stoker is rated a unit of the civil staff, he must periodically undergo physical drill and cutlass and pistol exercise. It is quite within the province of possibility that even nowadays he may 'be suddenly called upon to assist his upstairs friends Jack and Joe in some hotly contested duel of

the sea. It is possible to be a hero in a naval fight while hewing, hacking, and shovelling the gritty coal, far out of sight of the great gleaming guns, and out of the smell even of thesmoke of their discharges. Life or death! Top speed, and just a little more! With an insistent twang the signal comes to the! engine room from the captain's bridge. The sea behind, aye, and occasionally the sea in front, spouts and froths as | if a school of whales were disporting. A cruiser with 15001b broadside at her command is straining every rivet in her Hull to cut across the fairway of a smaller vessel, which dare not accept the obvious challenge, for the poundage of her broadside barely touches four figures, and she is also outclassed in gun range. Who are the real heroes of this onesided encounter? Not the gunners of the bigger warship, as they are virtually immune from danger; not the pursued ship's gunners for not a puff of smoke came from their guns. Trip down the sinuous iron stairway to the hidden heart of the hunted vessel, and view a scene that will compel wonder, admiration and somthing akin to exultation inextricably mixed. Scores of. men are there in the fiery glow and scorching heat of the glorified stokehole, their naked, sweat-running bodies twining and twisting in the throes of j a. feverish activity unrelieved by aj moment's repose. It is upon the sinews, heart, and very soul of these men that the fate of ship and personnel depends. Each spitting crash overhead as a pursuing shell tears a great column of water into spray and spume might have been the herald of disaster and a-ierrible death. The fighting men above may be picked up alive: even if & shell finds the magazine, but tbo stoker—ah, the stoker!—will have gono below with the shovel handle in his gra&p amid the grit and grimes of his calling.—"Chambers's Journal."