WORLD’S WORST JOB.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17170, 13 October 1923, Page 4 (Supplement)

WORLD’S WORST JOB.

TRIMMERS ON A TRAMP. (By BOYD CABLE, Author of the sea book, “ The Rolling » Road.”) Whatever claim a ship’s fireman may hare on the title of the “world’s worst job,” T’m very certain that it is not the worker in the stokehold of an Atlantic liner who is in the running. The real candidate for this branch of the world’s worst job is the fireman on a smallish tramp steamer working in tropical waters. I remember one good example of a run round tlie top end of Australia (about 10 degrees south of the equator), west and north across the equator to the Philippines | (about odeg. north), south across the • lino and through Macassar Straits to Java ports, and north over the line again to Singapore. One worked in singlet, dungaree trousers, and unlaced hob-nailed boots: . not “ stripped to the waist,” because this would have stripped the skin from the flesh every time a furnace door was opened to fire or rake it. In the first, minute of the watch below, before work began even, every pore of the body was streaming, and a man was as soaking wet as it he’d stepped out of tho sea. I’ve seen a. man take a boot off, tilt it, and pour perfrom a cup. But. bad enough as his job i.s in such case, the fireman must yield his claim to the “ world’s worst job ” in favour of the coal-trimmer of the same class of steamer under like conditions. The i trimmer’s job is carried on in a dark cavern, dimly lit with a smoky little oil lamp, without oven the draught of the furnaces to create some current- of warm air. shovelling eternally at- the tons of coal dust on which he stands. The super-heated stagnant, air is thick with gritty coal dust, which ; fills eyes, ears, mouth, nostrils; the pecially) is ceaseless, the temperature beyond description. Tlie trimmer on a tramp steamer in the tropics lias mv vote for the worst job in his line.