The Majesty of Steam

[Dick Zimmermann]

Dick Zimmermann, Chief Engineer, 1970-71

The Majesty of Steam - and the Men Who Made It

It won't be much longer now before the last fossil-fueled steam-driven ship in the Navy goes cold iron for the last time.  In anticipation of this black day in naval history (at least for some of us), the Navy has already done away with the pipeline for getting BTs ready to join the fleet.  The nuclear-powered carriers and submarines will of course remain steam driven because they don't really have a choice, but the rest of the fleet seems to be destined for gas turbines, diesels, or diesel-electric plants.

If you want to look at this solely from a technical perspective, I'm sure it's a good thing to switch over.  Just as the giant step from sail to steam was a great technological advance in its own day, the transition from steam to gas turbines and diesels is likewise a huge improvement in many ways.  

Anybody who has ever spent time in a steamship's fireroom can vouch for the difficulties that you couldn't even begin to convey to someone who hadn't actually been there.  Someone who had never cleaned firesides could not possibly understand what it's like inside that firebox cleaning the soot off all those boiler tubes where you can hardly see or breathe because of all the flying steam, water, and soot.  Or cleaning watersides by 'punching tubes' in a steam drum that seems to feel just like what a coffin will someday be like.  Or standing watch for four or more hours in a space that must be at least 120 degrees.  Or tearing down a main feed pump while you're sweating so hard it keeps getting in your eyes and sometimes you can hardly see what you're doing.

The new gas turbine and diesel engine power plants won't have any of these drawbacks, and they will most surely be more problem free.  In the language of the technologists who put these things into words, the new plants will give us 'improved reliability and reduced maintenance; they will be easier on the people who have to operate and maintain them.'  These are most definitely true statements, and nobody could even begin to deny them.

Some of us who served on ships with these guys who had to put up with the incredible hardships that came with steam plants, learned that there was something special about the men who kept a steam plant running.  We also learned that there was something special about the plants themselves.  Something I learned during my Chief Engineer tour was that each piece of machinery in a steam plant had its own personality.  I expect that similar thoughts were expressed by steam engineers on railroads, who left the face of the earth many years before their counterparts on ships.  That's a sad situation for former shipboard engineers, just as it was for the railroaders who witnessed the farewell to steam in their world.

As I saw it, steam plants aren't the colorless mechanical robots that diesel or gas turbine plants are - each boiler acts just a little differently than any of the others, even on the same ship.  You had to know how to treat each of the boilers, pumps, and blowers, and you couldn't treat them all the same way.  Diesel engines and gas turbines just go through their assigned motions, and power comes out in a boring kind of non-descript way.  But the power comes out more easily than it does from a steam plant.  AND THAT'S THE ADVANTAGE - IT'S MUCH EASIER.  

But when it comes out more easily, maybe you also lose something, sort of like payback for whatever it is that you're gaining.  The BTs who kept these steam plants running, while working away down in the bowels of ships in spaces called 'The Hole' or 'The Basement' by many, didn't have it so easy.

And it is precisely because they didn't have so easy that they earned a badge of honor from some of us who watched them work.  It wasn't one of those badges that could be sewn onto a shirt, but was instead the admiration that comes from watching someone do something that is incredibly difficult, and recognizing the toughness of character that comes with that accomplishment.

BTs will have their successors in the Navy of the future, but their successors will never truly be able to take their place.

[gregbroek1]

hear hear  ill drink to that