July 1 8, 19 1 8 
Land & Water 
17 
Coaling the Fleet : By Lewis R. Freeman 
A SIGNAL came one morning, ordering the Grand 
Fleet to proceed to sea, and, almost as 
though the sparks of the wireless that caught the 
winged word had themselves lighted the liid and 
waiting fires, wreaths and coils of smoke began 
crowning some scores of towering funnels which a few 
moments before had loomed only in gaunt silhouette against 
the round snow-clad hillsides which ring the Northern Base. 
Presently a dust-begrimed collier shook herself free from 
the moorings which held her to one of the battleships, and, 
floundering nervously as though anxious to get out of the 
way as quickly as possible, n6sed off into the sooty wakes of 
three of her untidy sisters who had been coaling the other 
ships of the division. 
Shortly the engineer-commander, his immediate duties at 
an end for the moment, came up for a breath of fresh air, 
and fell into step with me on the quarter-deck. 
"There you have (so far as the Navy is concerned) the 
Alpha and the Omega of the coal,'' he said, motioning with 
his mittened hand, first toward the retiring colliers, and 
then, with a sweeping gesture, to where the thickening smoke- 
columns were beginning to blend in a murky stratum of 
streaky black above the even Hnes of the anchored ships. 
"All the energy (save only human force, and that stored 
in food and explosives) of the Fleet comes aboard from its 
colliers or oilers," he continued ; "all that is left of it— after 
making steam to run the turbines and dynamos, and for 
working the condensers, cooking, and heating — goes up 
through the funnels or down through the clinker hoppers." 
Then he told me of an incident which had occurred a day 
or two previously. "Some one came into the ward- room," 
he said, "aqd remarked casually that the wireless had just 
picked up a signal from a ship about to go ashore in the 
heavy storm then driving outside. ' What is she ? ' several 
officers asked with quick concern. 'Only a collier,' was the 
reply, and everybody, reassured, resumed the reading of 
their newly arrived papers. ' I was afraid it was a destroyer,' 
was the only comment anyone made. 
"That is just to show," said the engineer-commander, 
"how few on a warship (save those of us whose work is the 
conversion of it into energy) stop to think how vitally impor- 
tant coal really is to us. As a matter of fact, one can easily 
imagine circumstances in which the loss of a collier would be 
far more serious than that of a destroyer, cruiser, or even 
of a battleship." 
It will doubtless surprise many people to know that the 
average modern battleship lying at anchor and waiting, to 
be ordered to sea may easily consume twenty-five tons of 
coal a day, which figure will be raised from 50 to 100 per 
cent, by one or two harbour spins at half or quarter-speed 
for target practice. 
The course of the coal from the hold of the collier to 
where, on the fire-bars, its potential energy is transformed 
to furnish power for a battleship is an interesting one, 
though I should not care to follow it quite so closely as 
in the story an officer told me of his ring. Emerging from 
the hold of a collier after a couple of hours spent there directing 
sack-filling, he missed a large signet-ring which he had been 
wearing when he descended into the dusty hole. Search 
was, of course, out of the question ; but, by a lucky chance, 
he happened to mention his loss to one of the men who had 
been working in the hold. He, in turn, spoke of it on the 
mess-decks, which was the only reason that led the stoker, 
who, three days later at sea, found a shining lump of metal 
among the cHnkers he was raking out to dump', to bring it 
to the officer in question. The gnarled, ash-pitted lump 
bore no resemblance to a ring ; but a distorted, but still 
recognisable, section of the seal identified it beyond a doubt. 
It had been shovelled into a sack of coal, hoisted in the 
latter to the deck, dumped into a bunker, finally to work 
out of the bottom of the latter into the stokehold and be 
thrown under the boilers. 
The speedy coaling of even an eight-knot tramp is almost 
always desirable ; with a warship it is absolutely essential. 
All the principal navies of the world have studied the matter 
very closely, but down to this day no practicable contrivance 
has been evolved which will go far toward eliminating the 
variable human element in coaling. Something can be done 
with mechanical carriers where a ship can berth alongside 
high bunkers, but nothing of the kind appears to have been 
devised that is not too bulky to carry about on either a 
warship or a collier. The construction of a warship makes it 
Copyrieht in U.S.a! 
impracticable to have large openings into which coal might 
be hoisted in bulk from a collier. The American Navy coals 
its battleships by hoisting that fuel to the decks with huge 
mechanical "grabs," but, according to such information 
as is available to me, this method (while it effects 
a saving in labour), does not eqiial in speed the British 
method of man-handling the coal at- every stage of its 
transit, except the hoisting. 
A ship may coal at any hour of the day or night — especially 
if she is just in from the sea and there appears to be a chance 
of her being called upon to put out again on short notice — 
but the usual time is the morning. Barrows and sacks are 
brought out, and such other preparations as practicable are 
made the night before. Breakfast is served at an early 
hour, every one — officers and men — coming down to it in 
their "coaling togs." 
The decks are black with waiting men as the collier comes 
alongside, and the instant the mooring-lines are made fast 
several hundred of them — each with a broad short-handled 
scoop — clamber over her rail and leap down into the open 
holds. Others toss down bundles of the sacks in which the 
coal is hoisted aboard. They are made of extremely heavy 
jute, bound with light manilla rope, and of a size sufficient 
to hold two hundredweight of coal. At the mouth are two 
beckets or iron rings, through which the strop is rove. 
The sacks are filled by scoop in the holds of the collier, 
and dragged together in bunches of about a dozen each. 
The wire cable from the hoisting-boom is run through the 
rings at the mouth of each sack and made fast. As the 
winch winds it, it tightens and takes up the slack, thus 
drawing the mouths of the sacks together and preventing 
the spilling of coal in hoisting. The instant the sacks are 
hoisted to the deck of the warship a man casts loose one end 
of the wire cable, and on the swinging back of the whip it is 
pulled out of the rings, and the coal left ready for the barrow- 
men. 
The wheeling of the sacks, from the point where they are 
left in a tottering pile on -the deck to the opening of the 
chutes down which their contents are dumped to the bunkers, 
is the most important stage of the operation, for the way it 
is carried out makes all the difference between a fast and a 
slow coaling. Obviously, then, it is to the organisation of 
this "traffic" that the greatest attention is given. 
Since a battleship is primarily made for fighting, the 
facility with which coal may be taken aboard is necessarily 
a secondary consideration. Between turrets, hatches, and 
various other obstructions on the decks, the route by which 
a coal-sack is wheeled to a chute is always a devious one. 
Part of it usually runs across open deck, where "double- 
track trafific" is possible; at other points the way may be 
so narrow that only a single barrow can be wheeled through 
at a time, and even that only when carefully steered. 
But perhaps we can learn more about it by taking our 
barrow and falUng into line. The last of a pile of sacks has 
just been trundled away, and, to the scream of the winch, 
another "cluster" is rising slowly out of the hold to take 
its place. The scoop-men are falling into their stride by 
this time, and from now on you can expect them to be 
sending up a fresh "boquet" every forty or fifty seconds. 
That your barrow wheels may have a fair run, a man with 
a scoop pushes aside the lumps of coal which have fallen 
out of the last sacks, and another man shovels them up 
and throws them into a half-filled sack hanging to the rail. 
There is a warning cry of " Stand clear 1 " and the cluster 
of sacks plumps down upon the deck with a heavy thud. 
Even while it is still in the air two men have seized corners 
of the swaying mass and pushed it along so that it lands in 
the centre of the rather restricted working space in this 
particular corner of the fo'c'sle deck. At the same time, 
one of them frees an end of the wire cable, and, as the boom 
retreats, the two help to make it run smoothly out thiough 
the beckets at the mouths *of the sacks. At the release of the 
encircling grip of the cable some of the sacks begin to topple 
over, but before one of them has fallen to its side (which 
would, of course, result in the spilling of a good part of its 
contents), quick footed barrow- men have pushed their trucks 
under them, and they are held sufficiently upright to retain' 
their loads. A tug or two from one of the "loading" men 
sets a sack straight on a barrow, and the man behind the 
latter — watching from the comer of an eye to keep from 
fouling another load — backs quickly but carefully out, 
executes a dextrous right-about, and trundles off on a trot 
along the track to the nearest chute. 
