Topic starter
03/02/2010 3:04 pm
I know these history questions aren't very popular but I have one. I was reading the description of the J.M.WHITE in Ways Directory the other day. In it he quoted an article written by Will S. Hays describing the boat. In the article Hays wrote "There are seven sixteen burner gold-gilt chandeliers in the main cabin".
My question is this.....how did they light and extinguish all those "burners"? I mean a sidewheel boat shook and swayed so the chandeliers must have swayed a lot. I can't imagine a cabin boy on a ladder with a match tackling a job like that. Did the chandeliers lower? If they did I have never seen or heard about a lowering mechanism.
By "burner" was Hays refering to gas burner or were they coal oil? My aunt used to live in an old house in Jeffersonville and in the attic they had a "gas generator" for the gas lit chandeliers. So having gas lights on a steamboat is not an impossibility.
Any thoughts?
03/02/2010 5:42 pm
Lighting
Maybe a long stick with a lighted wick like the old street lamplighters had, or today's church acolytes use???? Would they have had to remove glass covers (chimneys?) to get to the lighting area?
One aside here, regarding the swaying of a boat: when the Dukes of Dixieland started on the NATCHEZ back in 1994, the trombone player had a solo number in which he stood on one foot and moved the slide with his other foot. One night they were inside at the stern and Ben was playing this solo just as we turned around into our own wheelwash. Last time he scheduled that song at that time, in fact I don't think I ever saw him do that number on the boat again!
03/02/2010 7:17 pm
The gas light fixtures I've seen are not suspended from the ceiling by a chain or other flexible means. Rather, they are attached to a solid rod or pipe that delivered the gas. There are several older homes here in Muscatine that still have the original gas fixtures that have now been electrofied. The fixtures on steamboats may have been hung the same way.
04/02/2010 7:24 am
There are also lights that held their own oil and were on counterbalanced or spring balanced hangers, so you could pull them down to light them, then lift them back into place. We have one that has been electrified in our 1856 C. F. Lott home museum.
S'
David D.
04/02/2010 10:23 am
All of the answers are probably correct. The lamplighter was a regular crew position on the old-time packets. It was an all-day job. He had to clean the chimneys, trim the wicks and fill the cisterns of all of those 112 lamps during the day. Running lights, engineroom lamps, deck lights and searchlights also had to be maintained. At night the lamplighter lit them and curtained the skylight transoms. In addition there were portable lanterns to fill his spare time.
Bless Thomas A. Edison and Nikola Tesla every time you think about it.
04/02/2010 5:30 pm
Hmm, since most early boat systems were DC, in this case Edison probably gets more credit! Poor Nikola, he's pretty much the forgotten one, but probably the greater influence and contributor to our modern electrical system.
Somewhere I still have the plans for 1/4 million volt Tesla coil. . . I swear that someday I'm gonna build that sucker!!
Bwahahaha! Yeees Igor. . . .
🙂
S'
David D.
05/02/2010 4:45 pm
I would say they were oil lamps. Some chandeliers had extra bracing or were tied off in some way to prevent swaying, but that photo doesn't really show any of that. Perhaps this grand vessel was not expected to rock.
They could have been counterbalanced so the fixture could be pulled down. There appears to be some extra stuff above the lamps that could be part of that mechanism. The knob hanging down in the middle could have a ring in it for hooking into with a tool, so as to pull the thing down.
Never-the-less, it is mind boggling.
05/02/2010 10:12 pm
Rigid
The reflection in the mirror appears to show it mounted to a solid pipe.