Internal boiler room temperatures - Civil War Steam boat era

Excellent question! Most of the civil war era boats did not have a boiler "room" as such- the boilers were open to the air and view and were mostly fired from the front. Any wind from the boat's passage which was not obstructed by freight or the staircase would reach the firemen directly. That said, there was no insulation on the firebox fronts (or most anything else) so there would have been fierce radiant heat. The coal fired boats usually had a coal bunker facing the fireboxes, so they were probably hotter. The armed military vessels, iron and tin clads especially were all enclosed and often had the boilers set down into the hull. Lord knows what the temperatures reached in them! Still, it couldn't have been much different from the environment that the black gang worked in on ocean going steamships. Took a tough man to fire one. According to many accounts, it was not uncommon for the boat to supply whiskey to the firemen. Seems to me that would have contributed to dehydration, but maybe they didn't care (or never sobered up enough to find out).

John, Hank & steamboating colleagues:
Interesting topic on boiler room temperatures etc., and one I've always mused over. There are a number on this web who could enlighten us even more and the list would start with Alan L. Bates moving on to Kenny Howe, Shipyard Sam, Tom Schiffer...just for starters. Kenny's presentation for the MOR group at the Howard Museum focused on this in his slides and comments on the horrendous heat in the engine room, boiler spaces of then then new MISSISSIPPI QUEEN. Kenny was instrumental in mounting those engines and was more than open to what it was like. From what I review here in Alan's THE WESTERN RIVERS STEAMBOAT CYCLOPOEDIUM, there couldn't have been much to any 'real' insulation in bulkheads, decks etc. Also add the factor of extreme summer heat and humidity further making life miserable for the firemen, engineers and roustabouts. In extreme winter old accounts relate how the roustabouts huddled in/around the boilers for warmth. Coaling any steamboat or ship was a much-hated and dirty chore by the crew.

When asbestos came on the scene to insulate pipes etc. is a good question on my part. Was any insulation employed prio to that? Old ice houses and other buildings ashore employed large amounts of cork along with charcoal. Other accounts mention use of horse hair. How these would have worked on a boat near flaming boilers and super-heated piping, cylinders is unknown to me.

Though "not steamboats,' you're on the money Hank RE: large ocean ships and the unenviable role of the 'black gang.' We touched on this in web postings several years back but worth reviewing. Many large navy and other ocean ships converted to oil on/around/after World War I...but not all. My late father who would be 93 vividly recalled the 'black gang' on ocean ships. They were divided into different categories: first was shovelers/breakers who heaved the coal from the deep bunkers, 'broke' the lumps into smaller nuggets; next were the haulers who trundled it in barrows to the furnace doors; then were the trained firemen who heaved, banked, raked the coals in the fireboxes. It was a strict hierarchy. On the big Atlantic liners/ships British owned most of the men were Irish. It was a hard, cruel life 'below decks.' The daily ration of 'grog' was customary and is mentioned even on early steamboats here but more prevalent on British vessels and in the British Naval fleet. German vessels may have provided beer and perhaps Franz could enlighten us on that. It could be either rum or gin [Mostly rum] that was served in a tin cup about the measure of a pint. The custom was thought to have originated centuries ago when the British were involved in the Caribbean and other hot weather ports. The booze was ladled in from a large barrel or porcelain container and cut 1/3rd with water. The grog barrel was often wood with brass fittings polished reading on the sides TO THE KING [Or Queen]. The British Admiralty abandoned the custom long about the 1970s or so with the emergence of concerns over drug and alcohol abuse. There's a Kill Joy in every crowd! For years the CUNARD LINE maintained for the crew a kind of crew bar below decks and a famous one was the 'Pig n' Whistle.' Frank Prudent may be able to add to this as he too is a big CUNARD fan. I was invited to the crew bar on the old QUEEN ELIZABETH in the 1960s and it was a real treat--and honor. They drank stout, gin and tossed darts.

I well recall below in the boiler and turbine rooms of the old QUEEN MARY, QUEEN ELIZABETH [*Big Liz] the temperatures rising to 130 degrees. The men on duty worked a shorter watch of three hours in extreme conditions. Those huge banks of boilers roared with a white hot heat under forced draft. Entry to the boiler spaces was via a kind of atmospheric chamber lock. Entering you were assailed by the roar, heat and sense of increased air pressure which, upon speaking, made your voice high and strained like when kids inhale the gas from a carnival balloon. Thje days of gaining casual access to major engine spaces on major ships is long, long gone. Again, thanks for your initial posting and follow. Most fascinating to one like me who's seen a little of below decks and interested. Now, think what it was like in the traditional steamboat 'cook house' or galley where the cooks and stewards slaved from morning to night. 'Romance on the water?' I doubt it.

Cheers,
R. Dale Flick

Firstly: I have never set foot on a Civil War gunboat. I notice that many of them had conspicuous ventilators on the roof. They probably admitted combustion and cooling air to the firebox.
I have fired a coal burning towboat in my somewhat checkered past. It was in November and the weather was warm, not hot. Like most towboats, the Kongo had the boilers enclosed all 'round and the firebox had wide doors on both sides of the boat. We got it into our heads to force the pop valves to open. First, we in the deck crew wheeled in some extra coal and it was dumped conveniently near the firing doors. When all was ready the fireman and and four deckhands each served one door, bailing coal like mad. The West Kentucky coal was a mine-run mixture of clay, shale and scrap iron. We bailed coal into the furnaces for about an hour and she actually popped. The smoke is dissipating to this day down there above Memphis. Our egos satisfied, the deck crew retired from firing.
The heat was not oppressive durng this exercise.

Maybe, some one can ask the "black gang" on the BADGER how hot it is in her boiler room when she's being worked. As far as I know, she has the last coal fired marine boilers still operating on such a large ship

Mid 1800s boiler room temperature

The temperature of the area around wood-fired furnaces on steam boats must have been high, but uncertain whether anyone had a thermometer that would have told such temperature. At the Commercial Hospital in Cincinnati, patients' temperatures were taken and charted on hand made charts. Billings once noted that he had a thermometer after he left Cincinnati. Only the energy of interns willing to to the temperature meaurement, drawing the chart, etc, actually did this.

Allen describes opene furnace doors. Firemen worked four hours on and four hours off.

Purpose of the question was to determine whether people working 4 hour shifts and were heated up for that time lost certain characteristics of certain diseases. Ordinarily, men who are conditioned, thin, used to work or running, actually do develop internal temperatures of 104 and maintain them with light clothing and plenty of water, and lose body heat from evaporation of sweat. Also, they develop a thermal tolerance which enables them to tolerate the heat if they have been around same.

Cooks etc in on boats must have been around lots of heat, and perhaps burned themseves as they worked on close quarters.

John Steiner

Hi, John:
Good questions posed and no doubt you are seeking information that would be almost 'clinical' in nature. Funny, nearly the same topic was brought up tonight at my club meeting from people discussing the old 'Marine Hospital' system on the rivers. Capt. Fred Way wrote/said that pilots suffered hernias at an unusual rate in addition to what we know today as sun related skin cancer. Certain 'ailments' the men then suffered then can't be discussed here. Heat relating to retarding certain diseases has been studied for years, as you know. Heat can weaken the system or, in turn, retard the growth of systemic bacteria. 'Sweating' goes back to the days of Small Pox. Heating of blood clinically has/is used to aid in stemming certain diseases. In World War II England, when faced with the Blitz bombing raids and lack of drugs, experimented with a treatment in which patients fighting gross infections were literally 'flooded' sytemically with booze in the form of whiskey, gin, rum. The old saying, 'Drunks live on and on' bears some truth. There was some evidence it worked against infections--but not to the degree of antibiotics such a penicillin etc. As a child grossly ill in W.W. II I was saved only by chance when the U.S. Army released doses of liquid penicillin. It was nasty to the taste and gross--but it worked.

Firemen on the old boats here and ocean steamships known as the infamous 'black gang' had a habit my family told me about years ago [Alan Bates correct me here] was that after their watches they would seek sleep/rest by falling in their bunks dirty, hot, sweaty. 'Tradition' of sorts had it with then that if they bathed the water would 'rob' them of their strength and ability to return for the next watch. Other terms used by the men we again can't use here. Well, you asked for some leads and we're doing our best. For generations writers commented on the strength not only the firemen exhibited but the roustabouts. In later years doctors and medical researchers would research such with revelations of 'occupational physical stress.' Writer/editor Clarke Firestone wrote on this and his commentary ranks as the finest in steamboat anthology. No, John, from various points of view there was no 'romance' [Whatever that is] on the old steamboats. I shouldn't have posted this but in light of your message I went ahead. Where this discussion started and ended is a good question. Well, what do I know?

Cheers,
R. Dale Flick

I've never set foot on an ocean ship. Even on the airy Belle of Louisville engineroom and firebox temperatures soar to above 100 degrees. The men simply get used to it. Harris Underwood kept the pilothouse on the Belle of Louisville hot all the time, and would call for heat in August. Then there was Sam McGee up there in Alaska!
I shared a room with a deckhand on the Paul B. named Vic. Vic never undressed as far as I know from beginning to end of trips and even stayed in his shoes when abed. Fortunately there were two berths. It was not romantic!

steamboats

Dale, you and I were discussing this - and both of us were amazed when we were in the other's presence.

My wife is a wonderful seamstress/user-of-sewing machines. The problem of what one uses in medicine boils down to the evidence - there is a great emphasis on "doing something." She is able to take various pieces of cloth and sew them together. We often have 'facts' or observations that stand in isolation, and often they are not as easy, nor do we put them together in such a manner.

Accordng to those who have seen the Marine Hospital annual reports, almost half of those admitted had some sort of venereal disease. Most cleared spontaneously, but with GC, there were strictures, obstruction of flow, and with syphilis, after stage I and stage II, time had to pass before the later stage - thoracic aneurysms, gummas, and the neurosyphilis developed.

Wagner-Jauregg got the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1927 for at least two and perhaps more inter-related phenomena.

1 - he recognized that in some persons who were already in the mental hospital where he worked who survived co-incident fever with pneumonia, etc, they improved. Thus, the internal fever was associated with improvement or remission of fever.

2 Of those who did improve, he determined that they had general paresis - GPI - syphilis of the brain

3 He experimented with how to cause fever - using typhoid and tuberculin vaccines, and he suggested the use of malaria.

4 30 years after he suggested the use of malaria, he tried it, and it worked, but he tried in in those persons who at least clinically were already looped, looney, etc, in his bin -- and it improved.

5 Some died - he had three die early on in part because they were given a malaria strain that was more malignant.

6 Now - penicillin works. However, there was the Tuskegee 'experiment' which went awry, in that it started out reasonable but on the way to the forum, there was pencillin. Salversan, developed by Ehrlich(k) after he won the Nobel Prize, did not penetrate the blood-brain barrier, and did in a lot of people when administered in high dose. ALong the way, Penicillin came into play. I have not studied the Tuskegee experiment, other that what I have learned superficially, so I don't know exactly what happened to these men.

There is a difference in cooking a person - as in an oven, and in an internally derived fever - such as with malaria. There is also a different mechanism for triggering sweating with exercise. Fat people don't do well in heat, in part because they don't have the surface area per unit of body weight.

I appreciate that some have pointed out the obvious - that the temperatures weren't known, because they weren't measured. This gives rise doubting the absolute certainty that some have about the fate of the world with warming, which some call climate change as a natural occurrence, and the perfidity of man as manifested by his breathing, thus generating "Carbon". The obvious solution is to do in man. Then the world would revert to its natural and pristine state.

John Steiner

Hi, John & steamboating colleagues:
John, what a surprise it was to meet you last night prio to our Literary Club meeting here in town. A surprise to the point of 'spooky' in that we both instantly recognized each other within minutes of talking. That's the wonder of how Steamboats.org can bring people together both near and far. I trust you enjoyed the evening. As Literary Club librarian I will continue to search out some of the old papers going back to 1849--really before with a body of writings, letters etc. to the 1830s. Your subject of interest and research is bound to 'catch' a number on this web who have far more knowledge of the U.S. Marine Hospital era than I. It has been discussed on this web and you could type in on the archives provided here. Dr. L. C. Carr was a member of our Club and had first hand experiences in the infamous Str. JOHN PORTER Yellow Fever case in 1878. His famed story of that event is on file at the Club and I can pull a copy for you. More in time.

Cheers,
R. Dale Flick

John: In my casual reading of this thread off and on for a while, I don't remember seeing any but passing mention to the gross influx of combustion air which would be proportional to the size of the fire/firebox/flues etc. While combustion air does not block the radiation from the firebox or its heated outside surface, its temperature and velocity both does/did make the area much more conducive to sustaining hard work. Those tall chimneys likely created enough draft to suck water out of the river! Said draft was augmented by the velocity of the air passing over the tops of the chimneys when under way...and, proportional to the speed. I have often wondered if the "feathers" and other ornamentation atop the chimneys didn't inhibit the draft. The combustion air flow was up through the grates and through the fuel beneath the boilers...some, if not most of it passing the firemen on the way there. When the doors were open to the firing operation, the fireman would be surrounded by air rushing into the open door. This latter influx of air was frowned upon as being "tramp air" not assisting in combustion but serving to cool the firebox/boiler by not passing through the burning fuel on the grates...thus an admonishment to keep the doors closed when not firing. I have no idea whether the designers of steamboats took the routing of the combustion air past the firemen into consideration, but would suggest that it would have been a important consideration in getting an boat to be a viable vehicle of commerce...