the Pilot, the Engineer and the Chief...

Bruno and Roland: Sounds like the stuff that Leak Repairs used on our leaks and valves...I still have a call list for my company but it is over a decade old and the number for Leak Repairs in that book has been removed. A call to my old plant re who they use now has not been answered...probably due to the weekend or THAT number being no longer valid. Bruno, I have some questions re propane burner pilot lights (steamboat related) if you have any inclination to humor Cap'n Walnut.

Capt. Walnut, Pilot lights, Geeze what are they? 😉

Standing pilot lights and thermocouples, almost a lost art. I'll do my best, feel free, either private message through this forum or e-mail me:

[email protected]

On A Tangent

This has been a great thread - brings back a lot of good memories.

One of those memories was touring the engineering spaces of the battleship USS Iowa.

The Iowa class used eight 600 PSI boilers driving four double-expansion steam turbines. What was cool about the arrangement was that it was designed not for efficiency, but for durability in the heat of battle.

600 PSI was used because the lower pressure was not only gentler on the plant, but if there were a steam leak from a direct hit, the collateral damage would be lower (in theory, or course). All eight boilers could be cross-connected to any of the four engines in any combination. Loosing one or two boilers would not equal the loss of an engine. Also, the boilers had no automatic controls - one less thing to break in the middle of an engagement.

But the coolest part of the machinery spaces was Broadway. Broadway was a passageway that stretched from the #2 16 inch turret in the bow to the #3 16 inch turret in the stern, and from Broadway you could access any of the boiler or engine rooms. In the overhead of Broadway was a rail mounted hoist that ran the length of Broadway. The man purpose of the hoist was to transfer shells and powder between the forward and aft turrets safely, but could also be used to move parts between engine and boiler rooms. If a boiler or engine went OOC, its parts could be used to fix another boiler or engine quickly.

The engineering spaces were designed to take a serious licking and keep on ticking. How serious? The main armor belt around the machinery spaces were designed to take a direct impact from two 2,000 pound 16 inch shells! In comparison, a modern surface-to-surface missile is about 500 pounds of explosives.

The one big downside to all of this was man-power. These ships required a lot of crew - 2,600 enlisted plus 150 officers. That's roughly the same size crew for a nuclear aircraft carrier (ships company only)! So when budget cuts started to hit the Navy, these were some of the first ships to go (there were other reasons).

Ok - I've hijacked this thread long enough!

Answer finally found!

the story behind the Natchez' telegraphs has been discovered. Back when the boat was being built, Captain Ted (the company's vice president and "moral rudder" at the time) went over to Southern Scrap Metals, where the Intracostal and the Industrial Canals meet. They were dismantling an old Navy vessel (both name and number were unknown), but none of the scrappers spoke english, so Ted would walk around and make a circle gesture with his hands around the things he wanted, including the telegraphs. For 20 dollars a pop, they would cut out the piece of equipment and at the end, Ted put the things into his truck and brought it back to Bergeron.

Good detective work! During Gustav several old Navy ships at Southern got loose and rattled around the canal. I think they now have to remove them to safer areas. But that was certainly a handy spot for obtaining things for the NATCHEZ. As I recall, it was Capt. Ted's idea to have the pilothouse roof trimmed in red. They kept it that way the first year and then quietly painted it white. I remember him visiting in the '80s and he was certainly held in high regard by everyone.

Alan Bates;12696 wrote: Time is important on the Belle of Louisville where the distance and the time are both short. One amusing aspect was that Chet Foster, a chief, lived in Mauckport, Indiana, about a half-hour's drive from Louisville. On night trips the boat would amble along, so-so until the turn was made to go back to the wharf. If Chet was on watch the boat would gradually built up an amibiton to get back to that wharf. When the master or the pilot noticed the door rattling and the sash clattering it was time to call Chet and request a more leisurely pace.

I've been told the same phenomenon was known to happen during the Sunday night trip when a certain Chief had a 100 mile drive back to home in Cincinnati after the boat got in.

Interesting thread. I'm glad to see that Alan Bates is back with us. You gonna be there for the Belle's 100th, Alan? I hope so.

This thread has caught my interest as my experience with both the B of L and AQ has shown very different technology in the telegraph and the use of Z drives. The AQ's telegraph was nice, neat, and compact. However, it was an electronic device that had its "glitches" (during landings or departures, of course) that would leave me cussing and wishing I was using the old mechanical telegraph on the Belle! Neither was it nearly as dramatic and expressive for the pilot to give commands--getting an emergency full ahead didn't really get your attention from a little red light as it was to see that dial flying around that telegraph and making a racket with the bell. There was one instance on the AQ at a landing when the packing on the stbd. throttle valve stem was gradually blowing out as we made maneuvers towards Natchez. The noise became painfully loud for everyone (including Chief Rich--a rare occurrence)! I couldn't hear the telegraph's bells and had to stare intently at the tiny red lights on the telegraph board to give me any indication of what was happening. It also made me wish I had only one throttle valve to manage.
As far as the Z drives go, I learned which pilots relied on them more than others. I remember one pilot when coming on his watch while we were cruising along would immediately slow the steam engines down, throttle up the Z drives, and set the rudders on center as he used the Z drives for steering during his entire watch. In fact, this pilot often went to a "dead slow" on the steam engines, and I was tempted to ask him on those occasions if he would rather just secure the steam engines to save on our steam! There were other pilots doing exactly the opposite. From a steam engineer's perspective, I would much rather listen to the steam engines running a "full ahead" than the rattle from the Z drives as they shook the AQ's stern when making any maneuver moving off center was necessary.