Chapter XXXIII: The Engineer

These concluding chapters should be written by an engineer; for no sailor, whatever his position may have been, is fully competent to judge of the work performed by the handlers of marine engines. Much less is he able to appreciate the position of those toiling helots of civilization, the firemen and trimmers. The benefits of steam are vast and undeniable; but it is not good to forget that the service of steam to-day means a truly awful burden of labour and risk laid upon a large army of civilized men. I believe I shall carry with me the assent of every one who knows anything about the facts when I say that of all modern occupations there is not one so terribly exhausting, so full of peril, as that of the servants of the marine engine at work. The marvel of marvels to me is that men can be found to undertake the task so readily. And if this be true of the Merchant Service, as I hold it is, plain unvarnished truth, it is doubly true of the same work, or what answers to the same description of work, in the Royal Navy. For there the manifold complications of ship-propelling machinery are immensely more intricate, the conditions under which the men labour are far more arduous, and, in addition, there is always the fighting risk superadded.

But I must not stray into the fighting line of engineering--I have said, perhaps, more than enough on that subject recently. Nevertheless, I honestly believe that I have only been able to put in the tamest and most colourless way what I feel about these men. When I say that such a chapter as this should be written by an engineer, I mean that only an expert in the wonderful profession can fully appreciate the difficulties and dangers thereof. Outsiders may, as I do, admire and wonder, but we cannot fully enter into these things as an engineer can. The country badly needs a writer on engineering matters who knows his business thoroughly, and at the same time is able to tell the people who don't know, what marine engineering means. No amount of sympathy and admiration can make up for lack of expert knowledge, yet, as far as it is possible, I feel constrained to draw the attention of my countrymen to the work of the men who, far below the water-line, amid the clanging chorus of their gigantic slaves, bend watchful brows to their mighty task; who for the four hours of their watch on deck (see how the sailor crops up), no, their watch below at work, know not one moment's respite. Vigilance unremitting is theirs; the price of effective manipulation must be paid, for no eastern Afrit was ever more jealous of the power over him held by the enunciator of the master-word than is the high-pressure marine engine of the governance of the engineer.

The casual observer, glancing down into the engine-room of a sea-going steamer, is apt to imagine that the men who wait upon the engines have an easy time of it. He is inclined to think that once the engines are started--"full speed ahead" sounded--watch after watch need only sit and look at them doing their work. Nothing could well be more false, while nothing is more natural. For engineers, like the best workmen everywhere and of every sort, make no fuss about their work. Quietly, without ostentation, they tend their engines, their trained ears noting the faintest change of tone in the uproar which sounds so chaotic to the ear of the outsider. Every single part of those engines, the amount of strain that it is bearing, the need for nursing, lubricating, watching that it has, is in the mind of that quiet, nonchalant man who steps cat-like into the thick of the flying steel cranks, and accommodating his movements to the swing of the thrusting shafts, feels their temperature, the amount of lubricant they are carrying, and regains his perforated platform with an air of indifference as if he had merely looked over the side on deck, instead of having been on the most intimate terms with an unspeakable form of death.

Perhaps the most noticeable feature about the marine engineer in the Merchant Service is the high respect in which he is held by every one. The merchant seaman instinctively recognizes in him a man whose attainments are not merely theoretical, but eminently practical. Every merchant seaman realizes that with the engineer has arrived a new stamp of seafarer, whose stern stress of duty cuts him off from those enjoyments common to all seamen. For him there is no meditative contemplation of the glories of the tropical night, when in the midst of the mighty solitudes of the untainted ocean man draws near to the great heart of Nature, feels himself akin to the stars and the wind and the waves; no heart-uplifting view of the apocalyptic splendours of the dawn, when the grey shadow of night melts away before the palpitating glow of the approaching sun; no speechless delight in the indescribable panorama sweeping past when the swift ship skirts closely the wonders of many shores.

At such times the engineer and his crew, deep in the bowels of the ship, are shut in from all sights and sounds and perfumes save those of the engine-room and stokehold, which are akin to those of Tartarus. And when through the swart night the vessel plunges madly athwart the raging seas, remorselessly driven against the combined forces of wind and wave and current, the engineer works on, all depending upon him. Then do his anxieties enormously increase, as at one moment the whirling blades of the propeller are buried deep beneath the surface and their thrust vibrates through every fibre and rivet of the ship, and the next by a downward plunge of the vessel's head they are lifted into the air, spinning madly with a frightful acceleration of speed on their release from the element in which they have been toiling. Then, see the engineer erect upon his iron platform, facing his Titanic charges, throttle-valve in hand, and steady eye fixed upon index glasses; every sense on the alert, muscles tense to shut off the supply of force sooner than the "governor" can act, so that the engines shall not be torn from their foundations by the fearful strain imposed upon them by the sudden taking away of their work while the driving steam is still bursting in through the main feed and slide-valves.

No other engineering in the world can for one moment compare in vital importance with this. The conditions are so onerous, the complications are so many, the need for watchfulness is so great, that a new race of men has been bred to compete with them. The engineer ashore may, and does, have all his repairs done by other people; the engineer at sea must, in the very nature of things, be not only the prince of engine-drivers, whose care of his charge, under the most severe tests, not applied occasionally but continuously, is beyond all praise, but he must be ready at any moment by day or night to undertake the most radical repairs. With improvised adjuncts he must undertake on the instant to do such things with masses of steel that if they were described would sound impossible except to the large room and full equipment of a first-class factory ashore. Not only so, but the work must be done under conditions of heat, imperfect lighting, and cramped space that render the duty enormously more difficult.

Yes, it _must_ be done, because if not----? Well, they have taken away the steamship's masts, so that the sailor, even with the best ability and good-will in the world, can hardly get steerage way on the vessel by means of sails, and then there is a great ship, perhaps with an immense perishable cargo and a large number of passengers, lying like a log upon the ocean, at the mercy of currents that are most likely to be drifting her away out of the track of ships, away into the ocean solitudes that are to-day, owing to the method of following beaten tracks which is so universally pursued, more solitary than they have been for centuries.

The performance of duties like these calls for the highest qualities of mind and muscle ever possessed by men. The forces dealt with are so terrific, the dangers so great, that a weak man could not so much as face them, much less perform the wonderful pieces of work that are necessary in opposition to them. Occasionally a curt paragraph appears in the shipping papers, conveying to underwriters and owners the information that the steamship _So-and-so_, long overdue, has arrived, her broken-down machinery having been repaired by the engineer. Beneath that brief intimation lies a volume of tragic story--the dauntless conflict of man with fire, steam, and steel, and his final triumph over them. But these stories are never told as they ought to be. Some day, perhaps, an engineer-writer will step forth and unfold to an admiring world the Iliad of the engine-room. May I live to read it.

For the evolution of a marine engineer, it is first of all necessary that he serve his apprenticeship in a "shop" where marine engines are made. This is essential, and a moment's consideration will convince any one that it must be so. Then, having mastered all the details of engine construction, if the aspirant has a desire for the sea, he will, in some way, of which I do not pretend to understand the details, obtain a subordinate position in an engine-room of some sea-going steamship. Here will he become conversant with the duties expected of him as an engineer-in-charge, and will, moreover, devote all his spare time to scientific study, in order that he may be fit to pass his examination in theoretical engineering. And if he shows himself worthy of the position, there will be little doubt that, having passed the required examination before the Board of Trade officials appointed for that purpose, and received his second engineer's certificate, he will find little difficulty in getting a berth as junior engineer. His foot once upon the ladder, the ascent is easy. There is only one more examination to pass compulsorily, that of chief engineer, although there is, as in the seafaring branch, a voluntary examination which all self-respecting engineers will take, "Chief Engineer Extra." Now he may rise to be chief engineer of the _Oceanic_ or the _Lucania_, with twenty or thirty engineers under him, and a whole host of firemen and trimmers.

It would ill become a mere sailor like myself to say anything about the polity of the engine-room, even if I had ever been in a position to study it. No doubt there are occasional hitches, instances of petty tyranny, of jealousies, of hindrances to getting on, since, with all their virtues, engineers are but human. But I do not know. I know that, except in the way of official routine, such as the control of the engines from the bridge, the officer of the watch has nothing to do with the engineer at all. The chief engineer is responsible to the master, and to him alone. Only the master can punish, and all cases of insubordination, etc., among the "black gang" must be reported to him. The master is in supreme command, and knows quite well what is due to the engineer. More, he seldom fails to grant him his full due. But I should be sorry to sail in any steamships where the officers took upon themselves to meddle with engineering matters. There would be much unpleasantness, from which the officers would suffer most. In brief, the engineer's importance is recognized.

They live, too, in a little world of their own. They have their mess-room, with a steward to wait upon them, and the best food the ship can supply. Their accommodation, too, is good, and their pay--well, it varies much with the class of ship, but, taken all round, it is much better than the officers'. _And they are British to a man._ I would not give much for the peace of a foreign engineer who by any chance found himself in a British ship's engine-room. The engineers in this respect enjoy peculiar advantages. Some people begrudge them their unique position in the seafaring world, and profess to see danger ahead because of it. I do not. I confess that my feeling with regard to the engineer is that, remembering the awful stress of his duties, the way in which he is not only cut off from home delights, like the sailor, but is also debarred from participation in the real joys of the sea, he deserves every advantage in pay, position, and prospects that he can obtain.

The unique position he holds among seafarers of which I speak is, that he is in close touch with powerful Trade Unions ashore. Since every engineer must learn his business ashore before going to sea, he becomes a member of the hierarchy of mechanical workers. Let him go to sea for never so many years, he must remember the workshop where he received his training; he has numbers of associates and relatives who are still working ashore, and who, in safeguarding their own interests in parliamentary ways, are all unlikely to forget him. They are his proxies, can speak for him, can use their votes on his behalf. Presently we shall find this great organization having something to say about the prototype of the Mercantile Marine engineer in the Navy, the engine-room artificer. The Admiralty, in their wisdom, have chosen to train up the naval engineer officer themselves, so that he shall be free from the influence of the workshop, shall become a class apart from and above the mechanical engineer. But in the doing of this they have been compelled to build up another corps to do the work. They are known in the Navy as E.R.A.'s (Engine Room Artificers), and it may be said, without any fear of contradiction, that they are, as far as ability and experience go, always the equals, and often the superiors, of the merchant engineer. Indeed, their period of service and the knowledge required of them before they can become Chief E.R.A.'s in the Navy is much greater than the Board of Trade require for the granting of engineers' certificates for the Mercantile Marine.

Then comes the great anomaly--the immense gulf that divides the two classes of men. As I have said, the merchant-ship engineer knows no superior on board the ship except the master. He deserves the best treatment, the best pay, and the greatest respect; and he gets them. His work cannot be made lighter, it must always be full of danger and toil, but all that can be done by way of mitigation of these onerous conditions is done. On the other hand, the E.R.A. in the Navy is a nobody. His pay is trivial compared with his congener in a merchant ship, he gets no respect from anybody, the youngest officer in the ship is his despot, whom to answer back means degradation and loss of pension, and he is berthed and fed much as a fireman is on board a merchant steamer; so that he continually smarts under a sense of injustice, and looks with longing and envious eyes upon his chums who, wiser than he, have gone into the Merchant Service. More than that, he knows full well that there are no reserves of E.R.A.'s, there are not nearly enough of them to man properly the ships that are now afloat; in case of an outbreak of war with a European Power, huge bribes would be offered to merchant-ship engineers to come and help in the Navy; knows, too, that not one of them would come without being rated as an officer, and receiving all the deference due to an officer in her Majesty's service. And so he may find himself, after years of the most arduous experience, ruled by a nephew who was a babe in arms when he served his time, who has all his life been engaged in one steady occupation on the same kind of engines, never hurried, never bullied, and probably with a sea experience of one-third of his uncle's, the E.R.A.

Therefore, because of these reflections and this knowledge, the E.R.A. is continually warning youngsters from the home shops not to enter the Navy by any means. The Merchant Service is the place for them if they want to be treated properly; the Navy is a place where they will never be anything else but a "dirty Tiffy," looked down upon by the youngest blue-jacket, and liable to be docked of many years' hard-earned pension for pointing out a mistake to an officer who, instead of accepting expert information gratefully, reports them for insolence.

I trust that these remarks about the E.R.A.'s may not be considered malapropos, remembering the great importance of the subject; remembering, too, that in the engineer of to-day we have not a mere mechanic, a man with no thought beyond his day's work and the receipt of his wages. I am afraid that the importance of the engineer, especially at sea, is insufficiently recognized by non-engineers. Every class of the community is benefited by the work of the engineer, and in modern sea-traffic he is, as Kipling has finely said, the kingpin of the ship. He cheerfully takes upon himself a burden of toil and danger such as the ancient world never knew--takes it, too, with the full consciousness of what he is doing; holds himself ready at any time to sacrifice his body for the safety of those whom he is serving,--and the least we who are thus served can do, is to recognize his value to the full.

For my part, I look upon the modern marine engineer as the true nineteenth-century hero. Some day I hope that a roll of honour will be drawn up, giving a list of heroic deeds performed by engineers out of sight, unostentatiously, just as a part of their duty. It would be an inspiring record; and from no source would more details be drawn than from the engine-rooms in the Navy, where, as has been abundantly proved, the engineer is thought but little of; so little, indeed, that all his efforts to obtain some meed of official recognition are at present in vain. Good for us that this does not obtain in the Merchant Service. There the engineer is estimated by his shipmates at his proper worth.