thumb|right|A fireman or stoker, sometimes called a "boilerman"

A fireman, stoker or boilerman is a person who tends the fire for the running of a boiler, heating a building, or powering a steam engine. Much of the job is hard physical labor, such as shoveling fuel, typically coal, into the boiler's firebox.

Railways

thumb|left|A fireman working on a German [[DRB Class 52|Class 52 steam locomotive]]

On steam locomotives, firemen were not usually responsible for initially preparing locomotives and lighting their fires. As a locomotive boiler takes several hours to heat up, and a too-rapid fire-raising can cause excess wear on a boiler, this task was usually performed by fire lighters working some hours before the fireman's main shift started. Only on small railways, or on narrow-gauge locomotives with smaller and faster-warming boilers, was the fire lit by the fireman.

thumb|A fireman refills the water tank of a steam locomotive.

Whoever was responsible for fire-starting would clear the ash from the firebox ashpan prior to lighting the fire, adding water to the engine's boiler, making sure there is a proper supply of fuel for the engine aboard before starting journeys, starting the fire, raising or banking the fire as appropriate for the amount of power needed along particular parts of the route, and performing other tasks for maintaining the locomotive according to the orders of the engineer (US) or driver (UK). The engine itself was cleaned by an engine cleaner instead of the fireman. Some firemen served these duties as a form of apprenticeship, aspiring to be locomotive engineers themselves. In the present day, the position of fireman still exists on the Union Pacific Railroad, but it refers to an engineer in training. The fireman may operate the locomotive under the direct supervision of the engineer. When the fireman is not operating the locomotive, the fireman assists the engineer and monitors the controls.

Mechanical stoker

A mechanical stoker is a device which feeds coal into the firebox of a boiler. It is standard equipment on large stationary boilers and was also fitted to large steam locomotives to ease the burden of the fireman. The locomotive type has a screw conveyor (driven by an auxiliary steam engine) which feeds the coal into the firebox. The coal is then distributed across the grate by steam jets, controlled by the fireman. Power stations usually use pulverized coal-fired boilers.

Notable stokers

Vladimir Lenin, disguised as Konstantin Petrovich Ivanov, escaped to Finland in 1917 on train 293 from Udelnaya Station. Hugo Jalava, a co-conspirator and the train's driver, helped to further conceal Lenin by having him work as his stoker. Jalava later recalled that Lenin shovelled with gusto as he fed the engine, making the train run fast.

There were approximately 176 stokers on board the coal-fed ocean liner RMS Titanic. During the sinking of the ship, these men disregarded their own safety and stayed below deck to keep the steam-driven electric generators running for the radiotelegraph, lighting, and water pumps. Only 48 of them survived.

Simeon T. Webb was the fireman on the Cannonball Express when it was destroyed in the legendary wreck that killed engineer Casey Jones. Jones's last words were "Jump, Sim, jump!" and Webb did jump, survived, and became a primary source for information about the famous wreck.

KFC founder Colonel Sanders worked as a railroad stoker when he was 16 or 17.

A 14-year-old Martin Luther King Sr. worked as a fireman on the Atlanta railroad.

Art

  • Torsten Billman, a Swedish graphic artist, drawer, and mural painter - himself coal trimmer and stoker on various merchant ships from 1926 to 1932 - has portrayed the hard work in coal bunkers and stokeholes.

thumb|Engineers and stokers of a [[Traction engine#Ploughing engine|ploughing engine on Heritage Day ]]

Events

  • Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson acted as stoker on the steam locomotive No. 60163 Tornado while performing a Race to the North against Richard Hammond and James May. It was an homage to the historical Race to the North, a rivalry between British steam engines, trains and men of different companies between London and Edinburgh.

Film

  • The lead character Bill Roberts (George Bancroft) in Josef von Sternberg's motion picture The Docks of New York (1928) is a stoker.
  • The lead character in Aleksei Balabanov's 2010 film The Stoker, Ivan Matveyevich Skryabin, is a stoker.

Literature

  • The first chapter of Franz Kafka's novel Amerika (published posthumously in 1927) is entitled "The Stoker".
  • Mat Burke, a principal role in Eugene O'Neill's play Anna Christie (1921) is a ship's stoker.
  • Yank, the protagonist of Eugene O'Neill's play The Hairy Ape (1922), is a stoker on a ship.

Music

  • "Casey Jones", a song by the American rock band the Grateful Dead, is about a railroad engineer who is on the verge of a train wreck due to his train going too fast, a sleeping switch man, and another train being on the same track and headed for him. The last two lines of the song reference the train's fireman: "Come round the bend, you know it's the end. The fireman screams and the engine just gleams."
  • "Stoker Dreams" and "Stoker Love" are songs by the Russian indie group Chimera.
  • The RMS Mauretania (1906) is remembered in a song, "The fireman's lament" or "Firing the Mauretania", collected by Redd Sullivan. The song starts "In 19 hundred and 24, I ... got a job on the Mauretania"; but then goes on to say "shovelling coal from morn till night" (not possible in 1924 as she was oil-fired by then). The number of "fires" is said to be 64. Hughie Jones also recorded the song but the last verse of Hughie's version calls upon "all you trimmers" whereas Redd Sullivan's version calls upon "stokers".

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Dissertation.