CHAPTER 09 -- THE COALING COMPLEX
Chapter 09: THE COALING COMPLEX
By the mid-19th Century, the three-decked Ship-Of-The-Line so artfully handled by Admiral Lord Nelson, had ruled the world’s oceans for nearly 300 years with very little technological change. Had Sir Frances Drake been pipped aboard HMS Victory he would have been amazed – but would have known how to use the ship. That’s because Victory, though bigger, more heavily armed, and more modern, was little changed from the premise of Drake’s Golden Hind.
The Industrial Revolution of the early 1800’s began to change all that. Science and technology had harnessed steam power to run factories, and soon thereafter, steam locomotives. It was inevitable that some “bright young feller” would figure out how to propel ships with steam engines. For centuries, empires had been won or lost for want of “a fair wind”. Steam powered ships would be able to sail in any direction, regardless of wind, and much faster.
USS Demologos was the first warship to be propelled by a steam engine. Commissioned in 1815, she was hailed as quite an accomplishment, but her slow speed and unreliable engines relegated her to duty in New York Harbor as a floating battery. But it was a “beginning”.
The outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 saw a combined French and British fleet of three-decked Ships-Of-The-Line gathered off Sevastopol – accompanied by paddle-wheeled steam tugs to make them more tactically mobile.
But both Britain and France had been experimenting with “steam” Ships-Of-The-Line for more than five years by then. The British, reluctant to give up their place as THE first rank naval power, began converting suitable “three-deckers” to steam-assisted warships while retaining their full sailing rig. This was a rather parsimonious attempt to keep their numerical superiority while saving the cost of new, scratch-built ships.
The French, on the other hand, realized old three-deckers, fitted with steam engines, would still retain their bluff bows and bulbous underwater lines – reducing their speed. Instead, they built a new class of three-deckers designed around steam engines with underwater lines better suited to speed. Launched in 1850, Napoleon (90 guns), name ship of the class, became the first purpose-built steam battleship in the world – the first true steam battleship – and the first screw propelled battleship. Nelson’s Victory could make all of four knots with a “fair wind” in her sails. Napoleon, under sail and steam, could maintain 14 knots.
From that day forward, the navies of the world were committed to “steam” – and the COAL that made it possible. The French had done away with any thought of half-measures. And with Britain and France being “colonial powers”, they relied upon their naval forces to protect and police their colonies as well as the sea lanes leading to and from them. Now, a nation’s “seapower” could only be projected as far as the supply of coal in a ship’s bunkers would allow. And the freedom of action of every Admiral or ship’s Captain was limited by the distance to his next coaling stop.
So the race to secure strategically located colonies began in earnest. Any nation with the slightest pretense of being a world naval power had to establish colonies along the major sea lanes within easy steaming distance of one another. By stopping at each coaling station in turn, you could – theoretically – sail a fleet from Portsmouth, England to Shanghai, China. (Case in point; the deployment of the Russian Baltic Fleet to Chinese waters in 1905 – and the 1907 round-the-world cruise of the Great White Fleet.) And so began the love-hate relationship between battleships, their crews, and coal.
This view of the High Seas Fleet steaming in column toward the horizon is, indeed, a majestic sight. The power and might of these smoke-belching behemoths is quite obvious. What is not so obvious, is the vast amount of back-breaking labor that went into producing those voluminous clouds of smoke.
Deep inside the bowels of the battleship, and located adjacent to the engine rooms, are the boiler rooms. Here, a crew of “stokers” continually fed shovelfuls of coal into the roaring fireboxes beneath the boilers. In turn, the water inside the heated boilers produced steam to run the engines or turbines turning the propellers. These stokers were often referred to as “the black gang” – because their sweat-drenched bodies were covered in a thick grime of coal dust. During a battleship’s periodic “speed trails”, several teams of stokers would be kept on stand-by to relieve exhausted men, or to replace those overcome by heat prostration.
The coal is stored in chambers (called bunkers) located in such manner as to make moving coal to the furnaces as easy as possible. The arrangement of these bunkers differed somewhat from ship to ship and, more significantly, from nation to nation. In the Kaiserliche Marine, coal bunkers were arranged along the sides of the warship, usually just behind the torpedo bulkhead. In addition to the thick external armor belt, and thinner torpedo bulkhead designed to absorb blast, placing tons and tons of coal inboard provided yet another layer of protection. This practice proved quite successful in allowing warships to absorb heavy battle damage and continue to fight.
When “coaling ship” was ordered, “every man Jack” would turn to and get the coal aboard as quickly as possible. Even junior officers could be required to participate in this filthy, hard labor. The coal bunkers were accessed via openings in the main deck (called scuttles). Once the scuttle plate was removed, dockside cranes, or loading chutes, would deposit piles of coal onto the deck. Men with shovels then scooped the dusty black mound into the scuttles. This dirty, dust-choking, hard labor went on for hours until several thousand tons of coal was loaded (usually 3,000 to 4,000 tons).
In the picture below, the USS New Hampshire is taking on coal from a barge tied alongside. Obviously, the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1909 did not have any sophisticated hoppers or loading towers, so the crewmen are doing it by hand. They have rigged temporary derricks to hoist canvas sacks of coal to the ship’s deck where it will be dumped, and then shoveled into the round scuttle clearly visible in the deck.
In the next picture, a ship is taking on coal at Port Said in the Suez Canal Zone (circa 1920’s). Again, the coal barges are tied alongside the vessel – but the men are carrying the coal aboard. Coaling in “far distant” ports could be quite primitive.
The Coaling Complex for the Imperial Dockyard: Wilhelmshaven is “state of the art” and was based on a massive US Navy coaling station in Pensacola, Florida just after the turn of the last century. I managed to find a usable picture of a slightly improved version built in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (circa 1919).
As you can see, the loading docks were built out into the water on tall trestle bridges, allowing deeper draft vessels easy access. Loaded rail cars were shuttled under the “hopper towers” where bucket conveyors raised coal to the top of the hopper. Loading chutes would then be lowered near to the ship’s deck – and the process would begin. Rail cars continued to shuttle beneath the hoppers as needed.
The oval track arrangement saves enormous amounts of space, while allowing a loaded coal train to gradually climb to the level of the loading hoppers. Other track spurs provide for temporary “parking” of loaded cars, storage of coal at the rear, and switches to return empty cars to the main complex.
It went without saying that it would be impossible to find a skilled “Batter” interested in such a mammoth and complicated project. Even in modules, this would require a great deal of planning and technical skill, with many opportunities for failure. Consequently, I fell back on my skills at finding existing SC4 lots and props that could be re-purposed and pieced together to build a reasonable facsimile. I already knew I would not be able to recreate the structure, but the “oval” rail concept was crucial in saving space within the dockyard.
My secondary goal was to show the COMPLETE process of providing coal to ships – from start to finish. In this single complex, you can see how coal is delivered to the coaling station, unloaded, handled for processing, stored, and then distributed to warships – the whole product path. I was determined NOT to plop a pile of coal next to a ship and say...”Yeah – that’s where they get coal.”
Here are four shots showing the progressive stages of construction.
And this is a closer view of the overall complex.
Looking north from the Munitions Complex, across the wide channel leading to the Coaling Basin, it is easy to pick out the peninsula occupied by the crowded sprawl of the Coaling Complex. The largest integrated facility in the dockyard, the Coaling Station was placed at the far end of the harbor to keep the heavy “coaling traffic” from interfering with other facilities. It also helped that the prevailing wind would blow the clouds of soot and dust away from the rest of the dockyard.
The “Complex” is almost a world of its’ own. Warships coming and going, coaling docks, cranes and derricks, warehouses, huge mounds of black coal, processing plants, receiving lots, receiving docks, and a swarm of puffing steam locomotives moving tons and tons of coal.
Beyond that dusty, smoking jumble of activity you can just make out a railyard dedicated to handling and repairing the fleet of engines and hundreds of pieces of rolling stock required to service the complex.
But down in the Coaling Basin Channel, movement catches our eye……
SMS Viribus Unitas is under tow. Two steam tugs astern of the battleship are passing hawsers to act as “brakes”. A third steam tug stands by to assist. And the larger steam tug Goliath has already paid out her tow line in readiness to move. Goliath was brought in to provide a little extra “muscle”, since moving the battleship through the tight quarters from the far end of the basin might require some brute force “finesse”.
Viribus Unitas was the name ship of a class of four Austro-Hungarian dreadnoughts. With the collapse of the Empire in 1918, she was handed over to the provisional Yugoslavian Government in October of that year. On the night of November 10th, Italians managed to get into the harbor of Pola and sink her with an explosive charge.
Goliath is a bit larger than the “harbor tug” pictured off her port quarter. (Beautifully detailed and textured model provided by @Barroco Hispano.) Originally used as a sea-going salvage tug, she is from a large class built around 1907 and well able to withstand heavy seas the harbor tugs cannot. Due to advancing age, she and her sisters have been replaced by a bigger, and more powerful class of “Fleet Salvage Tugs”. But still sound and seaworthy, the “Goliaths” have been assigned to deal with a new menace to naval warfare – floating mines. Note the two “greenish”, fish-shaped objects stowed on her aft deck – those are “paravanes”. "Harbor Tug" courtesy of @WolfZe.
This model is an accurate and highly detailed example of the hundreds of obscure seagoing tugs and salvage boats that worked the far and forgotten corners of the World’s seas. Their arrival amid fifty foot waves and howling winds could mean the difference between life and death and the safety of much larger ships in danger of foundering. The aging, weathered decks and the “classic” ochre and black paint scheme make this model come alive.
Tucked into the corner of the Coaling Basin are the Minesweeper Docks. Goliath is the “flotilla leader” and, during time of war, they are charged with keeping the sea lanes in and out of the Jade Bight free of enemy minefields. When “sweeping” a field of mines, the tugs would usually deploy in “echelon” in an overlapping, inverted “V” formation. Those paravanes on the aft deck would be deployed and streamed on both sides of the tug. The paravanes stretched wire tow cables outboard from the ship – much like a modern sonar device. The cables snagged the anchor lines of floating, submerged mines, the paravane teeth severed them, and they came to the surface where they were destroyed by small arms fire. Needless to say, minesweeper crews received “hazard pay”.
Just above the Minesweeper Station, along the west side of the Coaling Basin, are two “Offshore Mooring Points”. These are semi-permanent berthing arrangements built from thick pilings driven into the harbor bottom and capped with steel and concrete landing platforms. They are decked over and provided with night lighting to allow “anchor details” easy handling of large mooring hawsers. I believe these are unique to Pearl Harbor and can still be seen by thousands of tourists visiting the USS Arizona Memorial. MANY THANKS to @mattb325 for cheerfully fulfilling my request and releasing them to the community as “Offshore Mooring Pontoons”.
The USS New York was completed in 1914 and, much like her predecessors – at 27,000 tons – tended toward the wide beam common to most US battleships. A jump to the heavier 14 inch / 45 cal gun was made, but her designers continued to experiment with the placement of the main battery turrets. It was finally decided to use a five turret, twin gun arrangement modified from the earlier Florida Class. After failed negotiations with the builder, the US Navy chose to revert to triple expansion reciprocating engines producing a speed of 21 knots. She served in both World Wars and was expended as a target in 1948.
USS Texas, sister to New York, was completed as an identical twin and her service career was much the same as well. You see the ship in her 1932 configuration after a complete modernization. During WW II, Texas was part of the Bombardment Group off Omaha Beach during the D-Day Landings in Normandy. Her ten 14 inch rifles provided quick and accurate gunfire support and was much appreciated by the assault troops moving inland. German Panzers poised to counterattack the American beachhead were quickly demoralized and scattered when two-gun salvos of the huge shells began to arrive at 5 second intervals. In 1948 the State of Texas took great pride in accepting her from the US Navy for preservation as a museum ship. She still lies in a berth dredged out of the Mexican War Battlefield Memorial at San Jacinto, near Houston. At 106 years of age, Texas may well be the oldest – and possibly the only – surviving example of the “true” dreadnought battleship.
Next time…...The Coaling Docks.
As always --- MANY, MANY, MANY THANKS to @Barroco Hispano for his intricately detailed, and beautifully textured warship models. As a "semi-professional" naval historian, I take a great deal of pleasure in simply gazing at these beautiful models of the ships I have avidly studied for six decades. I have NEVER found any form of illustration to be as informative or pleasing as these models.
If you enjoyed anything you saw – please punch the “like” button so I will know. A comment would be even more informative.
Comments and critiques requested and gratefully accepted. All questions answered promptly to the best of my ability.
THANK YOU for your visit !
-
20
11 Comments
Recommended Comments
Sign In or register to comment...
To comment in reply, you must be a community member
Sign In
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In NowCreate an Account
Sign up to join our friendly community. It's easy!
Register a New Account