‘I wish I could get hold of that man who first found coal’ – Coaling warships with naval labour, 1870-1914.

Dr Steven Gray


Department of History & Classics| YrAdran Hanes a Clasuron

Swansea University |Prifysgol Abertawe
Singleton Park |Parc Singleton
Swansea | Abertawe
Wales | Cymru
SA28PP

01792 60(3514).

This work was carried out at the University of Warwick and National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. It was supported by the AHRC through its Collaborative Doctoral Awards programme.

Abstract

The expansion of a steam-powered Royal Navy in the period 1870−1914 made vessels utterly dependent on coal. Getting this coal aboard warships was dirty, exhausting, and dangerous work. Even in 1914, it was still largely done by hand and, increasingly, it was the job of the ships’ crews to perform this task. Thus coaling was a quotidian task for sailors, usually occurring every 7-10 days, and one that could last all day. This article examines the different methods of coaling a warship, particularly focussing on the use of sailor labour and colliers to reflect their increasing use as the period progressed. In addition to examining the roles of each of the ships’ crew in coaling, it also assesses sailors’ attitudes towards the task. In doing so, it shows that such a hated job required coping mechanisms, such as fancy dress, music, and competition, as well as the promise of alcohol and shore leave afterwards. Finally, the article examines the dangers of coaling, showing that a regular need for fuel frequently exposed sailors to serious danger, often suffering broken bones and, all too frequently, death.

Keywords

Royal Navy, sailors, labour, coaling, fuel, Victorian, Edwardian, British Empire

The nineteenth century saw a revolution in naval shipbuilding. In particular, the use of steam technology in naval ships transformed the Royal Navy, to the extent that by 1864 it had become ‘unrecognisable’ from that of a decade before.[1] The transfer from a sail to a steam navy was gradual, with hybrid ships powered by both sail and steam used while early steam engines lacked sufficient power and efficiency. Thus, even though the Battle of Navarino in 1827 was the last to be fought by the British Navy entirely with sailing ships, it was the end of the Crimean war in 1856 that marked a watershed in the use of steamships as the dominant warships in the Royal Navy.[2] Steam propulsion allowed ships’ routes to be more direct, and their speed to be increased. Furthermore, it enabled the use of iron and steel in hull design, making them less susceptible to exploding shells, and for the mastless decks to hold better positioned guns, making warships far more formidable in battle. As a result, steam allowed power projection on a whole new scale. It not only allowed warships to pass existing defences designed for action against sail ships, but also facilitated both the bombardment of enemy forts and arsenals and the transportation of large numbers of invading troops. Furthermore, as land based powers could not hope to successfully defend entire seaboards, Britain was able to use its navy both as a deterrent against attacks on British interests and as a ‘bargaining chip and lever’ to benefit its commerce.[3] The success of this shift to steam is perhaps best shown in Britain’s ability to avoid major maritime warfare until 1914.[4]

In most histories of the navy it is the advantages of this perpetually improving ship technology, alongside huge increases in ship numbers, that have attracted the most attention when discussing Britain’s oceanic hegemony in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, the vast majority of studies assess the effects of the technological evolution of warships without considering that the introduction of steam vessels into the Royal Navy also made the fleet utterly dependent on suitable coal, and its distribution around the world. Despite the ‘centrality of coal and coal depots to nineteenth century imperial defence’ little has been written on fuelling the fleet for the period 1870-1914.[5] Yet coal was required at stations for ships to perform even the most straightforward operations.[6] Coaling was therefore a quotidian, but nevertheless crucial, part of naval life. It was often performed as regularly as once a week, and in smaller destroyers every three to four days.[7] The methods used, the weather, and the amount of coal needed determined how long coaling would last, but it was certainly not unusual for it to last a whole day.[8]

Coal, for all its advantages, is a solid, heavy, dirty fuel, and transferring it was a long and taxing process, however it was carried out. Although one might expect the processes used to transfer coal to become more mechanised, even by 1914 coal was still largely loaded by hand, with the use of a simple hoist.[9] In fact, as the period progressed, coaling a naval ship at any station required more substantial human labour, as larger, more fuel hungry ships required ever increasing amounts of coal to be loaded. The reasons that nearly all methods involved extensive human labour were twofold. Firstly, mechanised methods were enormously expensive to implement, and secondly, the remarkable efficiency of coaling using human labour made the benefits of such mechanisation marginal. This was especially true when it is considered that the increasingly enormous warships had great difficulty manoeuvring into harbours where more complex coaling systems could be installed. Thus, transferring coal was a long and taxing process, however it was carried out.

Although at some stations local labour was used to coal warships, and continued to do so beyond 1914, in the period 1870-1914 there was a noticeable decline in its use in coaling. The log of the Bedford, which was on the China Station from 1907 to 1909, reports that it was ‘quite a luxury’ to ‘be stood off’ for coaling. Similarly, the Implacable, during its 1901−4 commission, reported that ‘one of the advantages of laying at Malta – native labour is employed in coaling ship’, suggesting this was a rarity.[10] As a result of this shift, this article will concentrate on the role of sailors in the process of coaling.

There were several reasons for an increase in the use of naval labour for coaling. At some stations the individual circumstances changed. For example, in order to reduce costs, Malta began to rely more heavily on crew labour, and to a much lesser extent mechanisation, than on the local heavers who had numbered around 200 at the turn of the twentieth century.[11] The decreasing employment of local labour was more generally linked to the greater use of colliers for coaling, however, as a growth in ship size and numbers after 1889 meant it was not always feasible to coal at a jetty or by lighter. This situation was exacerbated by the amount of coal used by each ship: even the comparatively economical Dreadnought consumed on average 300 tons a day, and carried 2900 tons of coal.[12] This represented a huge change in ships’ capacity for coal: H.M.S. Collingwood, launched in 1880, carried just 900 tons.[13] The use of colliers eased these issues, as they allowed multiple large warships to coal at once, under their own labour, in the relative calmness of a harbour. This was an advantage particularly at stations with large fleets.[14] Furthermore, it allowed the navy to tap into a free labour force, and permitted them to coal in convenient harbours while on manoeuvres far from coal stacks. The process of coaling was also seen as easier from colliers; the methods being fairly uniform for each class of ship.[15] Moreover, ‘the Royal Navy were able charter private colliers as and when required without difficulty in peacetime and considered that the large, privately owned merchant collier fleet would able to cater for any additional demands in wartime’.[16]

There were three methods of coaling naval ships, from a jetty, from lighters, and from a collier, and, although it was only the latter that was always performed by naval men, there were several reasons why a ship’s company might be called to coal their own vessel when using other methods. Occasionally there was simply not enough local labour to coal all the ships in harbour, and at smaller, purely naval sites, this was often the case. At Esquimalt, Vancouver, for example, although indigenous labour was sometimes used, it was usually the ship’s crew that coaled from the lighters.[17] Temporary labour shortages also occasionally occurred at large stations, caused by strikes, or during cultural and religious festivals such as Christmas, and Chinese New Year.[18] Thus, although these methods were less likely to involve naval labour, it is pertinent to briefly explore their mechanisms.

Coaling From a Jetty

Coaling from a jetty was generally limited to large stations on trade routes or bases of supply, where significant stacks of coal were maintained and specialist wharves and jetties had been installed (see Figure 1). By the late nineteenth century, as a result of the growing size of battleships, this method was largely reserved for cruisers and individual vessels, rather than fleet warships.[19] Techniques could vary from station to station, but coal was generally carried on board in baskets from neighbouring stacks, which required considerable shore labour, although crews often worked with them in tandem.[20] These heavers would begin by filling the coal sacks, followed by rigging the ships in one of two arrangements. If coal was simply to be carried on board, planks were placed between the ship and shore. If this was not possible, stages were rigged and baskets passed up. Although techniques varied between stations, this way of coaling tended to be more efficient than from lighters and especially colliers.[21] This speed of transference could be impeded, however, if shore labour was short, or deemed incompetent. In Sydney, for example, the workers of the Union Company left coal in sacks on the wharf, leaving the crew of the Encounter to carry 135lbs bags 200 yards across springy planks with inclines. Remarkably, the crew still averaged around 60 tons an hour, but this was significantly lower than normal rates.[22]

At the beginning of the twentieth century, it became more common to use cranes at the larger Mediterranean and British naval stations. Some of the early cranes installed on quaysides actually did little in terms of the speed of coaling, as they could only load five or six bags at a time, even if they did save back-breaking labour.[23] The machinery installed at some larger stations in the last decade of the nineteenth century, such as at Portsmouth and Portland, included more advanced hydraulic cranes and hoists for receiving and discharging coal. Although each hoist could reportedly discharge at 500 tons per hour, a rate around double what could be achieved with manual labour, only cruisers could coal alongside. Battleships therefore still had to be coaled by lighter, although the bags were transferred from the dockside by cranes.[24] At smaller stations such as Crete and Alexandria, and in many of the stations further afield, loading by baskets remained as the only method of coaling from a jetty.[25]

Coaling from Lighters

An equally common way to coal was from a lighter, which was especially used where a station did not have the facilities to coal a ship directly from the shore. In general, a lighter would come alongside a warship and be secured, usually the night before coaling, thereby giving as many daylight hours as possible to the task. In the morning, the coal would be transported, either passed by hand, or by using the ships winches, from the lighter to the deck. From there, it was deposited in the ships bunkers (see Figure 2).[26]

In the 1870s, this coaling technique was less standardised and methods less perfected, and

‘it was frequently the deuces own job getting the coal out on account of the ship rolling like an empty tub and threatening either to fall on top of you or suck you under at every heave’.[27]

From the 1880s onwards, however, the coal brought out by the lighter was already in bags, allowing a higher rate of transference.[28] This more uniform use of coal in bags, along with operational experience, went some way to alleviate earlier problems, and in time coaling from lighters became so efficient that some station records for the rate of coaling were broken using this method.[29] Even so, although this was done regularly and in the calmness of a harbour, as shown in Figure 3, on rare occasions rough seas overnight could detach lighters, which could then suffer damage or even sink with coal aboard.[30]

Coaling from a Collier

The last method, coaling using a collier, was used extensively, especially when large fleets were at a station together. As it prominently involved the ship’s crew, it is of this method that most records and descriptions remain. Coaling was exclusively performed by a ship’s company, and to be efficient, organisation was crucial. A division of responsibilities was usually done at the beginning of a commission, and each man kept his role throughout. Even so, it still took time for every man to know his duties and perform them competently. In the earlier part of the period, coal was loaded by one or several simple pulley systems known as whips, but after 1892 the newly invented Temperley Transporter was seen as a much superior option (see Figure 4).[31] Described as ‘a sort of overhead trapeze for running the coal from the collier to the ship’, this machinery allowed the swift transference of coal, but its use was not without difficulty.[32] Some ships ‘could not get along at all with the collier’, for example, and this could cause serious delays.[33] Moreover, the Temperley was far from infallible and regularly broke down, and ‘considerable time [was] lost in unshipping cross-beams and shifting gear’.[34] Even with these delays, however, coaling averages using the machinery were often impressive, although they did not often exceed 100 tons per hour, considerably lower than the highest rates seen by other methods.[35]