A Real Live Steamer: A Fish Tug’s Engine Room – Spring 1992

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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.

By George P. Wakefield

Steam gill-netters have been a keen interest of mine ever since the first tug passed my way in 1916. I was aboard my little ship, a rectangular-shaped punt which we called the scow, sculling around the river. From that day I was a continuous observer of the river boats and since we had seven real, live steamers in the harbor of Vermilion, I had an excellent opportunity, coupled with my natural love of boats, to learn a lot about them; their shapes, their noises, the crews, the way they moved through the water and the shape of their stems, even the detail of their rudder chains registered in my mind.

For the sake of marine history, I think it important to look into the engine room in one of these tugs. The Kishman Fish Company’s, Rainbow, was a typical single-cylinder steam powered tug. I believe there were more of this type than compound or triple expansion engines used in gill-net tugs on the Great Lakes mainly because they were very simple engines and low cost. Simplicity usually means reliability at the sacrifice of efficiency and these little engines were about as barren of movable parts as possible. They were wonderful little engines, as I reflect today, compared with triple-expansion types, and for that matter, any modern internal combustion engine. I still have an inordinate love for these little jumping puffers that were so common on the lakes.

Of course the engine required a boiler, that silent kettle that the engineer watched and petted like a cat for it was an explosive pressure tank that could, if not attended properly, blow the boat apart, and that was serious stuff. As far as I know, the safety record of these flue type boilers was excellent to such an extent that they were accepted by the fishermen as much as the engine itself. I think this was a result of very strict governmental inspection developed over the years after many fatal explosions up until the latter part of the 19th century.

So here we are in the doorway watching the engineer operate the engine in response to signals from the skipper. We have just arrived at the coal dock and pop aboard at the stern. The crew are off shoveling coal into the rail-cart which will be pushed down to the side of the tug and dumped into the boat. The crew never paid much attention to us as we boarded, I believe they sort of liked our coming down to meet them.

Now we heard the coal rumble through the open manhole in the deck and crash in the bunker below. The chief had the door closed on that side to keep most of the coal dust out of the engine room, but a lot came up from the bunker. One of the crew shoveled the remaining coal off the deck into the hole and closed the opening. In a short time the engine room bell rang out a loud clang. We were off. The chief threw over the linkage bar at the fore end of the engine and pulled the throttle valve open just a bit to let the engine run slowly. You could hear and feel the response of the engine as she turned at slow speed. We were leaving the dock and about to turn around in the river and dock to unload our catch of perch and blue pike. We soon felt the hard overturn of the rudder as the captain turned to starboard. The bell clanged hard astern; the chief reacted fast, switched the linkage bar to the right and pulled back on the throttle. The engine came alive and the sound of the prop echoed in our ears along with the vibrant engine. The chief knew the circumstances and put extra steam into the cylinder; we were headed for the bank and had to stop fast. We were now backing and then one bell clang signaled stop; then another bell came down the line and the chief put her in ahead with a good shot of steam. He later checked the engine to slow as we came to the dock. Another single bell and she was stopped. The boat rubbed the dock with a nice landing. Two bells nudged the engine room for a reverse as the chief operated accordingly to stop the boat. Soon a single bell for a stop meant the engines were finished and we were secured at dock. The chief now had time to answer questions. He was a friendly fellow so we were in steam engine heaven.

Before we go into the detail of an engine room here is the general plan of the power plant. The boiler because of its weight when filled had to be about midships. Room was required to fire the boiler and remove ashes. This meant the engine would be several feet aft. Since the engine was relatively tall, a means to operate it had to be built. This was the bridge running athwartship just forward of the engine enabling the engineer to operate the engine’s forward and reversing mechanism. Here the chief had access to the boiler and was in a position to run the engine. A ladder at the side allowed the engineer to go to and from the boiler. The engine consisted of a cylinder with a side mounted slide valve supported by four columns rising from the base which enclosed the guide and cross-head, piston rod, crank and crank-shaft. The shaft coupling and the shaft ran aft to the inside stuffing box and then to the propeller. That generally was the layout of the steam unit on the tug Rainbow.

A Talk With The Chief

I asked, “How does that up-and-down-rocking, ahead and reverse actually work?”

“Well, that’s a long story but see those two bands down there on the shaft? They ride around on an eccentric, let’s call it a pulley with a shaft hole off center. As the shaft turns the pulley goes up and down. Understand that? All right, since the pulley is connected to this side of the quadrant link, it goes up and down. Now if you understand that, you can follow the rest. The other pulley down there is set up just the opposite to the first one; consequently, the pulleys go up and down directly opposite to each other. Now then, if this last pulley is connected to the other side of the quadrant link it would go up and down while the other side is going down and up. This is what makes the link go up and down as you noticed, like a teeter-totter, right?

“If you now understand the reason for the rocking, let’s see how this device affects the engine. See this shaft leading to the small cylinder next to the main cylinder; this is the slide valve that opens and closes allowing the steam to enter the top of the piston stroke or the bottom. Suppose the engine is going ahead, then if you were to reverse this slide valve action, the engine would reverse, right? Now if l move this quadrant link under the valve shaft, the engine goes one way; then if I move it to the other end the engine goes the other way or in reverse. Simple? But this invention was one of the first and best ways to control a steam engine. It was devised by a draftsman working for Robert Stephenson in 1841 and has always been known as the Stephenson link motion.”

“Chief, tell us about the boiler,” I said.

“Let me roughly describe the steam generator. It is made strong to resist high internal pressures mostly of steel plate riveted together. The shape is a short cylinder with flat ends. The furnace is a tunnel of steel starting at the fire door here and ending at the combustion chamber at the end. Running back above this tunnel are the fire tubes or flues that end up at the front above the fire doors and are covered by the smoke hood which leads to the stack up above. The furnace tunnel and the walls of the combustion chamber are surrounded with water including the fire tubes. This allows all the heat from the furnace to go directly through the steel to the water; this clever design gives the greatest possible heating surfaces which draws the most heat from the burning coals. Live steam is formed at the top of the boiler and piped overhead directly to the engine, as you can see. This type of marine boiler was very common on the lake fish tugs. It’s a Scotch marine boiler.”

I said, “I didn’t think it was so complicated.”

He said, “I forgot to tell about the fire place. In the tunnel are cast iron grates that support the coals. They have slots which allow the ashes to drop through to the lower part of the tunnel.”

I said I had seen those cast iron grates on the docks, looking pretty worn out.

“True. They have to be replaced, usually after a year’s use.” Since he was in the mood to talk we asked him about his job.

“Well, I first arrive at the tug, say 5:30 a.m. I notice a small wisp of smoke rising from the stack which means the fire I banked last night is intact. I unlock the doors, climb down to the boiler and open the fire door for a peek into the sleeping coals. They look just right, so I awaken the flames with my slice bar and rake the coals to clear the ashes. Then I level the bed of live coals and shovel in new coal. To hurry the fire along I open up a steam valve to force live steam upward in the stack which produces the noise of forced draft as I open up the drafts below the fire door. She is now on the way to making steam.

“Next I lubricate all moving parts of the engine. Start on top and work down oiling the main bearing wick-wells, crank bearing, crossheads and guides and finish by oiling the eccentric bands. By now the pressure gage shows enough steam, about 20 pounds, to rollover the engine. I open the bleeder valves on the top and bottom of the cylinder to get the water out. This is important ’cause water in the cylinder does not compress and could damage the engine. A final shot of oil into the cylinder from the hand pressure lubricator puts the engine in shape to operate. I look down to see for sure how my crank is in relation to a top and vertical position;

This is an automatic action since I always have to watch this whenever we start and stop the engine. Can you see bow the engine would fail if the crank was in a vertical position?”

I knew enough about mechanics and engines to say yes.

“Okay. By now the old man and the crew arrive. The captain pops his head in the doorway. ‘You ready, Chief?’

“Soon I get the go-ahead bell and open the throttle just enough to run the engine slow speed. My steam pressure is still low, around 50 pounds and rising. When we arrive at the lake we’ll be cruising well enough to make fair progress to our nets. In another half hour we will be up to our regular steam pressure, 85 pounds and 11 miles an hour through-water speed. Every half hour I’ll go through my lubricating routine and check boiler water level. I’ll bring the water level up with this.” He pointed to the injector at the side.

“How does it work?”

“An injector operates about the same as if you lifted yourself up with your boot straps, sort of an impossible situation. The injector has a steam nozzle aimed in the direction of the water line leading to the boiler. When steam is blown, say at 85 pounds against water pressure in the boiler of the same pressure, the speed of the steam increases as it is squeezed down going through the nozzle, just like a garden hose with your finger over the nozzle. This increases the speed of the water enough so it meets the boiler water and penetrates it! There you have it.

“As we arrive at the nets the captain calls for slow speed while the nets are pulled by the steam puller up for’d, port side. Nets in, we turn back to port under a full head of steam. Soon we’re in port, coaling and unloading. My day is almost done. All I have to do is bank the fire and wipe up.”

I said, “Thanks Chief. I now feel like I could take your place.”

*  *  *

The steam tugs gradually thinned out because they were unprofitable — the extra cost of the engineers required for the steam plant gave a distinct cost edge to the internal combustion engines that had been emerging since 1900. The steamers just faded away, some were sold for other uses; the Rainbow, idle at the dock for a couple of years, finally ended up sunk at the Yacht Club dock. A diesel skipper pumped her dry and towed her out in the lake for good riddance as a river hulk. She did not sink readily for her house came off and floated on the surface as a gesture of resistance. She now rests on the bottom off Vermilion awaiting the scuba diver to discover her bones. No one realized it at the time but she represented the final days of the Golden Years of profit from fishing and the last of small steamers. It was in reality, the end of a rainbow.

NOTES

The Rainbow was built at Erie, Pa. in 1910 for C. A Mattison of Vermilion. She was 56′ x 15′ x 6.3′ of wood, powered with a single cylinder non-condensing engine. She was skippered by John Naegle and later by Freddy Martinec with George Show later as chief engineer. Her net­ puller machine was a product of the Crosley Lead & Machine Company of Erie. She fished as a fleet boat of the Kishman Fish Company all her life until laid-up in the thirties when she was finally ab

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