ingenuity. And that is why I have qualified the
expert's objection as inane.
Of course, these doors must not be operated from the bridge because of
the risk of trapping the coal-trimmers inside the bunker; but on the
signal of all other water-tight doors in the ship being closed (as would
be done in case of a collision) they too could be closed on the order of
the engineer of the watch, who would see to the safety of the trimmers.
If the rent in the ship's side were within the bunker itself, that would
become manifest enough without any signal, and the rush of water into the
stokehold could be cut off directly the doorplate came into its place.
Say a minute at the very outside. Naturally, if the blow of a
right-angled collision, for instance, were heavy enough to smash through
the inner bulkhead of the bunker, why, there would be then nothing to do
but for the stokers and trimmers and everybody in there to clear out of
the stoke-room. But that does not mean that the precaution of having
water-tight doors to the bunkers is useless, superfluous, or impossible.
{7}
And talking of stokeholds, firemen, and trimmers, men whose heavy labour
has not a single redeeming feature; which is unhealthy, uninspiring,
arduous, without the reward of personal pride in it; sheer, hard,
brutalising toil, belonging neither to earth nor sea, I greet with joy
the advent for marine purposes of the internal combustion engine. The
disappearance of the marine boiler will be a real progress, which anybody
in sympathy with his kind must welcome. Instead of the unthrifty,
unruly, nondescript crowd the boilers require, a crowd of men _in_ the
ship but not _of_ her, we shall have comparatively small crews of
disciplined, intelligent workers, able to steer the ship, handle anchors,
man boats, and at the same time competent to take their place at a bench
as fitters and repairers; the resourceful and skilled seamen--mechanics
of the future, the legitimate successors of these seamen--sailors of the
past, who had their own kind of skill, hardihood, and tradition, and
whose last days it has been my lot to share.
One lives and learns and hears very surprising things--things that one
hardly knows how to take, whether seriously or jocularly, how to
meet--with indignation or with contempt? Things said by solemn experts,
by exalted directors, by glorified ticket-sellers, by officials of all
sorts. I suppose that one of the uses of such an inquiry is t
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