[John Rogers]

A Trimmers Life Or

My Life As An Ocean Going Coal Miner.


The occupation of trimmer which was to become known as one of the worst jobs in the world during Victorian times, had its roots down the coal mines of South Wales, Yorkshire, and County Durham, England when trimmers were the souls that were employed to clear the coal away from the miner’s path into baskets or skips as he hacked into the virgin coal face in a tunnel far below the surface.
It was one of the most physical demanding tasks that had to be carried out in the dimly lit darkness in cramped conditions that included sometimes searing temperatures, high moisture, wetness underfoot and unclean gas and dust laden air, conditions so bad that the Government of the times was forced to introduce laws to ban Boys under 12 years of age and females of all ages from working underground where their size was often of an advantage when shoveling and hauling coal away from the coal face to the pit head elevator via the small narrow tunnels. This legislation sped up the adoption of higher access tunnels and pit ponies but never the less the trimmer’s job remained a brutally hard task until underground mechanization and materials handling led to its demise.
Transfer this same hard task to a steam ship of the day, a ship with hand fired boilers and its coal fuel stored in holds or bunkers adjacent to the boiler room where the trimmer’s job was to deliver a constant supply of coal to each fireman tending the boilers.
This was the job I took on when I joined my first coal fired steam ship and became a member of what was known as the “Black Gang.”
As a sea going job it was the same as most others in as much as we worked four hours on and eight hours off watches, except for one very big difference, it was hard physical work, almost non stop, for most of the four hour watch and accompanied by conditions not far removed from and sometimes worse than the job of a trimmer down a coal mine.
The ship’s boiler room or stoke hold had a crew of three firemen or stokers and one trimmer per watch and while each fireman’s task was to feed coal into the furnaces of the boiler under his care it was the sole trimmers job to maintain a supply of coal on the plates alongside each of the three boilers.
The bunker was a very dangerous place to work as it was poorly lit, only by a portable cluster light, and the constant shoveling of coal into the wheelbarrow often caused the coal heap to shift and slide, sometimes like an avalanche, and this was often agitated by the movement of the ship as she pitched and rolled to the weather conditions. These coal slides would add clouds of dust to the already dirt laden atmosphere of the bunker, dust that would get in the eyes, the throat, the hair and into every single pore of the body that was exposed. Sometimes all you could see of a trimmer in a bunker was the whites of his eyes after the black dust had coated everything else.
Essentials for the job were a good pair of boots, steel toed preferred, and a good shovel with a smooth wooden handle to minimize the inevitable blisters and calluses that developed on the hands. Body clothing was usually a pair of cut off jeans or shorts, a tee shirt and a sweat rag. I never saw a fireman or a trimmer wearing a safety hat, breathing mask or glasses in my time.
Once the wheel barrow was full the job of wheeling it to the boiler fronts was often a big challenge, a steel wheel on steel plates, the ship’s motion and the heavy load often made success a bit like Russian Roulette as I struggled to control the barrow while the ship’s roll created a steep uphill slope and an equally taxing runaway down hill descent in heavy weather. Every single muscle in the body was put to test when wheel barrowing under these conditions.
I was still in my teens and not of a big build, only 5’ 7’ tall and skinny with it, the previous years as a deckhand on a three masted sailing schooner where all ship board tasks were manual had at least hardened and strengthened me toward this new job.
Three loads dumped and three fireman's immediate needs satisfied, might occasionally allow time for a breather but only a brief one as a steamship traveling at full speed in good conditions has a coal and steam appetite like a horse with the bit in its teeth. At anytime the satisfaction of being ahead of the fireman's and boiler’s demands was only a fleeting experience before it was back to the old routine of wheel into the darkness, shovel, and tip for the watch duration

The firemen, senior to the trimmer, had the task of shoveling coal onto the grate of each of the three furnaces per boiler and in a skilled way that ensured an even spread and grate coverage to provide the maximum heat for steam raising. His prime duty was to maintain a constant steam pressure supply for the ship’s engines and this involved a continual watch on the boiler pressure gauge and the water level gauge glasses and at the same time he had to plan his firing method to allow for tending the individual fires by slicing and raking the fire bed, breaking up the clinker and removing the ashes in one furnace while maintaining a full fire on the others.
Toward the end of the watch the firemen would normally let one boiler furnace burn out to almost nothing but at the same time maintaining steam pressure with the other two while the ashes were being removed and a clean fire restarted, this process was repeated until all furnaces were firing clean and well for the engineer and firemen of the next watch to inspect and take over.

Ashing out the fires was another job for the trimmer after the fireman had pushed and raked the ashes off the grate into the bottom of the furnace grate. While doing this close up against the boiler fronts where the temperature was often in the 100 to 130 degrees (F) the radiance from the fire added to that heat plus the quenching of the hot drawn ash with water upped the humidity and the discomfort.
When the ashes were cooled they had to be placed in a small hydraulic hopper for conveying up and over the side, hence the expression “dumping the ashes”
The watch ending was always a good feeling, probably far more appreciated by the stoke hold crew that the deck watches or even the engine room. Fresh, clean, relatively cool air and a wash down never felt so good

I spent a couple of voyages as a trimmer before becoming a fireman, a less strenuous duty, but only marginally so, but when the old coal fired ships were converted to oil fired boilers the job became a lot cleaner and far easier for the “Black Gangs” of those days.