On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 09:17:27 +0300, injipoint
wrote:


I hope you have this stuff written down for your family etc.
I never tire of hearing tales of how things actually ran and what
happened in the workplace. You get more than enough of the political
history - we should hear more of the stories of the people who did the
jobs.

No, I'm not a diarist. That's Skip.
Most people would find it all boring and inconsequential.
You kinda "have to be there."

I failed to mention something about operating a boiler during
maneuvers. The opposite of steam demand.
When the skipper is sending full astern and flank speed demands,
demanding all the steam the boilers can produce, and heating
all the refractory materials, tubes, headers and drums to the extreme,
he might suddenly telegraph stop.
If the burnerman isn't very fast in cutting out all but one burner,
you can pop a safety. On my ship, the first one popped at 1320 psi.
Never saw that happen on my ship, but some close calls.
The results of that are consequential, because it requires some safety
valve maintenance, and blows many clumps of soot from the stack,
scattering it topside, and royally ****ing off the deck apes, who have
to clean it up.
I've popped safety valves as part of testing them, and the sound is
deafening in the fireroom, but the fireroom is very noisy anyway.
Once you get to steaming with 4 burners it's all shouting.
One time I was coming back from liberty and a ship similar to mine
popped a safety at D&S piers in Norfolk as I walked by, maybe a few
hundred yards away. Don't know why.
It was the most horrendous sound I ever heard.

I'd wager that my mates have forgotten most all of it.
Many took no interest in steam, and just did as they were told.
I consider all that a bit differently, and remember all the jobs I've
done, however lowly, their purpose, their high and low points.
I've felt satisfaction at sweeping a floor well. And utter boredom in
tedious jobs.
Sometimes I've felt humbled by standing on the shoulders of "great
men" whose combined work could assemble something like that ship I
served on. And proud to be an important part of its operation.
And sometimes I've witnessed utter stupidity.
For example, I had a damage control assignment where my task was
practiced by finding the obvious chalk markings put on the ASROC deck
by the Weapons officer.
Those chalk markings represented something I was to pick up, put in
normal water bucket, and dump over the side. My only garb besides my
skivvies, shoes,socks, dungarees and white hat was a pair a rubber
gloves.
What was I to pick up and carry in a bucket to toss over the side?
Plutonium.
The scary thing is I probably would have done it.

I think many here have their own good tales. And of an age to tell
tales that just don't occur any more. Time moves on.
And the most interesting tales to me are the ones that no longer can
happen. Old steam machinery is an example.
I'll relate later when I was a Lilliputian in U.S. Steel, dealing with
an 800 pound slugging wrench, using a 2000 pound hammer.
I do believe I'm now the only man alive who can tell that tale.
And the only one to write it down.