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Monday 5 December 2011

Engineering as it used to be–part 7.

I left my reader (Hi Christopher) some months ago, hanging on with bated breath. Here is the next episode in the saga of engineering and debauchery at it’s finest. (I might just leave out most of the engineering bit).*

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

For those of a non technical bent, look away now.

On sailing from Singapore, which was a relief because my funds were severely in the red, we set off for a visit to the land of the rising sun. Japan.

What I was not expecting was that my boss had volunteered me to do an exchange with one of the accompanying warships (I’m showing my age here. It was a “Battle” class destroyer). I would transfer over in exchange for one of their midshipmen. Of course this would be done at sea whilst we were underway, by means of a jackstay transfer.

Barrosa2

This involved passing a rope between the two ships travelling at speed and then being hauled across by a bunch of tossers who thought nothing of relaxing the jackstay enough to allow yours truly to be partially immersed in the South China Sea. Bastards. (I can say that cos it’s my blog). These days transfers are usually carried out by helicopter as H&S has virally infected our armed forces.(I’m surprised that they are even allowed to shoot the Taliban).

One thing that never ceases to amaze me was their choice of sleeping quarters for me. A camp bed in the radio room. On an RFA vessel the only people permitted entrance were those that had Top Secret clearance or above and positively vetted, (it was another 15 years before I obtained that level of clearance, due to the fact that I had to work round those big nasty things that went bang and emitted a large mushroom cloud).

Next came disillusionment. Being a callow youth and believing everything I’d been told, I thought that I would live the life of a naval officer. Swanning around, practicing a plummy accent, and drinking copious quantities of pink gin in the wardroom (Bar).

Not so. I was to attend the midnight to four watch in the boiler room. Bugger. A quick briefing ensued, where it was explained to TFE that naval boiler rooms had a different set of rules. Let me explain. In the RFA they had a perfectly reasonable way of getting air into the boilers to aid combustion of the fuel. You use a fan to feed air directly into the furnace. Made sense to me. Not so in Her Majesty’s Royal navy.

Their idea was to pressurise the entire boiler room. As explained to me, if I was to enter the boiler room and endanger this pressurisation, the flames in the furnace would leap out and engulf all.

So the boiler room had an airlock system that you had to enter by. With a safety feature being that the outer door had a switch that turned on a light in the airlock. When this light illuminated then it was safe to enter the boiler room.

Ten to midnight loomed. After struggling to find my way I arrived at the first door and opened it with trepidation. Not knowing my way around, for all I knew, I might have found an outside toilet. The next paragraph shows that I may have needed one.

I’m in the airlock. I close the outer door. Oh fuck, I’m still in pitch darkness. Try again. Nope. (Twenty times later), Expecting to be engulfed by the fires of hell, I inch open the inner door. To my surprise there was no agonising flaming death.

All  I found was that the boiler room crew (laughing hysterically I saw), had deliberately unscrewed the light bulb. Bastards.

An interesting aside. The following day I was informed that I’d be  on one of the dog watches. I was somewhat taken aback by that statement. Yes, my last ship had a cat. But the navy kept dogs onboard? That really intrigued me. Was I to spend the time cleaning out the kennels of attack alsatians used to repel boarders, or were they Officers’ pets? I was wrong. Oh well.

*Fooled you. this post was always going to be about the engineering (Or lack of it). Next post. Japan.

One day i might even let you know about my bit part as a submariner. That was fun. Especially the toilets.

11 comments:

  1. "........H&S has virally infected our armed forces.(I’m surprised that they are even allowed to shoot the Taliban)."

    Surely that should be:-

    H&S has virally infected our armed forces.(I’m surprised that they are even allowed to be in a country where they might be shot by the Taliban)?

    ReplyDelete
  2. " In the RFA they had a perfectly reasonable way of getting air into the boilers to aid combustion of the fuel. You use a fan to feed air directly into the furnace. Made sense to me. Not so in Her Majesty’s Royal navy.

    Their idea was to pressurise the entire boiler room. "

    Knowing nothing about ships' boilers, but a little bit about combustion - the latter ensures all boilers receive combustion-air at an identical pressure.

    The RFA system may not necessarily equalise pressure & therefore airflow rate. Whether that's significant is another issue.

    Combustion-air flow rate affects efficiency at constant fuel consumption.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Joe.
    "........H&S has virally infected our armed forces.(I’m surprised that they are even allowed to shoot the Taliban)."


    I doubt whether our forces are even allowed to use ladders in this day and age to peer over Afghan walls without a twenty page risk assessment.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Joe.

    "The RFA system may not necessarily equalise pressure & therefore airflow rate. Whether that's significant is another issue."

    Much more efficient as it feeds the air directly into the combustion process.

    A bit of a moot point now. Most commercial companies have moved over to more efficient diesel engines and the Navy now uses gas turbines and diesel electric propulsion.

    Glad to have your input as always. (Stops me being lazy).

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  5. When we wanted to hang our "dhobying" up in the boiler room on the Broadsword, we had to queue at the upper door to said "airlock" and wait in turn as the indicating light went from white to red than back to white, then red and so on. If an entrepreneurial chef could replicate the "eternal potmess" recipe, fortunes could be made.
    I may be wrong but on a domestic scale the equivalent boilers would be "open Flued" or "Fan flued"

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  6. @Anon

    On a domestic scale, they'd be Forced-draught - Type B23.

    The fan is is upstream of the flue (& combustion chamber).

    Open flued (Type B21) depends simply on the more-bouyant (warmer) products of combustion self-evacuating up the flue; Fan Flued (Type B22) has the fan downstream of the CC pushing the products up the flue.

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  7. Submarine dunnies... have heard a little about these and how pressure differences underwater make for difficulties that your regular sea toilets on your mate's 30 footer simply never have to face. I imagine what can go wrong is quite different too, though what the worst case scenario is I've no idea. Has anyone ever been launched bare arsed and head first into a ceiling on a column of sewage? Hope to be enlightened by a future chapter.

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  8. Nice dit FE ..

    I never managed to get "down below" during my time in HMS Intrepid (well, you can't trust Booties near anything technical, can you ? ) ..

    But I'll be eternally grateful to the "spanner-wanker" who lobbed a slack handful of nuts & bolts (accidentally or otherwise) into some important bit of the port prop-shaft mechanism, whilst we were alongside in Durban, causing it to "graunch" big time & requiring the FMU in Guzz to make & fly out replacements for the knackered parts ..

    Meant that instead of a 3 week visit, it ended up being almost 12 weeks ... ;)

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  9. Captai. I wouldn't let Booties anywhere near anything mechanical anywhere. We were in company with Fearless and needed a bit of welding done on our fridge system. The mechs brought up a welding machine up on deck ready for shipping over to us, then went below to get their toolbag.

    They set up the welding machine at our fridge machinery space, set it to the correct current. There was then a flash equivalent to the Hiroshima nuke and a huge hole appeared in the pipe. Not what was intended.

    It transpired that whilst they went below deck to fetch their toolbags, the booties washing the deck with a firehose had also washed down the inside of the welding machine!

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  10. Ahh .. therin lies the difference, FE ..

    "Perce" (the crabby bastard) would have just "scrubbed round it" .. ;)

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  11. Why are the dog-watches so called?

    Because they're curtailed!!

    Boom Boom.

    (With apologies to Patrick O'Brian)

    ReplyDelete

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