Boatnerd Discussion Forum

“Yup. Nuclear vessels are in fact steam ships. Just a different sort of fuel to make steam is all. Same with the nuclear power plants on shore.”

Yup, steam plants just need a different fuel source. Steam Turbines have far less moving parts than a Diesel engine. Diesel engine will wear out long before a turbine. Why else do you see diesel boats replacing the engines. Can’t argue about maintaining since all equipment requires maintenance.

Yup. Nuclear vessels are in fact steam ships. Just a different sort of fuel to make steam is all. Same with the nuclear power plants on shore.

I own a 1912 steam tractor. Lots of work and upkeep, as compared to a Farmall tractor from the 30's & 40's, but lots more fun (being said by a person who fires it a dozen times a year, and not day in & day out)

GUEST UK wrote:Its not your EPA that is killing steam its progress ?95% of world shipping does not use steam any more. The great lakes region must and for the most part has gotten up to date. Shipping is Global not just regional Some reasons. Are there any steam ships with a Unmanned ER Notations ?(no) Steam plants have more maintenance and more costly to operate. As for the EPA argument it is mute as a steam plant can be fitted with scrubbers the same as Diesel ships. So why no more steam ships being built? I was both a Steam and Diesel Engineer for 43 years, not all on the Great lakes. So steam is out. Is sail the next propulsion system? I am not pro or con just giving some talking points

Sorry. Can’t convince me. Long live steam. Unmanned engine rooms are not the safest. Things do break.

If steam could be made as efficient as diesel there would be more steam plants im not exactly sure how it works but is not a nuclear sub or aircraft carrier really a steamship

Its not your EPA that is killing steam its progress ?95% of world shipping does not use steam any more. The great lakes region must and for the most part has gotten up to date. Shipping is Global not just regional Some reasons. Are there any steam ships with a Unmanned ER Notations ?(no) Steam plants have more maintenance and more costly to operate. As for the EPA argument it is mute as a steam plant can be fitted with scrubbers the same as Diesel ships. So why no more steam ships being built? I was both a Steam and Diesel Engineer for 43 years, not all on the Great lakes. So steam is out. Is sail the next propulsion system? I am not pro or con just giving some talking points

Yes, my father-in-law was a GE turbine specialist. He worked all over the world. Mostly around the Great Lakes basin. He was the head engineer on the turbine side, building the Big Rock nuclear plant. He worked on the turbines in Wyandotte and Trenton power plants. One year in the sixties he overhauled the turbine on the John G Munson. He believed that the hull or boilers would give out before the turbine. Well, the turbine out lasted the boilers. The EPA is killing steam power on the lakes.

Long live steam! I was camping last summer up north when a fellow camper stopped by. He said that this guy wanted to talk to me about steamships. He was an engineer for a company that maintains steam plants. I learned a lot from him. He believed that the EPA is the cause of the death of steam plants - ashore and a float. Reason: due to their ability to burn low grade fuel giving off high emissions. According to him, steam plants are far more reliable than diesel. Of course I believed him since my father-in-law was a GE turbine specialist.

How many Engineers made the move from steam to diesel or did most just ride out the steam till retirement?

In my time working on the lakes I only worked on one steamer and it was a turbine ship (Munson). Since most of my time was on diesels and I worked in the engineroom on diesels I could see, seeing what we did all day as wipers/oilers on diesels compared to video's I've seen of an oiler doing work on the E.M. Ford I think M/V guys had an easy go. Now that I volunteer on the City of Milwaukee I realize how labor intensive expansion engines are. It's a marvel that all systems on that ship ran off steam- electric, heating, engines, power for the winches, windless, even the two steering gears are small expansion engines, that's a lot of oiling, wiping, blowing down, draining water. The City of Milwaukee has one small diesel engine as an emergency light plant. There are watch crews on motor vessels but as much as the union says they're needed does an EMD powered locomotive have someone dedicated to watching the engines 24/7? A locomotive engineer is on the whole time but he's not fussing with the prime mover after it's started. On another note the Kaye E. Barker had a boiler incident back in 2006.

Steam was phased out of trains & ships due to the economy of running a diesel ship or locomotive over a steam unit. Fewer people are required to run a diesel boat, the amount of fuel to run a boat over a distance is cheaper with diesel, and the maintenance required on a steam plant is much higher than on a diesel. A diesel boat can be started, warmed up for an hour or so, and take off, get to the port, then turn the engine off. A steam boat took about about 24 hours to comfortably bring the steam plant up to pressure and warm up the engine to run. Thus, if the boat was to sit at the dock for a few days, a fire was maintained to be ready for the next run, involving firemen to be there all the time.

Several lawn mowers make more noise than a reciprocating steam engine in operation, so an engine room would be relatively quiet, but hot & humid. A diesel engine room would be nearly as hot, but so loud that hearing protection is mandatory.

It is fun when, operating my steam tractor at an event, I ask people if they think that steam is dead. Many think so, till I tell them that the most advanced nuclear submarines & carriers in the world are actually steam ships, only instead of the boilers heated with wood/coal/oil, it is nuclear fission.

Guest, your Uncle is pretty much "on the mark" with the hazards that working with a steam power plant could pose.

With that said, I think from a young engine room employee's perspective, I would take steam over diesel any day. When you work with a steam power plant you are learning real engineering that will help you land a shore job and further your career. As long as you are willing to learn, the complexity makes it interesting. The few years I spent working on steamships (Detroit Edison, John T. Hutchinson, Consumers Power and Adam E. Cornielius) opened the doors and allowed me to work for a NY utility company for 34 years. I appied for a job and within two weeks I was hired at a power plant and advanced from there and retired as a Regional Manager of Natural Gas Operations. I owe it all to working on a steam boat. Yes, there are hazards with working on a steam power plant, but with proper training and awareness they can be minimized and dealt with properly.

I do not want to cut diesel short, because there are plenty of shore side diesel jobs that your experience could help you get. It all comes down to what do you want to get out of sailing. I always looked at what the experiences that I gained could do for me in the future. Working with steam did not let me down.

I think that a pipe burst in the boiler and blew everything out thru the fire door on one of the Pittsburg boats back in the early 60's.

Are steam powerplants more complicated than diesel? Which one is the most preferred by engine room crewmembers? Is one safer to work around than the other?

I had an uncle that sailed for ASC during the early 1960s. I recall one story he told about the danger of superheated steam in which steam coming through a hole in a pipe or loose connection would not be visible until it was a few feet away from the pipe itself. According to him, walking into such a leak would instantly cut open the skin. In another story that apparently occurred aboard the Joseph S. Young (later H. Lee White & Sharon) one night in Lake Michigan, the crew noticed that the water level in the boiler could not be determined through a small viewing port. As such, it could not be determined if the water level was too high or too low both of which could have disastrous consequences. I don't know the validity of these situations, perhaps he was just trying to embellish his tales of adventure on both on the lakes and the high seas to us kids.