Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

30 BRITAIN AT WORK. its way to London, handles the coal through from the pits on its system, and is striving to get a profit. There is nothing particularly interesting in the transit and use of coal by rail except the marshalling of the waggons by gravitation, the language of the merchant or dealer if his trucks have not arrived in time to meet the demand, and the more indignant tirade of the railway shareholder against what he calls the Company’s gross extravagance in accept- ing locomotive coal contracts at exorbitant prices. But in coal shipment for export there is much ingenuity apparent, for the docks across “ The Ferry.” Her commander is the mental force necessary to her safe guidance ; Fhato: Cassell & Co., Ltd. COALING A LINER. are equipped not only with jetty lines, but hydraulic cranes, swinging cradles, hoists, shoots, and other appliances deftly contrived to load the smallest or the largest vessel. The shipment at Tyneside, at Hull, or at Cardiff, the latter the port of largest coal export, is a sight to see—that is, if you can see it, for there is a significant warninsi in the Welsh harbour : “ Keep off the quays, as the coal-dust, especially in calm weather, makes the water look like land.” Apart from the vast quantity of coal shipped for use abroad, the consumption of fuel oil board our steamers is, as every traveller is aware, enormous. The engineers and stokers on a modern liner are the despots of a tropical kingdom. “ The Lucania” says the Cunard agent, strolling along the Hus- kisson Dock at Liverpool ; “ well, I should not go aboard to-day — she’s coaling!” There is no doubt about it. She is stripped of her finery for the purpose, and a myriad of men, with the latest appliances, are loading her capacious bunkers with fuel to drive her but the men in the engine-room and the stoke-hole dominate the ocean traffic, and the collier, wielding his pick in the lonely recess of the mine, is the chief factor, the initial impulse, of the wondrous maritime enterprise. The Oceanic is berthed close by. There is a glittering film of coal-dust on her great black hull, and the shed that spans the dock-side is thronged with a procession of grimy men who have just completed the coaling of the leviathan. The floating palace, over seven hundred feet in length, has no fewer than ninety furnaces, and thirteen boilers, to drive the engines of twenty-eight thousand horse- power, and she consumes seven hundred tons of coal daily, when on the move, utilising nearly five thousand tons on each voyage