As a boy at the end of the World War 2, I was told the story of a stubborn Royal Navy stoker.
Determined to get through the war in one piece, he wore his bulky, navy issue, life vest 24 hours a day. This was no mean undertaking when 12 hours of every day were spent shoveling coal in possibly the worst conditions of heat and humidity one could imagine.
Most stokers stripped to shorts for the work, but, in addition, our stoker wore his life vest on bare skin. Coal dust and sweat made this the modern equivalent of a hair shirt. His skin was rubbed away and he was in constant pain from the raw flesh. Salt water showers were customary for stokers coming off duty. More pain.
All things come to an end, and “Victory in Europe” day was a huge celebration. Out on deck, with a glass of rum or two to celebrate, our hero finally flung his much hated life vest into the sea.
On the one hand, six years of taking two showers a day in a kapok jacket (plus six years of eight or twelve hours a day of human sweat) plus six hours a day of being crushed by a sleeping adult, just might render a such a jacket useless. (My kids’ jackets had to be replaced every couple of years until they learned to swim because the jackets only last so long before the kapok is crushed to the point of no longer holding the air that keeps them afloat.)
On the other hand, I have just a bit of trouble believing that the Royal Navy would let a guy wear his jacket at all times. (I’d think there might be a bit of a fire hazard in front of a firebox and there are a lot of times when crewmen are supposed to dress pretty for one ceremony or another.)
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The capital ships were oil fired, but they were steam turbine, not diesel. (Point taken on the presence of stokers, of course.)
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Sounds fishy. On the other hand, I went overseas on the Ile de France and on that ship and all other troop ships that I know of in the Atlantic, the passengers (the troops), but not the crew, wore life jackets at all times and slept with them on the bed.
I share tomndebb’s doubts - donning a lifejacket below decks isn’t always a good idea, as it can seriously hinder your ability to escape, particularly from a partially flooded compartment.
Sounds implausible to me, too. I can’t see a naval rating being allowed to get away with this. It might be a bit more believable about a merchant seaman, especially as many older cargo ships were still coal fired as late as WW2. I can believe the sank immediately part, though.
Kapok life vests can become waterlogged. I’m sure this story is apocyphal as there are too many plot holes but it’s not unreasonable that a sweat saturated vest might sink.
At any rate I was glad to have had an inflatable float coat rather than kapok as I worked on the flight deck. When we had the '83 engineering fire on the Ranger all of us were more than a little nervous and everyone in our shop tested our vests for leaks and the batteries in our locator beacons. Sailors are often overly cautious for good reason.
Yes, WW2-era Royal Navy ships would have been either oil-fired or diesel-fired. Oil-fired ships still have boilers and crew maintaining them. I don’t know if they were called ‘stokers’, but they certainly wouldn’t have worked in the coal-choked environment you’d associate with a stoker on a Titanic-era coal-fired steamship. Even before the switch to oil, many ships would have had mechanical coal-handling equipment instead of human stokers. This must have been cleaner, but still not as clean as an oil- or diesel-powered ship.
There are several advantages to using oil as a fuel for naval steamships instead of coal. Oil provides better acceleration because it’s easier to increase the amount of available steam. It also requires less manpower, and makes it easier to adjust the ship’s balance. The distribution of stored fuel is an important factor in determining a ship’s trim. With coal, the fuel has to be moved manually, but with oil it can be simply pumped. If a ship is damaged and begins to flood, an oil-powered ship can more easily restore its balance by transferring fuel appropriately. Finally, since oil and diesel fuel have a similar density to water, damage to a fuel tank isn’t terribly serious. The fuel will be contaminated, but flooding in a fuel tank doesn’t change the weight of that tank by much, and doesn’t make the ship sink. Damage to a coal bunker, OTOH, can seriously upset the ship’s weight and cause a Lusitania-style bunker explosion.
All of these reasons mean that a WW2-era ship was unlikely to be coal-powered. However, it’s still entirely possible that older ships pressed into service, as well as merchant navy ships, might have been coal-powered.
There are other ways pre-modern life vests might have failed besides being packed with coal dust. Life vests stuffed with cork or other natural materials tended to be very susceptible to aging and exposure to salt water, and often simply fell apart. This might be one reason why wearing a life vest at all times wouldn’t be permitted.