TITANIC-TITANIC.com | Titanic's Boilers
This classic photograph of Titanic's boilers in the Harland and Wolff boiler shops ready to be installed on Titanic is surely one of the most enduring Titanic images in existence, a potent reminder of her vast size and power. You can just spot the Harland and Wolff worker on the shop floor, almost dwarfed by the size of them.
Titanic was equipped with 25 double-ended triple furnace boilers, and 4 single-ended ones, making a grand total of 162 fireboxes, or furnaces, each one of which had to manually stoked by a legion of firemen, or stokers - about 150 were aboard, and of course, the boilers had to be kept in steam for the entire journey, night and day. A team of trimmers brought the coal to the boilers for the firemen to use, and it also the job of the trimmers to keep the coal in the bunkers equal, or 'trimmed', on both sides of the ship to prevent the possibility of her listing. This huge army of firemen and trimmers were known as the 'Black Gang', for obvious reasons.
The boilers, located deep down on G deck, supplied steam to the engines at a pressure of 215psi.
On a normal crossing, Titanic would have consumed approximately 600 tons or more of coal per day. This coal, once consumed, leaves behind a by-product - ash - which has to be shovelled-out from below the boiler, and just like the coal, this had to be manhandled by the members of the 'Black Gang' away from the boiler room floor. About 100 tons of the stuff would need to be disposed of every day, and because the boiler rooms were below water level, it couldn't simply be dumped over the side, so high water pressure was used in devices called 'Ash Ejectors' to pump the ash into the sea.