Tour of Belle’s Smokestacks
Smoke from the boilers’ fires is released through the Belle’s smokestacks. Early steamboats burned wood to heat the water in the boilers, and cinders (hot chunks of burned wood) flew up the smokestacks too. The stacks had to be very tall so the burning cinders would fly up and away from the boat. It could be very dangerous for these to fall on the wooden decks below. They might catch them on fire! As one of her safety features, the Belle has never burned wood to heat the boilers. She burned coal for the first 40 years of her life, and today she burns a low-grade diesel fuel for the fires that heat the water to create steam.
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