Any Bluejackets know the reasoning for this ?

[Rock Dodger]

An electric potato peeler I can understand, especially in a galley catering for hundreds of people. But a steam-driven potato peeler? Sounds like some serious heavy engineering! They ran steam lines up to the galley to power this stuff?

Pete

Don't ask me how I know this, but it is true. A certain 'manufacturer' of oven ready chips used (still may use for all I know) jets of superheated steam to knock the skin off spuds as they moved along a stainless steel mesh conveyor. That was, of course, before they soaked them in chlorinated water mashed them to mush squeezed them through a square cross section die, added salt and other goo and flash fried them before freezing them at minus 40 before putting them in a plastic bag.

The picture on the bag conjured up an image of farmhouses, bucolic bliss and "hand cooked by a buxom country housewife" wholesome freshness...

Yep, steam peeling at the rate of 10 tonnes an hour!

 

[Sandyman]

An electric potato peeler I can understand, especially in a galley catering for hundreds of people. But a steam-driven potato peeler? Sounds like some serious heavy engineering! They ran steam lines up to the galley to power this stuff?

Pete

On some of the older ships just about everything was run on steam. Steam pipes ran throughout the ship.
What I used to particularly hate operating were the steam driven upper deck winches used for the lifeboat derricks.

 

[prv]

A certain 'manufacturer' of oven ready chips used (still may use for all I know) jets of superheated steam to knock the skin off spuds

I googled for steam-powered potato peelers and found such machines, but I assumed that even an aircraft carrier wouldn't need quite that degree of industrial spud-processing. I took Sandyman's post to refer to a more or less conventional motorised potato rumbler, but powered by a small steam engine (I guess turbine rather than reciprocating).

But perhaps I'm wrong?

Pete

 

[Sandyman]

Your take was correct
Its going back a bit, but as I recall it was just a pistons driving a rotating drum inside a fixed drum.
Bung the tatties in. Turn the seacock on. Open the steam valve & away she went.
All the peelings collected in a sieve below & were thrown into the gash gobbler

 

[Sandyman]

Talking of Admiralty Books. One of my prized possessions is an immaculate copy of The Admiralty Manuel of Navigation 1914.
Cost three shillings then.
Have read it through twice but still cannot understand the section on GPS

 

[Bilgediver]

Yep, bales of cotton, wool, are notorious for spontaneous combustion, as are iron fillings, coal (coal dust), sugar, flour, etc. Have a google about ship fires, you'll be surprised. Better still have a chat with a fire brigade that still a maritime deployment specialty -they should have some cracking pic's, stories about spontaneous combustion; get them to do a lecture in your local club.

I've seen a a fire start in a ships cargo hold where some grain got wet. About a bucket full of grain was just starting to burn. It was very localised with no warmth in the drier surrounding grain. Smoke detectors worked

 

[Norman_E]

Your take was correct
Its going back a bit, but as I recall it was just a pistons driving a rotating drum inside a fixed drum.
Bung the tatties in. Turn the seacock on. Open the steam valve & away she went.
All the peelings collected in a sieve below & were thrown into the gash gobbler

Have a look at this engine http://muskegonheritage.org/Dake Engine description/Dake Engine page.html
I know that some ships had winches and other gear driven by Dake Double Square engines.

 

[Sandyman]

Tks for that. Real engineering.

 

[Biggles Wader]

One of the problems with jute as a cargo was that it was prone to spontaneous combustion if it got damp.With a hold full of the stuff you could not use water to put the fire out as the jute would then expand and split the ship in half.

 

[Rowana]

Jute was bloody awful stuff!

I served my apprenticeship in a jute mill in Dundee, and if we did get a loom fire, which happened fairly frequently, there was no point in POURING water on it, as the dust was so light, it just continued to burn on top of the water! If it just happened to flow under the next loom, that went up as well. I've actually seen 4 adjacent looms go up.

The trick was for a group of guys to get round the burning loom, each with a bucket of water, and slowly lap the water out using your hand - Just quick enough to put out the fire, but not as quick as float off the burning dust!

And if the fire got up into the rafters, well it just started running along the dust. Our gaffer had a ladder with a couple of hooks on top which he used to hook over a beam, climb up, take off his flat cap and use it to knock out a fire break, then scramble down, move the ladder to the next beam and repeat the process. It was important not to be too close to the burning dust when making a fire break, or it was possible to knock down burning dust and start another fire!

Happy days!

 

[DownWest]

Vegtable base oils are a problem for auto combustion. After a pile of sawdust with some frying oil set our field alight, I looked at t'net. Quite common in musical instrument workshops with linseed oil rags.

 

[Poignard]

It would surprise many people to hear that even metal is prone to spontaneous combustion. I was in one of Jebsens ships carrying steel scrap, turnings and swarf from Chicago to Europe and the cargo began to smoulder.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...teel swarf and spontaneous combustion&f=false