Fireman or stoker is the job title for someone whose job is to tend the fire for the running of a steam engine

Steam engine

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...

.

On steam locomotive

Steam locomotive

A steam locomotive is a railway locomotive that produces its power through a steam engine. These locomotives are fueled by burning some combustible material, usually coal, wood or oil, to produce steam in a boiler, which drives the steam engine...

s the term fireman is usually used, while on steamships and stationary steam engines, such as those driving saw mills, the term is usually stoker (although the British Merchant Navy did use fireman). Much of the job is hard physical labor, such as shoveling fuel, typically coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

, into the engine's firebox.

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 used the rank structure Ordinary Stoker, Stoker

Able Seaman (rank)

In the British Royal Navy in the middle of the 18th century, the term able seaman referred to a seaman with at least two years' experience at sea...

, Leading Stoker

Leading Seaman

Leading seaman is a junior non-commissioned rank or rate in navies, particularly those of the Commonwealth. When it is used by NATO nations, leading seaman has the rank code of OR-4. It is often equivalent to the army and air force rank of corporal and some navies use corporal rather than...

, Stoker Petty Officer

Petty Officer

A petty officer is a non-commissioned officer in many navies and is given the NATO rank denotion OR-6. They are equal in rank to sergeant, British Army and Royal Air Force. A Petty Officer is superior in rank to Leading Rate and subordinate to Chief Petty Officer, in the case of the British Armed...

 and Chief Stoker

Chief Petty Officer

A chief petty officer is a senior non-commissioned officer in many navies and coast guards.-Canada:"Chief Petty Officer" refers to two ranks in the Canadian Navy...

. The non-substantive (trade) badge for stokers was a ship's propeller

Propeller

A propeller is a type of fan that transmits power by converting rotational motion into thrust. A pressure difference is produced between the forward and rear surfaces of the airfoil-shaped blade, and a fluid is accelerated behind the blade. Propeller dynamics can be modeled by both Bernoulli's...

. "Stoker" remains the colloquial term used to refer to a Marine Engineering rating, despite the decommissioning of the last steam-powered vessel some years ago.

Railways

On steam

Steam

Steam is the technical term for water vapor, the gaseous phase of water, which is formed when water boils. In common language it is often used to refer to the visible mist of water droplets formed as this water vapor condenses in the presence of cooler air...

 railways, firemen were also usually responsible for cleaning the ash and dust from the firebox prior to lighting the fire, adding water to the engine's boiler, making sure there is a proper supply of fuel for the engine aboard before starting journeys, starting the fire, raising or banking the fire as appropriate for the amount of power needed along particular parts of the route, and performing other tasks for maintaining the locomotive according to the orders of the engineer

Railroad engineer

A railroad engineer, locomotive engineer, train operator, train driver or engine driver is a person who drives a train on a railroad...

 (US) or driver (UK). Some firemen served these duties as a form of apprenticeship, aspiring to be locomotive engineers themselves.

Mechanical stoker

A mechanical stoker is a device which feeds coal into the firebox of a boiler. It is standard equipment on large stationary boilers and was also fitted to large steam locomotives to ease the burden of the fireman. The locomotive type has a screw conveyor

Screw conveyor

A screw conveyor or auger conveyor is a mechanism that uses a rotating helical screw blade, called a "flighting", usually within a tube, to move liquid or granular materials. They are used in many bulk handling industries...

 (driven by an auxiliary steam engine) which feeds the coal into the firebox. The coal is then distributed across the grate by steam jets, controlled by the fireman. Power stations usually use pulverized coal-fired boiler

Pulverized coal-fired boiler

A pulverized coal-fired boiler is an industrial or utility boiler that generates thermal energy by burning pulverized coal that is blown into the firebox....

s.

Depictions in popular culture

Yank, the protagonist of Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O'Neill

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...

's play The Hairy Ape

The Hairy Ape

-Plot :The play tells the story of a brutish, unthinking laborer known as Yank, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich...

is the stoker on a ship. Mat Burke, a principal role in O'Neill's Anna Christie

Anna Christie

Anna Christie is a play in four acts by Eugene O'Neill. It made its Broadway debut at the Vanderbilt Theatre on November 2, 1921. O'Neill received the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his work.-Plot summary:...

is also a ship stoker.

The first chapter of Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

's novel Amerika is entitled "The Stoker".

Further reading

• Huibregtse, Jon R. American Railroad Labor and the Genesis of the New Deal, 1919-1935 (University Press of Florida; 2010; 172 pages)
• Licht, Walter. Working for the Railroad: the organization of work in the nineteenth century‎ (1983)
• Orr, John W. Set Up Running: The Life of a Pennsylvania Railroad Engineman, 1904-1949 (2001)
• Tuck, Joseph Hugh. "Canadian Railways and the International Brotherhoods: Labour Organizations in the Railway Running Trades in Canada, 1865-1914" Dissertation Abstracts International, 1977, Vol. 37 Issue 10, p6681-6681