Gary sat on an overturned trash can watching the boiler-front gauges. The light-off blower was chugging away and the firebox sight glass showed its usual yellow-white glare. The pressure gauge showed 230 pounds, which meant that the stop valves were holding. He started to think ahead. Once they got the boiler up to pressure, they’d then need to find somewhere for all that steam to go to do some good work for Jesus. Main feed booster pumps. Main feed pumps. The big blowers. Cutting in the DA tank to start scrubbing the feedwater. The ultimate objective remained: that all-important ship’s service turbo-generator in Main Control. If they could get a crew of machinist mates into the engine room right behind them, they could then cut in the superheater tubes and eventually roll that generator, and, maybe, with any luck, one, even two main engines.
He caught a whiff of stack gas. That made him sit right up.
The big blowers were large steam turbine-driven fans that produced much larger volumes of air to maintain the higher energy combustion in the firebox. The light-off blower had been getting its air from the boiler room; smelling stack gas in the boiler room meant that the light-off blower was creating negative pressure in the fireroom. Worse, it meant that the flow of “outside” air to the boilers was coming from inside the ship, instead of down the intake plenums. He called the chief over.
“Once we get this boiler up to set point, we’re gonna have to roll the forced-draft blowers to maintain main steam pressure,” he said.
The chief nodded, as in, well, yeah.
“I’m smelling stack gas,” Gary said. “That means the intake plenums have been compromised, too. We roll the big blowers, I think we’re gonna take suction on the entire interior of the ship. What kinda air we gonna get down here?”
The chief closed his eyes for a moment. “We’re gonna get whatever fire and smoke that’s still left inside,” he said. “And that’s gonna draw fresh air through all the holes in the flight deck. And that’s gonna reflash fires that’re probably dying out right now for lack of oh-two, because they’ll be getting brand-new air and a lot of it.”
“Shit,” Gary said. Except, he thought: the boiler wouldn’t care, as long as it got great quantities of air into its firebox.
He was very tired. He tried to think of a reason not to light off the big forced-draft blowers once the required steam pressure was available. He closed his eyes for a moment to gather his thoughts. They want me to roll a ship’s service generator, and eventually, a main engine. But God help anyone who was trying to move around inside the ship when that big draft of outside air came howling through the smoldering remains of Franklin’s interior spaces. The chief nudged him, thinking he’d gone to sleep.
“Tell the bridge what the problem is,” the chief said. “Tell ’em what might happen. See if they wanna go ahead.”
Gary just looked at him for a moment. “Right,” he said. “You smell it, too?”
“Smell what?”
“Stack gas, loose in the space.”
The chief grinned. “I’m a chief boilertender, Boss,” he scoffed. “I breathe stack gas, drink fuel oil, eat fireside soot, and fart fire. A little stack gas in a main hole ain’t no biggie in the P.I.”
Gary rolled his eyes and relayed his concerns to the XO on the bridge.
“Do what you have to do, Lieutenant,” the XO told him. “We desperately need more power and a way to go faster than two knots. The whole Jap air force is out looking for us tonight. Our fighters are reporting torpedo bombers. Those evil bastards know we’ve been hurt bad, but unless they get some torpedoes into us, they know we’re gonna get away. I’ve got Lieutenant McCauley on a mission to get some more snipes down there. Don’t let up.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Gary said. He glanced at the pressure gauge. Four hundred pounds and rising. This was going to get really interesting. “Bleed aux steam to the big blowers,” he ordered. “Warm their steely big asses up.”