# The Telegraph



## spongebob (Dec 11, 2007)

The Telegraph

something to rouse the memories

Back in the old days, the days before engine control rooms with telemetering, remote controls, computers, earmuffs and air conditioning the watch keeping engineer spent all his time on the plates as he wandered around the engine room looking, listening, feeling and even smelling for a sense of change, a throb out of kilter, something running hot, a whine that changes tone or what ever warned of a change to the heart beat of the propulsion machinery and its auxiliaries. 
Perhaps the senses that guided us the most were touch as we felt a surface with our bare hand to gauge its temperature and as carefully and tenderly as we would a child’s forehead or a woman’s breast.
Then our hearing, the sounds of change to which we became much attuned albeit at the expense of our hearing faculties in later life as we used this sense without any dampening ear muff aids or medical advice of the fact that loud noise was injurious to our health.
Above all there was one sound that had special meaning, the jangle of the ship’s telegraph.
Its first “Standby” clang saw us galvanize into action to ensure that all the pre movement checks were in place and to eagerly await that first telegraph command call. It meant that we were leaving port, leaving home, or better still, leaving for home; it was an exciting sound and none better than the final full away double ring from the bridge that allowed us to settle the beast down for the long or short haul across the ocean or sea.
The big polished brass Chadburn dial then goes quiet; the next time it rings will normally be at the end of the voyage. Down below we are denied the sights of the approach to an old favourite port, a new port or, above all, our home harbour as we suffer the “channels” of the home approaches but when that “clang, clang, clang” sounds again we are ready to provide whatever the master needs in the way of propulsion to berth the ship. It is a time when sometimes we need to tell the bridge that compressed air does not grow on trees but most times the act of berthing is carried out by those above us with the tenderness and competence of a mid wife birthing a baby.
The crowning sound and moment is that old sound, sometimes rung with gusto or a long and lingering tinkle of “Finished with Engines” 

Bob


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## harry t. (Oct 25, 2008)

some old engine room photos circa 1935 from last years Daily Mail


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## Robert Hilton (Feb 13, 2011)

Thanks, Bob. A superb piece of writing.


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## gordonarfur (May 27, 2018)

No wonder they were called the black gang (poor sods).


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## mrcruisine (Oct 10, 2010)

Thanks bring back memories indeed, drive us nuts when the old man keeps going from DS and slow ahead and back to stop then astern like its automatic, wrong way alarm klaxons going when engine is in ahead or astern setting, the 4th whinging not enough start air and so on, then as often happened when we berthed the mates forget to call down Finished with Engines while we wait for an hour while they are in the bar, waiting for the brass telegraph to speak. All good fun and brilliant post, many memories evoked so thanks.


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## Tim Gibbs (Apr 4, 2012)

spongebob said:


> The Telegraph
> 
> something to rouse the memories......
> 
> ....Bob


It sure did Bob!
I recently found this pic, an amazingly well preserved transparency, of Halter Hayden, one of the few long term friends I made whilst at sea. 
Here he is trying to look really cool at the one of those newfangled electric telegraphs on the City of Hereford in 1964. Somewhere I have a slightly less cool pic of him laying on the boat deck trying to balance a can of Tennents on his nose.


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## makko (Jul 20, 2006)

Some other ones Bob to set the skin a-tinglin': Telephone call to ECR confirming pilot on board, confirmation of time to standby, scribbling down in the log the time of first engine movements (and saying a silent prayer that you had bled the fuel line correctly!), call down from bridge arriving to port,"30 miles out." to shut down evap and THEN, finally FWE (make a note in the log).
Rgds.
Dave


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## electricfish (Nov 12, 2008)

Typical "white" boiler suit, saturated with perspiration within 5 minutes of starting the watch at 2000 hrs. Trying to wash the boiler suit in a metal bucket fitted with a heating element at 0030 hours somewhere off Peru! Then having to make sure it will be dry by 0800 hrs. Sometimes difficult times, but so glad to have those wonderful memories. It must be a function of the human brain to remember the good times and forget the others!


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## sternchallis (Nov 15, 2015)

electricfish said:


> Typical "white" boiler suit, saturated with perspiration within 5 minutes of starting the watch at 2000 hrs. Trying to wash the boiler suit in a metal bucket fitted with a heating element at 0030 hours somewhere off Peru! Then having to make sure it will be dry by 0800 hrs. Sometimes difficult times, but so glad to have those wonderful memories. It must be a function of the human brain to remember the good times and forget the others!


You mean you only had one boilersuit, not three. One on, 1 spare and one drying.


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## dannic (Mar 10, 2013)

spongebob said:


> The Telegraph
> 
> something to rouse the memories
> 
> ...


Lovely to have a clanging telegraph, worst I had was tanker built in Sweden (aft end) and Spain (hull) with horrible loud buzzer for telegraph! And even on bridge control it woke you up!!
Dannic.


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## john24601 (Nov 18, 2008)

Waiting endlessly for the 'finished with engines call' only to find out that the bridge staff had gone and forgotten about us!


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## kewl dude (Jun 1, 2008)

re: Waiting endlessly for the 'finished with engines call' only to find out that the bridge staff had gone and forgotten about us!

Tell me about it. Most ships I sailed the C/E was very obvious up on deck, watching what was going on, and if the bridge was abandoned he braced them.


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## Bill Morrison (May 25, 2013)

Back in the very old days, you had to know your P from S what happen in the hours of darkness is anybody's guess .


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