Titanic Coal

On board the Titanic, there were 29 boilers equipped with 162 furnaces meant to keep the Titanic running.  The stokers and firemen worked below, shoveling coal from the chutes where they were stored in one wall to to the furnaces on the other side.  These men rarely saw sunlight during the whole voyage and worked not only a very hot job, but also a very dirty job as they shoveled coal kicking up coal dust.  This led to their nickname being "The Black Gang."  Despite what some may believe, not all of the Titanic's boilers were lit.  They were divided by watertight compartments into six boiler rooms and 5 of them were used, leaving Boiler Room No. 1 unused.  The men hired to staff that boiler room were given another task, putting out a coal fire.  Coal fires were not uncommon at the time and despite popular belief, it did not cause or contribute to the sinking.  To get this fire out, the staff from Boiler Room No. 1 were assigned to Boiler Room No. 5 to clear out the whole chute which they did on April 13th.  The stokers were among the first to notice the collision and water as the iceberg caused water to pour into Boiler Room No. 6 and Boiler Room No. 5.  The first thing they did was get the fires out.  With the very cold water and very hot boilers, they didn't want a boiler explosion.  So they released the steam from the furnaces up through the funnels and gradually cooled the boilers.  Not very men survived from the boiler room.  During the break up, Boiler Room No. 1 and 2 were affected.  Boiler Room No. 1 was ripped apart sending the boilers straight to the bottom and the coal in the bunkers with them.  It also exposed the boilers in Boiler Room No. 2 at the back of the bow section and are still visible in the wreck today.  As it turned out, one of the boilers from Boiler Room No. 1 was the first recognizable item from the Titanic seen confirming to the French-American teams led by Jean-Louis Michel and Dr. Robert Ballard that they had found the wreck of the Titanic.  

Coal is the only artifact recovered from the ship's wreck site you can legally own.  You can typically find small pieces of coal at artifact exhibition gift shops and people have turned them into different things such as necklaces and bracelets.  This is a larger lump of coal than usual and if you look closely, you can see the red rust from the wreck site still clinging to it from contact with something at the wreck site.