Keith Tillotson
The Boiler Room (1937)
The first thing when I went out to sea was, I got sick. Oh, man! I was up on the bow, securing the anchor, and it was a fairly rough sea. This old ship was going up and down – you'd go up about 30 feet and pshoo just like that, you'd get sick. They'd call you to go on duty, go up on the bridge to stand watch. To look for things – look out here, look out there. See if you could see something, I guess. They had a watch on each side – starboard and port. And I'd be sick. I lost a hat one time, leanin' over the side to vomit. I lost a lot of hats, first year.
So, I wanted to get out of the deck gang. I wanted to get down in the engine room. I ran into one of the chiefs in charge of the engine room, and I said, "I'd like to get down in the engine room." And he said, "Just goof off."
You were always chipping paint, you know. So, I goofed off as much as I could. And when it come time to transfer somebody to the engine room to get rid of them, I was one of them. I got down in the engine room. The boson mate – the guy in charge – he says, "That's the guy I want to get rid of." See, the officers would ask them who they would like to see transferred. I guess that's the way it happened.
I liked that much better. Oh, it was hot. You're talkin' about a fire room that gets 150 degrees. It's under pressure, and it's awful hot down there. You had to stand under the blower – I probably lost hearing from that. Whining blower – you couldn't talk to each other. You had to walk right up to a guy like this and scream at him.
Still, workin’ in the fire room was better than on deck. You study and work hard, and I made the rates when I come home. You start off as apprentice seaman, then you’re – I don’t know, second-class seaman? Or, fireman in this case. You get fireman first, then you can be in charge of a crew in a boiler room when you’re at sea. Then I finally went up to – I struck for boilermaker. That means you work with somebody who is a boilermaker. Then I made second-class boilermaker, and that was about the time I had my four years in or a little better. You’re in for four years. You want to ship over, you can ship over – sign on again – for two years. I was about 22 years old when I got my four years in. I shipped over for two years when I got married.