Now we are talking here. I know all about being a fireman in the Navy. Although my stint as a fireman only lasted a few months I learned quickly that I did not want to stay a fireman all too long.

One infamous job a fireman must do on any ship they are on is clean the bilges and inner bottoms. In these two areas all the water, oil, fuel, and other liquids accumulates in the engine rooms. On steam ships this is a much larger mess than on one of today’s gas turbine ships. But it is still a mess. The inner bottoms are much worse than the bilges as this is where the heavier materials collect.

So after the bilge is cleaned the inner bottoms are scooped out and the person who does this is almost always the new fireman on board. Lucky for me I went to my ship as an E4, petty officer third class. So, when it was tie to bilge dive I was put in charge of the three firemen we had in the engine room. Two were regular gas turbine techs and one was a non-rated nuke school reject.

Firemen work in the engineering rates. The jobs they can have range from welder, machinist, electrician, HVAC technician, and yes, even a real fireman. They work down in the engineering spaces and will rarely interact with other portions of the ships crew.

To me life as a non-rated fireman would have been the worst in the Navy. Working outside is not all that bad as a seaman or airman might do. But firemen will work inside the ship 90% of the time in a hot and humid engine room. Or if you travel too far north, a cold humid engine room. In port engineering was almost always the last department to be allowed liberty and worked later hours as a whole department than any other. We spent several nights onboard the ship until 10:00pm, 2200 hours.

If the weather was too rough to be outside seamen and airmen could work inside, but no matter how rough it was the fireman had to work. Then when it was rough it made things worse in some ways for the fireman. All the junk in the bottom of the lube oil tanks would get stirred up and the lobe oil filter had to be shifted and cleaned about every 15 minutes. I did that job a few hundred times and it is not fun.

You move through the ranks as a Fireman recruit, Fireman apprentice, and finally fireman. Unless you have been through A-school you cannot move up in rank until you strike a rate.