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On a ship, the fire room, or FR or boiler room or stokehold, referred to the space, or spaces, of a vessel where Boiler. The steam was then transmitted to a separate engine room, often (but not always) located immediately aft, where it was utilized to power the vessel. To increase the safety and damage survivability of a vessel, the machinery necessary for operations may be segregated into various spaces, the fire room was one of these spaces, and was among the largest physical compartments of the machinery space. On some ships, the space comprised more than one fire room, such as forward and aft, or port or starboard fire rooms, or may be simply numbered. Each room was connected to a flue, exhausting into a Chimney ventilating smoke.
By their nature, fire rooms were less complex than their allied engine room and were normally supervised by less senior personnel.
On a large percentage of vessels, ships and boats, the fire room was located near the bottom, and at the rear, or aft, end of the vessel, and usually comprised few compartments. This design maximized the cargo carrying capacity of the vessel. The fire room on some ships was situated amid-ships, especially on vessels built from the 1880s to the 1990s.
On a steamship, power for both electricity and propulsion is provided by one or more large boilers giving rise to the alternate name boiler room. The latter name was preferred in the British Navy, among others. High pressure steam from the boiler is piped to the engine room to drive reciprocating engines or for propulsion, and for electricity. When cruising, it was normal for a naval vessel to damp the fires on up to two-thirds of their boilers, and use the steam from only a few boilers in one or two fire rooms to power the engines at low power. When higher speeds were required, more boilers would be brought on line (they were rarely extinguished entirely, as re-lighting a boiler was time-consuming). In rare occasions, when flank speed was called for, all boilers would be burning at once, generating a great deal of steam for high-speed operation, but at a very inefficient rate of coal consumption. Merchant vessels had much less need for high speed, so they would generally be satisfied with far fewer boilers, and much lower maximum speeds (and even then they would often save on fuel by not using all of the boilers, and traveling at a sedate 4-5 knots).
Naval ships typically were able to generate a large volume of smoke by changing the fuel mix. Prior to the heavy use of radar, a smoke screen could be used to mask the movement of ships (although smoke screens produced by smoke generators were also used). Coal in particular produced a large amount of black smoke, depending on the grade of coal; generally, the smallest amount of smoke was the most desirable, as it made the vessel harder to spot on the horizon.
Two engineering advances resulted in the disappearance of the fire room in the early 1990s. The first was the movement by naval shipbuilding to nuclear-powered vessels. If a room containing nuclear material was subjected to damage, it was assumed that the event would likely result in abandonment of the ship regardless of the separation of rooms.
The second was the adoption of in place of oil-fired boilers for all other navy ships. These powered engines directly and needed no boilers.
Forced draft fire rooms were used until World War II. These required that personnel enter through an air lock to maintain the pressure. These were abandoned when the forced draft occasionally failed and blowback occurred killing fire room personnel.
Commonly, screens were placed over openings reducing airflow by approximately 50% so the opening area was increased appropriately. The requirement for general ventilation and the requirement for sufficient combustion air are quite different. A typical arrangement might be to make the opening large enough to provide intake air plus per Minute (CFM) for additional ventilation. Engines pull sufficient air into the fire room for their own operation. However, additional airflow for ventilation usually requires intake and exhaust blowers.
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