"Yes, sir; but they had to repair one of her boilers, and so her departure was postponed till to-morrow."
When the steamer was off Flamborough Head the boilers commenced to leak, and the ship's fires were extinguished.
While pitching in the heavy seas the boilers leaked terribly, the fires were again put out and the ship became unmanageable.
She was a fine new steamer, well and strongly built, but she had put to sea with her boilers in poor condition, and it had been intended to give them a thorough overhauling in Dundee.
For fifty-two years the black boilers of the 'Clonmel' have lain half buried in the sandspit, and they may still be seen among the breakers from the deck of every vessel sailing up the channel to Port Albert.
As soon as the mechanical fuel-shifter has been adopted, and the boilers have been properly insulated in order to prevent the overheating of the stoke-hole, the stoker will be raised to the rank of a secondary engineer, and his work will cease to be looked upon as in any sense degrading.
The captain repeatedly called for more steam, which the engineer refused to furnish, cautiously keeping the pressure low because the salt water foamed in the boilers and some of it passed over into the cylinders, causing heavy thumping at the end of each piston stroke, and threatening to knock out the cylinder-heads.