That sounds like a very detailed question, but did a boat like the one in Heart of Darkness used coal (presumably a costly import) or could use the rather abundant local wood ressources ?
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Wood
The locals would sell wood at the stops along the river
Until the 80's when they were replaced by Diesel engines
edit: that's the 1980's mind you
The locals would sell wood at the stops along the river
Until the 80's when they were replaced by Diesel engines
edit: that's the 1980's mind you
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Always wood, and not just for African explorers. The US had a rather large industry building wood burning passenger and freight river steamers from ~ 1820 to the early 1900’s for use on its own rivers. More or less all the navigable rivers in the US pass through heavily wooded areas. While they could fuel up at piers loaded up with dried cordwood wood for fueling purposes, in a pinch they could just pull over to the bank in any random place where the crew and each of the able bodied male passengers would be handed an axe and they would cut what they needed on the spot. The US had plenty of coal but nothing can beat literally free fuel lying around on the transit route you are taking.
Even if the context is different, I find that strangely contrastive with early British view on fuel consumption of sea transportation that held manpower cost to be the only issue. (Something along the line of "I'd only need to economise if it needs two men to shovel the stuff in")
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It's been a few years but I thought that at one point in that story they stop to refuel on the side of the river.
It's better than no wood. The USA was a thinly populated country from 1820 - 1900. If you were travelling on a steamer on an inland river, and you ran low on fuel, you had 3 choices:
Try and make it to the next available fuel dock (if you have sufficient fuel to make it there)
Pull over, drop anchor, wait for another vessel, let them know you need fuel, and wait until you get a response. Depending on where you are at, this might be a matter of days or weeks.
Pull over, drop anchor and start chopping - have a delay of a few hours.
Green wood is far from an idea fuel, but it will burn well enough, and if you are careful, you can dry it considerably before you use it. When you are firing the ship with the remaining dry wood, or the dryest new wood, you stack the green fuel around the outside of the firebox and boiler. As you fire the boiler, start with the greenest wood in the front, and the best fire towards the back. As the fire heats and dries the wood in the front, push it backwards, and insert fresh green wood. repeat until you have gotten where you want to go. Helping matters considerably is that all the wood can safely be assumed to be old growth timber, which tends to be drier, denser and better burning than trees which are younger or planted.
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Ah! And now I know how best to burn green wood. I am quite sure that will kick in one of these days when (if) winter returns to Houston. Thanks.
You can do it just like that in your fireplace. Build a fire and put the wet/green wood stacked up along the sides - not the back you can’t reach it, and not the front or it blocks the radiant heat. Once it starts to singe, obviously it’s dried up quite a lot. Either put it on the fire if you already need fuel, or pull it out, let it cool a bit, then stack it. Put new green wood in its place.
Alternate if your fire is big enough make one end/side hot, and the other drying. If you angle the drying wood right it will actually reflect the heat back to true desired direction and make the fire seem even hotter.
These tricks also work for wood that was/is heavily rained on when you bring it inside.
Green wood has a higher fuel value than previously thought but that is of course dependent on the burning mechanism and how you control it. Balancing influx of air and controlling the exhaust is a complicated matter. At one end of the spectrum we have fast burning high temperature setups such as the rocket stove and on the other end of the spectrum you have slow burning, low temperature setups like an indoor open fire. The former burns clean and the latter is dirty. A rocket stove can make good use of green wood, an indoor open fire is less suitable and using dry wood is advisable. For a normal in between setup such as a wood fired stow or a crude boiler the answer "Wood" isn't sufficient. The difference in efficiency between types of wood must be taken into account. Where I live birch is abundant and birch is a good fuel source, it sits in a sweet spot, lights easily and doesn't burn to fast. But lighting the fire with birch alone is tedious, better use some small pieces of fir and throwing in a log of fir every now and then helps with the soot deposits.
Coal on the other hand is great, coal pretty much does what you want it to do, which is why charcoal piles/kilns were the norm in preindustrial Europe and remain relevant in many industrializing countries such as Brazil. Even in remote regions such as the interior Amazon during pre-Colombian times sediments of purposely created charcoal has been found, used to enrich the almost barren Amazonian soil. In a modern smithy it's easy to control the heat, by adjusting the fan speed we can increase or decrease the air influx. A wood fire stove is a bit more complicated since the airflow isn't forced. Bellows can of course be used but they aren't much use for protracted use, very good for getting the metal white hot when melding, not so good if required to keep the metal malleable.
While the manifests would state the purchases each vessel and boiler would have been accompanied by competent tenders with an assortment of fuel types, even if they were just wood. The hotbulb engine which arrived around the same time as the otto is an interesting approach to the issue, burning at very high temperatures it can make use of a multitude of fluid fuels from mineral oil to butter.
My uncle, an engineer and then captain used to have a turbocharged burner for his central heating, to get it running he used a mixture of diesel soaked sheep fodder and plastic bags. Engineers in that original meaning are odd and their solutions match that.
Coal on the other hand is great, coal pretty much does what you want it to do, which is why charcoal piles/kilns were the norm in preindustrial Europe and remain relevant in many industrializing countries such as Brazil. Even in remote regions such as the interior Amazon during pre-Colombian times sediments of purposely created charcoal has been found, used to enrich the almost barren Amazonian soil. In a modern smithy it's easy to control the heat, by adjusting the fan speed we can increase or decrease the air influx. A wood fire stove is a bit more complicated since the airflow isn't forced. Bellows can of course be used but they aren't much use for protracted use, very good for getting the metal white hot when melding, not so good if required to keep the metal malleable.
While the manifests would state the purchases each vessel and boiler would have been accompanied by competent tenders with an assortment of fuel types, even if they were just wood. The hotbulb engine which arrived around the same time as the otto is an interesting approach to the issue, burning at very high temperatures it can make use of a multitude of fluid fuels from mineral oil to butter.
My uncle, an engineer and then captain used to have a turbocharged burner for his central heating, to get it running he used a mixture of diesel soaked sheep fodder and plastic bags. Engineers in that original meaning are odd and their solutions match that.
