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Marine engineering has an interesting history, and anyone who goes into the discipline will be following in a long tradition of engineers. Marine engineering first became known as a separate discipline during the second half of the 19th century. This was when marine engines became widespread. During this period, marine engineers were actually called stokers because they had to stoke the fires that provided the power for the steam engines. They continued to stoke the coals for the 19th century and even part of the 20th century, and many marine engineers still use the term stoker as a nickname for their job.

Today, of course, modern marine engines do not run on steam. Most ships use two or four-stroke diesel engines, gas turbine engines, or outboard motors. On some vessels, such as submarines, the marine engineer works on electric motors. These engineers have to have specialized knowledge since these engines are quite different from others. On large vessels, the marine engineer may even oversee a nuclear reactor.

While the source of the power may be different, the basic propeller setup is actually still very similar to those steam powered vessels. Marine engineers are required to have much more extensive knowledge than the early stokers did, but even so, the basic concept of pushing a ship forward has actually changed very little.

Tags: marine engineering

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 11:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.