In ships burning coal the stokehold is a grimy place, with yawning openings in the sides leading to the black bunkers where the coal is stored. A few dust-covered electric lights glow dimly in the murky dusk, and when a furnace door is opened the glare of the fiercely burning fires lights up the begrimed and sweating stokers, who seem almost like unearthly creatures toiling in an over-heated Inferno. But the great oil-burning liners have a different picture to present. The fire room is almost as neat and clean as is the engine room. The firemen do not seem to be overworked, as they step from one to another of their burners, looking through a series of peepholes to see that the oil is burning properly. Smudges of dirt are not uncommon on a man’s face and hands, perhaps, but the begrimed Vulcans of the coal-burning ships have no counterpart on the oil burners, and the coal dust and the dingy stokehold is a far cry. The _Majestic’s_ boilers do not depend upon natural draft, but a set of four powerful fans draws the warm air from the turbine rooms through two great air shafts about seven feet in diameter and forces it under pressure beneath the boilers. These great air shafts total 1,000 feet in length, and a part of the air they supply is led to each boiler. In addition to this supply for the furnaces there is a separate supply of fresh air for the crew of the boiler rooms. The boilers are all separate and any one or any series can be completely shut off from the others in case of necessity. The steam that is generated in the forty-eight boilers of the _Majestic_ is led by a complicated system of pipes to the turbines, which drive the propellers. Formerly steamships universally used the reciprocating engine, but gradually the turbine is being adopted, until now the fastest ships are universally equipped with this later design.