Sydney Heritage Fleet is a celebrated working museum and volunteer organisation which restores, preserves and operates Australian maritime heritage.

Our operational steam ships, Lady Hopetoun (our 1902 flagship) and Waratah (1902 steam tug) need people to help keep their boilers stoked. The job of the stokers is to keep the fires pumping out the heat needed to generate the steam.

No experience? We will teach you!

Have you come from a background of steam operations? Perhaps in a factory? Power station? This will be like coming home to you. The difference is you will be moving over the water at the speed you have helped achieve!

SHF is very proud of our men and women who volunteer in the stokeholds of our steamships. We need quite a few more. We promise that this work can be dirty and requires volunteers to climb down into the stokeholds of steamships and work furnaces just as stokehold crew did in days of old.

Stokehold crew are responsible for the operation of the ship's coal-burning boilers. They ensure that the boiler furnaces are kept supplied with coal and operating at peak efficiency. Stokehold crew assist with bunkering and with ash removal. They shovel coal into furnaces and remove ash. The work can be hot and dusty and crew must be able to descend short ladders down into stokeholds. Stokehold crew are part of ship’s crew and operate under the instruction of Master and Chief Engineer. Overalls and work boots are required. PPE is provided.

Interested? Come out on one of our steamships as a guest crewperson. You will be given an induction and the chance to experience stokehold work on one of our steamships.