How did large coal fired ships dispose of tons of red hot ashes?

Question

I have never really thought about this before, so it is really just thinking aloud. Large passenger ships in the 19th century would have spent weeks at sea. The engines would be coal fired and located below the water line. I presume they had some mechanism which prevented the fires from becoming choked with hot ash, and also to dispose of said ash (into the water?).

Capt. John · Accepted Answer

Thank you Brian for asking this question...  and
     Thank you T.J for providing the answer.

     Son of a Gun... I'm 62, and just when I get to thinking I have seen it all... I still learn something everyday. As much as I know about the Titanic and steamboats in general - I never thought, and never knew of this...

Happy & Safe Boating,
John

Bung 2 · Answer

I sailed as an engineer in a coal fired freighter as late as the 1950s.  Ashes were put over the side at sea via either an ash ejector or a patent vacuum ash hoist which used the vacuum generated by the condenser and main engine Edwards air pump when underway as its energy source.
The "mechanism" for recovering the ashes from the bottoms of the furnaces was the "fireman on watch".  As well as pitching coal into the furnaces, on top of the firebars, his job also entailed riddling the fires with a slice bar to break up any clinker and to keep the fires clean and also to move the ashes through the gaps between the bars to the bottom of the furnaces.
He also routinely raked the ashes on to the stokehold floor plates and damped them down with a sea water fed hose, before shovelling them into the hoist or ash ejector.  They were never put overside while red hot.
Firemen were a tough breed of men !!!

Dash · Answer

They used a system called an Ash Ejector

http://titanic-model.com/articles/tech/TechFeatureOct2005.htm

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How did large coal fired ships dispose of tons of red hot ashes?

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