Boilermaker

A boilermaker is a tradesperson who fabricates steels, iron, or copper into boilers and other large containers intended to hold hot gas or liquid, as well as maintains and repairs boilers and boiler systems.

Although the name originated from craftsmen who made boilers, boilermakers in fact assemble, maintain, and repair other large vessels and closed vats.

The boilermaker trade evolved from industrial blacksmithing; in the early nineteenth century, a boilermaker was called a boilersmith. The involvement of boilermakers in the shipbuilding and engineering industries came about because of the changeover from wood to iron as a construction material. It was often easier, and less expensive, to hire a boilermaker who was already in the shipyard--fabricating iron boilers for wooden steamships--to build a ship. This overlap of skills could extend to anything large and made of iron--or later, steel. In the UK, this effective monopoly over an important skill of the industrial revolution led to boilermakers being labeled 'the labour aristocracy" by historians.