World War, 1914-1918 -- Naval operations -- Submarine
The boat dives at dawn, and, the trim correct and the captain
satisfied, the order is given to "fall out all but diving hands." One
officer remains at the periscope, while the remainder and the majority
of the crew move off to their sleeping billets and lie down. When not
on watch it is customary for everybody to sleep, read, and eat all the
time; this is to conserve the stock of air in the boat. Oxygen is not
carried, but "purifiers" are. The air in the hull of the boat is,
however, ample for a long day's dive, and except when kept down by
accident or the machinations of the enemy there is no necessity to
renew it. It is kept on the move, however, by ordinary circulating
fans, which produce a general draught and disturbance of the halos of
bad air around each man's head, and this keeping of the air moving
makes a great difference--in fact, with no fans running a match fails
to burn after nine hours' diving; with all fans circulating a match can
be lit after a dive of from fourteen to eighteen hours. Why this is, I
don't know. If any work is done while diving (such as reloading of
tubes or repairing of damage) the air is used more rapidly--in fact,
extraordinarily quickly. When no work is being done, but only the usual
day's dive has been carried out, there is a slight increase in rate of
respiration among the hands on watch, with a slighter rise in rate of
pulse. But as soon as one attempts to do anything, such as lifting
weights or making a speech to the crew on the subject of their crimes,
one finds it necessary to breathe heavily and quickly; and in fact, in
the case of the speech, only a few minutes' harangue would be possible
towards the end of a day. Officers do not keep watch at the periscope
for more than a couple of hours at a time--it is bad for the eyes and
bad for the temper; the deadly monotony of shuffling slowly round while
stooping to stare at a perfectly blank and usually misty horizon is the
worst part of a patrol. The periscope work makes one sleepy also.
Submarine officers sleep a lot; the work is dull and sleep passes the
time. One gets tired of reading, although one certainly reads an
extraordinary amount. A succession of blank uneventful trips is good
for education, however; somebody once said that the book to be cast
away on a desert island with was Gibbons' 'Roman Empire.' I have known
heavier books than that to be worked through on patrol--even to weighty
tomes on Constitutional History. The sailors also read, sleep, and eat
continuously. A few hands keep watch on the hydroplane wheels, the
pumps, and the motors; the rest take it easy. They study such
periodicals as one finds on the counters of small tobacconists' shops,
and in addition they borrow and read intelligently the more abstruse
literature from their officers' library.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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