Life at sea in a (non-US) wartime
submarine - as I'm sure you realise - was not a comfortable
affair. Even in peacetime, there were many hazards and
discomforts.
1. Weather
Even the biggest of wartime submarines
were small, which meant a lot of hardship in rough weather,
particularly on the surface. With all the 'normal' smells of a
submarine, - food (steadily going 'off'), fuel oil, musty
clothing, bilge, sewage etc. - it was easy to get queasy and
tired. If somebody was actually seasick, the smell could only
be camouflaged with strong disinfectant, so, if one person
became ill, several others would soon follow. With a standard
rationing on fresh water, scrubbing out the boat could only be
done with salt water or even white spirit. And you couldn't get
into the open air for a breather, except for perhaps one person
at a time onto the small 'bridge'.
2. Food
'Fresh' food was loaded before
sailing, but would soon deteriorate. Bread was stowed in almost
every crevice of the boat, but would be mildewed in days.
Within ten days the only food left would be canned. From this
point of view, submarine crews fared well in comparison with
the civilian population: the dehydrated or tinned meats, fish,
milk, cheese etc. was well above the standard ration. The
Cox'n, responsible for messing in British boats, had little or
no training in catering and was mainly worried about keeping
his books straight. Nicknames of 'Hunger' and 'Famine' abounded
among the 'grocers', as they were also known. Among the
'favourites' of the regular meals at sea would be 'Herrings in
Tomato Sauce ('HITS'), Palethorpe's pre-cooked sausages
(snorkers), tinned steak and kidney pudding ('Baby's Heads'),
and a mixture of tinned bacon, tinned tomatoes and scrambled
dried egg ('Train Smash'). At other times there was Cheese Oosh
- from 'Hoosh', an Eskimo word, taken from the Canadian Navy -
made from (reconstituted) egg and milk: at the right
consistency, it became portable food. Then there were Baked
Beans ('Windy Beans' or Haricots Musicales - for obvious
reasons). A qualified cook was rarely carried, and those that
did the job were asked to prepare a hot meal on surfacing at
night and a hot breakfast before diving at dawn. The cook(s),
though, could only use the galley - little more than a large
cupboard - when the boat was surfaced, and that was generally
at night when the engines were running to recharge the
battery.
The British submarine galley compared
unfavourably with the US Navy version,
but it worked. |
The intimate surroundings of the forward mess. This is in HMS/M
Graph, the ex-German Type VII U-boat. |
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Two pictures from HMS/M Seawolf, above from 1943, in the
Stokers' Mess., and, left, from 1945, teatime. (These lower four
pictures kindly supplied by the late Dave Perkins, NS, Canada) |
A very important
man in a boat - this is the helmsman on Seawolf in 1943 |
HMS/M Unseen's Senior
Rates Mess in 1945. |
Crews got accustomed to one hot meal
after dark and one early breakfast before diving again. The
trouble was that, often, the time of surfacing in the evening
would depend on circumstances 'up top', and the cook would
usually have very little time to prepare something
sustaining.
Meanwhile, up on the bridge, the Captain would often spend the first half-hour or so of darkness
mulling over the day's event and thinking out his patrol. One
story abounds of the captain who insisted that he be brought a
coffee or cocoa to the bridge almost immediately, and in a
'full' cup. This was difficult for many to achieve, climbing
the swaying conning tower one-handed and keeping the cup's
contents in place. But one man did always seem to manage it.
Before that captain left his boat for the last time, he asked
his temporary steward how he had managed to do it. "Well, sir,
maybe I can tell you now. When I get to the bottom of the
ladder I take a big gulp. And when I get on to the bridge I
spit it all back in t'cup!"
Another difficulty lay in getting rid
of the waste. Gash (rubbish, garbage) of all kinds was crammed
into reeking buckets and bags and ditched, as a carefully
planned evolution, on surfacing. And that all had to go into
the Control Room and up into the oncoming gale coming down the
conning tower - in darkness.
While French submarines had wine - but
no smoking - the British had their rum. One eighth of a pint
per day per man (though not officers). But when in the day is
it best to issue spirits? It would seem sensible to have a tot
at the end of the day on surfacing, though the crew were, at
that time, over-tired, short of oxygen and over-supplied with
carbon dioxide. There was no other time, though, so the
evolutions of surfacing, running the diesels, ventilating the
boat and perhaps reloading torpedoes would need to be completed
before thinking about the reviving tot and something to eat.
Anyway, it was looked forward to, as it made the food taste
better. Interesting stowage problems, though. Say 48 'entitled'
men in the boat, with enough stores for six weeks away, that's
6 pints a day, so in excess of 30 gallons of rum to be kept.
The containers suffered an uncommon amount of 'breakage' and a
generous amount of 'spillage' was allowed
for.
 The Motor Room
3. Atmosphere
When charging the battery, the engines
needed enormous amounts of air. This had to be gulped down the
conning tower hatch, dragging cold and damp air into the boat,
straight through the control room and aft. In rough weather, a
lot of seawater would come down the 'tower' with the air,
requiring a canvas bag or trunking to be rigged beneath the
hatch, resembling a shower unit. Larger waves occasionally
flooded the tower hatch and the remaining air in the boat would
be sucked into the engines, causing a huge vacuum to form very
quickly, making people temporarily deaf due to the effect on
the eardrums. Anybody with a cold could be deafened for several
days afterwards. Except for the odd occasions well out of
patrol areas, nobody on board would have the restorative
effects of sunlight and open air for the duration of a patrol.
(The same could be said of today's nuclear submariners, but at
least a modern boat's atmosphere is a lot
healthier.)
4. Medical
If anybody became ill and unable to
work, then somebody else would have to do the same work in his
place. Medical care was administered by the Cox'n,
(theoretically under the direction of the 1st Lieutenant but,
as most of the officers were not much more than 20 years old,
the Cox'n usually had more experience). The Cox'n and 1st Lt.
would have 'done a course', but they went off to sea with not
much more than one simple medical manual. I'd be interested to
hear a little more about this subject - there must have been
cases of submariners dying at sea through
illness.
5. Routine
evolutions
Re-loading torpedoes was perhaps the
most arduous task carried out. Because of the noise it made, it
was usually undertaken at night, on the surface, often in rough
weather in a pitching and rolling boat, so that was hard
enough. Normally done as soon as possible on surfacing, it
would delay the longed-for hot meal and tot. It also meant the
almost complete stripping of the 'fore-ends' - the whole of the
junior rates' sleeping and eating quarters - so that rails,
hoisting chains, ropes and tackle could be rigged. The
fore-ends would also act as one of the food stores, so emptying
the compartment was no easy task. There'd be no food, no tot
and no sleep until the job was done.
One of the old 'mysteries' of
submarine life in World War Two, was that of the usually simple
task of flushing the toilet - known as the 'heads' since the
days of sail. Even the RN Submarine Museum makes a special
exhibition of the evolution of flushing which, if incorrectly
done, was called 'Getting Your Own Back'! In Richard
Compton-Hall's book, 'The Underwater War', he reports
that a U-boat, the U-1206 was actually lost as a result
of the captain himself (ironically, one Kptlt Schlitt) making
an error in the drill which resulted in a flood of seawater
penetrating the battery compartment below and generating
chlorine gas: the U1206 was depth-charged by an aircraft
when it broke surface to ventilate, and the boat had to be
abandoned. One of the best descriptions I've found comes from a
fictional book, 'Send Down a Dove', by Charles MacHardy
(1968), quite well known to more recent submariners. I'll
paraphrase here:
Compressed air was used to blow the
waste matter from the heads overboard. Not a great deal of
pressure was required, 20-30 lb. per sq. in. was all that was
needed. But first the ambient sea-pressure had to be overcome.
At periscope depth (approx. 30 feet) the pressure of the
surrounding water was in the region of 15lb psi. Thus a total
pressure of 35-45lb was required to operate the system and
successfully discharge the waste. For this purpose a reservoir
bottle was fitted to the bulkhead and was connected up to the
main, compressed-air line; an arterial complex which ran the
length of the boat. When the bottle was charged to the required
pressure from the main line, the inlet valve would be shut. The
system would then operate independently from the reservoir.
Flushing was achieved by means of a lever at the side of the
pan.
Three things were important in the
operation: Firstly, the pressure in the reservoir had to be
sufficient to overcome sea pressure. Secondly, when blowing the
tank it was paramount to ensure the discharge-to-sea valve was
fully open. Thirdly, the manipulation of the lever which
controlled the blowing system and the operation of a non-return
flap had to be carried out in a strict sequence of movements.
Failure to do this could result in the contents of the pan
being blown back in the face of the operator. At pressures
ranging from 30 to 100 lb. psi, (depending on the boat's depth)
this was not only embarrassing but painful. The air reservoir,
of much weaker construction than the main HP air bottles, had a
relief valve in case too much air pressure was let
in.
Submariners,
like all navy personnel, enjoy an occasional song. One of the
many songs heard in British submarines in the 20th Century
(though not in WW2, as 'Tide', I am assured, was not introduced until after
the war) was 'Nobody Washes in a Submarine', to a rather obscure tune
(with acknowledgements to the late Cyril Tawney):
If you join submarines and you've got any pride, You
won't use Persil and you won't use Tide.
If you go in the washroom all the boys declare: 'You'd better
not take any soap in there.'
Chorus
For I don't give a damn wherever you've been, nobody washes in
a submarine.
The navy think we're a crabby clan. We haven't had a
wash since the trip began.
We've been at sea for three weeks or more, and now we're
covered in s*** galore.
Our feet are black where they once were pink. Three
blokes already have died of the stink.
We hid them in the fore-ends where they couldn't be seen, for
to throw them in the sea meant they might have got
clean.
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