How Men Are Trained for Submarine Duty.—The base-ship is also used as a training ship for rookies—that is green hands—and on it they are let into the secrets and mysteries of the working, sailing, and fighting machinery of the submarine.
The rookies are taken in hand by the officers and the more highly skilled sailors of the submarine and drilled in whatever they are to do until it becomes second nature to them, for a fluke of any kind might spell disaster for the whole crew and craft.
The Complement of a Submarine.—The word complement (notice that it is spelled with an e instead of an i) means not some pretty bit of flattery but the full number of men that is needed to man the boat.
The complement of a submarine is not very different from that of a torpedo boat or other small naval craft. There is, first of all, the commander, or commanding officer, who is in charge of and is responsible for the crew and his boat.
His word is law and he is as able a navigator and tactician—as an expert in directing a submarine, with skill and shrewdness is called—as it is possible to get. His brain is the master brain of the mighty craft, for it is he who plans what his crew must do, and when they must do it to the end that the enemy ship shall be sunk.
Then there are the officers under him—lieutenants (pronounced lef-ten´-ants, with the accent on the second syllable, by stage folks in naval plays)—and these correspond to the first and second mates, etc., of a sailing ship.
These officers are also thoroughly competent navigators, and should anything happen to their superior officer, any one of them could take command of the submarine and give a good account of himself.
The rest of the crew is made up of engineers and oilers, torpedo-men and gunners, wireless and signalmen, cooks and able-bodied seamen. The engineers not only must know how to run the engines to get the most power with the least fuel, but they must be machinists of the highest class in order to make repairs of every kind should the boat be damaged by shell fire.
The torpedo-crew, as the men who have charge of the torpedoes are called, take care of these mighty missiles from the time they are lowered into the hull from the base-ship to the moment they are shot from the tubes on their courses to sink the enemy ships.
This crew also takes care of the trimming tanks, which must, as we have explained before, be filled with water to offset the effect of lightening the submarine by the sudden discharge of the torpedoes. The gunners, of course, look after the guns and are expert gun pointers. All of the new submarines are equipped with wireless and this is worked by two or more experienced wireless men who are on constant duty while the boat is afloat and who operate the conductivity telegraph system when the craft is running submerged.