Under the periscope

by Mark Herbert Joseph Bennett

Boyd, the R.N.R. Lieutenant, was another offspring of the war, both as regards his being in the Navy at all and as regards his presence in the Submarine Service. Prior to the war the Royal Naval Reserve had contained comparatively few officers, and commissions had been hard to obtain, but after the first few months of hostilities the Admiralty had realised that they had not sufficient trained seamen for their needs, and had reopened the Reserve with a call for more officers. The result far exceeded expectation, for the officers of the Merchant Service flocked to the colours in thousands, and after a course of training were sent afloat as watch-keepers in any class of ship from Super-Dreadnoughts to trawlers. The growth in size and capabilities of submarines, and their more arduous duties, had necessitated that they should have an additional officer soon after war started, and the result was that each of the bigger boats was supplied with a Lieutenant of the Royal Naval Reserve. His duties were entirely those of a seaman, as he was the navigator, took a large slice of the watches, and looked after the confidential books and gyro compass. Boyd himself had served his first four years at sea in a sailing ship or ‘wind jammer,’ and had, after becoming an officer, transferred into steam and done a voyage or two in tramp. At the outbreak of war he had left one of the great mail companies of the Western Ocean, to which he intended to return when all was over. The Navy life did not appeal to him very strongly, and he was looking forward to a return to his old work.

The next in order was the coxswain, a first-class Petty Officer who had joined submarines as an able seaman about the same time as Raymond had entered that Service. Perhaps he had wanted to get married, and had been attracted by the increased pay, or it may have been that a friend in a submarine had told him stories of the life and privileges pertaining to it that had fired his imagination. Like most men of his age he had joined the Navy as a boy and been trained in a sailing brig, whence he had eventually emerged and blossomed out, until he received his anchor and was rated leading seaman after two years in submarines. Raymond had, owing to a vacancy, tried him as a second coxswain, with the result that in course of time he was promoted to the rank of Petty Officer and coxswain, and had followed his captain from boat to boat for several years in succession.

The second coxswain was a middle-aged leading seaman on turn for Petty Officer who had been through much the same training as his senior, and hoped for promotion as soon as he received his ‘crossed killicks.’[11]

Then there came the gun-layer, the cook, and six able seamen, all A.B.’s of much the same age, men about twenty-six who aspired to be coxswains or Torpedo Instructors in due course. They again were new Navy, and had received their early training in shore barracks and training cruisers. The Submarine Service is essentially a voluntary one, and it would be difficult to ascertain why they had ever joined. Probably if they were asked they would have replied ‘private reasons,’ and sucked their teeth noisily.

Then came the T.I., Torpedo Instructor or Torpedo Gunner’s Mate, a Petty Officer and electrical expert, who, after going through the same early trials as the two coxswains, had specialised in electricity after being rated A.B. He had received his first upward step when he became an S.T. or Seaman Torpedo man, and shortly after he was promoted to Leading Seaman the specialist rating of Leading Torpedo Man had been granted him. With maturity and experience had come the rank of Petty Officer and Torpedo Instructor, and now he was one of those who knew more about the internals of those highly mechanical engines of death than the rest of the crew put together. He lived in a whirl of balance chamber doors and hydrostatic valves, and gibbered in his sleep of reducers and ignition delay gear.

The L.T.O., who was a new Navy man and the T.I.’s second-in-command, was in charge under Seagrave of all the electrical appliances and motors in the boat. He was an expert at finding ‘earths’ and short circuits, and was notable among his kind in that he was nimble-fingered and could ‘make’[12] a switch without breaking it.

The engine-room staff was headed by Chief Engine Room Artificer Hoskins, a hoary-headed old sinner of the old school, who could coax a Diesel engine to run on air or coal-dust if necessary and was, moreover, in a permanent state of growl. Raymond swore by him, and had, like the coxswain, taken him from ship to ship in his upward career. He had joined the Navy as a fitter and turner at the age of twenty-two, having just completed his apprenticeship in one of the great shipbuilding yards on the Tyne, and had been entered as a Fourth Class Artificer. His keenness and wonderful ability with anything mechanical had urged him to join the Submarine Service, where he was practically in charge of his own engines. Give him an oil-can and a lump of waste, varied occasionally by a foot-rule and Macmahon wrench, and he would be happy for hours.

The second, third, and fourth E.R.A.’s were all much younger men who had joined under the new scheme as Boy Artificers at the training college at Devonport, whence they had emerged, having received all their knowledge from the Service, and in due course been rated Artificers, 4th Class. They were now slowly working their way up, and had joined the Submarine Service since the war, when the necessity for capable men had inspired them with the wish for more authority than fell to their lots in the engine-rooms of a Battleship.

The Stoker Petty Officer was a bearded and efficient ruffian, and the oldest man in the boat. Unlike the seamen, the stokers do not join the Navy as boys, but at about the age of eighteen, and this particular old sinner had had rather a rough time of it in his early days. However, he had kept going, and as only men of good character are admitted to submarines, it speaks well of him that he had not fallen by the wayside. In a submarine he had seen freedom from dirt and eternal coal shovelling, raking, and slicing, as well as extra pay and other privileges, and the added dangers of the life did not seem to worry him in the least.

His right-hand man was the Leading Stoker, who had seen much the same side of life as his senior, to whose rating he was now aspiring. He was a man of good solid worth, a little fond of the bottle; and possessed of many relations whose sudden deaths necessitated his immediate presence in the home circle. But he was a good man and knew his work and the men under him, and the engines never ran so smoothly as when he was superintending the oiling and other equally necessary operations.