Here's a memory about being aboard ship in the sixties. The first picture is a berthing compartment on ship. we had to go down a ladder into a compartment that had only one entry, thus one exit. The space is close to what we had (about 500 square feet) for 15 men to sleep in and the bunks are exactly what we had. They were like slabs in a morgue and I could reach from my bunk and touch the adjacent bunk.
The picture of the showers below is better than what we had on board ship, but somewhat close. Now a navy shower goes like this; You step in the shower, wet yourself down for 30 seconds, turn the water off, soap up and then rinse yourself off for 30 seconds (that's how it was at that time, I don't know how it is today).
In the sixties, ships at sea had limited fresh water that was distilled from salt water. I was on aircraft carriers so we had more than smaller ships like destroyers and our living spaces were better. There were times when we went on what was called water hours. That meant in order to conserve fresh water the showers were turned off. Toilets were run from salt water, so that was no problem. The only fresh water was in the lavatory sinks, so what you could wash was as you can imagine very limited. It was, I heard, worse on destroyers because they had water hours on a regular basis.
One period when we were off the coast of Vietnam, there was a problem with one of the boilers, so our fresh water had to be conserved. Our relief carrier also had boiler problems, so instead of being off the coast for the usual 30 days before returning to a port, we were on line off the coast ans bombing inland, for 61 days of 24 hours around the clock with 12 hour shifts for each man 7 days a week and there were no showers. By the 45-50th day guys were getting quite surly and it was best to not even talk to people if you wanted to avoid a fist fight. It happened during that time that one of the guys in our compartment left to take a shower. He came back a few minutes later and asked "when did they turn off the showers?" Those of us in the compartment replied " weeks ago!"
Copyright Bill Weber 2019 and beyond.
In the sixties, ships at sea had limited fresh water that was distilled from salt water. I was on aircraft carriers so we had more than smaller ships like destroyers and our living spaces were better. There were times when we went on what was called water hours. That meant in order to conserve fresh water the showers were turned off. Toilets were run from salt water, so that was no problem. The only fresh water was in the lavatory sinks, so what you could wash was as you can imagine very limited. It was, I heard, worse on destroyers because they had water hours on a regular basis.
One period when we were off the coast of Vietnam, there was a problem with one of the boilers, so our fresh water had to be conserved. Our relief carrier also had boiler problems, so instead of being off the coast for the usual 30 days before returning to a port, we were on line off the coast ans bombing inland, for 61 days of 24 hours around the clock with 12 hour shifts for each man 7 days a week and there were no showers. By the 45-50th day guys were getting quite surly and it was best to not even talk to people if you wanted to avoid a fist fight. It happened during that time that one of the guys in our compartment left to take a shower. He came back a few minutes later and asked "when did they turn off the showers?" Those of us in the compartment replied " weeks ago!"
Copyright Bill Weber 2019 and beyond.
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