231211 Sleeping Quarters

I was watching an episode of the TV show NCIS. There was a scene in their morgue that reminded me of my navy time at sea.

My sleeping quarters on the Kitty Hawk measured 18x12 feet. Those quarters were shared with 17 other sailors, 18 of us in an 18x12 space. There was also a small table in the corner and above that was a TV set. There were several TV shows from the U.S. that played during daytime and into the evening the rest of the time there were live videos of flight deck operations. The bunks were slabs of steel just like those in a morgue. They were stacked 3 high. The lowest bunk was a few inches off the deck and the highest was near 6 feet above the deck. I had to step on the 2 lower bunks to get to mine on top. I slept below asbestos covered piping about 12 inches in diameter. There were 2 small lockers on the back side of the bunks. That was where you kept the contents of your sea bag. To say the least, there was not much storage space, but then we didn’t have much to store other than uniforms. Each steel slab had a 4 inch cotton tick mattress. The mattress was covered with a cotton sack that we slipped over the mattress like you would put a pillowcase on a bed pillow. I don’t know the origin of the story behind this, but the old WW-2 and Korean war navy chiefs called the mattress covers, “fart sacks.”