The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1902-03-01
LIFE ON A TORPEDO BOAT.
to Endure Greatest Hard
ships.

ships.
At no time or season is life on
board the torpedo boat, or her bigger
sister, the destroyer, a particularly
happy one; but in winter it becomes
so hard and painful that DIR. john
son, could he be resuscitated, would
assuredly declare, with renewed en-
phasis, that no man with continuance
enough to get into Jail would be
found in torpedo craft, says the
London Mail. From the lightness of
the hull the crew suffer much from
cold, as there is only thin sheet of
metal between them and the cold wa
ter. But the severest trial of all is
heavy weatbAr, which may be said to
be normal in British waters in the
winter.
1t used to be thought that torpedo
boats and destroyers were only fair
weather craft, but now all nayies
send these vessels to sea in winter.
In the British navy three fiotillas,
each of eight destroyers, are con-
stahtly cruising all the year round.
Let US pay a visit to such a craft.
On deck is the officer of the watch,
shivering behind the canvas screen
which gives him some small protec-
ton from the weather. The boat is
tearingthrough the waves at q speed
of somewhere about 20 knots, and
the spray and wind cut like whips.
The motion of the boat is impossible
to describe. Pitching violently, now
with her bows buried deep in the hol-
lows of the heaving sea, now with her
stern emergent and her propellers
racing frantically; at the same time
rolling like drunken man. So live
ly and distressing is the movement
that few, indeed, are the salts who
do not succumb to the horrors of sea
sickness. To be seasick on board a
comfortable liner is one thing; to be
seasick in destroyer is quite an
other, and the most refined torture
that can be imagined. There is no
space or accommodation for in
capacitated men, and the crew is
calculated on the narrowest limits,
SO that il many are off the effective
list the vessel will have to return to
harbor.
And when, weary and wet, the men
from the deck turn in at the end of
their watch, let them expect no i'm
moderate degree of comfort. They
may well be pleased if it is possible
to cook a meal, and for days to-
gether they may have to subsist ON
cold meat. When the boat is rolling
and pitching it takes two to eat any
sort of meal. One holds a ham, from
which the other cuts slices and hur-
riedly devours them. It is an almost
savage state of existence though not
perhaps worse than that of our SOL
diers on the veldt.
The men on board wear "lammy''
suits, as they are called in the navy,
of thick wooden material, at night,
and they find it very hard to keep
dry. The little craft lies low in the
water, and she is every now and then
swept by sea which manages to de-
liver a very fair amount of moisture
below, through yentilators and leaky
matches.
From the general conditions it
might be supposed that service on
board these craft was dreaded and
avoided in the navy. No mistake could
be greater. Dogs life though the
life is, it has glories and delights Of
its own. There is less discipline of
the routine kind, and it may be more
efficiency. Bugles are not always
sounded to do this and that; smok-
ing is less restricted than in the big
warships; and there is no need to be
clean; indeed, cleanliness in tor
pedo boat is almost impossible. In
a word, the life is what the blue
jacket calls piratical one. The off,
GERS are young and keen, with q
sense of exhilafation at the thought
that they are positively encouraged
to run risks-for if they do not run
risks in peace they will certainly
never run them in war. And so,
vibrating, heeling, pitching, with her
men clinging for bare life to stanch-
ions as the deck tits to perpendic-
ular, the gallant little craft with her
more gallant crew scuds through the
night and fog and sleet and foam,
holding our British seas, and pre-
pared for any deviltry.