The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1913-09-18
THE WONDERFUL SUBMARINE.
Interior of Dreaded Craft Presents
Much Interest.

have any knowledge OF what the in
terror of submarine is like. Co:n-
paratively few have ever been aboard
of one of these much dreaded vessels
of war time which sink below the Sur
face, slip upon the enemy and then
launch a torpedo into it's side. The
interior differs entirely from the view
that the average person forms of a
submarine and the craft is really one
of the most interesting of the fleet of
war vessels.
Climbing down ten rungs OF an
iron ladder into the interior Of sub
marine is like going into a boiler
shop where there is one continuous,
deafening, ear splitting racket like a
dozen trip hammers chattering a
tattoo amid a grind and rumble and
thump of machinery as if especially
designed to burst your eardrums.
At first the noise in that narrowly
confined place is painful and bewil-
dering. To make yourself at all heard
YOU must shout into the ear of COM
panion. So intense is the strain, says
a write in St. Nicholas, that you
marvel how day in and day out hu-
man ears can withstand the ordeal.
You find yourself inside what
seems an enormous steel cigar paint
ed a neat pearl gray, q color which
is servicecble and does not dazzle the
eye. Light comes to you partly
through portfolios and in part from
incandescent lamps placed fore and
aft in the darker parts of the hull.
You have expected, of course, to
land in tangle of whirling machin-
ery that fills the inside of the boat
from stern to stern, threatening
with every revolution to take an arm
or a leg off. Instead the first thing
you see is an uninterrupted work
ing space,' or deck, measuring Z
by 25 or 80 feet.
At the stern, far in the back
ground, are the machines and en-
gines. In fact, this section of the
vessel is nothing but machinery, a
rumbling mass of silvery steel and
glittering brass, revolving at the
rate of 500 times a minutes, so COM
pact that you wonder how the va
rious parts can turn without con-
ficting or how it is possible for hu-
man hands to squeeze through the
maze to oil the machinery.
But this economy of space is as
nothing to what you will see. The
floor you stand on is cover of the
cells of the storage batteries where
in is pent up the electricity with
which your boat will propel herself
when she runs submerged. The walls
amidship and the space in the bow
are gigantic ballast tanks to be fill
ed with water.
The four torpedoes, measuring six
teen feet three inches long, eighteen
inches in diameter and weighing
1900 pounds each, are lashed end
for end in pairs at either side, and
directly over these are tool boxes
and hinged hunks for the crew to
sleep in.
The very air which is taken along
to keep life in you in case the boat
should be detained beneath the sur
face longer than usual, is compress
ed in steel cylinder 1000 pounds
per square inch, pressure so In
tense that were the cylinder to
spring a leak no larger than pin
hole and were the tiny stream of
escaping air to strike a human be-
ing it would penetrate him through
and through and drill hole through
an inch thick board behind him.
And yet everything about the in
terror arrangement of this boat is
so simple that you can see at a
glance it's purpose. Away forward,
where the tip of the cigar comes to
point, are the two torpe % tubes out
of which the gunner will send his
deadly projectiles seething beneath
the waters at the rate of thirty-fve
knots an hour against an unsuspect-
ing hull.
Directly under the coming tower
is a platform, three feet square and
elevated three feet from the deck,
upon which the captain stands, head
and shoulders extending into the
tower, so that while at his post he is
visible to the crew only from the
waist line down and at the feet of
the captain and on level with his
platform is stationed another of the
officers, in charge of the wheel that
controls the diving rudders and the
euages that register the angle of as