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Show N&vn Hales ; Bu a Lieutenant in the x N United States Nauu SAFETY ORDERS YOU use lum-sklil tiros, don't you? And rubber heels, mid chew your food, mid nre careful not to stick hend or arms out of. the window? Thou there's accident Insurance, denUsts, tind pure food laws to keep you out of trouble. But do you have a list of things that might happen? And do you keep that list iu sight? I've a ten-spot says you don't. ' In the navy we do. Ammunition and guns are of course the dangerous part of our equipment, almost of our lives. After years of experience and many accidents we have been able to catalogue cata-logue all the possible misfortunes that might befall a loading crew. We have devised a complete set of Instructions which, If properly carried out, consti tute a stitch-in-time against all such mlss-stitches as fire, explosion, and destruction of the ship. This list is called the warship's safety orders. Almost the first safety order Is that they all shall be printed and posted In every part of the turrets and near all guns. Men must know them backwards back-wards and forward, and one at a time. Men must know this "safety first" cate-' cate-' chism so perfectly that when the emergency emer-gency arises no instant shall be lost remembering just what to do. Safety orders are of two kinds, pre-rentive pre-rentive and stop-it-ive. The former discourage the devil's visit. The latter entertain him after he has arrived. Of the former some samples are those in regard to ammunition: Don't take "naked lights" into magazines. Don't drill with "live" that is, loaded ammunition. am-munition. Don't expose too many charges at one time two or three are the limit with the big guns. Don't handle shells and powder bags rough !.v they are strong, but much stronger If they go off in your hands. Most care is taken at the guns themselves. After each shot the plug-man plug-man must sponge off his breech-block. Suppose 360 lbs. of smokeless powder are shoved In for the next shot. Suppose Sup-pose the red-hot pl.ug is swung home to stop the powder. Before It locks the whole mass may ignite. And the only possible advantage that can come out of such carelessness Is the afternoon off you may get while burying the ashes of your shipmates who were in that turret. - Safety orders say "SPOXGE." And, believe me, we SPONGE ! There are over 200 safety orders. No more important set of commands exists in the fleet. No day passes ' without some drill and instructions in cluding them. And the result is safety. BRIGHTWORK KIPLING might write a stirring paragraph about polishing brass on a battleship. O. Henry could at least drag a laugh out of the subject. Any sailorman could drag a laugh out of a hitching post just trying to describe de-scribe brightwork and what it means to his brine-soaked soul.- The American battle fleet used to be white. On the cruise around the world in 1009 foreigners marveled at our cleanliness. The ships were like great floating advertisements for some washing compound. "They even smell clean !" exclaimed an Australian. Tidiness is all right and so is healthful health-ful well-airedness. But warfare against filth can be carried too far. After the Spanish-American war the eternal irritation ir-ritation of painting and scrubbing and polishing coupled- with ironbound rules to preserve the virgin purity of what had been painted, scrubbed, and polished, nearly drove men to distraction. distrac-tion. This one thing was said to have been responsible for more than 75 per cent of desertions at that time. Finally war paint was adopted in place of white. Rails and upper works were also gray. Even guns, once so beautifully polished, now faded into the misty background of the sea ho-' ho-' rizon. Battle lanterns and search lights were black. Gangways were dull shellaced. Every effort was made to assure cleanliness, but without being be-ing finicky or foppish. All surfaces were made dull that could be. Today "brightwork call" on the bugle at S:15 a. m. means more than half an hour of overhauling than of actual shining. The whole ship is divided into cleaning clean-ing stations. During the morning watch- from 5:30 to 7:30 the men sweep and scrub paintwork, canvas, decks, masts and other parts. The period from 8:15 to 8:45 is merely a final touch. In the engine and dynamo rooms there is a good deal of metal surface to be shined. But this is considered in the class with scrubbing on deck. However, How-ever, outdoor machinery, such as winches, cranes, and capstans have small unpainted parts which are polished pol-ished at "brightwork" time. Wood can also be brightwood. In fact this term has come to signify any surface unpainted. For instance the gunwales (edges or rails) of boats are no longer varnished. They are scrubbed, scrub-bed, bleached in the sun, and sandpapered sand-papered until softly white and smooth. Working parts of a gun are polish ed, but the barrel Is painted dull gray. A concession to shlnlnoss Is made by using gray enamel or by oiling tho painted surface. It's not hard work though, and there is something In it that appeals to the men. A few bright spots change the whole ship's appearance. It Is like the single pearl In the dark tie of a well-dressed man's apparel one masterly mas-terly touch of brightness, In good tnste without being gaudy. Jack might not entirely agree. Bui his esthetic taste la less stunted thar he tries to pretend. MYTHS THERE Is a strain of the mystic in mariners which will never die. For safety's sake they hold to mathematical mathe-matical precision when necessary. But deep In the long night watches come over again the old apparitions of the sea. Even in the navy this holds. There's the thick main nrcicr belt poured and forged by formula. There's the nice complexity of the anemometer. There are drop-forged cranks and pistons, and glistening oil-tempered torpedo tubes. Yet who has not heard the -whisper of fog on the armor shelf? No doubt Columbus knew that the lips of thick weather on Its way can always warn the keen-eared ship captain. Though the truth of the matter is that thick weather comes with calm, and the wash of sea alongside Is then more noticeable. And who. In spite of anemometers (wind velocity measurers), does not know that westerly wind will work evil with one's compass? Though, the scientific fact Is that homeward bounders into Queenstown started this myth. They were right too. For with weeks on westerly trades the earth's forces induce a slight new magnetism into the ship's Iron and so "works evil with the compass needle." Why not blame the wind ! There is the "well-known attraction of land on ships" which the old rascals ras-cals used to bring up in court after an inexplicable grounding. They used to get away with it too. But can you imagine a better creed when one has a fifteen-million-dollar man-of-war and a thousand lives on one's hands than to believe that rocks and shoals are drawing draw-ing the helpless monster into danger? Is there a better spirit to keep a man eternally vigilant and alert? Some old beliefs are very real. Local magnetic spots are not devil's holes as was first supposed. Off Madagascar and in several parts of the South Pacific Paci-fic are areas of iron-sand bottoms or something of the sort. British cruisers have several times reported sudden and extreme variations of their compasses com-passes at these points. On the other hand equinoctial storms (March 21 and September 21) are pure myths. So are weather changes with changes of the moon. And it's lunacy to believe that afternoon after-noon sights are less dependable than those of early morning unless one's grog allowance is too great. BALANCING POISE is man's greatest social gift. Awkwardness marks the clod. Equilibrium of mind and mental attitude, atti-tude, grace of bearing and manner, are characteristics of a gentleman the world over. And, strangely enough, of an engine too. "It's alive!" spectators cried when the first steam mechanism kicked side-wise side-wise and snorted. It was. But that was all. For its basic lack of balance made it no more than the abysmal brute ancestor of our great race of modern steam machineries. Watt's engine nearly shook the laboratory windows out. Bob Fulton's "baby" snatched pitch from his vessel's ves-sel's seams by such vibration as a nervous earthquake couldn't imitate. At that time centrifugal force was the dark horse of steam design. Moments Mo-ments that is leverages of rotating masses were the wild tribe of early mechanical construction. Often and often would they descend on a peaceful peace-ful habitation of cranks and wheels and wreck the whole contraption. Engines En-gines ran, but for how long was a matter mat-ter of luck. Earlier types did fairly well because their speed was nothing to brag about. During the Civil war the Navy department de-partment built the Wampanoag for the purpose of cleaning out Johnny Reb's swift commerce destroyers. But her knees knocked together too hard. She averaged the then startling speed of 18 knots on her trial trip. The engine made only 30 turns per minute. min-ute. By heavy gearing a speed of 75 revolutions was transmitted to the propeller pro-peller shaft. (Contrast this with modern mod-ern turbines going about 1,000 r. p. m.) But poise was there not. and a cruel not it was. Her wooden sides trembled. trem-bled. Her whole body became palsied like a great-grandmother who's eaten too many ice-cream sodas as a girl. But genius was not to be beaten so easily. Iu the succeeding 40 years rotative ro-tative speed Increased tenfold and power jumped every year. |