Pillow Lines

Life at sea can get pretty boring sometimes. There’s a lot of waiting around for things to happen, especially when the sub is down. You don’t want to start a fresh project too far after lunch, cause you have to start getting ready for recovery about 3 pm. When you have a lot of time on your hands sometimes the only thing to do is a practical joke.

When the boss was diving, either Dudley or Ralph, It was like a day off. We called them Dudley Days. You could nap or read a book. All the things you can do while your boss is at the bottom of the ocean. The Dude was not the hard ass that Ralph was. Ralph went out of his way to catch you goofing off while Dudley thought we should all take an hour a day to exercise. Half the guys took naps instead.

One day we found out that the Dude was in his room sleeping at 2 in the afternoon. He was Launch Coordinator that day and had the VHF radio turned on by his pillow just in case. This was too easy to pass up. Normally Alvin is on the surface at 4:30 or 5 o’clock, so when Alvin is at just 500 meters depth we launch the small boat, say around 4:15. A phone call to the bridge to get them in on it and we were ready.

The signal to launch the small boat is one short blast of the ships whistle. We did that and backed it up with some realistic radio chatter. As I said, Dudley was the Launch Coordinator for the day so he was supposed to be giving the commands to launch the small boat. After the whistle blew we stood by the boat waiting. We knew which hatch the Dude would come through. And come through it he did, practically at a full run. He was on deck in a split second and could see the boat was still aboard. You could see the pillow lines running down his face. “Where you been Dude?” we asked. “Doing some paper work” he replied wonder why we couldn’t stop laughing.