Читать книгу Under Pressure. Living Life and Avoiding Death on a Nuclear Submarine онлайн

56 страница из 72

The second thing to strike me was what lay immediately above my head – and the need to duck. I cracked my forehead on the overhang of the steps down to 3 Deck, giving me a nice egg of a swelling above my left eyebrow. Although Resolution was the biggest submarine built by the Navy at that time, it was hellishly cramped in terms of living space, and moving around its tiny passageways required all manner of contortion. The raison d’être of the submarine is first and foremost machinery and functionality, with the bodily needs of men coming a distant second. I noticed valves, gauges, low ceilings, wires, switches and dials all round, and wondered how in hell I was going to cope learning the mechanics of all of this.

Two people couldn’t pass on a corridor without one moving aside. You could stand in the middle of the passageways on 1, 2 and 3 Deck with your outstretched hands and touch either side of the sub. It was impossibly tight. Then there were the protruding pipes to bang your head on, bulkheads to trip through, small hatches to navigate, valves and dials all over the place, plus vertical ladders between decks … there were risks everywhere. I had to pass through hatch after hatch and ladder after ladder before getting to my bunk at the bottom of the boat. The lack of space was giving me the fear. I couldn’t let on, but on first impressions I wasn’t sure life in a steel cigar-shaped tin can was going to work for me. It was all the equipment, for fuck’s sake. It was everywhere you looked, coupled with those passageways and ladders eating up all available living space. Plus, there were nuclear weapons and a nuclear reactor to worry about, never mind their impact on the space. I was already starting to regret my ballsy decision to become a submariner.