To Teach Men not to Drown.

Progress, Volume VI, Issue 4, 1 February 1911, Page 543

To Teach Men not to Drown.

Had the scores of men who have died like rats drowned in a trap, imprisoned in disabled submarines, been through the course of training now provided in the British Navy, and had they possessed the simple life-saving apparatus now used there, they might all have been alive to-day. This apparatus robs submarine service of its terrors, but lest the drowning men in a sunken boat should lose their nerve and not be able to use the apparatus properly, classes have been instituted to teach the crews of submarines in the Royal Navy how not to drown. Says a writer in Harper’s Weekly “Of all the duties that fall to the enlisted sailor’s lot none calls for stauncher qualities of courage and self possession than the manning of the submarine. During the present year Japan and Prance have each lost a vessel through accident; less recently Prance has lost two besides, England two, and Russia one, and in each instance the crews, trapped and helpless, have slowly died from the exhaustion of the air or have been poisoned by chlorin gases within their tombs of steel. “To avoid a recurrence of such loss of life in cases of similar disasters, England will fit to every submarine that she builds in future air-traps— which the men can go for momentary breathing-time, while they put on their helmets airlocks, through which to leave the submarine. The men will be provided with special life-saving dresses and helmets. The helmet contains an oxylithe chamber, providing a supply of air for the period of an hour and a half, and has a glass window. It is so buoyant that it will support the wearer and another man upon the top of the waves. The dress is fitted with a chamber which can he inflated when the wearer comes to the top, and, after closing the valve, the man can open the front window and breathe the air for an indefinite time, until rescued by some passing vessel. “There is a twelve-pound weight attached to the dress, which enables the wearer to keep down while travelling from the air-lock to the place of escape. Then, if he has not enough buoyancy to start from the bottom, he slips the weight. This gives him extra buoyancy and takes him to the surface. If, on the other hand, he has enough buoyancy, he keeps his weight in place until reaching the surface, and it is slipped there. Several hundred men have been instructed in the use of this invention in the Submarine Depot at Portsmouth. The accounts describe how the men are trained by being sunk in an airlock, which is a sort of diving-bell, in a tank of water. This reproduces the conditions under which the men would find themselves when the boat was actually submerged.