Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/227

 largest ship. For instance when the Titanic was scrapped by an iceberg and the Lusitania was hit by a U-boat torpedo they both went down in a few minutes.

I won’t try to tell you what all the different compartments have in them but some of them are most uncommonly interesting and these you should know about. The first is the conning tower with its periscope. When the submarine is running either light or awash and the weather is good the commander can see what’s what around him from the deck or from the bridge, as we call the top of the conning tower. When the weather is rough or an enemy is nigh he takes a look around through the ports, that is, watertight windows, in the conning tower.

Should, however, the boat be submerged and the captain wants to size up the situation he permits only the top of her periscope to project out of the water and through this he scans the sea. Whenever I got a chance I used to look through the periscope. At first it was hard for me to make out a vessel on the surface because the field of view was small and what with the boat rolling from port to starboard it seemed to me I was always looking at the water