Steve McQueen as Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Jake Holman in The Sand Pebbles toting his seabag, lashed with hammock.
Posted on 01/02/2022 5:27:52 PM PST by texas booster
With this week closing out the year, we are taking a break from the normal WW coverage and, in a salute to the sleepy final days of 2021, are looking briefly at hammocks in naval use.
Apparently picked up by sailors after Columbus came to the New World and saw Awawak Indians lounging in the easy-going beds slung between trees, the Royal Navy began using hammocks as early as the 1590s, making them standard across the fleet by 1629, an upgrade from sleeping on a plank or sea chest.
Sailors stowed their hammocks when not needed in a way that they offered a modicum of protection from shrapnel in combat and would easily break free and serve as flotation devices should the ship be lost.
As detailed in “Living Conditions in the 19th Century U.S. Navy,” March 17, 1869:
"Enlisted personnel which included petty officers slept in canvas hammocks slung on the berth deck. When suspended, this canvas formed a receptacle for a mattress and blanket; when not in use, the canvas was wrapped tightly around the bedding and bound with a lashing and stowed in the nettings in clear weather and below when for any reason, such as rain, they could not be taken on deck. During his first year (Regs. of 1818) a man was allowed one mattress and two blankets."
From the 1800s through WWII, this meant the average Sailor learned the “Lash Up” that included carrying their hammock along with their seabag, taking the assigned netting with them when transferred ashore, or being sent to the infirmary or sickbay. Their issued hammock even remained their property in death as it served as a funeral shroud for their burial at sea, if required.
The use of hammocks was very much “old-school” Navy.
The use of hammocks even gave rise to the term “Trice Up,” in nautical lore, meaning to make your rack as the hammocks had a trice or hook to secure it to the bulkhead or wall. Hence the term “All hands heave out and trice up.” Or jump out of your rack and make it, allowing compartment cleaners to sweep and swab. The term endured even after canvas racks replaced swinging hammocks.
Hammocks even came to the aid of a drifting submarine, with the early “pig boat” USS R-14 (SS-91) having to literally sail home in 1921 after the sub ran out of fuel during a SAR mission, leaving the salty crew to craft a sail out of canvas battery covers, hammocks, officer’s bed frames, and their radio mast to make it back to Hawaii.
This luxury was slow to expand to the rest of the fleet. For instance, it wasn’t until about 1940 that the Great War-era battleship USS Texas (BB-35) ditched hammocks for racks and reportedly the USS Tennessee (BB-43) never got the upgrade, still having hammocks at Pearl Harbor and continuing to use them through VJ Day despite the fact the old battlewagon received a nearly year-long modernization in 1942.
This meant that many Bluejackets went to WWII still swaying from hammocks at sea. The art of “clewing,” packing, and stowing a hammock was essential knowledge.
Even new construction continued the trend, with circa 1937-40 constructed Sims-class destroyers and 1936-39 Benham-class tin cans still including a few hammocks in their berthing although almost all enlisted had rack. The preceding Bagley-class destroyers, completed in 1937, had 32 hammocks in mess spaces to augment 183 crew berths.
It was only with ALNAV 278-45, (Navy Department Bulletin, 30 Sept. 45-1283), effective 15 October 1945, that mattresses and hammocks were decreed to be the property of the shore establishment or ship, rather than the Sailor issued them. Hammocks themselves had stopped being issued to new recruits the year before.
By the end of 1947, with ancient war wagons like Tennessee mothballed, hammocks were quietly removed from inventory. It should be noted, however, that the Coast Guard continued to use them well into the 1950s, with New London underclassmen sailing on the training ship USCGC Eagle, still swinging from hammocks while on their annual Mids summer cruise.
Meanwhile, the British continued to use the devices for a stretch longer, with the training ship HMS Fife (D20), a repurposed County-class destroyer, rigging hammocks for embarked cadets in one of the mess areas as late as a 1986 cruise and “may have been the last men of the Royal Navy to sleep in that fashion.”
Still, that is not to say that the devices remained in limited use in the U.S. Navy for the past few generations since Truman dropped the A-bombs. The practice unofficially continued on submarines through the early 2000s on the old Sturgeon-class submarines, with some junior enlisted bubbleheads preferring to “rig nets” in out-of-the-way compartments rather than hot bunk in racks.
For more on the early life of sailors at sea and their personal gear, check out What’s in Your Seabag by James L. Leuci, MCPO, USN(Ret.) as well as the 175-page thesis Hammocks: A Maritime Tool by Michele Panico.
So - have any of our FR sailors slept in a hammock while at sea?
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Steve McQueen as Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Jake Holman in The Sand Pebbles toting his seabag, lashed with hammock.
“So - have any of our FR sailors slept in a hammock while at sea?”
No. But a nuclear warhead kept my feed warm.
“Sleeping In.” A Sailor occupies his hammock in the broadside gun casemate of a large U.S. Navy warship, circa the mid-1910s. The original image, copyrighted by E. Muller Jr., from N. Moser, New York, is printed on postcard (AZO) stock. Donation of Charles R. Haberlein Jr., 2008. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 106268
THE ROYAL NAVY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR. On board the submarine HMS TRIBUNE at Scapa Flow. The forward torpedo compartment. Around the stowed torpedoes some of the crew’s hammocks and kit bags can be seen. The men that work in this compartment also sleep here ready to respond to any emergency. Four of the eight forward tubes can be seen through the bulkhead. Creator: Priest, L C (Lt), Royal Navy official photographer Source: © IWM (A 10909)
I trust that your feet warmers were better secured than these shells.
Nope. Soft steel bed pan. Lift it up for space for your stuff.
Actually yes, but it was in the cabin of a 40 foot Freedom Ketch on a sail from the Chesapeake to Jacksonville. Took almost 10 days! Beating into a head wind and trying to stay outside the Gulf Stream. It was a bucket list trip that I never want to repeat. 😬
And that’s how you wear a white hat!
My husband was on the Aircraft Carrier Independence doing a 9 month Mediterranean cruise during the Viet Nam war. He was a “brown shirt” (took care of the planes). They had racks and his bunk was directly underneath the flight deck by the arresting cable #3. He said it sounded like a dragon whenever it was utilized. A crash first when the plane hit the deck then the loud roar/squeal of the cable every 45 seconds. Flight operations went every 45 minutes. There were times when the cable was missed and it broke the rhythm - a crash and no roar. Somehow he got used enough to it to get some sleep. He said working the flight deck was the most exciting thing he has ever done and that’s after 20+ years as a firefighter.
Not a sailor. Army. 1958. But went Japan out of Seattle on troopship USS Mitchell. Slept on racks. 3 years later returned Stateside on a troopship, the USS Mann. Slept on racks. We were one of the last via troopship. It was 1961 and the Boeing 707s were taking over and changing all that.
L.P. The officers...did they have berths?
We had racks, with “all hands heave out and trice up” as a reminder of hammock days. My ship was built in 1940; I served aboard from ‘61 through ‘64, so she was well broken in.
Where is the lead shielding to protect sensitive gonads from harmful radiation?
Or was that only for officers?
As the Navy continues to modernize, I am not sure that some of the old traditions don’t have a place, if only to enforce discipline.
Someone else noted that discipline seems lacking after boot camp.
I can see the efficiency of flying troops home rather than a troopship, but the cost must be higher (as it is in freight).
It is almost as if the modern Navy doesn’t care about $$ anymore, just whiz bang and high tech.
At some point though, someone has to steer, someone has to keep the boilers going and someone has to fight fires.
Good posting. I can relate.
Med cruise 1961, USS FDR (CVA-42). Green shirt (Catapults) and berthing with flight deck overhead just below arresting gear. Took about two weeks to get used to the noise of aircraft landing right on top of my rack. After the last planned night launch, we got in the habit of falling asleep real quick.
My rack was a piece of canvas lashed by hemp line to an aluminum tubular frame. There was a 2” mattress inside a cotton bag (like a pillowcase) and one thin wool blanket that was very itchy.
I was only 18-19, so it was obviously the most exciting thing I’d ever done. The chow was consistently the best I’ve had, and flight deck crewmen had front of the line privileges so between launchings I often had 4-5 meals a day and still weighed only about 160.
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