[Lou L]

When your job is to spend every hour in the presence of equipment whose entire purpose is to kill people you really have to stay on your toes every second.

I've always said that there's no "routine" operation or act on a naval ship...even coming aboard can be dangerous, if you're not careful.

[robowombat]

When I was a boy I remember hearing a flag officer say ‘When at sea you are always at war.’ Being a kid it didn’t register . Later I noted the USN lost far more men in the age of sail to storm and mischance. As late as 1921 the fleet tug Conestoga vanished while in transit to Samoa via Pearl Harbor. So it remains today, the sea is always akin to an enemy.