Word: ballasting
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...Ballast clean and smooth as glass...
...keep their positions in convoys, the slow (10½ knots) Liberties often must buck mountainous seas while running at full speed instead of slowing down as they would normally do. Overloading with solid cargoes of jeeps and tanks is common. Too often the voyage home is made without sufficient ballast to keep the ships from straddling heavy seas that leave bow and stern dangling out of water...
Durham & Cheadle then developed a zinc alloy for the job (pure zinc soon gets coated with an oxide that interferes with electrolysis), and adapted their discovery to protect condensers, hulls, bulkheads, ballast tanks, etc. The device has already worked well on dozens of ships. So far as condensers, specifically, are concerned, Cheadle figures that his electrolysis eliminator doubles or triples normal life...
...Under these most difficult conditions, the enemy hove into sight - two capital ships at two miles' separation, a destroyer screening them. Vision blotted out, the Clyde had to be brought up until the periscope standards were awash. The heavy seas made her too lively. Tons of extra ballast had to be shipped to prevent her from breaking surface. The Clyde maneuvered, got around the destroyer, came "face to face" with one of the enemy. It was the Scharnhorst. The Clyde steadied. The order to fire was given. The men waited - it seemed longer than the 15 days and nights...
...torpedo weighs over a ton. When the torpedoes were about to run, the ship had to take in more ballast to prevent her from "bobbing like a cork to the surface." These extra tons now carried her down steeply. She could not be checked. The needle would never stop. She was well down in the danger zone when she pulled up. "The pressure squeezed down on the hull, feeling cunningly for some weakness. . . . Loud noises issued from the metal. . . . The startled eyes of the men watched a four-inch solid pillar start to bend as the weight...