Word: bluejacket
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...bluejacket was sweating a little in his clean and faded dungarees. His answers came jerkily and he was nervous. He was being tested for admission to the U.S. Navy's corps d' élite, the submarine service...
Subtly the doctor probed and searched. The bluejacket wondered what was wrong, why he had been called to the "nut factory." His service record in the surface ships was clean. The psychiatrist's questions gave him no clues. But his answers and his scores in the preliminary written tests told the tale. The sailor was healthy, intelligent and eager for sub duty, but he was not the type. Within the hour, he was off the Base, his papers marked "immediate sea duty...
...that in the Navy they may be very smallshots. Typical remark by an instructor: "The last Sunday you preached from your pulpit some nice old lady came up and said, 'That was a wonderful message, Doctor.' The first Sunday you preach after you finish this school, some bluejacket may come up and say, 'Damn good sermon, padre.' You must realize that there is as much sincerity in one as in the other...
Five minutes later John Gudgel and Dick Johnston were sipping martinis hurriedly in a desperate effort to forget what they had just seen: no bluejacket batting out code to the fleet, but rather, a welder and his torch sealing the seams in two steel plates...
...injured Watson was lashed in a bunk, where he chewed aspirin to kill the pain of his broken ribs. The drinking water had salt in it. Food supplies ran short. Cigarets were soaked, so the crew smoked dried tea leaves and fresh coffee rolled in pages torn from the Bluejacket's Manual. The auxiliary engine was useless. It was impossible to sail her. Day after day, a chip in a maelstrom, the 3070 tossed on the heaving Atlantic, battered by soft. waves, driven by the whims of one storm after another...