Sleep Deprivation on Navy Ships?

[Goodshipvenus]

I’m mathematically challenged and I can’t claim to understand how dog watches and other issues of a Royal Navy sailing day was apportioned, but it seems to me that each watch only got four hours of sleep in their hammocks each night before the watch was changed and they had to go on deck. Is this correct or do I completely misunderstand something? If I this was true, then how could men function indefinitely on four hours of sleep a night and still do dangerous work? They couldn’t return to their hammocks after their Watch ended because all hammocks would have been taken down. So, were sailors supermen who got by on little sleep, or do I have this completely wrong?

[Jaager]

As I understand it, there were 4 hour watches, but of the six per 24 hours, an individual was assigned to two of them.   It probably came from fiction, but a continuous four on - four off was termed watch and watch and was used as a punishment.  But that was mainly for midshipmen and officers.  I suspect that a sleep deprived foretopman was a danger to the ship as well as himself.  It sort of makes the calling of "all hands" take on a more profound significance.

 

The RN was a bit more perverse with the crew as far as punishments.  They got them addicted to two highly addictive drugs and used withholding of them as a punishment. 

[vossy]

Speaking as a "modern" day veteran, 4 continuous hours sleep is a luxury we had during cruising watches. At battle stations etc. you slept for minutes where your

station on the ship was.

 

Ships are dangerous places.

 

Chris.

 

[trippwj]

Back in the days of sail there were but 2 watch groups - port & starboard. The dinner watch was 2 hours to shift which group had the late watch (midnight to 4am). Of course if there was s need to take in sail overnight then both watches stood to (all hands on deck).

[Dr PR]

In the 1970s we had four on and eight off watches in Condition 2 (1 in 3 watch rotation)  - which was what we kept in combat zones (Vietnam) when not at General Quarters (Condition 1). However, to avoid repeating the same watch periods every day we had a 2 hour mid watch from 0000 to 0200 and a "dog watch" from 0200 to 0400.

 

Breakfast was at 0700, muster/Officers Call at 0800, lunch at 1100/1200 and dinner at 1700/1800. We also had regular jobs when not on watch. Add to that the necessity to rearm every other day and refuel/resupply once a week and we were kept pretty busy! Do the math and you will find that it was almost impossible to get more than 4 hours sleep at a time, and some days that wasn't possible.

 

After six to eight weeks 1 in 3 without much sleep on the gun line in the south or MiG hunting in the north we were sleep walking when "awake." Fatigue was an issue!

[Jaager]

Topic drift here....  but I remember from Physiology that at a certain point - the brain will go into sleep mode - neither conscious or conscientious effort will be able to stop it.   It seems perverse and ineffective to punish for sleeping on guard duty if the individual was not allowed a nap before that duty.

[wefalck]

Interesting topic. I noticed that in other cultures people were tradtionally not in that 6-8 hours sleep and the rest wake routine, but slept in intervalls. The question seems not so much when you sleep, but how much sleep you can get in 24h. Obviously on a ship, particularly in the sailing ship days, there are periods, when the men got very little sleep.

 

From experience, I know that at some point one dozes off, wherever one happens to be. On the other hand, being in the mast in a storm should refresh you quite well ... they used to say that sailor can sleep anywhere any time ...

[AON]

In the days of sail in the RN the crew was divided into two parts, Port or Larboard and Starboard watches. and those were split into as many as nine divisions with each division commanded by a Lieutenant. Each division (I believe) was assigned to an area of the ship. If you were on watch only a minimal number were required to man stations, the remainder carried out ship's husbandry duties (maintenance, cleaning, etc.). A great number of the crew were landsman that were only good for cleaning, polishing or hauling on lines when told to do so. If your work was completed you could rest but best not to be to obvious about it. If you weren't on watch you had leisure time or time to sleep... unless extra hands were called to duty on deck. Trimming sails wouldn't necessarily require extra hands but changing direction and resetting sails might. Battle stations was a definite all hands to duty.  These situations would definitely impact your sleep time!

[Roger Pellett]

My Navy sea duty was limited:  an eight week midshipman cruise and a one week sea trial aboard a nuclear submarine.  The midshipman Cruise, was aboard a minesweeper, and I was immediately put into the regular watch schedule as JOOD underway.  While we did not operate at the tempo that Dr PR describes above, we did stand watched around the clock.  Waking up to stand watch and then going back to sleep once it was over was particularly difficult.  The Midwatch 0000-0400 was dreaded although some OOD’s liked it as the Captain was usually asleep then.  During a minesweeping exercise with the Japanese Navy, watches were six hours on and six off.

 

I have just been reading several memoirs about the US Navy during the Vietnam War. While I was familiar with the Navy’s “brown water operations” and the role played by minesweepers off shore, I was unaware of the combat that cruisers and destroyers also engaged in in coastal waters.  All of the accounts that I read highlight the fatigue experienced by the crews of these vessels.

 

Roger

Edited December 22, 2022 by Roger Pellett

[Oldsalt1950]

I was a Division LPO for half of my 20-year naval career and had to write many an underway watch bill. The process is determined by the nature of your deployment and subject to change as world circumstances evolve. For most peacetime deployments you can go to a three section watch with everyone standing 8 hours of watch in a day, have 8 hours of rest time and 8 hours to complete shipboard housekeeping duties. Underway replenishment and GQ drills of course put everyone not on watch into work mode. In a quasi-battle mode the watch bill goes port and starboard with the schedule now 8 on 4 off, 4 on 8 off to accommodate getting rest but maintaining mental acuity. I used to sit down with my division chief and Division officer before any underway time to establish what we were expecting during a deployment and always had a backup plan. It is much easier today to plan such things than back in the age of sail. 

[el cid]

In my experience (minimally-manned FFGs) the underway watch rotation varied by steaming condition (where we were and what the threat level was) and by the particular manning of each division. For example, on a particular deployment the FCs managed a “normal” watch rotation (4 on, 8 off) but the OSs were short qualified watch standers and had to run 6 on, 6 off.

 

But then we FCs also had to maintain and repair our equipment between watches. The OSs just broke stuff then called the ETs to come fix it while they slept.

 

On deployment the needs of normal watch rotation; equipment maintenance/repair; UNREPs; flight ops; GQ, fire, DC, and engineering drills (and actual events); housekeeping, training, etc, ensured that everyone was sleep deprived…always.

Edited December 23, 2022 by el cid

[jud]

Varied by ship, her job and job of each individual, in a combat Zone or not and the experience of the Skipper and crew. On LST 821 we operated in a combat zone constantly month in and month out supporting SEALS, PBR's and HAL 3, were kept busy just doing our thing without GQ on top of it, so we minimized that and had a ready gun always manned with enough to fire one gun, two men on roving patrol with grenades and a  M16 as defense against swimmers and floating mines while we went on about our business, some got more sleep than others but it was those who got the most that the months on station bothered the most, one shot himself because he wanted no more of it and he was a E6 Store keeper, exhausted enough to sleep on anything and take power naps is good thing on extended operations, just as important or even more so, is the ability to remain alert in spite of it all, when others are relying on you doing your job.

Edited December 23, 2022 by jud

[Lieste]

On 12/21/2022 at 7:37 PM, trippwj said:

Back in the days of sail there were but 2 watch groups - port & starboard. The dinner watch was 2 hours to shift which group had the late watch (midnight to 4am). Of course if there was s need to take in sail overnight then both watches stood to (all hands on deck).

The station bill given in "installation des vaisseau" has fewer than 293 men even for the 'tacking under plain sail'. From a watch of 299, when in two watches, and below 201 men from 202 men when in three watches (with no idlers). All hands piped to stations would be required for sails and pumping, sails and anchor, or for action (when manoeuvring was 94 when fighting one board or 60 on both boards (with musketry reduced only to those on the tops)). The 'ordinary' watch system was two watches with idlers, but the use of a three watch system (which with more down time between watches, and smaller watch sizes had no idlers on the books - all 'seamen' and soldiers were assigned roles ~ though some of the simpler operations still didn't require all numbers to be active for that evolution. (Also the watches were Larboard and Starboard, (or Babord and Tribord for the French) - Port is a later modification of terms.

"All hands" for routine sail evolutions is a nearly purely merchant navy procedure (plus to a lesser degree troop transport warships armed en-flute), where there were by Transport board requirements minimums for "hired vessels" of 6 men per 100 tuns (earlier 7 men per 100 tuns), giving crews around a third to a quarter of those of a warship of similar size - in order to provide the space needed for troops or cargo, and to reduce costs and cargo space used up by crew provisions.

Edited December 26, 2022 by Lieste
Correction to numbers (there are some differences from a similar pre-revolutionary document I had in mind).

[CDR_Ret]

Back in the days of "useta-fish" (US attack submarines were named after sea creatures until they started naming them after random congressmen, then cities. "Fish don't vote!"—Adm. Rickover), we typically stood one-in-three, six-hour watches underway. Generally, attack boats (SSNs) were able to keep their watchbills manned with qualified watchstanders because we did frequent local ops when not deployed. I don't ever recall a dog watch in an SSN because the watches rotated through the 24-hour cycle and everyone could get at least six hours of sleep per day. Boomer crews, on the other hand, arrived at the turnover site with a large portion of the crew either provisionally qualified on their watch stations—or not at all. This was because, for the Offcrew period, we had no boat, and personnel transfers occurred during Offcrew. For the first month or so on patrol, there were a lot of port-and-starboard (we called it "port-and-stupid") watches. After four months at sea on a Westpac in USS Hawkbill, nearly everyone was qualified to their most senior watch stations, so we were able to go to one-in-four watches for the crew and the officers were one-in-six. As Senior Watch Officer, I even let the Engineer off the watchbill completely because he had an ORSE (Operational Reactor Safeguards Examination) to prepare for on the way back to Hawaii after that deployment.

 

I have no idea what modern submarines do. It's been more than 30 years since I've been on a boat...

[David W]

I always wondered why some of my fellow workers were a bit .... off. Several were nuke sub vets and others were surface. Sleep depredation! Makes me happy that my army days were regular (well, kinda). I just finished a couple books about the UK navy in the North Atlantic during WW2 on corvettes and destroyers - those guys were tough.

 

Good and informative thread👍