The Snipe's Lament

Now each of us from time to time, has gazed upon the sea
And watched the warships pulling out to keep this country free
And most of us have read a book or heard a lusty tale
About the men who sail these ships through light'ning, wind and hail
But there's a place within each ship that legend fails to teach

Its down below the waterline, it takes a living toll
A hot metal living hell that sailors call the hole
It houses engines run by steam that make the shafts go round
A place of fire and noise and heat that beats your spirits down
Where boilers like hellish heart with blood of angry steam
Are moulded gods without remorse, are nightmares in a dream

You have no time for man or god, no tolerance or fear
Your aspects pay no living thing the tribute of a tear
For there's not much that man can do that these men haven't done
Beneath the deck deep in the hole to make the engines run
And every hour of every day they keep the watch in hell
For if the fires ever fail their ship's a useless shell

When ships converge to have a war upon the angry sea
The men below just grimly smile at what their fate might be
They're locked in below like men foredoomed who hear not battle cry
Its well assumed that if they're hit the men below will die
For every day's a war down there when the gauges all read red
Twelve hundred pounds of heated steam can kill you mighty dead

I've seen these sweat soaked heroes fight in superheated air
To keep their ship alive and right though no one knows they're there
And thus they'll fight for ages on til warships sail no more
Amid the boiler's mighty heat and the turbine's hellish roar
So when you see a ship pull out to meet a warlike foe
Remember faintly, if you can, the men who sail below.
—Author Unknown

(copied from a bulkhead at BT "A" School, Great Lakes, Il.)