Deck Logs were the UNCLASSIFIED records of ship's position, arrival and departure ports, and significant UNCLASSIFIED events that occurred during an average day in the life of the USS WILLIAM H. BATES (SSN 680).
One could determine the location, how that position was determined, which port the boat departed from, where it was heading, and who had the OOD at any given moment during the day.
Significant events recorded included casting off, mooring, emergencies like fires and injuries, reactor startups and shutdowns, drills that affected the ship as a whole, and even adminsitrative actions like Captain's Mast.
Deck Logs for January, May, and October 1978 have been recently uploaded to the SSN 680 site.
These three months show the full range of ship's activity recorded in the logs, from the sheer boredom of daily routine tied to the pier, through fast cruise, underway surfaced, submerging and surfacing, and drills and routine tedium that help fill our days on the 680. By October, we were somewhere in the Sea of None of Your Business doing what we were trained to do, so the October log is essentially empty, it being classified and all.
Particular items to note include dropping the brow on the Duty Officer's foot (surely an accident!), the injury that resulted from the near-legendary un-clogging, and subsequent redecoration, of the crew's head by a particularly memorable A-ganger (fair winds and following seas), a shipmate transported by ambulance to the hospital with appendicitis, and a whole suite of brief and uni-directional conversations with the CO on opposite sides of a green felt tablecloth, which suggests that we chiefs and leading firsts were somewhat remiss in our responsibilities to provide adult supervision.
We shared some lively times, someone once said.
Beyond the mundane, Deck Logs remain a valuable source of first hand information in determining the history of the boat and the crew who sailed her.
You can find the 1978 Deck Logs at SSN 680 >> THE LOGROOM >> DECK LOGS >> 1978 DECK LOGS.
