Don Cleavin – Noise in the engine room

Simon: And when the engines are running, and you’re in the Engine Compartment, how would you describe the noise, the sound inside?

Deafening.

Simon: I mean what would a person in the street have it as an equivalent of? There’s no noise that’s anything like it that you’d have in a daily life.

Electric drill I suppose.

Simon: Ok. So, it’s like standing by a pneumatic drill in the road is it?

Yeah.

Simon: And that’s all day.

Yeah. We didn’t have ear protection, but when you go onto the ‘A’ boats, which have got a high speed … no, we didn’t have ear defenders on them either.

It was the Porpoise Class you had ear defenders. Radio, you could what was going on inside the loop, you could hear what was going on.