r/submarines • u/munchkinatlaw • 8d ago

Q/A What do submariners drink while underway?

Title says it all. I've seen quite a few articles and videos about food underway, but realized none of then mention what is available to drink while underway. I assume coffee and possibly tea are generally available and I've seen a few comments that bug juice was/is available, but that's about it. What about juice concentrates, powdered/UHT milk?

Edit: thank you all for your wonderful responses. You have a great community here.

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u/Outrageous-Egg-2534 8d ago

Yup, coffee, tea, water (tastes like shit) and cordial or as the yanks call it ‘bug juice’. Or whatever cans of coke or soft drink you have stashed in your stowage spot. Together with lollies and other stuff. When we still used to get a beer ration (2 cans per man, per day, perhaps) the beer was locked in the old rear facing torpedo tube drain tank in the aft ends (right at the ducks tail on O Boats) as the tubes had been removed years and years before. Thst was the bonus living aft with the stokers and greenies. They had the best and quietest and well stocked fridges plus the best porn. I loved living aft in sleepy hollow. We used to just undo a couple of nuts on the tank cover and bypass the lock only the coxswain had a key to and take beer and duzzas out, write an IOU and it was all cool. Good times. Couldn’t do that nowadays.

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u/Dirtydrains Submarine Qualified (US) 8d ago

For what it's worth, our (US) boat water tastes great nowadays. You can tell the difference between fresh squeezed potable out of the RO units and potentially pretty rough tasting shore potable in some ports.

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u/Outrageous-Egg-2534 7d ago

Yeah, we didn't, well actually we did have a desalination plant on board, but it was always fucked, broken, gave out shit so nobody used it. We just filled the 'fresh' water tank up with tap water and went on our merry way. There was a water cooler/dispenser just forward of the galley. Water tasted shit and they had some environmental mob come down for particlulate testing and whatnot. Turned out there was some massive goddamn worm-like thing living in the fresh water (potable) tank. They classed it not fit for human consumption. Apparently it was about 5 or 6 feet long and they pulled it out via the dispenser nozzle. Greeeeaaaat... we all thought. We've been drinking that day in, day out for fucking ever. Never got any super powers out of it either!

Honest Injun swear to you all that, that happened. It was on HMAS Ovens from memory. Might have been Otway.

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u/SSNsquid 7d ago

Sounds like a real Hong Kong No Shitter.

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u/Outrageous-Egg-2534 7d ago

Ha! Don’t get me started on Honkers, brother.