Corrosion Has Set In

DESCRIPTION: "Corrosion has set in, Dahn below, The plates are getting thin, Dahn below, There's a leak in the fore peak, And how those bulkheads creak, I hope we'll last the week, Dahn below." About the ship's weary state and the carpenter's work to keep her afloat
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1987 (Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy); probably in existence when HMS Cheviot was decommissioned in the early 1960s
KEYWORDS: ship sailor derivative work
FOUND IN: Britain
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy, pp. 35-36, "Dahn Below" (1 text, tune referenced)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Dahn Below" (tune)
NOTES [401 words]: Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy lists the tune of this as "Dahn Below," but I've never heard of such a thing. It is a good fit for "Over There (I - The Praties They Grow Small)."
It apparently was known to the sailors of H.M.S. Cheviot on her last voyage. According to M. J. Whitley, Destroyers of World War II: An International Encyclopedia, Naval Institute Press, 1988, pp. 136-138, Cheviot was a member of the Ch/Co/Cr class of destroyers, most of them laid down in 1943. Cheviot herself was laid down April 27, 1943, launched May 2, 1944, commissioned December 11, 1945, and sent to the breakers October 22, 1961. She obviously did not serve in World War II, and based on online mentions, it appears she never engaged in combat after the war either.
The Ch class were slightly modified versions of the Z class (the main updates being a different but not necessarily better gun and the elimination of half their torpedo tubes to let them carry more electronics), themselves ultimately dating back to the "S" class. This was a not-especially-good design that had been produced en masse because Britain needed destroyers to fight the U-boats. Of course, by the time Cheviot was finished, there were no more U-boats, and the ships were clearly out of date.
The designs of that period were not especially good; according to Richard Worth, Fleets of World War II, Da Capo, 2001, p. 113, "Structural collapse precipitated 41% of the losses among Britain's smaller warships [in World War II], most of them sinking in less than 10 minutes" -- a harsh indictment of the design and construction of the destroyers Britain was cranking out. Plus mass-produced ships tended to be somewhat imperfect just because they were built so quickly. The "Ch" class wasn't finished quickly, because of parts shortages, but the actual construction was often hasty. So, although I do not know, I would not be at all surprised to learn that the Cheviot was somewhat problematic when young, and aged fast. And the British had far too many cranky old ships after the war, which made it harder to maintain them, even though many were paid off as soon as the war was over (even ships built in 1939 were being sold off before 1950). The problems this song describes are characteristic of all old ships, but surely especially true of a mass-produced outdated design that had little service role in the 1950s Royal Navy. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.1
File: Tawn019

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