Under the periscope — A Closer Reading

A Composite Crew and a Single Boat

Bennett does not name his submarine or most of its crew, referring to officers by nicknames such as “Captain Charteris” and “the ‘Guns.’” The preface asks former comrades not to be “too critical” of omissions, noting that the boat described is “of one particular class.” This deliberate vagueness suggests that Bennett is constructing a representative portrait rather than a strict personal diary. The effect is to make the reader focus on the shared conditions of submarine life—the cramped mess-decks, the “funk-holes” for air raids, the routine of diving and surfacing—rather than on individual heroics. The crew becomes a collective protagonist, their voices blending in the shouted orders and muttered complaints that fill the pages.

Waiting and Watching: The Rhythm of Patrol

The Zeppelin scene demonstrates how Bennett builds tension through accumulated detail: the “ten” searchlights, the “whirr and a rush of motors,” the “tiny flicker of flame” that becomes a “streak of blinding light.” The narrative lingers on the moments before action—the Fleet “watched and waited in silence”—and then accelerates into a blur of sound and motion. This pattern recurs throughout the excerpts: a long, quiet watch, a sudden alarm, a burst of activity, and then a return to stillness. Bennett’s sentences grow shorter as the action intensifies, mimicking the crew’s heightened alertness. The result is a reading experience that feels like standing a watch oneself, attuned to the smallest changes in the environment.

Sound and Silence: The Acoustic Landscape

Bennett’s prose is unusually attentive to sound. In the Zeppelin episode, he records the “Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat” of machine guns, the “Boom! Bang! Phit” of shore batteries, and the “long-drawn chant” of “Retur-ur-ur-n Stor-or-or-es.” These onomatopoeic passages contrast with the silence of the submarine itself, where men speak in low voices and the only noise is the hum of machinery. The preface notes that the book was written “while the War was still with us,” and the auditory detail may reflect the heightened sensory awareness of a serving officer. Sound becomes a way of measuring distance and danger: the “faintly in the distance” of seaplane fire, the “sickly glare” that replaces the roar of the burning Zeppelin.

Movement Between Worlds: Surface and Submerged

The book’s title, Under the Periscope, suggests a vantage point that is neither fully above nor below the surface. Bennett’s narrative moves between the open air of the deck and the enclosed atmosphere of the control room. In the Zeppelin scene, the crew is on deck, watching the sky; but the preface and other passages describe the claustrophobic interior, where men “dived down into their various burrows.” This constant shuttling between environments—the vastness of the harbour and the narrowness of the boat—creates a spatial tension that mirrors the psychological strain of submarine warfare. Bennett’s descriptions of the sea are minimal; he is more interested in the human response to the environment than in the environment itself.

Readers approaching Under the Periscope should expect a mosaic of incidents rather than a linear plot. Bennett’s composite boat and crew allow him to range across different aspects of submarine service—air raids, torpedo attacks, mechanical failures, quiet patrols—without being bound to a single sequence of events. The book rewards attention to its acoustic details and its shifts in scale, from the intimate space of the mess-deck to the wide horizon seen through the periscope. It is a document of a particular moment in naval history, written by a participant who was still living through the war.

Reading this, I thought of my grandfather’s silence about the war—how he’d stare at the sea after dinner, waiting for something unseen. The book’s dark, patient rhythm felt familiar. I once found that same quiet tension in The Corsair in the war zone — Themes and Context, where waiting itself became the story’s true weight.