I recall a show where they tied a string taut from wall to wall and once deep under water the string was drooping, and they said the walls were 6 inches closer due to the pressure.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1981, the USS Boston got underway for sea trials after an extended period in the shipyard. After standing watch in the morning, I went to my stateroom to do some paperwork. While I sat there, the boat went down to test depth (the deepest it normally goes) as part of the sea trials test program.

When the Thanksgiving lunch meal was ready, a crew member knocked on my stateroom door to invite me to the meal. I walked to the door, turned the handle, and couldn’t open the door.

It was wedged shut. As a result of some of the changes made while we were in the shipyard, as the hull had compressed the deck above my stateroom was unable to shift properly on its “floating” structure, which pressed on and distorted the frame of my stateroom door, wedging the door tight into the door frame.

After a brief consultation with the test director (talking to me from the other side of the door), we concluded that the door could be taken apart if I really needed to get out. Otherwise, we’d just wait until the test depth testing was completed and we came back shallow.

So I sat there for a couple of hours. Laughing crew members offered to slide me turkey under the door (which wouldn’t have worked anyway since the door was wedged tight against the deck). As soon as we headed back toward more normal depths, the hull expanded, my door popped free of the door frame, and I was able to leave.

“Stateroom door repair” went onto the list of work items from sea trials.