Submarine Run Silent Run Deep - Bubblehead Patch

Look where the bubbles on this patch come from: they rise off the crown of the skull, which makes it a bubble head in the most literal way thread can manage. Bubblehead is Navy slang for a submariner, and the men who ride the boats wear it without apology. The skull and crossbones under the boat has its own history in submarines. In September 1914 Lieutenant Commander Max Horton brought HMS E9 into port flying a Jolly Roger after torpedoing the German cruiser SMS Hela. It was his answer to Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson, who had called submarines "underhanded, unfair, and damned un-English."

The words across the top are the title of Commander Edward L. Beach Jr.'s submarine novel Run Silent, Run Deep, published in 1955. Robert Wise turned it into a 1958 film set in the Pacific war, with Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster in the lead and Don Rickles making his screen debut in the crew. The title refers to silent running, the stealth practice every submariner learns, where the boat goes quiet so an enemy cannot hear it. Beach later made captain, and he did not like how far the movie strayed from his book. The pirate flag still turns up in the force, too, and in 2017 USS Jimmy Carter returned to its home port flying one.

It is a 4 inch round patch in black and tan, with a tan merrowed edge rolled around the outside. RUN SILENT RUN DEEP arcs across the top of a black outer ring and BUBBLEHEAD runs along the bottom, all in tan block letters. Inside, a black submarine with a long hull, a sail forward and cross-shaped stern planes rides above a grinning skull and crossbones. A trail of bubbles climbs from the skull's head up toward the sail, and wave lines run across the bottom of the circle. The back is iron-on, and a few stitches around the edge will hold it for good on a jacket that sees the washing machine.

Nobody rides a boat for long without qualifying. A submariner learns every system aboard until he can trace it in the dark, and only then does he earn his dolphins, officer or enlisted. Life aboard means close quarters, long weeks without daylight and a crew that has to trust each other completely. The humor on this patch is the kind that gets a crew through a long patrol, a little dark and entirely proud of it. Bubblehead may have started as a jab from the surface fleet, but the submarine force kept it as a title.

Put it on a deck jacket or a sea bag, or in a shadow box with a set of dolphins and a photo of the boat. It is a good gift for a qualified submariner, or for a son or daughter just headed to sub school in Groton. Every bubblehead will get the joke before he reads the words.