It’s kind of obvious that most answers either are from younger sailors, or people that don’t know what they’re talking about.

The ship I served on from 79–82 was built in 1945 (edit: it was a Chanticleer class ASR, submarine rescue ship). Its ability to generate fresh water was compromised in warm water (temperature differential helped tremendously) and a very stupid arrangement of the distillation plants, wherein if we rolled too much, the batch got spoiled and had to be dumped.

Then, we carried 15,000 gallons in a forward tank, 10,000 gallons in an aft tank, and 5,000 gallons in each of two saddle tanks (roughly midships)

Our commanding officer was of the opinion that the fore and aft tanks were absolutely crucial to the proper handling of the ship, and the water in those tanks could not be touched unless people were literally, and I do mean literally, dying of dehydration (said CO was an asshole).

So .. we were on water hours in the winter, in rough seas. We were on water hours in the summer, in calm seas.

We rigged salt water showers, and had soap that would suds in salt water. You could have ALL the time you wanted in a salt water shower, then you got a 30 second rinse in the normal fresh water showers.

When it was cold, you got wet using 15 seconds of water, turned it off, suds upped, and got 60 seconds to rinse off.

If you were smart, you were not the first person in the shower, so there was hot water for that 15 seconds of getting wet.

Oh ..

(Edited to add … what follows was written by a friend, and shamelessly stolen. It was specifically written in response to a concept of floating solar panels to generate electricity.)

Lemme break this down for you landlubbers, again: salt water hates metal. And moving things. And especially metal moving things. And basically anything that isn't salt water. And you.

Salt water is functionally condensed hate.