Memoirs of Lloyd Moss: 1930
So we settled down to regular living in our little apartment, gradually adding to our household furnishings. I acquired some odds and ends of radio parts and assembled them in a set that ran off a 6-volt storage battery and a 45 volt "B" battery. After that we became constant listeners to the Amos and Andy program, Lowell Thomas with the news, and heard the first unintelligible squawks relayed from Admiral Byrd at the South Pole. Sometime in the early spring my work duty was changed to that of sub-inpector on the U.S.S. Chester as it was being fitted out with all its operating systems. My main job was to get thoroughly acquainted with the location of all electrical wiring and equipment on the whole ship. Routine day to day occupation was to follow close behind the Navy Yard workmen and make sure that in that maze of wires, pipes, cables etc., they didn't do such things as run a hot steam line close up under a junction box so that later in a time of emergency out at sea it would be impossible to open the cover of the junctin box and repair a vital link in the ship's operating system. This was a real job as the workmen seemed to be only interested in getting their pipelines from point "A" to point "B" no matter what else was around them.
In the middle of June I was sent to the receiving ship in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for ten days of instruction on the new type of gyro compass, "Armor Mk IV," that was being installed on the Chester. Back in Philadelphia on June 30th I was officially assigned to the U.S.S. Chester as Gyro electrician. By the end of July the ship was ready for the Naval Acceptance Trials. A skeleton crew had been assembled in the Navy Yard by this time and so we all went aboard together with almost an equal number of technical engineers who brought with them all manner of test instruments. For example, every important bearing on the ship had a gob of putty with a thermometer or thermocouple stuck in it so that the running temperature could be noted and written down in a log book every quarter hour. So after taking on stores we proceeded down the Delaware and up to Camden, Maine. Here, off the coast, was a carefully measured course where the Navy tests the performance of newly constructed ships before they are officially accepted by the Government. We had nine days to put the ship through all sorts of grueling stresses such as all possible speed ahead then a sudden stop and full speed astern during which thousands of instruments were constantly monitored and the readings recorded every quarter hour, and much oftener in some cases. I believe I remember that our maximum speed was 34.6 knots which is really traveling in a ship of that size.
We were usually at anchor in Camden at night and some of us could go ashore. One of the nice things about the affair was that the ship-building company furnished a complete set of hotel cooks and helpers for the trip, and they fed everybody royally five meals a day. The fifth was at midnight because there were so many technicians on duty 24 hours a day. Cambden, Maine is just about the best spot on the Atlantic coast for lobsters so of course our good cooks bought a lot of them and we gorged ourselves on them. As luck would have it the ship's trials went off so trouble-free that the last two days were dropped and we started back down the coast two days early with an excess cargo of lobsters in the galley. Word was quietly passed around that anyone could go to the galley when he was hungry and be given a hot boiled lobster at any time. I'll never forget how good they tasted nor will I forget walking into a steaming fireroom to check on something and seeing the fireman standing on duty before the array of valves and levers stripped to the waist and devouring a whole delicious lobster. The picture struck me as highly unusual and incongruous.