For obvious reasons names of contributors are not revealed, however, the rates of those adding their two-cents to SRC's booze stories is open to speculation. One submariner remembers the Navy's attempt to doctor torpedo alcohol in order to make it undrinkable. He describes how submarine torpedomen outwitted the best of the Navy's chemists..

"Torpedomen were a step ahead of the Navy chemists who doctored torpedo alcohol with red dye and sometimes added croton oil (An extract from a tree that causes extreme diarrhea) to the mix. We quickly learned to add a small amount of the questionable torpedo alcohol that might contain croton oil to a glass of water. When shaken, the water would turn milky if croton oil was present. Milky mixtures were avoided, but clear results were a green light for consumption. The red dye was a simpler matter. We just ran the alcohol through an endwise loaf of bread and the red dye was absorbed by the bread. The result of this work was 190 proof booze that when mixed with pineapple juice made a wonderful Hawaiian cocktail."

Alcohol of a lesser potency, but never-the-less quite adequate was that found in alcoholic cleaning fluids. Another submariner remembers, "During the cold war in the 1950s and 1960s the torpedomen were in charge of ordering the alcohol on some of the boats as the electronic and fire control technicians needed 90% pure alcohol to clean their equipment. The alcohol was ordered in five gallon cans and distributed in one quart bottles. From then on "gillie" was the drink of choice for some of the crew. No one drank while at sea, but on-shore parties were quite lively thanks to the electronic technicians' high standards of equipment cleanliness. The alcohol was also used during shipyard periods for cumshaw purposes."

Hiding booze on a submarine was a problem both in terms of the captain's tolerance of such illegal possession and the custom authorities. A novice submariner was instructed as follows, "On my first long trip I dipped a scoop into the rice bin. The scoop hit glass. On investigation I found a bottle of Jack Daniels. Being a greenhorn I started to pull the bottle out and was stopped by a First Class who was clearly agitated. With patience he explained that every submariner has his hiding place for forbidden stuff and the rice bin was his. I never saw a submariner drunk at sea and never saw a man take a drink at sea. I concluded that the rice bin incident was a one-time event."

A torpedoman recalls that when in a Caribbean foreign port where the booze was as cheap as water the exercise heads on torpedoes would be removed and bottles of alcohol would be carefully sandwiched between rags and stacked into the heads. There was always more room in the torpedoes than the sailors had money, even at the low prices. After arriving in a US port each bottle with carefully labeled names of crew members were extracted and distributed. The customs people never suspected and neither did the officers.

Old salt submariners of yesteryear speculate on the possibility of illegal booze aboard nuclear powered boats. The consensus of diesel powered opinion is that today's submarines are so intricate and delicate that any impaired thinking, no matter how slight, would be a danger to boat and crew.