Lower armored-cruiser casemates were wet and miserable

How bad were conditions in the lower casemates of British armored cruisers during heavy weather?

They were very wet and unpleasant, but ordinary water ingress was more a habitability and fighting problem than a distinct threat of the whole crew drowning.

Lower casemate guns sat close enough to the sea that heavy weather drove spray and water into their working spaces. The panel emphasizes that these positions were thoroughly unpleasant rather than normally lethal. Any standing water can be dangerous if a sailor falls or is incapacitated, but the expected problem was not a compartment filling deeply enough to drown its crew. Wet ammunition handling, poor habitability, and loss of gun usefulness were the more immediate consequences.