On the Bottom
The Raising of the Submarine S-51
to
THE MEN OF THE U.S. NAVY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: Collision
CHAPTER II: On the S-51
CHAPTER III: Rescue Efforts
CHAPTER IV: Vacillation
CHAPTER V: The Salvage Problem
CHAPTER VI: Diving
CHAPTER VII: The Divers
CHAPTER VIII: Off Block Island
CHAPTER IX: In the Engine Room
CHAPTER X: The First Snag
CHAPTER XI: The Control Room
CHAPTER XII: Another Struggle
CHAPTER XIII: The First Pontoon
CHAPTER XIV: Blowing the Ballast Tanks
CHAPTER XV: Outside the Control Room
CHAPTER XVI: A Lost Diver
CHAPTER XVII: The Motor Room
CHAPTER XVIII: Winter
CHAPTER XIX: A Diving School
CHAPTER XX: Lost, a Submarine
CHAPTER XXI: Pontoons Again
CHAPTER XXII: My First Dive
CHAPTER XXIII: Sealing Up Aft
CHAPTER XXIV: The Torch Solves a Problem
CHAPTER XXV: The First Tunnel
CHAPTER XXVI: The Cement Gun
CHAPTER XXVII: An Ocean Oil Well
CHAPTER XXVIII: The Engine Room Hatch
CHAPTER XXIX: More Pontoons
CHAPTER XXX: A Tug of War
CHAPTER XXXI: The Last Tunnel
CHAPTER XXXII: Lashing Up
CHAPTER XXXIII: June 22, 1926
CHAPTER XXXIV: Still More Pontoons
CHAPTER XXXV: July 5, 1926
CHAPTER XXXVI: The Tow
CHAPTER XXXVII: Man of War Rock
CHAPTER XXXVIII: The Bell
CHAPTER XXXIX: The End
Image Gallery
GLOSSARY
INDEX
About the Author
I
COLLISION
On a dark September night, with a cold breeze whipping up a choppy sea about fifteen miles to the eastward of Block Island, the steamship City of Rome plowed northward towards Boston. Four bells struck. The new lookout took his post in the bow, sheltering himself from the wind by crouching low behind the bulwark.
“Light on the starboard bow!”
The mate on the bridge acknowledged the report, and sent word to the captain in his cabin. The City of Rome kept on her course. The helmsman went below for an inspection, leaving the mate, who relieved him at the wheel, alone on the bridge.
The lookout watched the light; a single white point perhaps five miles off. Gradually it grew brighter as they overhauled it, but its bearing remained constant, broad on the starboard bow. Twenty minutes went by. The light grew very bright. The lookout gazed inquiringly at his own bridge. The other ship, whatever it was, had the right of way, but the City of Rome made no move to pass astern.
They were very close now. The strange light was almost under their bow when a red side light flashed into view close to the white one. Simultaneously the mate started to swing the ship to port and blew his whistle frantically.
Hearing the noise, the captain rushed to the bridge, took a hasty glimpse at the lights on his starboard bow, and then, disregarding their proximity, ordered his ship swung to starboard towards the lights, trying to pass astern of them.
For one brief second the lookout, peering over the side, saw the dim outline of a submarine as they swung towards her, then came the crash.
The submarine, struck just forward of its conning tower, rolled drunkenly to starboard, then fell away as the City of Rome slipped by. The captain of the submarine appeared on her bridge. The startled passengers on the steamer, looking over the side, caught a brief glimpse of his face looking up, heard one agonized cry from below:
“For God’s sake, throw us a line!”
The City of Rome, speed unchecked, rushed on by.
II
ON THE S-51
Inside the S-51, except for the few men on watch, the crew were turned in, closely packed in their bunks in the battery room. On the little bridge, two officers and two seamen, heavily clothed, conned the ship;—course northwest, speed eleven and a half knots.
A cold spray broke over the low-lying hull. All hatches were secured, except the single one leading from the bridge down through the conning tower to the control room. The Diesel engines were drawing air from an intake valve just under the bridge.
Lieutenant Dobson, commanding the S-51, dropped into the control room to study the charts. He was closing on Block Island; in another hour he would head out to sea again to continue his twenty-four-hour reliability run.
Shortly after 10 P.M., the lights of a steamer were sighted on their port quarter. They gradually drew closer. The watch on the S-51’s bridge examined her. They had the right of way; under the “International Rules of the Road at Sea” the S-51 was required to maintain its course and speed. As their own stern light was plainly visible to the other ship, they felt no alarm. The steamer would shortly change course and pass astern of them.
They watched as the City of Rome drew closer and closer, but saw no change in her bearing. A few more minutes and the steamer was looming over their port quarter, very close now. She was evidently going to run them down in spite of the rules. They must look out for themselves.
“Hard right!” The submarine’s rudder went over and she started to swing to starboard. With relief her officers noted that the steamer, almost on top of them, was starting to turn to port, away from them, as she commenced blowing her whistle. Then to their horror they saw the steamer change her direction, and swing to starboard right for their side. The next instant, there was a terrific crash as the stem of the City of Rome struck the battery compartment.
The S-51 was thrown violently to starboard. Through a huge hole in her port side, water started to rush into the room, filled with sleeping men.
Dewey Kyle, machinist’s mate, flung by the shock from an upper bunk into the narrow starboard passage, found himself in water up to his waist when he hit the deck. Running aft through the battery room, the water followed as he stepped through the door into the control room. A few seamen, clothed as he was, only in their underwear, were climbing the ladder to the conning tower. The men on watch in the room stood by their controls; a chief petty officer there, who might easily have left, helped Kyle up the ladder but himself stayed below at his station.
Kyle scrambled up through the little conning tower and out the hatch to the bridge; as he did so he found himself swimming. The submarine had disappeared beneath his feet. He was the last man out.
A dark hull, looking mountain high, was disappearing in the darkness. The water was cold, the choppy sea made swimming difficult. Kyle thanked his luck he was not loaded down by clothing. Nearby he could see eight other swimmers,—his captain, the lieutenants who had been on watch on the bridge, the helmsman, the quartermaster, a few others. They were struggling desperately to rid themselves of their heavy clothes so they could swim.
One by one they vanished in the dark water, till only two beside Kyle remained afloat. Like him, Geier and Lyra had been catapulted from their bunks by the collision; being nearer to the control room they had escaped before him; now only these three unclothed swimmers of the crew of thirty-six remained on the surface.
Desperately they swam on in the wake of the steamer; after nearly an hour in the water, a small boat picked them up, and brought them aboard the City of Rome. In a few minutes, ship and survivors were on their way to Boston.
Some hours later, when nearing the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal, the City of Rome reported the accident by radio.
III
RESCUE EFFORTS
“COMMANDER CONTROL FORCE TO COMMANDING OFFICER U.S.S. Falcon:
“S-51 reported in collision latitude 41° 12’ N., longitude 71° 15’ W. Falcon proceed to scene immediately prepared for rescue work.”
I handed the radio message back to Lieutenant Hartley. Already he was casting off his lines to the pier, and in a few minutes the Falcon was standing out of the New York Navy Yard and heading up the East River towards Long Island Sound.
The delayed report from the City of Rome had been picked up in Boston, and telephoned to the Submarine Base at New London. The Camden, flagship of the Control Force, had passed the word to us at New York.
The Falcon made her best speed, but it was one hundred and fifty miles to the position given in the orders. We could not arrive until after dark.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Hartley, commanding officer of the rescue ship, plotted the position of the accident on the chart while I watched. His dividers pricked a point in the open sea, fourteen miles east of Block Island, fifteen miles southeast of Brenton Reef Lightship off Point Judith. We looked at the sounding printed there. Twenty-two fathoms,—one hundred and thirty-two feet deep. It was a bad position. Exposed to gales from every quarter. Nothing to break up the swells rolling in from the Atlantic when the winds subsided. And Point Judith was notorious as being the meeting place of all the winds that blew.
We steamed on through Long Island Sound, past New Haven, past New London, through The Race as the afternoon wore on. A message informed us that the diving launch from the Torpedo School at Newport, twenty-five miles away, had arrived on the scene at noon. Several destroyers searching had located the wreck by a stream of oil and air bubbles making a slick about two miles from the spot reported by the City of Rome.
Hartley broke out his diving gear and cleared the side for working. We had only two divers,—Chief Torpedoman Frazer of the Falcon, and Shipwright Anderson, whom I had brought from the Navy Yard. Two men in deep water could do little, but there would be a few others there from Newport.
As night fell we cleared the northern end of Block Island and stood out to sea in the darkness. The Falcon started to pitch as we met the waves. Far ahead we could see clusters of faint lights, and steered for these. By 10 P.M. we had arrived.
A weird scene. In the blue glare of searchlights from the mother ship Camden, a submarine stood sharply out against the background of black water, a stream of bubbles and oil frothing up against her side. From her conning tower two hoses led over the rail and disappeared in the sea. One hundred and thirty-two feet below they were attached to the S-51. The S-50 was pumping air continuously to her stricken sister.
A piercing note coming through the water vibrated against the Falcon’s hull,—the S-50’s oscillator was sounding the lost submarine’s call continuously. We listened on our microphones. No answer came from below.
In the darkness we could make out several destroyers, another submarine, some smaller boats.
Blinker lights flashed from the Camden’s yardarm. Our quartermaster spelled out the order:
“Falcon, anchor clear of S-50. Prepare for diving in morning.”
Slowly we steamed to a spot about five hundred yards astern of the illuminated submarine. On the forecastle, Chief Boatswain Burnett tripped the locking gear, our anchor chain roared out through the hawsepipe, we came to rest.
Quietness reigned except for that haunting call vibrating steadily through the water. Nothing showed through the darkness except the gray sides of the S-50, shining ghostlike in the searchlight beams.
Soon the coughing of a motorboat broke the silence. A launch came alongside, heaving up and down against the low bulwarks on the Falcon. A petty officer was helped over our rail. Only one brief word from his shipmates,—“Bends.” He passed into our recompression chamber, the heavy door swung to, compressed air started to whistle in as the needle on the gauge moved up. The first diver on the S-51 was being treated in “the iron doctor” for the disease that makes the ocean depths so dangerous to penetrate.
About midnight, he came out, much relieved. A slight figure was Chief Torpedoman Ingram, diver on the Torpedo Testing Range at Newport. Briefly he told me his story.
“I went down the stream of air bubbles. The sub is lying way over on her port side with a big hole in her battery room. I walked her deck from bow to stern and I hammered on every hatch. Not a sound inside. They’re all dead down there!”
Ingram gave us a few more details. Bubbles of air were leaking from around all the hatches. It was very hard to walk on the deck because of the heavy port list. He was the first man down, going over from the side of the little diving launch. They had no time to rig a telephone in his helmet, consequently he could not report what he saw while on the bottom. When he finally gave the signal on his line to come up, four jerks, those on the surface, anxious for the report, had hauled him up with only a short decompression.
A case of “bends” was the result, with no means of treatment till the Falcon arrived with her recompression tank.
Another diver, following Ingram, had attached air hoses to the salvage connections in the side of the S-51; the S-50 was pumping air below in the hope that she might help any possible survivors.
I looked toward the S-50; the air was coming up in masses of bubbles as fast as she was sending it down.
When morning came, I. was ordered to report aboard the Camden. I learned that the admiral there had hired a wrecking company for the rescue work; two of their largest derricks were already on the way from New York.
It was assumed that the survivors, if any, would be in the stern. If so, the after end of the ship would not be flooded, and the two derricks might be able to lift the stern to the surface.
There was nothing there for me to do. I left the squadron and returned to New York.
Meanwhile, the wrecking company’s divers passed heavy wire slings under the stern of the submarine and held them at the surface with a small derrick. Two large derricks, the Monarch of one hundred and fifty tons and the Century of one hundred tons capacity, arrived and anchored behind the breakwater at Point Judith, fifteen miles away.
Two days had gone by since the sinking of the S-51. If men were alive inside the boat, their case was desperate. But in spite of that, three more days went by. The wreckers dared not tow their derricks out to sea except in calm weather. At the wreck, conditions were good enough for diving, but they were not good enough to permit the lumbering derricks to leave the shelter of the Harbor of Refuge. Twice the sea looked calm and they started, but a few miles out they struck the swells and with their heavy top-hamper swinging dangerously, their owners turned the derricks about and towed them back to Point Judith lest they capsize among the waves.
At last, after five days, came a very smooth sea, the derricks were finally towed to the wreck, hooked to the slings, and heaved down till they were taking their maximum lift. Nothing budged. The S-51 was evidently flooded. Hastily the derricks were cast loose and hurried back to harbor before another breeze should spring up and catch them in the open sea.
There was no longer the slightest doubt. All hands inside the S-51 were dead.
The rescue efforts were discontinued, the wrecking company was discharged, and the Navy Department turned to a consideration of salvage possibilities.
IV
VACILLATION
The Navy Department was in a quandary.
Early in September, Commander John Rodgers, attempting in a Navy plane the first nonstop flight to Hawaii, had disappeared from sight for nine days. A burst of criticism was leveled at the Navy Department. While Rodgers was still missing, the Shenandoah, flying over Ohio, was caught in a storm and destroyed with the loss of Commander Lansdowne and a large part of his crew.
Led by Colonel Mitchell, of the Army Air Service, a storm of criticism now burst around the Secretary of the Navy, who was charged with demoralizing the Naval Air Service.
Hardly two weeks later and the S-51 was sunk with all but three of her company. The criticism now rose to the proportions of a flood and poured in on Washington in a demand that the S-51 be raised and the bodies of her crew recovered.
The situation was difficult. No large submarine had ever been raised in deep water in the open sea. Raising the S-51 did not look feasible, but at least an attempt must be made.
Neither in the Navy nor in private wrecking companies were there any means for the job, any reliable method of procedure.
The wreckers originally engaged on the work offered to undertake the job, provided the Navy furnished all needed equipment and divers, the diving ship Falcon, a sister submarine, and technical officers to assist,—everything in fact except one tug, a wreckmaster, and four divers, which the wreckers would furnish. The government, in addition to furnishing practically everything, was to pay a considerable sum whether the job was a success or not, and a bonus in addition if the S-51 was raised.
This contract, which normally would not have been entertained for a moment, nevertheless looked good to the harassed Department. It was on the point of being signed in Washington, when I went to Admiral Plunkett, Commandant of the Navy Yard at New York, with a method for the Navy to raise the ship itself. The admiral, enthusiastic over the idea, seized the telephone and over the long-distance wire to Washington presented the scheme, only to learn that the Department was not interested. They were about to sign a contract with outsiders to do the work.
Admiral Plunkett was furious. “This is a Navy job! If we can’t take care of our own ships, we ought to get out and let someone run the Navy who can!” And in that deep voice and in language which all those who ever served with him will easily remember, he burned up the wires till those at the other end agreed to delay the signing till our method could at least be explained.
The admiral dropped the phone, and looked at his watch. His aide went scurrying for a timetable.
“Here, Ellsberg, you’ve got twenty minutes to catch the next train. You explain it to them!”
I dashed from his office to the admiral’s car; his two-starred flag on the running board took us through the traffic and in a few minutes I was leaving the Pennsylvania Station on my way to Washington.
It took most of that night to convince some of the officers from the Bureau of Construction and Repair that we had a feasible plan, but even so it was impossible next day to get a favorable decision. It seemed as if the Department felt that the raising was doomed to failure, and in the existing state of mind of the press and the public, they did not care to risk another failure by the Navy. Expensive though it might be, it appeared preferable to hire a commercial company so that the burden of failure, when it came, could be assumed by them, not by the Navy itself.
In this atmosphere, little was possible, and I felt that I had achieved a considerable measure of success when I finally obtained a postponement of any decision then and had the discussion transferred to New York.
Back at the Navy Yard next day, reinforced by Admiral Plunkett and several of the officers who had taken part in the early rescue work, we made the proposal to let the job go outside the Navy look so ridiculous that the Navy Department representatives capitulated and agreed to let us proceed. Even the wreckmaster of the salvage company, in view of his company’s lack of equipment and submarine experience, was forced to admit the wisdom of that course.
As he left the conference, the wreckmaster turned and delivered his parting shot:
“I don’t know who is going to do this job, but whoever he is, he’ll wish before he gets through that he had been born a girl baby!”
Admiral Plunkett lost no time. Inside of ten minutes, orders had gone to the shops, and the construction of the pontoons for the salvage job started.
V
THE SALVAGE PROBLEM
The S-51 was a vessel of one thousand tons surface displacement. Our task was to lift this weight one hundred and thirty-two feet to the surface, meanwhile working in the open sea, and then tow the ship one hundred and fifty miles to New York, the nearest harbor with a suitable drydock.
Ordinary lifting methods were ruled out, first because no derricks existed capable of lifting so much weight, and second because of the impossibility of working them at sea even if the derricks were obtainable.
We felt that we could seal up the undamaged after half of the boat and, by expelling the water, restore about four hundred tons of buoyancy, but that seemed to be the maximum that could be realized from the boat herself. The remainder of the buoyancy would have to be provided elsewhere.
In conference with the Navy Department, it was agreed to use submersible pontoons, which the divers were to attach to the hull, and the Navy Yard immediately started to build six such pontoons, each with a lifting capacity of eighty tons. The Navy owned two more, which had been used eleven years before to lift a small submarine from forty feet of water. These old pontoons were too weak to work in deep water, but we reinforced them while we built the new ones. That was to give us eight pontoons with a total lifting force of six hundred and forty tons, but it would take about four weeks to build the six new pontoons.
For a diving ship, the U.S.S. Falcon, Lieutenant Henry Hartley commanding, was assigned. The Falcon, an oceangoing tugboat, had been built as a minesweeper during the war, and afterwards converted to a rescue ship. She was small, only one hundred and eighty feet long, but well suited for the job. She carried special air compressors for diving and salvage work, extra wrecking pumps, a recompression chamber, and special winches and bitts for handling lines.
Obviously the Falcon was too small to berth all the divers, tenders, and officers required, and there was no room on her for shop machinery, extra boats, or stores. To provide room for these, Admiral Plunkett asked for the repair ship Vestal, Captain Tomb commanding, a large vessel fitted out as a floating machine shop for the fleet. The Vestal had a foundry, blacksmith shop, machine shop, carpenter shop, and large storerooms. She was well provided with small boats, and had ample room for the extra men we required.
As a rehearsal vessel, a sister ship of the S-51 was assigned,—the S-50, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Lenney.
To help the Falcon in mooring, for handling pontoons, and for general service, two seagoing tugboats, the Iuka, Chief Boatswain Augustine, and the Sagamore, Chief Boatswain Cregan, were attached to our squadron. A smaller tug, the Penobscot, Chief Boatswain’s Mate Ashland, was detailed as a despatch boat, to make daily trips to New London, fifty miles away, which was our shore base, and bring out stores, provisions, and mail.
The salvage squadron then consisted of six ships,—Falcon, Vestal, S-50, Iuka, Sagamore, and Penobscot. The whole squadron was placed under the charge of the Commandant of the Submarine Base, New London, Captain Ernest King, who in addition to his duties at New London was designated Officer in Charge, Salvage Squadron. Captain King was unfortunately compelled to divide his time between his duties at New London and these added ones, but he managed to spend half the time with us off Block Island.
Admiral Plunkett designated me as Salvage Officer. I was attached to no particular ship, but worked during the day on the Falcon, had a stateroom and an office on the Vestal, and occasionally slept on the Sagamore or Iuka.
As my assistants, I had Lieutenants Lemler and Kelly; and as a technical aide, Draftsman John Niedermair of the New York Navy Yard.
VI
DIVING
Nothing that the ingenuity of man has permitted him to do is more unnatural than working as a diver in deep water. As a result of this, if a vessel sinks a few hundred feet beneath the surface of the sea, she becomes as inaccessible as if transported to a distant star.
Still, many vessels laden with fabulous cargoes of gold have sunk in water less than a hundred feet deep. The lure of recovering this treasure developed the art of diving, but the divers of generations gone found that the sunken gold was purchased from the sea only at the price of life or health. Those who stayed down long enough to recover anything would shortly after their return to the surface be seized by terrible convulsions resulting, when quick death did not ensue, in paralysis for life. Many a diver working on the hulks of the Spanish Armada, around the coasts of England, or treasure ships off the Azores, learned this to his sorrow.
Because of the contortions of the sufferers, the early divers gave to the disease the name of “the bends.” Its cause was long unknown, but its results were beyond question. No diver, in spite of fortune’s lure, dared go deep nor remain over a few minutes.
Years ago, on one sunken galleon, access to the treasure room was easy; daily a Spanish diver entered, seized two bars of gold and hurriedly came up. It was slow work. At last the daily glimpse of pigs of gold piled high proved too much; cupidity overcame fear; the diver labored nearly an hour sending up a fortune in bullion. Finally the diver himself emerged, but the treasure was not for him; “bends” ending in paralysis of the spine ensued; he lived, but only to curse daily the gold which had tempted him to linger on the ocean floor.
The growth of medical skill and in other lines finally solved the mystery of “the bends” and in a measure provided a way to minimize the effects.
The usual diving dress consists of a copper helmet and breastplate secured watertight to a flexible canvas-covered rubber suit. The helmet is necessary to permit breathing; the suit may be dispensed with in warm shallow water, but is necessary in cold water or in deep water and is always necessary if the diver is to do any work requiring him to bend over or lie down.
Water is heavy; as the diver descends he is compressed by the weight of the column of water over him. Over the surface of his body, for each foot he descends, an added load of almost half a ton presses on him. At one hundred and thirty feet, the total load is nearly sixty tons. To prevent the diver from being crushed into a jelly by this weight, it is necessary for him to breathe air under pressure slightly exceeding that of the water; this internal air pressure is transmitted by his lungs to his blood, and enables him to balance the external water pressure. The diver is then in a condition similar to that of a pneumatic tire on a heavy automobile; the tire stays rounded out in spite of the weight of the car on it because it is inflated with air under sufficient pressure to balance the load. If, however, the inner tube is ruptured and the air escapes, down comes the weight of the car and flattens out the tire. In the same way, the diver inflated with compressed air, stands the weight of the sea pressing on him; but if through any accident, he loses the air pressure in his helmet, like a trip hammer down comes the weight of the sea and crushes him as flat as any blown-out tire.
As he goes deeper, a diver must increase the air pressure in his suit to correspond; it is therefore most dangerous for him if working on the deck of a ship to fall off suddenly into deeper water and be thereby subjected to greater pressure. If, under such circumstances, he cannot simultaneously raise his air pressure, he is crushed by the water into his helmet, and many men have died from such a “squeeze”; the latest instance occurring to a civilian diver in shallow water in the East River while we were working off Block Island.
It is directly due to this pressure that “the bends” arise. To exist underwater the diver must breathe air under heavy pressure. For the depth at which the S-51 lay, the air had to be compressed to five times its normal pressure. With each breath the diver had to inhale five times his ordinary quantity of air. The large excess of oxygen consumes the tissues much more rapidly than is normal and produces a dangerous state of exhilaration somewhat akin to that caused by breathing pure oxygen; overlong exposure will cause “oxygen poisoning.”
But it is the inert component of the air, nitrogen, which is the cause of “the bends.” Nitrogen, which forms four-fifths of our atmosphere, is ordinarily breathed in and out, having no effect except to dilute the oxygen. However, when the air is much compressed, conditions change. Under heavy pressure, the nitrogen entering the lungs, instead of being all exhaled again, dissolves in the blood, and the heavier the pressure and the longer the period of exposure, the greater the quantity of nitrogen dissolved.
While the diver remains under pressure, that is, stays on the bottom, he notices nothing. The nitrogen goes into solution, the blood remains a clear liquid. But when the pressure is decreased as the diver rises to the surface, trouble starts.
A bottle of ginger ale is a good illustration of what happens. There is a gas, carbon dioxide, dissolved under pressure in the ginger ale. As long as the cap remains on the bottle, there is no evidence of the gas, the liquid inside is clear. But when the cap is removed, the pressure is released with a “pop,” the gas bubbles out of solution, and the bottle froths over.
In the same way, when the pressure is released on the diver by his coming to the surface, the nitrogen dissolved in his blood bubbles out and forms a froth in his blood. These bubbles clog the arteries, impeding circulation, and causing convulsions or “the bends.” In many cases, the bubbles gather in the spinal column, where they affect the nerves, causing paralysis. In less aggravated cases, a favorite place for bubbles is in the joints, resulting in great pain.
When the cause of “the bends” was finally discovered, the remedy was indicated. It lies in bringing the diver to the surface in a series of short rises, with a pause at each stage; lifting him enough each time so that under the decreased pressure some nitrogen will come out, but not decreasing the pressure so much at each step as to allow bubbles of any size to form. The “decompression time,” that is, the length of time at each stage and the number of stages, depends on the amount of nitrogen originally absorbed, which in turn depends on the depth to which the diver has gone and the duration of his stay there. Consequently, for every depth, there is a limit to the time the diver can stay down (which period decreases rapidly as the depth increases), and the length of time the diver must spend in “decompressing” increases rapidly the deeper he goes and the longer he stays down.
When the causes of “the bends” had been laid bare, and proper tables of decompression worked out by experiment, diving in deep water became practical enough to permit work to be done after a fashion, though at great expense and considerable hazard.
But aside from his troubles from disease, the diver has many physical handicaps to struggle against. His diving suit, with helmet, lead belt, and lead shoes, weighs about two hundred pounds, and is both heavy and cumbersome. When fully dressed, the diver is quite bulky, and much impeded in action by his suit. Movements underwater are slow; if he stoops over or lies down, a different adjustment of his air valves must be made; a fog gathers on the face plate of his helmet and makes vision through it difficult; communication with the surface is always trying, even with a telephone, because of the roar of the compressed air through the helmet which makes it hard for the diver to hear. On the other hand, it is difficult for those on the surface to understand the diver, for when he passes below ninety feet depth, the air pressure causes his voice to lose its distinctive quality, his words sound all “mushed” up and become exceedingly difficult to understand. As an illustration of this, under such air pressure, a diver can no longer whistle. The “thick” air changes everything.
Everything that the diver sees is magnified by the water, but he rarely sees much. In northern seas, the water is nearly opaque, and objects ten feet away are often invisible. It resembles looking through a ground glass window; light comes through, but nothing is seen. Conditions are often even worse than this; if the bottom is muddy, fine silt rises up in the water in clouds and objects even a foot away are invisible.
Under such conditions, even powerful lights cannot pierce the water, and a diver a few feet from a boat has no idea where to look for it.
VII
THE DIVERS
Our most immediate need was to get sufficient divers. We estimated that thirty were required. There being only a few qualified commercial divers on the Atlantic Coast, it seemed necessary to depend on what the Navy could supply. We combed the navy yards and the fleet for deep-sea divers, particularly for those who had worked on wrecking jobs before. From northern waters we obtained Chief Torpedomen Frazer of the Falcon, Michels from the Submarine Base, Ingram from the Torpedo Station, Smith, Eiben, and Wilson from the Experimental Station. From Newport came Chief Gunner’s Mate Eadie, then in the Naval Reserve Force, and Gunner’s Mate Bailey; from the New York Navy Yard, Frank Anderson and his son George, one a shipwright, the other a rigger; from the Light Cruiser Squadron came Boatswain’s Mate Carr; from a destroyer Chief Torpedoman Kelley. These men we knew about; they had worked on wrecks and in deep water; they were proved divers. But they were not half enough. To complete the crew, we asked for and had transferred to the Falcon every bluejacket whose record showed any qualifications as a diver.
The divers were of various types. Frazer and Michels were six-footers, powerful and broad. Eadie, Anderson, Carr, Eiben, and Wilson were of medium build. Smith, Ingram, and Kelley were slight in size, while Bailey was actually small. Most of them were quiet men, unexcitable, of more than usual intelligence. There was in their makeup no spirit of bravado, no sign of daredevil dispositions. They had all proved themselves good divers, but they were of such varied types physically, it was impossible to tell from them what a diver should look like. Every one had had long service in the Navy; nearly all were married.
VIII
OFF BLOCK ISLAND
On October 14, 1925, the Falcon sailed for Block Island, followed shortly by the Vestal and the other ships. At the wreck, bubbles and oil no longer marked the spot, but a buoy secured to the submarine located it immediately.
Lieutenant Hartley’s first step was to prepare the site for long-continued diving operations. It is of the first importance to the diver that the vessel from which he is receiving his air supply shall remain steady in position while he is at the bottom. The few hundred feet of hose from him to the ship constitute literally his thread of life. If a heavy sea or a sudden squall should swing the diving ship away, especially while he is inside the wreck below, his airhose will be snapped off and he will be left to die.
Anchoring the diving ship is not enough. She will swing to her anchor all the time; if the wind or sea change, she will be swept far out of position. The diving ship must be firmly held over the submarine in spite of wind or sea so long as a man is on the bottom.
To accomplish this, Hartley planted six anchors in a circle about the S-51, the diameter of the circle being about six hundred feet. To each anchor was attached a short length of chain, and to that a double wire hawser which led to the surface where it was secured to a can buoy we borrowed from the Lighthouse Service. We then had floating in the sea a ring of buoys,—one ahead, one astern, and two on each side of the S-51. Before diving commenced, the Falcon was to steam into the circle, heading into the sea to the windward buoy, and secure a seven-inch manila hawser to it. Dropping back a little to leeward, a small boat was to run lines in succession to the other buoys, and secure them to rings there by pelican hooks in the ends of the hawsers. With the lines all secured, the Falcon could center herself over the wreck by hauling in or paying out on the various hawsers; when in position the hawsers radiated from her like the spokes of a wheel and served, in spite of changes in the direction of wind or sea, to hold her over the S-51. To make safety for the divers doubly sure, we made each diving hose six hundred feet long, of which only about two hundred and fifty feet was ordinarily paid out. The other three hundred and fifty feet hung in a coil on deck as a reserve for running out to the diver in case a hawser should part on us and let the Falcon swing away.
It took two days with the improvised gear Hartley had on the Falcon to plant the heavy anchors; at the end of that time all the ships had arrived and we were ready to begin. The Falcon steamed in, moored herself, and the salvage work was under way.
The first job was to clear the top of the submarine of radio antennae and other rigging in order to prevent the men from getting their air lines tangled up there.
The S-51 sank with her radio mast up. From this point over the conning tower, the antenna extended to bow and stem; in addition, two heavy wire ropes ran from a ring in the stem up to a heavy A-frame over the bridge and then to another ring near the stern. These were the “clearing lines,” intended to form a guide so the submarine could slide through a net without catching her gun or conning tower in the meshes. To one of these clearing lines was secured a thickly insulated “loop antenna” for underwater radio communication.
We removed these obstructions by cutting them with a special V-shaped knife attached to a line. Divers went down, hooked the V-bladed knife around the wires to be cut, lashed marline over the open side of the V to prevent the knife from slipping off, and then signaled us on the Falcon to heave on the line. A sharp pull on the Falcon’s winch, and the wire below, jammed into the notch of the V, was quickly severed. It took nearly an hour to secure the knife for each cut, and nearly two days to clear away all the rigging, but there was then no better way. About ten dives on this job and there were no more wires over the submarine’s deck. The divers secured a four-inch manila line to the rail aft and another one to the gun forward as guides or “descending lines.” These, brought aboard the Falcon at the surface, were to guide the divers down to the S-51. All was clear.
IX
IN THE ENGINE ROOM
The first effort towards raising the S-51 was to seal up the undamaged compartments, and we decided to start on the engine room. Chief Torpedomen Frazer and Smith were selected for this job. I went with them aboard the S-50, where Lieutenant Commander Lenney, her captain, carefully explained to us what valves must be closed in that room to make it watertight. There were nearly thirty valves on voice tubes, oil lines, water lines, engine exhausts, and air inlets that had to be shut, many of them difficult to reach.
Frazer rehearsed the work carefully on the S-50, starting at the after end of the engine room and closing the valves in succession as he came forward between the engines. The valves were of various kinds, from small one-half-inch drain valves to the huge twenty-four-inch air inlet valve which admitted air to the two Diesel engines. Several times Frazer went over the room, noting in detail the location of each valve, for on the S-51 he would have to find most of them by feeling around in the black water. At last he was letter perfect, he could locate all the valves in succession blindfolded. We returned to the Falcon; Smith and Frazer were dressed by the tenders.
With a man on each side to assist, Frazer dragged his heavily weighted figure to the rail, where he stepped on the stage, grasping the steel bails to hold himself erect.
“Up stage!” The winchman threw in his clutch, the stage rose till it cleared the rail. The boom swung over, the stage swung outboard, over the sea.
“Down stage!” Slowly the stage dropped into the water, the sea rose over Frazer’s body, his helmet disappeared. A stream of bubbles broke the surface.
“Hold stage!” Several feet below the surface we could see Frazer adjusting his air valves. I took his telephone receiver, adjusted it over my head.
“All right, Jim?”
“All right. Take me to the descending line.”
Frazer stepped off the stage. Nothing below him now. We hoisted in the stage. The tenders dragged him, dangling by his airhose, about twenty feet along the Falcon’s side to where the after descending line went below. Frazer seized it, wrapped his legs about it, sang out:
“Lower away!”
His tender rapidly paid out the lifeline. Frazer disappeared. Swiftly the line went out. Fifty feet, a hundred feet, he must be nearly there. The airhose stopped running through the tender’s hands. I listened. A flat, strange voice came to me over the telephone:
“On the bottom!”
Frazer had landed on the submarine. We took Smith to the stage and hoisted him overboard also. Down he went, two streams of bubbles broke the surface of the sea. The line stopped running out. Once again came the report:
“On the bottom!”
On the deck of the submarine, Smith stood by the hatch to tend the lifelines while Frazer dropped through the opening into the engine room. He carried a powerful submarine lamp, but in the murky water inside the submarine it cast only a dim glow. While Smith paid out carefully on his lines, Frazer started slowly aft through the narrow passage between the engines. He passed between the first cylinders of the starboard and port Diesels, turned sideways to avoid catching his lines on the cams. Another step, some obstruction hit his helmet and blocked his passage. Swinging his light upward for a close look, Frazer saw it was the engineer officer of the S-51 clinging to the throttle of the port engine, his half-dressed body jammed between the hull and the overhead valve gear, his legs hanging down into the passageway and closing it. Frazer set his lamp on the engine, seized the body by both legs, and pulled vigorously but without success. The man had been jammed in hard by the rushing water. Frazer could waste no more time. Picking up his lamp, he pushed the legs to one side, ducked low to pass under, and continued his way aft till he came to the door leading into the motor room. Here he set his lamp down on the floor plates, and feeling on the bulkhead, found the voice tube valve there. He screwed down hard on the handwheel to make sure it was tightly closed, then moved forward to the valves in the engine exhaust pipes. The exhaust clapper valves were closed,—evidently in that last desperate minute the engineers had tried to secure the boat for submerging. Frazer closed the globe valves on the inside of the clappers, then moved on to the multitude of smaller valves. All went well, a steady stream of air bubbles from his helmet trickled through the hatch at Smith’s feet; Smith carefully took up the slack in Frazer’s air line as he worked forward, to avoid having any loose hose to catch inside; on the Falcon we tended carefully both Frazer’s lines and Smith’s and kept them properly taut. The minutes went by, no word came from either diver, but we refrained from bothering them by questioning. Frazer’s hour was nearly gone; in a few minutes we would signal him to start up.
Inside the boat, Frazer came once more to the dead engineer, pushed aside his legs, crawled under him, and made another attempt to pull him free. He was stuck too hard. Frazer left him and stepped forward to the last valve on his list. This was the largest one, the twenty-four-inch main air induction to the two Diesel engines, located overhead just forward of the number one cylinders, where it admitted air to the engines, somewhat after the manner of a huge carburetor. The valve was operated by a lever through a set of links and bell cranks. The operating lever was far over to starboard, with its locking ratchet in the “Full Open” notch on the guide arc. Frazer released the ratchet, grasped the handle, and pushed it to port. The handle swung over the guide arc evenly, the valve moved downward towards its seat, and finally it stopped with a metallic ring. Frazer swung his lamp close to the arc to make sure the valve was closed. It was not. The handle had stopped at “¼ Open.” There were still three inches on the arc to go to the “Closed” notch. Frazer pushed again, but the handle moved only a fraction of an inch further.
On the Falcon, the timekeeper moved over to the rail where I stood with the receiver from Frazer’s telephone over one ear.
“Fifty minutes for Frazer and Smith.”
Their time was up. I motioned to the tenders leaning over the rail. Four long jerks on Smith’s airhose; the tender waited; in a moment he felt four answering jerks from below. Smith had acknowledged the signal to get clear and stand by to come up. In turn Smith gave four jerks on Frazer’s line.
Frazer acknowledged the same way. It was time to leave, but the last and most important valve was still open. Seizing the handle with both hands, Frazer pulled the valve wide open to get a good swing, then shoved the handle to port with all his might. Over his telephone I heard a sharp metallic ring. Frazer looked at the handle, it was still “¼ Open.” I heard Frazer swear, then in the flat faraway tones of a man under pressure, he spoke for the first time since he went down.
“Mr. Ellsberg, the main air induction valve won’t close!”
I could hear Frazer turn off his air while he listened for instructions. They were brief, but each word was spoken slowly and distinctly.
“Never mind. Time up. Come out.”
And to make sure, once again we gave Smith the signal to stand by to come up.
Frazer came up the machinery hatch, assisted by Smith. He signaled us to take up the lamp, which we hauled quickly to the surface, and carefully turned off before taking it out of the water.
Then four jerks on each man’s airhose, a moment’s wait for the four answering jerks from each that showed they were clear of all obstructions and at the descending line ready to rise. We swung the stage over the side and lowered it, shackled to the descending line, to ninety feet. Two tenders seized Frazer’s lines, and hand over hand, his lines came in over the rail as they hauled him up. At ninety feet, they paused, while Frazer let go the descending line and climbed on the steel stage.
“On the stage,” shouted Frazer into his phone. I got it clearly.
“Frazer on the stage! Start Smith up!”
The tenders hauled on Smith, pulling him off the submarine and up, till he too sighted the stage, swung on to it, and reported.
“On the stage!” sang out the man at Smith’s telephone.
“Frazer,” I said, “unshackle the descending line.” Frazer acknowledged, leaned over on the stage, and cast loose the shackle that held the side of the stage to the descending line. Freed, the stage swung away from the descending line, which disappeared from his view.
“All clear!” reported Frazer. Everything was clear for the next divers to descend. Smith and Frazer started their slow rise to decompress.
X
THE FIRST SNAG
About two hours later, we hoisted the stage over the rail. The two divers clung tightly to the bails, as we swung them, dripping, in on deck. A group of dressers gathered round, loosed belts, shoes, removed helmets. The divers’ faces, a little pale, looked grotesque sticking above the heavy copper breastplates. Frazer leaned far over and a bucket of water ran out of his suit.
“Exhaust valve leaked,” he explained.
The dressers pulled off their diving suits. In heavy blue underwear, they rose and stretched, relieved of the crushing weight of their equipment. Smith, looking thin and slight by contrast with the huge frame of his companion, asked for a cigarette. Frazer, wet to the skin, did not linger. The doctor gave him a drink, half hot coffee, half whiskey, and he ran below.
I found Frazer in his bunk, wrapped in blankets.
“I got ’em all, Mr. Ellsberg, except the main air induction. Maybe I got that too, but it isn’t in the ‘Closed’ notch yet. I tried three or four times. It won’t go any further.”
Then he described his efforts to pull the engineer free, and his. difficulties in working inside. The room was pitch dark, the water very dirty, he got only a dim glow from his lamp penetrating no more than a foot or two. It was very hard to walk inside because of the heavy list to port the submarine had; besides some of the steel floor plates had fallen into the bilges and it was necessary to hang on to the engines to get aft.
I pondered the question of the open valve. Possibly the links were set differently and the valve might actually be seated even as it was. But we had to be sure. We could never blow the water out of the boat if that valve was not tightly closed.
On the Vestal, I had Kyle, Lyra, and Geier, the three survivors of the S-51. Kyle was a machinist’s mate, Lyra a fireman, Geier an electrician. Kyle’s station was in the engine room. He should be acquainted with that valve.
On the Falcon’s bridge semaphore flags started to wave, spelled out:
“Vestal. Send survivors S-51 to Falcon.”
The answering pennant rose to the Vestal’s yard arm. In a few minutes a motor launch, bouncing over the waves, made the run from Vestal to Falcon. The three survivors climbed over our rail.
Kyle, stocky and heavily built, came first; Lyra, a tall, loose-jointed youth, next; and Geier, a small, thin man, last. Kyle and Geier had not got over the shock of their experience; Lyra did not seem so much affected.
Kyle knew most about the valve. He had often operated it, the last time the very day the S-51