I relayed the message to Eiben. He dropped the light down. Both men stood in utter blackness, unable to see each other, the light, or the job they were working on.
Wilson pushed his new fitting up into place, guided by his sense of touch, but hampered by his gloves, and tried to get the union nut started. It would not catch. He twisted the fitting this way and that, but he was unable to get it lined up so the threads would catch. Several times he asked to have Eiben hold the light against his helmet while he tried to find out what the trouble was. Finally he gave up in disgust.
“On deck! I can’t get it started. Tell Joe to try it; I’ll hold the light!”
I told Eiben to switch places with Wilson. In the darkness he exchanged his light for Wilson’s pipe fitting, carefully felt his way around his partner to avoid fouling on the Kingston valve controls behind them, and feeling in with his clumsy gloves tried to line up the connections. He had no more luck than Wilson, and after fumbling with it for over ten minutes, he informed me:
“It won’t go in, Mr. Ellsberg. There isn’t quite enough room to get it lined up straight so the threads will start. I’ll measure the clearance against my glove. You’ll have to make another fitting. We’re coming up!”
On deck a few hours later we checked the clearance as Eiben had taken it with the end of his glove. There was only an inch and a quarter room on the S-51; the S-50, where we had made up the fitting, had a quarter of an inch more space, but the lack of that quarter inch on the S-51 prevented the assembly. With standard fittings we were unable to make up the assembly in less space than we had the first time; to overcome the trouble, the coppersmith on the Vestal made up a specially brazed half union and flat elbow which took up a little less room than the first one.
Eiben and Eadie took this down, screwed it to the drain outlet on the large ventilation valve, and coupled to it a length of hose about thirty feet long, sufficient to reach down the corridor, and out through the engine room hatch to the deck of the submarine, where it ended in a valve which the divers tied to the rail.
In the engine room, Eadie and Smith started a similar job on the ventilation valve, just forward of the port engine. In the engine room there was plenty of room to work; they uncoupled the drain pipe, screwed on the new fitting and coupled up another short length of hose leading through the hatch to the deck outside, where it ended in a valve which was painted a bright yellow to distinguish it from the valve on the hose leading to the control room.
Meanwhile, the Vestal’s boilermakers had made us a large tank to serve as a sort of cement gun. It had a special quick-loading hatch on top; a connection on the bottom to discharge the cement into the hose to the submarine; petcocks on the side to show the cement level inside; and an air connection on top for putting on the air pressure to blow the cement through the hose and into the valve castings inside the submarine. We prepared a large cement-mixing trough on the Falcon’s quarterdeck, and had twenty sailors standing by with shovels to mix cement and then load it through a funnel into the top of our gun.
When all was ready on the Falcon, Grube went down to the S-51, taking with him a rubber hose for the cement to run through. On the submarine, he screwed this to the short hose leading into the control room ventilation valve.
As soon as Grube reported this done, the sailors, who had been vigorously mixing the Lumnite cement, now loaded the cement gun and sealed down the cover.
I told Grube to stand by below, ordered Niedermair to put one hundred and thirty-five pounds’ pressure on the gun, and opened the valve from the tank to the hose. A stream of cement shot through. In a few seconds, I heard Grube report:
“Cement coming through the hose down here!”
It took but a minute to blow all the cement out of the gun. Niedermair shut off the air, closed the valve to the hose. The sailors opened the tank, hastily reloaded it. Three times we filled and emptied the gun into the control room ventilation valve, sending through enough cement to push out all the water and fill the valve body seven times over.
After the third shot, I ordered Grube to shut off the valve on his short hose, unscrew the surface hose from it, and screw the surface hose into the short hose leading to the engine room valve body.
Meanwhile, Wickwire relieved Grube and finished shifting the hoses. Then we started again to shoot cement, into the engine room valve this time. Meanwhile, Wickwire slipped down the engine room hatch, carrying with him the disconnected hose to the control room. He took this to the door in the bulkhead, gave the valve on the hose end a final turn, to make sure it was tightly closed, and tossed the hose through the door into the control room. This, of course, we had to do before the cement set in the hose and made it so stiff it would not bend. Wickwire swung the door closed, turned down one dog, to make sure the hose was not fouling the door, and then climbed out to his station on the deck again.
We sent four charges of cement in rapid succession through the hose into the engine room valve, which was somewhat larger than the one in the control room. When the last charge had gone through, the diver shut off the valve below, uncoupled the line to the surface, and tossed the short end of the hose with the closed valve down the hatch into the engine room bilges.
On the Falcon we dismantled the cement gun and a motor launch took the entire cementing outfit back to the Vestal.
Smith went down, entered the engine room, turned down all the dogs on the door leading into the control room, and sledged them tightly home. Michels, going down a little later, connected an airhose to the blowing connection on the salvage hatch which Fraser had long before secured over the gun access trunk.
The control room was ready to blow as soon as the cement hardened.
We waited two days to give it plenty of time to set, then hooked the blowing hose to the Falcon’s manifold. Niedermair took the pressure, noted the time, and turned on the air. The pressure steadily rose in the compartment. The cement-filled valve “chattered” no longer, not a bubble of air escaped. In little over an hour, all the water was expelled.
Our second compartment was dry.
XXVII
AN OCEAN OIL WELL
To finish sealing up the interior of the boat, it was only necessary to put a salvage hatch cover over the engine room hatch which had for so long served us as the main entrance to the boat. We started preparing this on the Vestal, but I decided that before sealing up the engine room that we could lighten the submarine a little more by removing the fuel which she carried in two sets of double-bottom tanks just above her keel.
The manifold valves leading to these tanks were in the engine room, just forward of the starboard engine.
Kelley went with me to the S-50; there he rehearsed carefully on the twelve valves to the tanks, learning to set them so as to blow first the after group of oil tanks, then the forward group.
When letter perfect, Kelley dived on the S-51, taking two hoses with him. One of these he screwed to the valve in the deck over the engine room through which the submarine normally took aboard her oil; the other hose he took inside the boat with him and, unscrewing a small relief valve from the fuel oil manifold there, coupled the second hose in its place.
Then it was a case of setting the valves on the intricate manifold, working in a cramped space in the blackness under the floor gratings,—open this valve, make sure that one is closed and so on across the set of valve wheels. At last the task was done, and Kelley reported.
“On deck! All set. Turn on the air!” Kelley started
Niedermair put a pressure on the airhose, watching the gauge carefully to see it did not exceed seventy pounds, as the fuel oil tanks were not heavily built and an excessive pressure would blow them up.
Anxiously we watched the Falcon’s end of the oil hose which Kelley had hooked up below. That hose was to form the discharge to the surface from the tanks.
A few seconds after the pressure went on, water started to spurt from the hose to the Falcon bilges. Kelley had made no mistakes, the pressure was goin
g through to the oil tanks. Another minute and a dirty mixture of water and oil gushed out, soon followed by a solid stream of fuel oil.
We shoved the end of the hose into a manhole over one of the Falcon’s oil tanks. For hours afterwards, the S-51 spouted oil from the bottom of the sea into the Falcon’s bunkers, a gift greeted with smiles by the happy chief engineer of the diving ship. Thirty tons of oil came through the hose by ten o’clock that night, at which time the stream, like many another gusher in the oil fields, turned its owner’s smiles to groans by suddenly starting to flow salt water. Evidently the S-51 had used up over half her fuel before she was sunk.
We pulled the hose from the Falcon’s tanks and let it discharge into the bilges for several hours more, when the salt water ceased flowing a steady stream and started to rush out in a spray mixed with air. The tanks were dry, air was coming through. We ceased blowing, disconnected the air hose from our manifold, and climbed into our bunks.
XXVIII
THE ENGINE ROOM HATCH
Everything inside the boat was now complete and we were ready to seal up the engine room. Smith, who together with Frazer had put on the other hatch covers, was selected for the job. Frazer, no longer able to dive, was working on deck in charge of the “bears.” Carr was chosen as Smith’s mate in place of Frazer.
Together with Smith and Carr, the other divers had rehearsed the installation on the S-50 of the engine room hatch cover. Several times each pair of divers had lowered the heavy steel cover plate, hoses and all, into place over the S-50’s engine room and bolted it down. We could hardly make the rehearsal realistic, lacking the essential feature of working submerged, but to make matters even less like the real job, we were not able to prevent the eager sailors on the S-50 from helping out the men practicing, whenever the hatch stuck. Below, only two men could get to the hatch and there would be no spectators to lend a hand in the pinches.
The hatch cover for the engine room was the largest and heaviest of the three hatch covers installed on the submarine. Fully assembled, with strongback, discharge valve, air connections, and a heavy suction hose with check valve and strainer box to act as a spillpipe, the thick steel cover plate weighed seven hundred pounds. As an added difficulty, the strongback toggle bar had to be centered inside the boat at the end of a cylindrical trunk three feet below the deck on which the divers worked.
The weight was far too heavy for two men to handle, even if we had not had Frazer’s experience to show the danger of overexertion. Here it was physically impossible to manhandle the weight.
There was nothing in the vicinity overhead from which we might hang a chain fall, so we designed and the Vestal’s shops made us a small derrick or crane, about seven feet high. As a preliminary step, Michels and Henry descended to the submarine and tied a guide line to the rail near the engine room hatch. Down this line we lowered our crane to the deck below; the divers cut it loose, erected it in a socket in the submarine’s deck just abaft the hatch opening, and ran a guy line from the jib of the crane to the rail on each side of the ship to hold the crane head centered over the opening. When the crane was rigged, we sent down a half-ton chain fall, which the divers hooked to the end of the jib, plumbing the hole. Then Michels unhooked the steel ladder inside the trunk which led below into the engine room, down which all the divers had climbed in entering the boat. The ladder would interfere with the strongback. Michels lifted it off the hooks, dropped it into the engine room bilges. The way was cleared for the hatch cover.
Early next morning, Smith and Carr were dressed, and slid down the after descending line to the engine room deck. With only a moderate sea to contend with, Hartley hooked the hatch cover assembly to his boom, hoisted it high above the Falcon’s rail to allow the long spillpipe dangling from the underside of the steel plate to pass clear, and swung the bulky mass out over the side. We shackled it to the guide line, and the winchman lowered away slowly. Once the weight was submerged, we kept the guide line as taut as possible, in spite of the rolling of the Falcon, in an endeavor to guide the cover down straight. With a little jockeying while the weight surged up and down over the deck of the submarine, we managed to land it close enough for Carr to hook it with the chain fall and drag it over near the open hatch. Smith cut loose all the lowering lines.
The two divers wrestled with the bulky hatch cover, getting the spillpipe through the opening, entering the strongback, lining the securing bolt up on the axis of the trunk, lowering the cover plate down till it rested on the knife edge. It took a long time.
On the Falcon, we waited anxiously. The divers made no reports to us. We guessed from hearing over the telephones their brief scraps of directions to each other, when they completed each operation in the job.
Questioning would only annoy them, so no questions were asked and as the divers seemed to be getting along all right we left them alone. But time flew rapidly, the timekeeper warned that the men had been down their allotted hour.
I took Smith’s phone.
“Hello, Smith! Time’s up. How are you getting along?”
“Fine, Mr. Ellsberg. Nearly done. The hatch cover is touching on one side, and only a few inches off the knife edge on the other side. Leave us alone a few more minutes and we’ll have it!”
It was an important job. If they could finish it, it were best to let them stay, as they were thoroughly familiar with conditions. We could give them a little extra decompression on the way up.
I waited twenty minutes, with the timekeeper eyeing me inquiringly all the time. No report from below.
Again I telephoned.
“Hello, Smith! Nearly done?”
“Yes, Mr. Ellsberg. Just another minute now and we’ll have it!”
But that minute dragged on to many more minutes and they did not have it. Apparently the strongback bolt was not quite true with the center of the hatch, and it kept the hatch cover from sliding home all around the knife edge. The cover touched on the high side (the starboard side) but it was still several inches off on the low side. The divers were trying to jockey the bolt and the cover this way and that so the cover would drop and touch all around.
At intervals, I called the men, told them to quit, they were long overdue; but each time they were nearly done, a few more minutes would see them finished, let them alone, plus plenty of profanity interspersed with their remarks.
On deck we grew more and more nervous as the time wore on and the men would not report themselves clear and ready to ascend. I took Smith’s phone, called down to him:
“How is it now?”
“We nearly got it now. Don’t bother us!”
I looked at the timekeeper. “Three hours and twenty minutes now,” he said.
I turned to the tenders.
“Take them up!”
Without further discussion, we dragged both men off the deck of the submarine and started them to the surface. They had been down nearly three and a half times the safe limit, on the longest dive ever made in deep water. Our decompression tables had no figures to cover such a case; to be sure, we spent nine hours in decompressing them! It was morning when Smith and Carr went down: it was evening when finally they came over the rail,—weak, wet, and frozen, but principally angry because we had refused to let them finish when success was just a matter of another minute’s work! The surgeon put them on the sick list to keep them in their bunks.
Another pair of divers went down to try, but they also failed to get the cover down all around. I decided to modify the assembly, and sent Michels and Grube down to cast the hatch cover loose and send up everything. They slacked off the chain fall to release the strongback and managed to get the heavy cover plate hooked and lifted clear of the opening, when the strongback slipped away from them and dropped into the engine room bilges. The ladder was gone, he had no light, but nevertheless, without reporting anything to the surface, Mike had Grube lower him through the hatch into the engine room bilges where he groped nearly an hour in darkness in a mass of piping before he finally
found the missing strongback, tied a line on it, and then after Grube had hauled him up through the hole, asked us on deck to heave on the line and lift out the strongback.
On the Falcon, Niedermair redesigned the strongback, added an auxiliary centering bar and clamp to permit the strongback bolt to be lined up and independently held in the hatch trunk before the cover was slipped down.
We drilled another pair of divers on the S-50 with the new arrangement; then sent them down to try it on the S-51. They failed to get it installed.
For three days, every pair of divers we had tried their hands on that hatch and came up without success, some cursing, others nearly weeping. Everything happened. One pair apparently got the strongback lined up squarely, the hatch cover slipped over it, and were ready to screw down on the securing nut when they found they had so burred up the threads on the strongback bolt while sliding the cover down it, that the nut would not engage the threads. They had to disassemble everything, send up the whole hatch rig again, for the Vestal to recut the thread on the bolt.
Another pair of divers got the hatch cover nearly down, enough so they felt a few turns on the nut would force it home, when they found that they had lost the nut. They telephoned up the bad news, asked for another nut. Unfortunately, it was a very special large nut, to fit over a two-inch-diameter bolt. We had no spares. Hurriedly we examined the main engines on both the Falcon and the Vestal to see if we could steal a nut that size from them. There was none. The divers had to come up.
The blacksmith and the machinists labored all that night, forging and machining another nut,—two of them in fact, for we made up a spare also at the same time. Next day, two other divers took the new nut down to screw it on and force the hatch cover home, only to find that, after all, the strongback bolt was on such a slant away from true, that when the nut was still six inches away from the cover plate, the bolt came so close to the large discharge valve on top of the plate that the nut would not go by the valve. The divers had to unrig the cover again and cast loose the strongback, ready to start at the beginning.
On the Bottom: The Raising of the Submarine S-51 Page 16