It was June 21. We were almost done, and working like beavers. All blowing hoses were attached to pontoons and submarine and buoyed off at the surface. Two pontoons, which had lost so much air from leakage that they had sunk again, were leveled off once more and all the lashings put on. The divers, working in relays, secured a towing bridle, made of one-and-one-half-inch chain, around the bow, and a heavy wire towing hawser led forward from this; a similar chain bridle was fastened round the stern with a wire led aft as a sternfast.
We worked till 10:30 P.M., when the last lashing was secured and everything was in readiness to raise the boat.
All hands were dead tired from the hard drive of the three days past, coming on top of months of arduous labor. When the last diver came up in the darkness, Hartley unmoored, steamed clear, and we climbed into our bunks, determined to finish the job next day.
XXXIII
JUNE 22, 1926
But we had reckoned without the sea. June 22nd dawned in a storm. Diving was out of the question; raising the submarine in such weather not to be thought of. Ordinarily, I might have welcomed the storm as giving us a chance to recuperate before undergoing the strain of the raising, but not then. In the foam capping the waves, we could see clusters of air bubbles rising from the bottom. Our pontoons were leaking, losing the precious air which kept them leveled in position above the submarine. If the storm kept up a day or two, as well it might, we would return to find our pontoons sunk on their noses alongside the S-51, the chains and lashings tangled, and a big leveling job to do over again. We must get enough air into the pontoons to make up for the leakage till the weather cleared.
The need was urgent, so in spite of the storm, Hartley took the Falcon in among the mooring buoys. Over went the surfboat. Boatswain Hawes and his seamen battled the waves to get the hawsers shackled to the buoys. Finally we were in position over the wreck, with our bow, heading south into the storm, over the S-51’s stern. In fifteen minutes we would be through, ready to start for Point Judith and rest.
We fished up the buoyed hoses leading to the stern pontoons, coupled them to our manifold. Carefully Niedermair blew through them for one minute, then shut the valves. The sailors disconnected the hoses, and tossed them, buoys and all, back into the sea. Then we blew through the hoses to the midships pontoons the same way.
The storm was getting worse, we could not stay much longer. We skipped the hoses on the next pair of pontoons, which were not leaking so badly, and tried to pull aboard the hoses to the bow pair, which were buoyed off just under our stern. The hoses would not come in. Leaning far out over the rail, I looked under the Falcon’s counter and found the hoses caught in our propeller, swept under no doubt as we tossed about. The hoses had to be cleared. If they cut in two, all the air would escape from the bow pontoons and quickly let them sink.
Into the surfboat tumbled the crew, I with them. We steered in under the overhanging stern of the Falcon, armed with boathooks. The storm was a help now, for as the trough of the sea swept by, the propeller was partly exposed. Leaning over the side of the boat, I speared the hoses with my boathook, between each pair of waves, dragging them a few inches up the top propeller blade, while the rest of the boat crew held the boat in close so I could work.
“Duck!” yelled Gunner Tibbals from the Falcon. A huge wave was sweeping by. Instinctively I dropped my boathook, ducked down below a thwart. The boat rose to the wave, crashed her rail, where a second before my head had been, against the stern of the Falcon. My boathook, still poised over the side, snapped in two and drifted away.
The wave passed, we sank into a trough. I took another boathook, resumed my fishing job, but kept a wary eye on the waves as they swept up. I lost another boathook, we stove in the rail of the surfboat, but after some twenty minutes’ work, the hoses pulled free of the propeller, undamaged. The boat ran out from under the stern, came alongside. On the top of a wave, I leaped easily over the Falcon’s bulwark.
The sailors pulled the last hoses aboard, and connected them to the quarterdeck manifold. Niedermair was getting ready to blow, when looking over our port quarter, I saw a huge mass of bubbles, foaming up and spreading out right under the Falcon’s stern!
It flashed through my mind that, after all, the hoses had parted and were releasing the air, but a second look made me drop that idea. No such geyser of air could come through a few small hoses.
Probably the pontoon chains had broken and the bow pontoons, free, were shooting to the surface, under our stern. When they hit us, we would be sunk right on top of the S-51.
There was little time for action. The winchmen were standing by the capstans, ready to let go the mooring lines as soon as we had finished with the hoses.
“Let go the port quarter mooring line! Heave round like hell on the starboard winch!” Hartley shouted.
The port line slacked, the starboard winch raced as a seaman jerked the throttle wide open. Our stern began to swing slowly to starboard. We had cleared the patch of foam about twenty feet, when the broken water suddenly widened out and four pontoons, with the bow of the S-51 between them, burst through the surface of the sea!
The rolling of waves, felt far below the surface, had rocked the submarine on the bottom, destroyed what little suction grip was left; the lightened bow had broken free and risen with increasing speed. There in the middle of a storm, when we had no desire at all to see it, one end of the submarine, and the wrong end at that, was once again afloat!
There was no choice. Storm or no storm, we must raise her now. The Falcon’s siren shrieked a warning to the other vessels. A boatload of extra hose came from the Vestal. We connected all the hoses to the submarine’s after compartments and to the stern pontoons, dragged them on board, coupled them to the Falcon’s blowing manifold. We started to blow air into the stern. There was no chance of getting her into port even if we lifted her, but I hoped that when, during her stormy tow, she finally broke loose and sank again, it might at least be in shallower water, where raising her next time would be easier.
The pontoons, weighed down by the submarine bow cradled in chains between them, rose and fell sluggishly as the seas rolled by, occasionally exposing the stem of the S-51 in their midst. Niedermair turned the air on the after pontoons. The Falcon’s air compressors labored their utmost to force the air through rapidly.
Meanwhile the S-50 maneuvered close aboard on our starboard side, dropped anchor just clear of our mooring buoys and endeavored to send us an airhose to help us out with the compressed air stored at high pressure in her banks. It was useless. Time after time, the storm swept the S-50 down to leeward as if her anchor were a feather. The hose never came on board.
The Falcon was left to fight the battle out herself. With all her compressors running, she was still not able to keep up much pressure on so many lines at once.
The storm grew worse. The pontoons swayed back and forth in the sea, battering each other. Wood sheathing came off in large patches, floated away. An hour went by, full of feverish activity, but it was passed in silence by the men on the Falcon, watching the wreck of all their hopes.
Everything was wrong. The blowing connections were all set to expel the water from the submarine with the stern, not the bow, at the surface first. With the bow up, it was impossible to drive more than two-thirds of the water from the sealed compartments in the submarine. Then the pontoon lashings had been put on with the main purpose of holding the pontoons from sliding aft when the stern rose. Now the bow was the high end. How long would they hold in that position? Evidently not indefinitely, for the two pairs of pontoons, which had risen properly lined up, were now a huddled group at the bow, pointing in all directions.
There was nothing to do but pump air and hope. We pumped steadily.
Some bubbles appeared aft, foamed on the surface, spread out.
I watched them, thought gloomily: “Well, here’s the stern! I wonder what luck we’ll have towing in this sea?”
But instead of that, a pontoon shot th
rough the froth, leaped free of the water like a tarpon, dropped back, and floated away with some broken ends of chain dangling from the hawsepipes! A few seconds later, its mate appeared, sparkled a second as it rose dripping above the sea, then lazily drifted to leeward with its companion.
The anchor chains under the stern had slipped upward a little under the lifting strain, had struck the point where the box keel began, had broken under the impact. The released pontoons racing upward under full buoyancy had left the partly flooded stern resting in the mud. The Sagamore chased the pontoons through the storm, some miles away got lines on them, and started slowly for Point Judith.
Our chance of raising the stern was gone. Mechanically, we continued blowing air into the engine room and the motor room, but I knew that with the bow end up we could not eject enough water to make the stern lift. Shortly, a moderate amount of bubbles showed over the spot where the spillpipe in the engine room was buried in the sea. The engine room was venting air, we could get no more buoyancy aft.
The stern did not rise.
The situation was now desperate. The four pontoons at the bow were charging back and forth as the seas swept by, battering each other like mad bulls. The stem of the S-51 rode heavily between them; we could hear the groaning of the chains under the keel as the submarine swayed. The stern pair of chains had broken; it would not be long before the forward chains parted under the terrific punishment they were getting. When that happened, the heavy bow, with no internal buoyancy of its own, would go crashing one hundred and thirty-two feet to the bottom, making a complete wreck of all our work. The prospect sickened me.
There was one way to save the situation,—flood the pontoons before the chains broke, and let the whole mass sink gradually. But to do that meant getting out on that chaotic mass to open the pontoon flood valves. It looked like suicide. I could not ask any man to try it.
Niedermair stopped blowing aft, the compressors came to rest. The rumor got out there was no hope of bringing up the stern. The divers clustered round, as sick at heart as I was, anxious for information.
Eadie voiced the unspoken question:
“Can’t we sink the bow?”
“Yes, Tom, that’ll do it, but who is going to open those valves?”
Silence. No orders, no comments.
None were needed.
Wickwire stripped off his jumper, threw away his shoes. Seizing a wrench, he leaped overboard, swam fifty feet to the nearest pontoon, dug his fingernails into the slippery sheathing, climbed aboard.
He was in the midst of a raging cauldron. The sea swept over him, the pontoon rose and fell wildly under his feet. He reached the flood valves, turn by turn, he swung them open. The sea swept him away, he swam back, battered but determined. Carefully he clung on, opening a turn at a time, when he was not buried in a wave. Again he was washed off, fortunately to the side away from the submarine. If once he fell into that devil’s churn where the bow of the S-51 ground between the pontoons he would quickly be mincemeat.
Another sea caught him, took him off again. His strength was gone, he drifted to leeward, paddling feebly to stay afloat. The surfboat picked him up, brought him in, exhausted, nearly strangled from salt water. The valves on one pontoon were open.
Badders went overboard from the surfboat, battled the seas on the second pontoon; Weaver tried the third and broke his arm; Boatswain Hawes, with no one else available in his boat, himself leaped into the sea, wrench in hand, clung to the third pontoon while he swung the wrench. Like the others, the green seas swept over him as the wild pontoon plunged sickeningly up and down. He stuck, one second buried, the next high above the sea as he rode the pontoon, turned the valves. The sea tore him away; fortunately, like the others, he drifted clear to be hauled into the surfboat.
No one ever got aboard the fourth pontoon, but it was unnecessary. The other three, valves partly open, were beginning to fill and ride more sluggishly. In another minute, we got what sad comfort there was in seeing the bow of the S-51, with the four pontoons still clinging to it, slowly vanish beneath the waves and sink gently from our sight. A few bubbles, a little froth, marked the spot.
The sea had won again.
As best we could, we cast loose our moorings, and with the rest of the squadron, the Falcon slowly steamed northward through the storm to the Harbor of Refuge at Point Judith, where hours before we had expected to go for a rest before raising the submarine.
The disappointment and gloom in the salvage party need not be described. The sailors were worn out, the divers literally burned out by months of toil under heavy pressure on the bottom, the officers haggard from the physical and mental strain. Silence reigned on the Falcon. No one spoke, except for the routine orders of the ship’s work. We dropped anchor behind the stone breakwater in the early afternoon, crawled wearily into our bunks.
June 22, 1926,—a day no one there off Block Island will ever forget!
XXXIV
STILL MORE PONTOONS
The storm abated during the night. At noon we steamed out again, moored.
We put two divers over together to inspect, Eiben forward, Smith aft. A silent hour went by as the divers worked along the wreck from opposite ends, finally meeting amidships, when we hoisted them up, cast loose the moorings, and again headed north for Point Judith.
In the little wardroom of the Falcon, a silent group of officers listened to the report from Eiben and Smith. It held little comfort.
The S-51 was lying far over on her starboard side, her bow some thirty feet to the right of its old position. Three of the pontoons which had been at the surface were clustered round the bow, resting on the bottom vertically, in a tangled mass of chains, wires, and hoses. The fourth bow pontoon, the one on which the flood valves had not been opened, was floating horizontally some six feet above the forecastle, tugging hard on its chains.
The pair of pontoons abreast the conning tower, which had risen only halfway to the surface and had consequently never been exposed to the waves, were still afloat over the submarine and apparently the lashings were intact, but, owing to its heavy list, the bridge was now jammed hard against the starboard pontoon of this pair, and was crushed in. The conning tower just below the bridge seemed undamaged.
The pontoons at the stern were, of course, missing, and the stern itself was covered with mud from having sunk into the bottom when the rest of the boat, at a sharp angle, rose to the surface.
The bow plating was badly damaged, the bridge was smashed, but neither one of these spaces contained any essential buoyancy. We lost perhaps ten tons of lift in the damaged bow buoyancy tank, but the three precious main compartments,—the motor room, the engine room, and the control room, on which we had spent months of work, all seemed undamaged from the drop of the bow when we sank the boat.
Taken as a whole, the physical condition of the submarine was not hopeless, but the work on the pontoons had all to be done over again, except on the midship’s pair. Indeed it was worse even that that,—we would have to untangle the battered pontoons at the bow, get them to the surface, and repair them, before we could even start to lower pontoons again.
Their story told, Smith and Eiben returned to their shipmates in the messroom below. In the wardroom, each officer sized the problem up to himself. It looked bad. How could a set of divers, already worn out, who had been kept going for some weeks past on their nerves only because they were able to see the end of the job in sight, now undertake all that work again plus the unknown but obviously dangerous job of clearing away the wrecked pontoons? No one spoke.
In Hartley’s stateroom, Captain King, Hartley, and I considered it. It would be difficult, but if only we could get the divers to work, not impossible.
Smith came later into my room, where alone I was pondering the problem. Of all the divers, Smith had I think faced the most risk, been in the most danger. Always he worked like a Trojan, unsparingly and intelligently. For some weeks he had not been well. Weakened by the strain, he had not dived much i
n the week just gone by. Wan and pale, he sat on my bunk.
“Mr. Ellsberg, I want to leave. I can’t dive any more anyhow, and I’ve got to get away and rest.”
I looked at him, surprised. I knew as well as he that he was knocked out, that his diving days were over, and I had hardly expected ever to ask him to dive again. But Francis Smith was an outstanding figure in the diving crew, a natural leader and an inspiration, especially to the newer divers. If we let him go, I could see our diving crew disintegrating. Most of the others were physically not quite so badly off as he, but mentally they were farther gone. If Smith went the rest would want to go also, ostensibly only for a rest, but once our gang broke up, and their wounds, so to speak, stiffened, never would we get them back. Diving in the Navy, in peace or war, is a volunteer effort. No man can ever be ordered to dive.
The situation was critical. I could see our expedition melting away, failure our portion. A repetition of the S-5, which still lies buried where she sank twenty-five fathoms deep, abandoned by the Navy six years before, after nine months of struggling by many of the same divers whom I had with me.
I pointed this out to Smith. I would not ask him to dive; but I could not let him go. He was obdurate.
“I’m sick of it, Mr. Ellsberg. I just can’t stand it here any longer. I can’t work, and on the Falcon I can’t rest. There isn’t any deck space; if I crawl in my bunk, this bucket tosses around so badly I nearly turn inside out. I want to go back to Pittsburgh, my home’s there. Maybe if I rest there a month, I might be able to come back. I’m sorry, but I can’t stay.”
I did not argue with Smith. I asked him to think it over a few hours, promised that if he still felt the same way then, I would get him the leave he wished. Smith left.
On the Bottom: The Raising of the Submarine S-51 Page 22