On the Bottom: The Raising of the Submarine S-51

by Edward Ellsberg

  Something was wrong. Francis Smith! I thought of the day he was buried in the tunnel while I clung in agony to his telephone! He was no quitter. I started from my stateroom to find the reason. In three steps I bumped into it.

  The wardroom was deserted except for one officer. He buttonholed me. I listened. He was totally discouraged, worn out, physically ill. He spent some time trying to make me see that we had failed, the job was hopeless, the divers unable to work again. I knew the last claim was true, but refused to admit it to anyone else. I escaped from the wardroom, a suspicion rising in my mind.

  I circulated a little among the divers, made a few inquiries. As I expected, they were all disheartened, dead tired, anxious only to get away and forget, but I learned also what I was looking for. The officer who had spoken to me had already gone among the men, told them the task was hopeless, assured them the only way we would ever raise the S-51 would be to bring out a few tons of dynamite and blow her up!

  Action was quick. A hasty conference with Captain King and Lieutenant Hartley, and within thirty minutes a tugboat was on its way to Newport bearing away the ill-discretioned officer, on leave for his health.

  A few hours later, I invited Smith back to my stateroom, went over with him exactly how the submarine lay, carefully explained in detail each move we would take in repairing the damages, replacing the pontoons; and shortly convinced him that the job was far from the hopeless task he had been told, if only the divers stuck to it then. Smith was not only convinced and ready to stay to the finish, but he became so enthusiastic over the prospect that he begged for permission to dive again, weak as he was! I sent him out to talk to the others.

  That evening, all the divers gathered in the Falcon’s wardroom. As with Smith, I explained the situation, pointed out the possibilities. But taken as a body, they were tired, discouraged. If they could go ashore for a week or two, they might return then, rested enough to finish.

  “I’m sorry, men, we can’t do that,” I explained. “If we get away from here, most of us will never come back. We’ve got to drive it through now for our own sakes. The country has forgotten us,—it will never know if we quit, but we’ll know. Stick! We can do it! And because we’re men, we are going to stay here and fight it out with the ocean if it takes us the rest of our lives! Who’s with us?”

  They all were.

  We sailed out again next morning, moored, prepared to dive. With the midship pair of pontoons pulling up, and one pontoon still lifting on the stem, the forward end of the submarine was off the bottom nearly all the way back to frame forty-six, where after weeks of digging by numerous divers, Eadie and Wilson had once before driven through a tunnel.

  Once more we needed a pair of chains there. Before the ship should bury herself deeper, Eadie went down with the hose; in one dive, with the vessel only slightly in the clay, the new nozzle drilled a hole through. We rove off new lines, hauled our wires, lowered down and stretched out on the bottom a new pair of anchor cables to take the pontoons there later.

  That done, we turned attention next day to the tangled heap around the bow. That pontoon floating over the forecastle had to come down before we could release the others. It was floating athwart the deck. We could not sink it there or it would drop onto the forecastle. Smith investigated. One of the lashing wires, leading to a sunken port pontoon from under the floating one, was holding it athwartships. But the wire was some seven feet to port of the deck edge, and out of reach. He could not cast it loose.

  Kelley had a method. With McLagan to assist, he dived, taking the torch lashed to the end of a squilgee handle some six feet long. They landed, straddled the rail on the high edge of the deck, groped their way forward. It was nearly as easy to walk on the side of the ship as on the deck.

  Under the pontoon, Kelley lighted the torch, pulled the trigger, lashed it back with a rubber band. Then with McLagan holding him, he leaned far out to port, thrusting out the squilgee handle with the torch spurting a jet of flame through the water at the far end. He balanced himself precariously on the edge of the deck, McLagan hanging on to steady him. With both hands he swung the tip of the torch to the wire, held it there a moment. A white stream of sparks shot out, the wire snapped.

  Glancing through the side faceplate over his shoulder, Kelley saw the pontoon, freed from the wire, swinging towards him. He dropped the torch, jumped over the side, grabbing the rail and clinging there. McLagan tried to run. There was nothing to run on. The pontoon swirled by, hit him, sent him flying overboard through the water to the bottom where he landed in a heap in the mud twenty feet below. The pontoon came to rest in a fore and aft position on the starboard side.

  Kelley scrambled back on deck, gripped his partner’s lifelines, and hauled him up again. Bruised and shaken, he escorted McLagan aft to the descending line at the gun. They rose, came aboard. Neither would say much.

  We dangled Boyd from the surface till finally we landed him on top the pontoon which Kelley had cut free, as it floated in its new position. Boyd cut loose the old hoses, then secured a new pair, and opened the flood valves and the vents to sink the pontoon to the bottom where we could release the chains. We returned next morning to find this pontoon also standing on its end on the bottom alongside the submarine, thus completing a trying situation.

  Meanwhile in the Harbor of Refuge at Point Judith we had set up a floating navy yard, consisting of the Vestal, which provided the shop facilities, and the floating derrick United States, of one hundred tons lifting capacity, which was towed from Newport to Point Judith and anchored behind the stone breakwater. The derrick was the dry dock for the pontoons.

  With Lieutenant Kelly to run it, the derrick hoisted out of water the two pontoons which had broken loose from the stern. The Vestal’s crew quickly overhauled both pontoons, after which they were dropped overboard, leaving the derrick clear to repair the bow pontoons when we raised them.

  The divers were a source of concern. The spirit of the men was excellent, they were doing their utmost, but most of the older divers were burned out. Wilson soon had to be sent to the hospital in Newport. His stomach could no longer hold food. Madden had long since been sent back to Boston with burst eardrums. Kelley came up with a minor case of “the bends” after every dive. He could dive only for brief periods now, when a torch expert was needed. Eiben went around with a permanent limp. I suspect he had a “bubble” in his knee, but never said anything about it. Bailey no longer could dive at all. George Anderson had been sent back to New York to save him from pneumonia. Holden and Sanders had been ordered to stop by the doctor and were acting as tenders. Smith was diving, but I dared not keep him down long.

  Only Carr, Eadie, Michels, and Wickwire of our older group were still in fair shape and able to stay down an hour.

  So far as the rest of the older and more skilled men were concerned, they were going along on their nerves, a bunch of eager cripples. But I was thankful for the youngsters whom Kelley had trained to dive the winter before. They had done their best through the first spring months, assisting the more skilled divers on the easier jobs. Now the burden fell on them. They were the reserves. Young, eager, with more power of recuperation, they swung into the breach left by the disabled veterans, and carried the job along.

  On Albert Grube, only nineteen years old, fell the main task of releasing the bow pontoons. With Davis to assist, he landed on the round top of starboard number two pontoon where it rose some sixteen feet above the forecastle. Halfway down its vertical side, the chains hung from the hawsepipes, secured in place by the heavy steel toggle bars, with a locking pin holding the toggles in the chain links. Carefully Grube slipped down the side, Davis lowering him by his airhose, for all the world like a mountaineer going down a precipice. His breastplate came opposite the upper hawsepipe. Davis ceased lowering, clung tightly to the lines to hold Grube suspended. Swinging across the face of the pontoon, Grube gripped the dangling chain between his knees to steady himself, lay against the chain with the toggle pressed
against his chest. With a small wrench he unscrewed the locking pin on one side of the link. Then he grasped the one-hundred-and-forty-pound toggle on the other side of the chain, braced his lead shoes against the link below, and hauled with all his might. Slowly the heavy bar started out of the chain till it came clear. Grube dropped it. The bar disappeared in the sand below, while the freed chain rattled back through the hawsepipe.

  Davis eased him down sixteen feet farther to the lower hawsepipe where Grube cleared the other toggle bar after a struggle, for the weight of the chain had it jammed against the pontoon. At last he dragged it out of the link and the chain vanished with a roar while Grube spun round like a top in the swirl that the flying chain set up in the water. Davis pulled him back on top the pontoon, gave the rising signal, and the two young divers started up.

  When we had them aboard, we hauled the Falcon clear and Niedermair blew the pontoon they had been working on. For eleven minutes the air went down; then the pontoon floated up and we hauled it alongside. Its sheathing was gone and it was leaking through numerous rivets. The Iuka took it in tow after we had expelled all the water, and sailed with it for our repair base at Point Judith.

  Working continuously during the next two days on the tangled web of chains, wires, and hoses around the bow of the submarine, the divers finally succeeded in freeing the three remaining pontoons there. We brought two more cylinders to the surface, battered and leaking, and started them for Point Judith. Finally we started to blow the last pontoon, but immediately large air bubbles showed on the surface, indicating that the pontoon was leaking like a sieve. We blew on it for nearly half an hour before it finally rose, the most battered of all the pontoons, with two large holes punched in its side where the pontoon astern of it during the storm had continuously charged into it as the seas rolled by.

  The pontoon barely floated. To get it to Point Judith, the Falcon unmoored and steamed away with it in tow, pumping air to it all the way to keep the waterlogged cylinder from going down again. We dragged it inside the breakwater, against the derrick, where huge wire slings were passed under it, and the derrick lifted it out of water. Meanwhile, I seized the opportunity to send all the divers on the Sagamore to Newport for a few hours’ change of scene, while the Falcon returned to the wreck. The Sagamore rejoined us there late at night.

  Matters began to look brighter. All the damaged pontoons were up. At Point Judith, the Vestal was working night and day, patching holes, welding up leaks, replacing sheathing, renewing broken valves. The tired divers, with the wreckage cleared away, saw the promises made to them fulfilled, and turned to with renewed energy.

  On June 29 we had a storm which drove us off, but gave all hands a much-needed rest. The last day of June the weather was passable, and the divers removed the damaged towline from the bow. Working steadily on the narrow deck at the very stem, Boyd and Davis succeeded in slipping a heavy shackle into the bullnose at the stem and then coupled a towing wire to it; while Kelley, Grube, Henry, Wickwire, and Michels, working in relays, fastened another towing chain round the base of the gun, led it forward, secured it to a chain bridle under the bow, and then ran it out over the sea bottom to a buoy well ahead of the ship.

  July 1 dawned with a light breeze, but with heavy swells from the southward. The Falcon moored nevertheless and rigged for lowering pontoons. The Sagamore and Iuka steamed out from behind the breakwater at Point Judith, each towing a rebuilt pontoon, while the divers started to pick up the wires to the pair of chains we had run through a week before. The last storm had carried away the buoys and snarled the wires; Eadie and Eiben cleared them.

  The first pontoon came alongside, pitching heavily. We rigged it, strained the lowering lines severely as the pontoon jerked on the lines till we got it submerged. We lowered to ninety feet, when Carr and McLagan went down to insert the toggle. Both became so seasick riding the plunging pontoon that they could do nothing till we lowered the pontoon to the bottom.

  We brought the mate pontoon alongside, rigged and lowered it to ninety feet. Here Kelley and Boyd went down. Boyd tore his suit open trying to insert a toggle bar, and had to be brought up, leaving Kelley alone. Kelley managed to get both toggles in, catching the chain on the fly, but came up sick. Smith, Henry, Clark, and Davis followed in succession to cast off the lines which ordinarily one diver could do in a few minutes. Finally at 10 P.M. we had the pontoon down and free. Our twelve-inch lowering hawsers were so badly stretched we threw them away and broke out a new set.

  July 2, the sea was still running a heavy swell. We turned to on the stern of the submarine. Michels and Grube dived together, passed a line under the stern, and we hauled down a four-inch manila. The wire line followed as usual. We were reeving it through when in some way Grube’s lifelines became tangled in the wire and he was jerked halfway to the surface before we could stop. Michels climbed the wire, helped Grube unwind himself, and both men came up. Eiben and Davis passed the second line; we got wires, chains, and both pontoons down on the bottom and toggled to the chains without accident, in spite of the rolling of the Falcon.

  July 3, we moored in the same swell, prepared to lower the last pair of pontoons at the bow.

  At this point, we obtained a new recruit to our diving crew. Chief Torpedoman Ingram, who made the first dive to locate the S-51 just after she was sunk, had worked with us through the fall operations, and had expected to rejoin in the spring. However, as he was the station diver at Newport, and one expert diver was required there to recover torpedoes lost on trial runs, the inspector at the Torpedo Station had refused to release Ingram in the spring. As we had already stripped the station of all its other divers, we could do nothing about it, though Ingram tried every method he knew to get sent back to the Falcon. Finally on July 2, he succeeded in getting his discharge from the service; on July 3 he showed up on the Falcon as a civilian volunteer ready to dive, and begged us not to let his presence be known, as he thought it might possibly get him in trouble! We welcomed him with open arms, promised to say nothing about the way he had bootlegged himself back on the job.

  Immediately he went into a diving suit and, going down with Carr, he helped put in the toggles and let go the lines on the pontoon which we lowered to the port side of the bow.

  We had only one pontoon left. We brought alongside the last one, rigged it, flooded it till it went awash. Over went the stage with Badders on it to close the flood valves. He got the after valve closed, but the sea swung the forward end of the pontoon in under the counter of the Falcon and the wrench on the valve became inaccessible. Before we could haul the pontoon clear by a line to the Sagamore, so much water entered the open valve that the pontoon became heavy and its forward end sank far enough to carry the handle of the wrench about four feet below the surface.

  Badders jumped from the stage, dived repeatedly underwater and closed the valve half a turn at a time, but before it was fully shut, the wrench fell off the valve stem and sank. Badders could do no more.

  The pontoon was getting very heavy on that end as the water flowed in. I recalled several cases where our pontoons had broken away and sunk end first; it seemed about to happen again on our very last pontoon. But if we could not close the valve, I could at least prevent further flooding. Niedermair turned on the compressed air, blew into the hose to the forward compartment, drove some of the water out till the strain on the hawser eased up. Meanwhile Eadie, who had been nearly dressed, had the rest of his rig put on, and was dropped over on the pontoon, going down about eight feet. He closed the valve with a Stillson.

  I had jumped overboard to help Badders when the trouble first started, and now stood in a soaked uniform at the forward bitts. Hartley manned the after line.

  Together we lowered on our hawsers, dropped the pontoon to ninety feet and held it just above the starboard bow of the submarine while Grube and Eadie dived to insert the toggles in the chains. Then without bringing up the divers, we leveled off the pair of pontoons.

  It was the first and only ti
me on the S-51 that we ran through our chains, lowered a pair of pontoons, and succeeded in leveling off the pontoons afloat over the submarine in one continuous operation.

  We had, moreover, in three successive days, lowered three pairs of pontoons, which was a far better performance than we had been able to do when the divers were fresh on the job.

  The Falcon unmoored in a fog and steamed clear for the night.

  July 4 came on a Sunday, but in spite of both holiday and Sunday, we celebrated by making an early start on the job. We had two pairs of pontoons to level off, and three pairs to lash.

  We tried leveling first on the second pair of pontoons from forward. Boyd and Henry did the diving; the job worked fine.

  The Falcon then shifted aft to get over the submarine’s stern, where we leveled off the pontoons there without much difficulty, while Wickwire and Davis handled the lines on the pontoons.

  Michels, Eadie, and Eiben, going down in succession, washed the mud away from the buried Kingston valves, and once again blew the water out of the starboard and port ballast tanks, using an airhose shoved through the open valves or the holes Kelley had burned weeks before.

  Ingram cleared the towline round the stern and secured a buoy to it from a point well astern of the vessel.

  Carr and Grube went down on the bow, secured wire lashings across the deck on the forward pontoons, and were putting the lashings on the chains of the second pair when the pontoons started moving. The forward end of the port pontoon suddenly dropped to the bottom of the sea, while the corresponding end of the starboard pontoon shot up twenty feet. The leveling job was ruined; they could not install their lashings, and were lucky not to be hurt. The port pontoon had apparently leaked enough to grow heavy on one end and sink.

  It was dark, too late to do anything. We hauled up the divers and unmoored.

  XXXV

  JULY 5, 1926