Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  Ancient Massawa lay on the hot Red Sea coastal desert, athwart the traffic stream passing via Suez between Europe and Asia. The north coast of the Red Sea bordering Arabia has no harbors at all. The south coast has only two, Port Sudan in the Anglo-Egyptian condominium of the Sudan, and Massawa in Eritrea, far superior to Port Sudan in natural facilities, in strategic location, and in protected berthing space for large ships.

  In 1881, Italy had bought a foothold on the arid Eritrean coast line from the impoverished Turks who saw no value in it at all. This was the first step in the crack-brained Italian dream of building up again an African empire. Suffering even then from the delusions of grandeur which later were to flower fully under Mussolini, Italy had then set out from Massawa to conquer the hinterland, Ethiopia. However, at Adowa, in 1896, the spears and guns of Ethiopian warriors had slaughtered King Humbert’s army and put an abrupt period to Italian ambitions in East Africa. Not again for forty years did Italy venture away from the barren Eritrean coast line.

  But in the early 1930’s, Mussolini, deluded by the screaming mobs before the Palazzo Venezia that he was Caesar reincarnated, destined to revive the glories of vanished Rome, started again on the path of East African conquest.

  Italy was bled white to provide the gold poured into the ancient slave-trading Arab village of Massawa to convert it into a modern port from which a new Ethiopian campaign might be launched and supported. And even more important, from Mussolini’s viewpoint, to build in Massawa a strong Italian naval base. From that, submarines, destroyers, cruisers, and novel fast motor torpedo boats could dominate the vital Red Sea route.

  It was Mussolini’s belief this would blackmail Britain into keeping her hands off while Ethiopia was being overrun. Otherwise she ran the risk of having her exposed lifeline to the East severed by that well-protected Italian hornets’ nest planted in the north harbor of Massawa, invulnerable behind extensive mine fields, reefs, and sheltering islands to any attack from seaward by Britain’s fleet.

  The scheme had worked. After years of preparation, during which Italian matrons had been stripped even of their wedding rings to get the gold to pay for it, Massawa had blossomed into a modern harbor. Everywhere sprouted massive stone quays, electric unloading cranes, substantial naval shops, warehouses packed with naval stores, airfields, submarine piers, mine and torpedo depots, coast defense guns, and—most sinister of all—a magnificent automobile highway leading inland over the mountains toward the Abyssinian frontier.

  In the fall of 1935 came a three-pronged attack. First, in Geneva, Fascist orators poured out poisonous sophistries to benumb the conscience of the world. Next, from Massawa, Italian submarine flotillas straddled the trade routes to the East to point up the unwisdom of British interference. Then in Ethiopia Mussolini’s cowardly legions assaulted the natives with poison gas from planes against which the guns, the spears, the shields of Haile Selassie’s valiantly resisting warriors were no defense.

  So Mussolini (though not without great difficulty due to Fascist incompetence even in so unequal a battle) had conquered. And after the conquest, in preparation for the economic exploitation of Ethiopian resources, Massawa, the solitary Italian outlet to the sea from that rich plateau, had been developed even further as a port.

  Thus matters stood when Adolf Hitler, in 1939, thrusting unceremoniously into the background Europe’s first loudspeaker for totalitarianism, started World War II. Promptly into Massawa harbor had rushed for sanctuary such German vessels in Red Sea or Indian Ocean waters as could get there. In Massawa, safe under the neutral and friendly Italian flag, they were to await the overthrow of Britain.

  In the spring of 1940 came Dunkirk. Mussolini, fearful that he might miss even the crumbs of the French and British debacle, plunged uninvited by Hitler into what was left of the conflict, lest he get no glory or loot at all in the death of world democracy. Put pending the dying gasp of Britain, which at sea was still potent, every Italian vessel east of Suez had rushed also for the protection of the mine fields of Massawa before Mussolini took the plunge. There in safety they awaited the swift capitulation of the defeated French and British.

  France surrendered. But to the incredulous amazement of both dumbfounded dictators, the irrational British not only refused to recognize their crushing defeat and the hopelessness of further resistance to Fuehrer and Duce, but even, where they could, took the offensive. Churchill, true to his 1940 promise to Mussolini that if Italy came into the struggle Britain would tear Italy’s empire to shreds, started in to make good his words by attacking in East Africa.

  Ethiopia and Eritrea were most vulnerable to British assault, and so long as Britain held Suez, incapable of support from Italy. And, therefore, it came about while England itself was being bled to death and burned to ashes by Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe, that Britain herself was setting the grand pattern for later victory in the Pacific islands and North Africa by isolating a given body of enemy troops from its home forces and then concentrating on them the necessary strength to wipe them out.

  The soldiers of Britain’s empire, South African, East Indian, Sudanese, Scotch, and the English themselves, aided by a Free French legion, attacked East Africa from west, from south, from east, while Britain’s navy blockaded from the north on the Red Sea. At Cheren, the gateway to Eritrea from the Sudan, Scotch, Bengalis, and Sikhs, scaling unscalable heights at night guarding the rocky pass, in one of the most brilliant assaults in all military history, swept the Italians from the heights and smashed a path into Eritrea.

  The badly routed Italians fled southward into Ethiopia, soon to surrender there, while the British swept forward into Asmara, capital of Eritrea, and looked down from its mountain plateau onto coastal Massawa, forty airline miles away and 7000 feet below.

  As a military measure, the Italians on the coast, with the mountainous terrain between favoring them, could have put up a fierce defense of Massawa. But there was no fight left in the cowardly Fascisti; sabotage was more in keeping with their character. While they parleyed for surrender terms with the British advancing slowly through fields of land mines, they carried through the most widespread program of organized destruction yet seen in any war.

  In the three harbors of Massawa and in its off-lying islands lay a fleet of some forty vessels, German and Italian. Freighters, passenger ships, warships, crowded every berth, while in addition, in the north harbor were two irreplaceable floating steel dry docks.

  A tornado of explosions swept the Massawa waterfront as exploding bombs, strategically placed far below their waterlines, blew out the sides and bottoms of ships by the dozens. The priceless floating dry docks received special attention, fourteen heavy bombs being planted in them to insure not only their sinking but their total destruction. The invaluable machinery in the naval shops was smashed with sledge hammers. Electric cranes were tipped into the sea. Everything in the way of destruction that Italian ingenuity could suggest to make Massawa forever useless to its approaching conquerors was painstakingly carried through.

  Finally, placed as carefully as possible, bow to stern, strings of large ships were scuttled in rows to block the harbor entrance. When the last bomb had gone up and the last ship had gone down, the Italian admiral commanding rubbed his hands in satisfaction over such a mass of scuttled ships as the world had never seen before. Then he surrendered Massawa and its smashed naval base as being not worth even one shot fired in its defense.

  Massawa fell in April, 1941, useless to the entering British.

  Such was the situation in far-off Massawa when, in the autumn of 1941, the threat to Alexandria from Rommel’s Afrika Korps attacking from Benghazi made it imperative to get another naval base from which British Mediterranean forces could operate in case Rommel immobilized Alexandria as a base by air attack. Massawa, smashed as it was, was still the only possible large harbor close enough for support, far enough away to be safe from short range Stuka bombers.

  Britain badly needed Massawa in operation. But Britain, wit
h its own coasts strewn with wrecks and struggling to keep its home harbors open against constant German aerial mining, had not the men nor salvage ships to spare for Massawa. Neutral America assumed the obligation. But hardly had we assumed it than we found ourselves at war and in worse case for men and ships than Britain herself, if that were possible.

  CHAPTER

  4

  MY FIRST NEED WAS DIVING GEAR AND salvage equipment to work with, and machinery to replace the sabotaged outfits of the Massawa naval shops. My second was divers. My third was salvage mechanics and salvage masters. And my fourth was salvage ships from which to work. With America mobilizing for its own defense, getting these things for the Red Sea, remote from any theater of war on which American eyes were fixed, was a nightmare. Aided by W. E. Flanagan, a small package of pure TNT, I started in. Without Flanagan’s fiery activities, little would have been procured at all.

  Naturally enough all the salvage gear and salvage equipment already in stock in America was moving toward Pearl Harbor. All I could do, even with the high priority I had, was order what I needed from overburdened manufacturers, to be delivered at seaboard in two to four months (if I was lucky), ready for shipment to Africa, which would take several additional months. So I made up long lists of diving gear, air compressors, tools of all kinds, underwater cutting torches—thousands of items—and had the purchase orders placed for the best possible delivery.

  When it came to getting machinery to replace that the Italians had smashed in the Massawa naval shops, I was in as bad case. There was none, and every existing shipyard in the United States, plus the dozens of new ones, were all screaming for shipyard machinery for instant use. Here also there was nothing to be done except to order a complete set of machinery for shipyard shops to be fabricated and trust to my priority to give me my share of what was turned out, when months later, the swamped manufacturers completed some.

  Next came divers. Diving is a peculiar trade, and divers are scarce animals even in peacetime American economy. What few the Navy had as enlisted men, whom I had once worked with, were en route to Pearl Harbor, barred to me. Via every possible channel I proceeded to track down all known civilian divers in the United States.

  I found that practically every one was already employed on America’s pre-war defense plans, mostly on underwater work in connection with new naval dry docks being excavated on all our coasts. Not even the seductive inmates of Oriental harems were more jealously guarded by their lords and masters from predatory males than were these civilian divers from any contact with seekers after their services elsewhere.

  Just for an attempted discussion with their contracting employer as to whether two divers out of over a dozen working on a pair of dry docks at the New York Navy Yard, might not be released for a navy job elsewhere, I was violently denounced and threatened with a court-martial by the Navy captain in charge. In the ensuing fiery tête-à-tête, regardless of the justice of my cause, my new three gold stripes cut only a sorry figure as against his four. I got no divers there.

  Still nothing daunted by this rebuff, from Maine to Florida, from New York to California, I wrote, telephoned, telegraphed, and rushed across the country to interview any civilian who claimed to be a diver not already working on a naval project. On the whole Atlantic Coast I got one. But in Hollywood, of all places, comparatively speaking I hit the jackpot. There, working for various movie studios, I found four men with records as divers, who, apparently only because the prospect I had to offer seemed even more outlandish than what they were then doing in the world of make-believe, signed up with me.

  So I had five divers. Not many, compared to the minimum of thirty or forty needed to cover my task effectively, but at least something to start with.

  Salvage mechanics were just as non-existent, but there, at any rate, I could hope to train any good mechanic for the task. The Army’s Middle East contractor thoroughly searched the entire field, hired thirteen for me and promised to get at least fifty more.

  Salvage masters, to direct the individual operations on each ship, were even harder to find. Those few unemployed but qualified by experience and able to make the physical grade, the Navy was swallowing. The rest were already under Navy control by a salvage company to which the Navy had given a contract for all war salvage along our own coasts.

  In all America I was able to locate only two competent prospects for salvage masters, both rugged individualists once employed by large salvage corporations, but now lone wolves. That both were unable, due to age or other physical causes, to get by the Navy’s medical officers, was the only reason they were left to me. I snapped them up before the Navy might lower its physical standards, and snatch even these two. Bill Reed, getting far along in years and blind in one eye from diving, and Edison Brown, younger but with a weakened pair of legs probably from the same cause, were my sole recruits.

  Then, while I was struggling to get men, there was always before me the problem of getting salvage ships. This turned out to be the most hopeless of all. What I needed was three or four vessels, small enough to work handily over and alongside sunken wrecks, big enough to make the voyage of 13,000 miles around Africa to the other side of the world. Large ocean tugs would suit best, but there were none available.

  My acquisition of Brown as a salvage master eased one of my problems, and for a brief time looked as if it might also ease the salvage tug problem. Brown owned his own salvage vessel, an old converted tug called the Retriever, which had voyaged some thousands of miles in the Pacific. Practically his whole crew of eleven men, including one good diver, Buck Scougale, volunteered to ship with me, and were all promptly engaged. Brown offered to sell me the Retriever also for the job, and as I urgently needed ships, I agreed to buy her for his use at Massawa, subject only to one condition: Brown had to deliver the Retriever in the Red Sea before he got paid for her.

  Brown thought that over a while, then shook his head. He doubted he could keep the old Retriever afloat till she got to the Red Sea. So he sold her locally in Los Angeles and I agreed that the first suitable tug I got, he and his crew were to have. Then hastily departing from Los Angeles, I continued my search for salvage ships.

  In my travels, I scanned every piece of floating junk offered, from Cuba to Newfoundland and in the Pacific, which from its size gave even a scant hope of use. Ancient trawlers serving as molasses boats in Cuba; ancient yachts, converted to houseboats in Florida; ancient lighthouse tenders long since condemned and sold out of service—all these I examined, in spite of the fabulous prices asked, for nothing else was remotely obtainable.

  But all had to be rejected. Either the rusty hulls would certainly disintegrate once they hit the open sea, or the decrepit machinery could by no stretch of the imagination last out a thousand miles of ocean voyaging, let alone the 13,000 miles required.

  One vessel I had, though it gave me slight comfort. My predecessor on the assignment, before there was any war and before he had set out by air for the Red Sea only to end his trip at Pearl Harbor, had contracted for a small Pacific Coast lumber-carrying steamer, the W. L. Chamberlin Jr., of 3000 tons displacement. She was suitable (after radical changes) for a base supply ship and a floating repair shop, but she was much too big and unwieldy for salvage work herself.

  This white elephant was in San Diego, being outfitted for the purpose, and I had about concluded that we should have to work from rowboats and rafts based on the Chamberlin, when Providence at last lent a hand.

  I received a telephone call from Rear Admiral J. W. S. Dorling, Royal Navy, Chief of the British Naval Mission in Washington, to see him there. He knew, of course, better than anyone else, that I was seeking salvage ships for the Middle East, and how urgently they were needed there. Dubiously he offered me a ship for the job, such as it was.

  It seems that months before, he had been ordered from London to contract for half a dozen small harbor tugs of a standard American design to be built at Port Arthur, Texas, for emergency salvage service in England. T
he first one was rapidly approaching completion; it had been scheduled to be finished in late January, 1942. But the British crew, sent over to take this first ship back to England, looking now at their tiny craft actually in the water, had decided they could never safely get across the stormy north Atlantic with her, especially in winter time, and the whole lot were rejected. That left Admiral Dorling with six tugboats in various stages of completion on his hands and no longer any use for them. If I thought I could use one, he would make me a gift of the first tug completed.

  I looked at the blueprints. The tugs certainly were small, of only 78 tons net register, about the size of the tiny caravels in which Columbus had discovered America. They were just under 100 feet long, but because of their harbor design, their freeboard was trifling, much less than that of Columbus’ caravels—the squat decks of these tugs were hardly three feet clear of the waterline amidships. But they had General Motors diesel-powered electric drives of 1200 horsepower and stout welded steel hulls. Tiny they certainly were, even for harbor work, but they were powerful and they were new. After the mass of rusting junk fit only for the scrap heap, the paper-thin hulls and the antediluvian machinery I had been inspecting, these new tugs positively intoxicated me.

  Could I use one? I was desperate. Hastily I assured Admiral Dorling they were exactly the right size (which was true, for if they had been any bigger he would never have been able to offer one to me, and if they had been any smaller, hard up as I was, even I should never have dared attempting to send one on a 13,000-mile voyage over the open sea).

  But while I had any luck, I determined to press it hard. Certainly I could use one. Still, while he was giving them away, why stop at taking one? Promptly I told Admiral Dorling I would take three.

  Dorling was willing enough but he had already half promised the other five to our Navy for use as tugboats in American harbors. He would see what he could do. Finally, he was able to effect a compromise, giving me the first and third tugs done, and our Navy the rest. So I came into possession of two cockle-shells, already named by the British the Intent and the Resolute, titles which I hoped might prove good augury on their coming odysseys. Hurriedly I despatched a telegram to my new salvage master, Brown, in Los Angeles, saying I had a ship for him, and directing him to proceed immediately with his crew to take over the nearly finished Intent and sail with her the moment she was outfitted, probably in late February.