Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  Our real troubles soon began. Before enough air pressure had even built up inside the dock compartments to register anything on the pressure gauges I had installed atop each compartment, we began to find air leaks in the upper decks above water. They weren’t hard to find—the air could be heard hissing gently as it escaped back to the atmosphere, under practically no pressure at all.

  My respect for the craftsmanship of Mussolini’s shipbuilders back in Italy where that dry dock had been built hardly six years before, went sharply down. Seams in the steel plates forming the top decks and connecting seams between the decks and the side walls, all of which should have been tightly caulked in any ship structure, were either caulked in slovenly fashion, or in some spots difficult to reach, had never been caulked at all. The Fascist inspectors on the construction of that dry dock should all have been shot for allowing such leaky steelwork to be palmed off on il Duce, but there it was and now it was my headache, not Mussolini’s. The top decks of the dock were leaking like sieves—no air was being contained inside and none could be till we had stopped those leaks.

  All hands, divers, electricians, carpenters, pipefitters, were knocked off their normal tasks and turned to caulking seams in the steel plates. Ordinarily this was ironworkers’ work, but I had none such in my own crew. So every mechanic, regardless of his trade, so long as he was a mechanic and had any skill at all with tools, was put on the task. Armed with hammers, such chisels as we had aboard, and more that I had hastily sent out from shore, they all began caulking steel plates—not a pleasant job, for those steel plates, under the vertical rays of the Eritrean sun beating mercilessly down on them, were soaking up so much radiant heat they were too hot to touch with the bare hand.

  Even the Eritrean natives, accustomed to going barefooted all their lives on the desert sands and with soles to their feet tough as elephants’ hoofs, couldn’t stand those sizzling steel plates. I noticed they were binding their bare feet in burlap or old canvas, and frequently soaking them in the sea as added protection, before they walked the hot grill of the deck plates of that dock.

  But hot steel or not, we had to caulk. So seated on improvised pads of wet canvas or wet burlap, anything at all at hand available to prevent burning our sternsheets as we sat on deck, we all caulked. Seams which were not too badly open were sealed in the usual way, by forcing the steel edge of one plate down tightly on the plate beneath with hammer and chisel. Some spots where the plates were so badly fitted (especially at the forward corners of the dock) as to make that impracticable with the primitive hand tools at our disposal, we sealed up as best we could by caulking soft lead strips into the open joints and then hammering the steel hard down on the lead with sledges.

  We gained on the leaks. By early afternoon we had stopped enough of the worst ones on deck so that the dock commenced to hold some air and slight indications of pressure began to register on the gauges. As the afternoon wore on, by ounces almost, the needles on the pressure gauges drew away from the zero marks; each ounce of pressure meant the water inside the dock had been forced down about two inches.

  I had no plans of that Italian dry dock at all—of its construction, its design, its weight, or of its size. I had to judge everything by what little of it I could see on the surface and by such crude measurements of it as divers could take of it as it lay on the bottom. Nothing of this gave me any very accurate data as to how much it weighed, how much air I should have to pump, or how far down I should have to force the water in the side walls before the dock became buoyant enough to break free of the bottom and commence to float up. There was a great deal of guesswork in the problem—all I really knew at the moment was that at last I was starting to push some water out.

  At 6:00 P.M., except for Tony who wouldn’t leave his compressors, and me, and three Americans who stayed aboard also to keep an eye on matters and to help service the compressors, all hands went ashore in the Lord Grey. The Italians and the natives were through for the day. The salvage men, after they had procured their suppers, were coming back with cots, mattresses, and mosquito nets for all of us and some food for those remaining aboard, prepared thereafter to live on the dock.

  The sun went down, darkness quickly fell, our electric lights twinkled on, glowing cheerfully on the quiet waters of Massawa harbor. It didn’t cool off perceptibly; the air stayed just as hot as during the day, but at least now we could lay aside our sweat-soaked sun helmets, spared for a few hours the fierce rays of the sun boring in on us like drills. And caulking on the steel plates, which all of us continued after supper, was no longer quite such an ordeal; with the sun gone, the steel soon changed from sizzling to merely hot.

  At 10:00 P.M., we quit, except for the watch set to service our quivering air compressors all through the night. All the air leaks in the decks we could detect, even with soap and water, had been practically sealed except for very minor pinholes. That more leaks would develop when the air pressure inside the dock built up substantially, I very well knew, but for the present at least the surface leaks were licked. What underwater leaks there were, we should learn when the water inside the dock was lowered appreciably.

  Lloyd Williams and two men took the first night watch. The rest of us, roasted to a medium rareness where we had been sitting while caulking, and well seared elsewhere all over our hides, sprawled out on mattresses or cots spread at random on deck; we would sleep under the stars till our turns came to service the compressors.

  I picked out a spot forward on top the starboard side wall, where if we had any breeze off the water a few inches away, I might get it. There, as far away from our hot compressors as I could get and still remain on the dock, I set up an iron cot, spread out my mattress, rigged my mosquito net, and crawled in, soaked as I was, not even removing my waterlogged shoes.

  It wasn’t bad there. Overhead, I could look directly up at the marvelous display of tropic stars, the constellations burning in unearthly splendor against the blackness of the night. I loved the stars and never tired of admiring them. Now to my aching body they were a solace from on high as slowly the heavens above revolved, lifting yet new stars into sight—a spectacle to raise the spirits of the most distressed. To salvage men (who have more need of faith than any shepherds ever had) as well as to shepherds do

  “The heavens declare the glory of God.”

  Then to add to the glory of that scene, there was a symphony of sounds about, blending together harmoniously—the gentle lapping of the sea against the steel walls of that dry dock both sides of me, the deep bass of the Ingersoll-Rands, the higher-pitched pulsing of the Fiats, all throbbing rhythmically away in the night.

  Soothed by sight and sound, but not comforted any by the sweltering air inside my net, I rested somewhat but I didn’t sleep any better than in my room—there was too much of uncertainty wound up in the problems of that dock for my mind to relax. How many days would the compressors hold out? How bad would the underwater leaks prove? How long could my new men, not so accustomed to the Massawa heat as I now was, last before they cracked up on me? What else, completely unexpected, as always happens on any big salvage job, was going to smack us before we got that dock up?

  At 1:00 A.M., I rolled out from under my mosquito netting, and with Al Watson, diver, and Jay Smith, carpenter, to help, relieved Lloyd Williams and his two companions on the compressor watch.

  “All the compressors have just been serviced, Commander,” Williams told me. “Once an hour is enough to check on oil and fuel, but watch those radiators! If the water gets below the top hose connections, it’ll all boil out like a geyser before you can get to it with a water can! Keep ’em well filled up! And the ice in that wooden oven we’ve got for a refrigerator is all gone; all you’ll have to drink till tomorrow is going to be nice warm water. There’s a few dozen bottles of that we left you.”

  “O.K., Lloyd, and pleasant dreams. We’ll take care of it,” I assured him. “And thanks for leaving us anything to drink. We’ll try to do as much for Bill Reed wh
en he comes on.”

  Al Watson and Jay Smith, very different personalities, I learned on that watch, were both exceptionally able and willing men, keeping a sharp eye on the compressors and their needs and leaving me little to do except roam the tops of the side walls, crossing our swaying footbridge from time to time, while I studied with a flashlight the pressures showing on my collection of sixteen air gauges. They were, of course, scattered, each gauge directly on top its own compartment, so that by the time I had made one round only over the dock to inspect them all, I found I had walked more than one-third of a mile in the process.

  The sight of those gauges was, however, heartening. The pressures were building up; we had shoved the water down inside the dock perhaps two feet. So far, the salvage wasn’t going badly.

  In my rounds, I paused a while each time to talk to Al Watson, since it was important to know my divers, their powers of observation and judgment, and how much confidence I might place in what they said they saw and did on the bottom. Al Watson I found a very keen person, inquisitive, and observant, crisp in his speech, which was unusual for a diver, and as salty in his expressions as any of them. He wasn’t big, a hundred and fifty pounds perhaps, but he had a splendid athletic figure which showed off well in his scant costume—smooth, hard muscles and a streamlined pair of shoulders and hips that made me think he must have been an expert swimmer. I later learned he actually was—the finest in Massawa. Before that watch was over, I felt sure I had a good diver in Al Watson which soon he proved himself to be—one of the best I ever saw. Meanwhile, he was tending the two compressors in his care with all the attention a fond mother might bestow feeding her infants.

  Jay Smith, carpenter, tending compressors on the other side of the bridge, was different. Tall and thin, quiet and slow in speech, much older than Watson, he took everything more phlegmatically. He somehow didn’t seem to fit the picture amidst a lot of smoking machinery, but he was tending it carefully nevertheless, learning, I suppose, that a salvage man has to do everything required from painting to pipefitting.

  So my three-hour watch on the lonely dock dragged along as I plodded endlessly the one-third mile course round the decks, armed always with two things—in my left hand a bottle of warm water from which occasionally I drank from the neck, and a flashlight in my right to avoid the mass of obstacles littering the decks of that sunken dock and particularly the naked bodies of the salvage crew sprawled aimlessly out on their mattresses, sleeping restlessly in the hot night.

  Bill Reed, with cadaverous-looking Jess Enos, diver, and big Buck Schott, carpenter, to help, relieved us at 4:00 A.M. Everything was going well (too well, I thought to myself, for a salvage job). I warned them about the radiator water and sympathetically informed them they would have only warm water to drink themselves—we had left them still a few bottles in the iceless icebox. And with that I tumbled back under my mosquito net, where flat on my back, I could once again regard the stars—almost a new-looking set which a three hours’ revolution of the heavens had brought upon the scene.

  Uneasily I tossed about on my damp mattress, wondering a little about myself and my own chances of standing Massawa much longer. I had lost twenty pounds since my arrival six weeks before; I couldn’t afford to lose any more. Neither could I afford to take things any easier. My assistants were willing enough but they were neither seamen nor salvage men, and if I slowed down, everything ashore and afloat around the Naval Base would slow down also. With everything just getting under way, this was no time for a slow-down—not with the war situation what it was in Libya. But several little things had impressed on my mind what Massawa was doing to us—first my leather belt, stiffened and rotted by the salt sweat soaking it all the time, had disintegrated completely several weeks back, leaving me dependent at the moment on a piece of halyard to hold up my shorts, which more than ever needed holding up: since I had shrunk so much about the waist, my khaki shorts were far too loose. Then my leather wrist watch strap (the second one in six weeks and the last one I had) had cracked in half that afternoon, all the life rotted out of the leather from the same cause—salt. I had been lucky enough to have caught the watch as it dropped, or it would have gone overboard to make yet another salvage job for me; now it reposed in my pocket. I puzzled vaguely where in Eritrea I could get another strap for I badly needed the free use of that watch.

  Then there were my shoes—not the ones I was wearing, those were so salt- and water-soaked and cracked as to be a disgrace to any hobo—my better ones stowed in my closet in my room in Building 108. The day before I had had to warn Ahmed not to keep them in that closet any more—they were all covered with green mold from the never-ceasing humidity. Perhaps if they were exposed daily to the sun and then kept under the bed, they might do better.

  And all my undershirts were going fast. When I wore one, which was rarely now, it usually came off in handfuls when I tried to get the sticking garment off my wet back—the rotted materials could no longer stand any strain.

  Finally, there was my knife—to a sailor, especially one wound up in salvage, a most important article. It was of good steel but not stainless; I hadn’t been able to get a stainless steel knife before I left New York. My knife was always rusty now, the blades corroding so fast I had practically worn them away trying to keep them sharpened up, so when I had to cut a line in a hurry, I could cut it. It wouldn’t last much longer. Where in Eritrea was I going to get another knife to replace it?

  These little things were all symptoms only, but worth regarding. Leather, cotton, steel, and flesh—Massawa was fast rotting away everything I had; would I last myself, I wondered, till I had finished the task I came for? There were many Army officers already in the Middle East, but General Maxwell had not a single naval officer under his command to send to take my place should I crack, or to spell me a while so I shouldn’t.

  Wound up in these musings, but finally lulled by the soothing lapping of the waves and the throbbing of the compressors, I dozed off.

  CHAPTER

  27

  SEVEN A.M. BROUGHT THE USUAL flotilla of Arab dhows sailing before a slight early morning breeze to the Persian dock, loaded with half-naked Eritreans to begin their day’s scraping and painting. But it didn’t bring the usual boatload of Eritreans and Italians to the sunken dry dock to begin the day’s salvage work there.

  Not till it was an hour late did the Lord Grey arrive alongside, and then it was empty except for the two Maltese riggers who formed its night crew. While the engineer held it in with a boathook, the coxswain clambered aboard with a note which he had for me.

  It was from my master mechanic and was very brief.

  Come ashore immediately. There’s trouble.

  BYRNE.

  I sprang into the boat, singing out to Captain Reed,

  “Take charge, Bill! Keep those compressors going. I may be ashore quite a while!”

  “Aye, aye, Commander! Leave ’em to me!”

  The coxswain was back in the boat also.

  “Shove off!” I ordered sharply. “Ashore!”

  The engineer pushed the heavy boat clear, and the coxswain gave him the ahead bell. We started over the glassy surface of the harbor, for now with the sun well up, the early morning breeze had died away completely.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked the Maltese coxswain, who spoke good English, once we were well under way. “Where’s the day crew of this boat? Where’re all the workmen?”

  The coxswain shrugged his shoulders.

  “No Italianos came to relieve us, so we stayed on. All night on this boat and no breakfast yet. I’m hungry. Then no natives came to the quay to bring out, so we waited for them till Mr. Byrne gave me that message to bring out. That’s all I know, Commander. When do we get relieved so we can eat?”

  “I don’t know, either,” I confessed. “Stay in the boat when we get ashore and I’ll see you get some breakfast sent down. I’ll get you relieved as soon as I can find out what’s wrong with the regular day crew.” />
  Byrne was waiting for me on the wharf with my car which apparently he must have driven himself since there was no sign of a chauffeur. He wasted no time.

  “It’s come, Commander. No workmen. Not an Eytie, not a native in the Base this morning. Everything’s dead. They’ve all gone on strike! What do you want done about it?”

  We drove up to the Naval Base from the water front, Byrne at the wheel, and stopped in front of the machine shop building, our busiest shop always. I got out and looked in. It was completely deserted. Austin Byrne, master mechanic, gloomily surveyed all his idle machines. Not an Italian machinist was in sight.

  Next door was the carpenter shop, normally manned by Arabs with Sudanese for laborers. Fred Schlachter, foreman, was standing in the open doorway; I glanced past him. The Arabs and the Sudanese had acted no differently than the Italians—not a machine was going, not a native was in sight.

  “It’s the same all over the Base, Commander,” said Byrne. “Nobody came to work. And it’s the same with the contractor’s building operations, too. None of his gang showed up either, except his Americans, so he’s still going after a fashion.”

  So the strike had come at last! Seeing that neither natives nor Italians had any organization, and the natives were of many diverse races, it was amazing in its completeness. But on second thought, perhaps it wasn’t so amazing. There is nothing like completely empty bellies to compel unity of thought; it required next to no organization under those circumstances to get spontaneous action to force some pay, at least. Our men hadn’t been paid since they started, many of them over a month before.