Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  Tended by the deck force of the Intent, mainly by thin Hollis Miller, stocky Terry Engdal, and even stockier Herald Bertolotti (“Muzzy,” short for “Mussolini” to his shipmates) who made regular rounds to replenish oil, gasoline, and radiator water, the pumps ran on steadily. I was happy to note that inside each of our wooden cofferdams to the submerged deck hatches, the water level was steadily falling. So also was it going down inside the steel hatchways rising to the superstructure from the engine room, the boiler room, and the midships hold (number three) where we needed no cofferdams. It wasn’t falling very fast, for there was a sizable area in every hatchway or cofferdam, but it was certainly going down all over.

  All day long, with the tiny Intent lying alongside the scuttled Liebenfels, we pumped. The sun rose high in the sky, beating mercilessly down on the sweating seamen scrambling with cans of oil, water, or gasoline along the flimsy staging rigged to give access to the pumps, each perched on a little island of its own rising from the sea.

  I was aided in one thing by a new assistant recently arrived, young Robert Steele, a naval architect about a year out of college, whom I had hired in New York to help in lifting from my shoulders the burden of all the complicated mathematics involved in the buoyancy and stability of the wrecks to be lifted. He had come just in time to assist on the Liebenfels. Together we made the rounds of all the holds, measuring how far down the water had gone in each. Then Steele figured how much of the 6000 tons minimum of buoyancy we needed to start the Liebenfels up, we had gained. Plenty more buoyancy was still required.

  The day dragged along, we fried under the burning sun, drank water constantly to keep from being completely dehydrated, swallowed salt tablets, and endlessly watched our smoking engines and their steaming radiators. We soon found we could improve them. Each gasoline engine had a thermostatic control valve inside its discharge line from the engine block to the radiator. The thermostat was intended, as in any automobile engine, automatically to choke down the circulation of cooling water in cold weather as required to prevent the engine from being cooled too much. Of course, in Massawa no choking was ever required; the thermostat valves were all automatically wide open in a futile endeavor to circulate water enough to prevent boiling. But the mere presence of the thermostatic control valve inside the discharge line was of itself a choke, even when wide open. So one by one, we shortly shut down every pump. Without waiting for it to cool, we dismantled the engine discharge casting holding the thermostats, threw the thermostats bodily into the Red Sea, reassembled the engine connections, and restarted the pump. We found that helped; nothing could stop the radiators from boiling, but at least they boiled less vigorously after that.

  The afternoon wore on, evening came to relieve us of the radiant heat of the sun, though the air temperature dropped very little, and the humidity not at all. To light the job as darkness fell, the Intent switched on her searchlight and trained it to rake the sea over the Liebenfels. In addition, the little portable electric generator set, a 5-kilowatt machine, which the Intent carried had already been set up on the superstructure of the Liebenfels exposed above the waves. It was connected up to electric wires suspended precariously from the masts and from whatever else fore and aft on the scuttled ship that showed above water. Now the generator set was started up, to add the racket of its exhaust and the humming of its electric generator to the chorus of the seven pump engine exhausts and the roar of falling water already playing the prelude to the rising of the Liebenfels.

  As the water levels inside the holds dropped, and the pumps had a greater and greater lift to overcome to suck the water up into them, the volume of water discharged from each pump decreased. Hours since, the water levels had dropped completely out of the ship’s hatches and the wooden cofferdams we had built to trunk the submerged deck hatches off from the sea. Now we were pumping water out of the ship’s holds and the machinery spaces themselves, but we had to suck it just the same all the way up to the levels where the pumps stood, a very considerable suction lift. With no tremendous gain in buoyancy resulting from it, we had unavoidably set up a situation where the laboring pumps were no longer gaining very much against the inevitable leakage into the ship.

  There was no help for this situation except to lower the pumps themselves down inside the hatches and the cofferdams to bring their suctions close again to the water. (A practically perfect pump will not work with the water over twenty-eight feet below it; a salvage pump does well to keep going when the water is down about twenty-four feet and even then loses considerably in volume.)

  Long before midnight, we were forced to start lowering away our pumps, a terrible job at any time, a worse one in the darkness. There was no sleep for anyone on the Intent that night. All hands turned to, first to rig new pump platforms some fifteen or twenty feet down inside the slimy, dripping hatchways we had freed of water, well below the level of the sea outside. When that was done, each pump in succession, shut down temporarily but still scorching hot, a mass of smoking metal weighing from half a ton to well over a ton for the larger British pumps, had to be lowered away with such improvised blocks and tackles as we could rig up from the masts of the Liebenfels protruding above the sea.

  That task, in the weird semi-darkness of the deep hatchways in spite of the best light we could provide, took real men. Everything was wet, slimy, and excessively slippery. On the frail planking above and on the flimsy improvised platforms below in the trunks, half-naked men streaming with perspiration fought for a footing, heaved on the tackles, cursed as the heavy pumps, smoking all over, swayed drunkenly as they came down, threatening to crush any unwary seaman below against the sides of the hatchway if he were not agile as a cat in side-stepping on what little slippery planking he had to maneuver on.

  There were seven pumps to lower; there were only fifteen men, including officers, on the Intent to do the job. One by one, we got the pumps down, lengthened out their discharge hoses so they would discharge the water over the tops of the cofferdams into the sea, restarted them. Not till the flaming dawn broke over the Red Sea and the sun, an intolerable ball of fire from the moment it rose above the distant horizon to the eastward of us, was up, did we finish that task. Only by then did we get the last pump (and one of the two heaviest) lowered far down the cofferdam over number one hold, and with great difficulty restarted and pumping again, to begin our second day on the salvage of the Liebenfels.

  In brief shifts, the weary salvage crew had breakfast, some jammed in the hot combined galley and messroom of the Intent to eat, while the others serviced salvage pumps. After breakfast, all hands, with still no sleep for anybody, turned to on servicing our pumps, for now the task had suddenly more than doubled in difficulty and far more than doubled in danger. No longer could any man get to a pump treading a horizontal scaffolding set above the sea. Now the pumps were all down wells twenty feet or more deep, to be reached only by clinging with one hand to a can of water, of oil, or of gasoline, while with the other as best one might, one clutched the greasy, wet, slippery rungs of a vertical wood ladder on the descent.

  But at least, close to the water again, our pumps were doing better. Still the water levels went down only slowly, for now in each hold the water was being drawn from over the whole area of the hold, a vast cavernous space dimly to be seen beneath the dripping steel beams of the Liebenfels’ decks overhead—an area about sixty feet fore and aft, and of about the same width athwartships.

  We struggled on during the morning, servicing pumps endlessly, pouring unbelievable quantities of fresh water into the radiators to keep the pump engines cool enough to avoid (God save the word in all that heat) freezing the pistons in the cylinders.

  Towards noon, the water in all the holds, but especially in the holds aft, had gone down far enough below the level of the sea outside to give me reason to believe something should soon happen. I lined up two marks on the poop of the Liebenfels, exposed a little above the sea, with a mark on the concrete oiling pier on shore astern of her. Ther
eafter every half hour I sighted along it.

  In the early afternoon, with the slight Red Sea tide flooding in to help us a little in buoyancy, I noted that my line of sight on my shore marker had shifted a bit, not only upwards but also a little to port. The stern of the Liebenfels was beginning to rise at last! And to put the matter beyond doubt, she had certainly swung in her bed in the mud a trifle to the westward!

  That news cheered the worn seamen of the Intent tremendously. They needed cheering for, utterly exhausted from lack of sleep and the interminable climbing of steep ladders, they were all staggering unsteadily as they made their rounds.

  In another hour the lift of the stern was easily visible without the need of any markers; by mid-afternoon, the bow of the Liebenfels also came clear of the mud, and the whole ship drifted a little to port till she brought up on her anchor cable which was already down forward, and on a steel hawser we ran out from her stern to the oiling pier abaft her.

  By late afternoon, the main deck of the Liebenfels came awash and soon, thickly crusted with barnacles, it was above water. Once again from bow to stern, a sailor could walk the decks of the scuttled Liebenfels, provided he had on a stout pair of shoes to prevent his feet from being cut to pieces.

  Now our wreck began to look like a ship once more, though to counter-balance that she began to stink like a charnel-house. But nobody minded that. In the eyes of any salvage man nothing on earth is so beautiful as his first sight coming up above the sea of the wreck to which he has given his heart’s blood, which is probably fortunate for that is the only real reward the deluded fool ever gets for his sufferings.

  The wreck continued to rise from the sea, more and more of her steel sides showed above the water. But we began to have troubles. One after another, without apparent cause, the pumps quit running. Immediately that happened, some seaman of the Intent’s crew scrambled down the ladder, checked the oil, the gasoline, and the radiator water to make sure everything was all right, retarded the ignition so the engine would not backfire and break his arm, and started cranking furiously. After a while, the engine would fire again and commence pumping, but the trouble necessary to restart a pump increased appreciably; the task was killing the already exhausted men.

  After that had happened on five pumps, I went down the number four hatch with Keith, the Intent’s engineer, when it happened the sixth time to the pump there, our six-inch American Jaeger. Keith looked the engine over. Everything seemed in running order; it shouldn’t have stopped but it had. While I cranked the engine, Keith gingerly tested the spark on one of the plugs with a screwdriver. There wasn’t any spark; some more cranking (tough work in that hot, steaming hold) showed not a spark on any of the four cylinders.

  “Magneto must be grounded,” announced Keith laconically. He examined the magneto; it looked all right but it was damp, evidently grounded by moisture.

  It had a right to be. The interior of that cargo hold was saturated with water vapor. Below, the hold was over half full of very warm water; from every deck beam and the steel plating overhead moisture dripped constantly. The humidity in that hold was certainly 100 per cent; everything electrical in that high tension magneto was bathed in the hot vapor-saturated air. No wonder it had quit furnishing any spark. No machinery was ever designed to work under the conditions in that hold. Nor men either.

  Keith laboriously climbed up on deck and got a pyrene hand fire extinguisher off the Intent. With that, when he came back he sprayed the magneto, the distributor, the spark plugs, and all the ignition wiring with carbon tetrachloride to dry them out. Then he retarded the timer, threw on the ignition switch, and I cranked once more. The engine started up, the pump again started to throw water.

  There was no question of the trouble; moisture-grounded magnetos in those steaming holds were stopping the pumps.

  It was getting on towards evening. We had a second night’s work and no sleep facing us, and the little crew of the Intent was already badly knocked out. The pumps had to be kept going though, or the holds would refill from leakage, submerge all our pumps now well down inside those holds, and the Liebenfels would sink again, this time taking our precious salvage pumps down with her.

  I got hold of Bob Steele, put him in the Lord Grey which had come alongside with more gasoline for us, and sent him back from the south harbor to the Naval Base to round up Bill Reed, Lloyd Williams, and the nine men they had in their salvage party and bring them all back to the Liebenfels immediately, prepared to work all night.

  It was dusk when Steele shoved off; it was completely dark three hours later when he came back with Reed and the relief salvage party. They took over none too soon. The sleepless, fagged-out crew of the Intent now could hardly drag their weary bodies up and down the ladders to the pumps.

  Reed, Williams, and their nine men had all worked already all day long themselves on repairs to the hot dry dock. They were no fresh and rested reliefs, but they knew salvage and its troubles and they took over with no grumbling. Brown’s drowsy and over-fatigued men dropped in their tracks in the darkness all over the Intent’s deck to snatch some rest.

  The second night began, a repetition of the first night, only worse. Once more new pump stages had to be rigged still lower down in the holds, and the pumps lowered again to keep their suctions. The pump working in the engine room was worst of all. The water level there had gone down so far the Liebenfels’ huge reciprocating steam engine was wholly exposed as well as most of her auxiliary machinery. Because of the engine room gratings and the interfering machinery, we could no longer lower the four-inch pump we had in the engine room hatch with a block and fall; it had to be taken down the narrow steep steel ladders going from one grating level to the next below. Those ladders, four of them altogether, sloping steeply, wet with the sea just receded from them, slippery beyond description from oil and grease coating them, only dimly lighted from far above, were terrible traps to send a half-ton gasoline engine and pump down, handled only by men to mule haul it about.

  But the pump went down, with men beneath it holding it back, men above it slacking it away, men struggling each side to guide it, all sweat-soaked, their muscles straining in the half light and the eerie shadows of that engine room, looking like demons of the nether world struggling in some unearthly task. The pump never slipped from their greasy hands, no one was crushed in the lowering of it. That seemed unbelievable.

  Down on the engine room floor plates at last (for in the engine room the water had been pushed down that far) the pump suction hose was led to the waterlogged bilges below the floor plates, a long discharge hose was coupled up to lead to the open deck far above, and once again the engine cranked up. We had another problem now; the exhaust from the gasoline engine had also to be piped all the way up to the open air or we should shortly have filled that engine room so full of poisonous carbon monoxide gas from the engine exhaust as to kill anyone who came down the engine room ladders to service the pump.

  Servicing pumps became more of a trial than ever; getting to most of them meant going down and up thirty to forty feet of vertical ladder—a man-killing job each trip. The stopping of any pump was now a calamity for us, but still they stopped. Each time, some salvage man had to descend to the pump, spray its magneto with carbon tetrachloride, even then nearly kill himself in the heat and the steaming air cranking it over till at last it fired again.

  I was up all through the second night with Reed’s crew, for now as the water went far down and the lightened Liebenfels rose well out of the sea, stability problems started to enter. With her number two hold completely flooded and in free communication with the ocean through the huge hole there, and a free water surface still existing in every other hold (none of which were yet pumped dry) the stability of the top-heavy Liebenfels was negligible and she started to list to port.

  Ordinarily this would not have been serious; we would soon have dried out some of the nearly emptied holds and made the Liebenfels quite stable, able to float erect.

 
But I swiftly found out salvage in Massawa had nothing ordinary about it. Under the terrific humidity conditions to which all pumps were now exposed far down in the holds, they kept stalling with grounded magnetos before we could get a single hold completely dried out. Then while we struggled to restart a stalled pump, water leaked back into that hold, the unstable ship listed more to port, all the loose water in all the holds ran to that side, increasing the list so greatly we suddenly had thrust upon us the need of abandoning all else to concentrate on lashing all our pumps securely to their platforms lest they slide off into the water below them.

  Under such conditions, struggling to keep enough pumps running all at once to prevent too much of a port list, I got no sleep at all the second night either.

  The sun rose again, the third day on the lifting of the Liebenfels commenced. The crew of the Intent with some sleep to recuperate on, took over once more. Reed’s salvage gang, worn by twenty-four hours straight of back-breaking labor, sprawled out beneath whatever shelter they could find from the sun, to sleep themselves.

  Somewhat haggard myself, I turned to with Brown’s crew on the problem of straightening up the lightened Liebenfels so we could tow her away and put her on the dry dock, thus ending our struggles.

  Under any normal conditions, anywhere else in the world, salvage on the Liebenfels was already completed. We had the ship well afloat, high out of water, drawing twenty-four feet, considerably less than her ordinary loaded draft of twenty-eight feet. Ordinarily under those conditions, we should simply have towed her into the nearest shipyard, which could easily have docked her, and washed our hands of further concern over the Liebenfels.