Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  With great gusto I posted that message at the Naval Base and sent another copy to Asmara, so all who had struggled to make it possible might know their efforts were appreciated by the top command, and those others who had been just as busily engaged in heaving monkey wrenches might make of it what they pleased.

  CHAPTER

  46

  THE PRESENCE IN MASSAWA OF THE British mechanics, sent down with the Dido for work on the light cruisers, gave me an opportunity. They were all to go back to the Middle East upon the completion of the third cruiser, the Cleopatra, but, in between jobs on those warships, I had them available for other work around the Naval Base.

  Consequently, after the completion of the Dido on August 25, I shifted the lot of them over to repair work on the Italian dry dock till the Euryalus arrived, and seized the chance thus afforded to take two out of three of Captain Reed’s crew of divers, plus the remnant of the salvage mechanics who originally had worked with them, off repair work on that dry dock and start them again on salvage. The third diver, Ervin Johnson, was left on the dry dock to tend to what underwater repair work was necessary as that dry dock rehabilitation job proceeded.

  So now I had two divers, Al Watson and Doc Kimble, and five salvage mechanics available under Captain Reed for another salvage job. I started them on August 31 on the salvage of the smaller Italian dry dock which lay in the naval harbor completely submerged about a hundred yards to port of its salvaged sister, where the Italians had scuttled it.

  Reed made a swift diving survey of his new task. We found the smaller dock had been built in six sections, of which five had been blasted open by bombs. Here again, however, one bomb had misfired, only this time it was the second compartment from aft which was still intact.

  Except for this difference, which was not important, the salvage problem was identical with that of the first dry dock, and Reed tackled it in the same way. There was, however, one other variation which forced more mechanical work. The upper decks of the side walls of this small dock were some nine feet under water, so we had nothing to stand on while we worked, and Reed had no salvage ship to work from. To overcome this, two wood scaffoldings, about eleven feet high and each over a hundred yards long, were built by Reed’s carpenters and set on the submerged decks of the two side walls, thus giving the men a walkway about two feet above water.

  For air compressors, I was somewhat better off than before. As a main source of air supply for the job, I had a huge Sutorbilt low pressure air compressor, capable of delivering 1200 cubic feet of air a minute, by itself more than one and a half times the total capacity of all four compressors on our first task. This machine was so big, it took two 200 horsepower Waukesha engines to drive it, and the whole assembly—driving engines, starting engine, belt drives, and compressor—took up about as much space as a small-sized room and stood about as high. As a matter of fact, the massive crate that this machine came in on the Chamberlin might well have served as a one-room cabin. This air compressor we mounted on a barge secured about amidships and outboard of the starboard side wall of the sunken dock, so that as the dock floated upward, it would just clear the barge.

  It had been my intention to use two such compressors when I started salvage on the second dry dock. I had ordered two in New York, one of which came out on the Chamberlin and which I unloaded myself in the naval harbor in Massawa, and the other of which came out on an American freighter and was unloaded in the commercial harbor by our contractor. Our contractor insisted on handling himself everything that came into Massawa; insisted on sending everything arriving in Massawa up to Asmara first, ostensibly for checking, regardless of its use or destination; and insisted also on keeping me completely in the dark as to what had arrived by freighter till it suited his plans to inform me of it (if ever).

  All this was one reason why I had the Chamberlin, which was my own salvage ship, brought to the naval harbor for unloading, even though the unloading facilities at my Base were vastly inferior to those in the commercial harbor. At least when something of my salvage equipment was unloaded at the Naval Base, I knew I had it, without either first searching all over Eritrea to discover it and then battling the contractor for possession of salvage equipment I had ordered for my salvage work.

  At any rate, in the present instance, my intelligence service informed me that the second Sutorbilt air compressor had arrived in Massawa and had been unloaded there. With this information, obtained sub rosa, I requested the contractor’s office in Asmara to deliver the compressor to me at once as I needed it badly for salvage work. What happened then would have been unbelievable outside an insane asylum.

  After some checking, the contractor informed me the air compressor had been received some time before, as stated (although he had never informed me of that), but that it had been shipped from Massawa to Asmara first for inventorying there as per his usual custom. As soon as that was completed, it would be shipped back to me. I made no comment. How any supposedly sane person could undertake to ship an air compressor assembly literally as big as a house over that tortuous mountain railroad 7500 feet up to the summit plateau, just to check the markings on its crate, and then ship it back where it started from for use, about a hundred and fifty mile journey, was beyond me. That was certainly American efficiency at its best in conserving Eritrea’s scant resources in labor in prosecuting the war. And yet some Americans were criticizing the British for inefficiency!

  A few days went by. I had started my salvage job and I needed that second Sutorbilt compressor, so once again I inquired by telephone as to when my salvage compressor would be sufficiently inventoried up in the mountains to be returned to me for use down on the seacoast. In some embarrassment, the contractor informed me they were still trying to locate the compressor in Asmara but hadn’t found it there yet. All their shipping papers showed its receipt in Massawa, its dispatch by rail to Asmara, but they couldn’t find any record of its receipt in Asmara, and they couldn’t find any air compressor there either. They were still searching their Asmara warehouses.

  Whatever happened to my mammoth air compressor assembly, I never found out. The ship’s papers showed its delivery in Massawa; the contractor’s check sheets showed its receipts there and its dispatch to Asmara, and after that it vanished from the sight of men (particularly from mine) forever. The contractor could never find it and couldn’t offer any explanations except that probably it had been stolen by the Eyties off the train on its way to Asmara (to which, in any sane establishment, it would never have been sent).

  When I manifested incredulity over that, maintaining that even the rapacious Eyties would have been as badly stumped in stealing that ponderous compressor assembly as they might have been in attempting to get away with the Washington Monument, I was informed by the contractor’s Massawa warehouse manager that a whole train of freight cars bound for Asmara not long before had vanished completely—cars, freight, and all—and had not since been found. Whether I was supposed to believe that or not, I couldn’t tell. By now, however, I was getting to the point where I could swallow anything, however fantastic, relating to goings-on in Eritrea.

  Nevertheless, my invaluable compressor was gone and I could never find a trace of it. Doubtless I made of myself a considerable nuisance to the contractor, insisting that since his scheme of keeping me in the dark while he thus handled my salvage equipment had culminated in this unbelievable disappearance, he must find it for me. But the contractor was too busy all over the Middle East with vast projects on a vast scale to be overly concerned with a minor matter like the strange evaporation while in his hands of the biggest piece of machinery in all Eritrea. He never found it for me. And except perhaps to make a note that there was a disturbing influence in Massawa to be gotten rid of at the first convenient opportunity, he seemed wholly unconcerned.

  So with only one big Sutorbilt air compressor to carry the main load, and one very much smaller Ingersoll-Rand air compressor available to act as a stand-by when the big machine had to be shu
t down for servicing, we started our salvage job.

  By now, Al Watson and Doc Kimble, the two divers, knew their Italian dry docks; so also did all the mechanics, particularly one fine new carpenter, a mountain of a man named Bill Oyea, who had come to us since the lifting of the first dock. He was even bigger than Buck Schott, whose place as carpenter he was taking, Buck himself having been promoted to foreman under Lloyd Williams for general repair work on already salvaged wrecks.

  Captain Reed and his little crew of seven Americans all told, aided by a moderate number of Eyties and Eritreans, turned to enthusiastically to duplicate their initial exploit. They did, too. Starting on August 31, with only half as many divers and mechanics available to him as the first time and more work to do, since here the decks were totally submerged, by September 10 Reed had everything rigged and sealed up, ready to start the compressors.

  On September 10, we started pumping compressed air from the big Sutorbilt compressor to starboard and the small Ingersoll-Rand to port. Immediately air leaks showed up, air bubbling upward through the sea all over the dock structure where the steelwork was improperly caulked by the Italian builders. This time we could caulk leaks only by diving, so Al Watson and Doc Kimble had a busy time under water for some days with caulking tools, making good enough of the leaks so the dock would hold air, particularly on the starboard side wall, which I intended to lift first. Doc used a regular diving rig; but Al, who was a marvelous swimmer, did practically all of his diving in a face mask only, which, in that shallow water, was less of an encumbrance to movement.

  On Sunday, September 13, the starboard side of the dry dock floated up, exposing all the deck hatches. I brought aboard the barnacled deck some small 3-inch gasoline-driven pumps, with which we then swiftly pumped free of water all the storage and machinery compartments in the upper part of that side wall, thus floating it up further till about three feet of the starboard side wall was completely out of water.

  All the deck hatches in the starboard side wall deck leading downward to these upper compartments we found worthless for watertightness, as their gaskets were all rotted away from long submergence. As we were unable to close these hatches therefore to retain compressed air, and the next deck down was leaking air so badly the compressors were unable to gain further on the water in the lower holds, it became necessary to get into these freshly pumped-out upper compartments and work inside them to plug leaks in the steelwork below.

  For that purpose, I brought over from the big Italian dock a small gang of ironworkers composed of Armstrong, riveter; Larsen, welder; and Jones, shipfitter. Armstrong and Larsen were Americans; Jones was a very tall, very thin Englishman, one of the mechanics just through with the cruiser Euryalus repair job on the Persian dock near by.

  With hand tools, this small crew started forward inside the newly exposed and pumped-out upper compartments of the starboard side wall, plugging all the air leaks they could find, and gradually worked their way aft.

  Meanwhile, the air compressors, which had been running night and day in much hotter weather even than we had had in mid-May when we raised the first dock, were having troubles. This was particularly true of the big low-pressure Sutorbilt compressor, which, never designed for service under any such conditions, was running with its compressor main bearings smoking hot all the time, literally so hot it would have been simple to have broiled steaks on them. We used the best hard grease available for lubricating those bearings, but it always melted swiftly and ran out like water, to fry odoriferously on the hot metal, giving to all the surrounding atmosphere a smell of cooking going on on a major scale. That odor of frying grease, mingled with the smell of rotting mussels on the now exposed starboard wall of the dry dock, gave an unforgettable aroma to the whole salvage operation.

  But as well as we could we kept both our compressors going and kept the air going down. I was holding the water level steady in the afloat starboard side and sending most of the compressed air through the cross connecting mains to the port side, hoping soon to get buoyancy enough on that side to float it also off the bottom.

  In this situation, the dry dock was on a considerable slant to port, with its port side still resting in the mud on the bottom of the harbor and nine feet of water over its port side deck, while the starboard side was afloat, about three to four feet out of water along its whole length from bow to stern.

  What I was working for was to get an even amount of buoyancy all along the port side so it would finally float up evenly, bow and stern together, with no trim. Of course this could not be assured for there was no way of telling whether the side still in the mud was more firmly stuck to the bottom at one end than at the other; also the only set of air pressure gauges we had or could get was none too reliable in showing how far down the water had gone inside any port side compartment.

  All Sunday and Sunday night, and on into Monday, we kept on plugging leaks and pumping air. My three ironworkers finally arrived by the middle of Monday afternoon at the after compartment in the afloat starboard side in their quest for leaks, and there they found a very bad one. They sent Jones, the English shipfitter, for me to look it over.

  I followed Jones, who very much resembled a bean-pole in build, aft along the barnacle-encrusted deck to that stern compartment. While all the other hatches in the deck were on low horizontal coamings, the hatch to this after compartment was different. It was a booby hatch; that is, it was a vertical steel structure rising above the deck to the height of a man nearly, with a rather small vertical steel door opening on its forward side to give access to a steep ladder going below from just inside that door.

  Jones had to duck his lanky figure considerably to get through the opened door; then he descended the steep steel ladder inside. Even I had to duck a bit to avoid bumping my head on the steel door frame above; then I followed him down the ladder to find myself in an elongated watertight compartment, steaming hot inside, with no openings for ventilation except that booby hatch at the forward end by which I had entered.

  Lighted only by my flashlight, I followed Jones through the waterlogged rubbish of what perhaps had once been used as an Eytie storeroom, some forty feet aft to the very after end of that compartment. There was Larsen alongside Horace Armstrong, who in the cramped space overhead was futilely trying to get a decent swing with a hammer on his caulking chisel.

  Armstrong paused to indicate to me the trouble. A strong stream of compressed air from the still-submerged dry dock section below was whistling out past an atrociously driven rivet in the top bounding bar of the after bulkhead. It wasn’t just a little air leak; it was a big one. The rivet, very loose, came nowhere near filling its hole; evidently the Eytie riveters, in originally driving that rivet, had had difficulty getting at it and had left the job badly botched.

  Armstrong, Jones, Larsen, and I held a conference on that rivet. It was finally agreed to accept Armstrong’s solution—give him time and he felt sure he could get that rivet point sufficiently caulked to stop the leak. It would be a slow job since he could hardly find space overhead amidst the cramped steel bracing for a fair swing with a hammer, but he felt he could do it. So, leaving Larsen and Jones to hold the light for him and spell him on the caulking, I left them fairly cooking in the hot vapor surrounding them and, with difficulty, threaded my way forward through the inside wreckage to the ladder, climbed up it, and squeezed out the booby hatch door to the deck.

  When I first went down that booby hatch, dressed only in a khaki shirt, khaki shorts, and some old shoes, I had already been thoroughly soaked with sweat; when I came out, however, I was positively dripping. I felt sorry for the men below.

  It was several hours after lunch and everybody was hard at work. As I went slowly forward along the starboard scaffolding reading the pressure gauges, I noted that the Eritreans were as busy as usual, scraping away from floats alongside at the barnacled side wall of the dock. Back aft was the thirty foot boat which we had fitted up with a small compressor for diving. Doc Kimble, fully
encased in his diving rig, was descending the ladder over the stern of the boat to caulk some underwater leak, while Al Watson, in bathing trunks only, and Lew Whitaker were acting as his tenders.

  Bill Reed, salvage master, was in the boat with them to receive whatever reports Doc had to make over the diving telephone from below. On deck the dock itself below me, Lloyd Williams was working with various mechanics engaged in trying to make watertight and airtight the ruined gaskets on the deck hatches and on some other hatches which needed bracing to hold the air pressure below them.

  When I finally came amidships, Jim Buzbee, pump mechanic, who was standing watch on the air compressors, called to me to come down off the scaffolding and take a look at our big twin-engined air compressor; it looked to him as if we were in for serious trouble soon.

  I clambered down off the scaffolding; went by the air valve manifold, an intricate array of valves by which the flow of compressed air was directed from our Sutorbilt compressor to various parts of the submerged dry dock; and then crawled down the vertical ladder on the outboard side of the dry dock to the barge on which the throbbing Sutorbilt compressor stood.

  It was certainly a huge array of machinery. The two massive Waukesha engines, side by side, which furnished the power, were far too big ever to dream of starting by hand cranking. Instead, in between them stood a small gasoline engine whose sole purpose was to start the big ones. After they were both unclutched from the compressor, the little gasoline engine was started by hand cranking, then clutched in to the big engines one at a time to start them; then, when both the big engines were running, they were clutched in on the compressor to carry the heavy compressor load. It was quite a slow and complicated arrangement, but workable; by hand alone, no one could ever get the rig going.