Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  I had a wild time on the poop of the Frauenfels, directing the Intent and the Resolute, straining on their manila hawsers in the midst of that howling gale, while somehow we kept from fouling the wreck of the Brenta till the stern of the Frauenfels was worked down through the narrow gap and a little to leeward to clear her of the wreck astern.

  Matters now looked better. My waterlogged wreck, about as high out of the water as any ordinary ship, was streaming to her bower anchors, held up against a 50-knot gale only by the two tugs straining on the two six-inch manila lines to our quarter. Unfortunately, we had to stay nearly broadside on to the gale. For not only did the chart show a bad shoal off our port side on which our stern would certainly be piled up if we went very far around to port, but also on that side if we let her swing head into the wind to ease the strain on our manila hawsers, we should be driven broadside into the wreck of the Vesuvio. Either one of these catastrophes would certainly, with the wind and the sea pounding us the way they were, finish our newly salvaged ship.

  None too hopefully, I watched the straining manila lines to my two tugs. I had no fears about the tugs; each had 1200 horsepower General Motors diesels—plenty to hold against the storm as their engines drove full power into it to hold us up. What worried me was the hawsers—they were both only six-inch manila lines, the biggest either ship had, and, while new, were none too big for the job. Would they stand the strain?

  For twenty minutes, perhaps, I watched those lines, taut as piano wires, while the wind shrieked by, full against our now exposed hull and superstructures, the seas pounded our starboard side, and the biting spray drove like buckshot into our half-naked hides. The gale had brought a sudden change in temperature—for the first time in my whole Massawa experience, I felt cold. But I didn’t dare leave the poop to get even a shirt; and then, it struck me, what would be the use of leaving anyway? All my clothes were aboard the Intent, tossing like a cork a hundred fathoms off to starboard while she steamed in the heavy seas against the storm.

  Then, suddenly, both six-inch hawsers snapped! With nothing any longer to hold our stern up, we started to swing to port downwind on to the shoal where I could plainly see the seas breaking over the coral reefs below. If we grounded on that, the Frauenfels was finished!

  I had good cause to bless the marvelous maneuverability which the General Motors diesel electric drives, controlled wholly from the bridge, gave both my tugs. Like falcons, the instant those lines parted, both tugs spun about and came driving down on our quarter, while on their fantails their crews madly heaved in on their ends of the broken hawsers. Perhaps a little more favorably placed, the Intent got to us first and sent a heaving line whistling up on our quarter. Cap tain Reed and I began frantically hauling in, to drag aboard the frayed end of that broken six-inch hawser and hurriedly pass it round our bitts, well away from where it had broken. Instantly the Intent headed out into the wind again to get a strain on the line and stop further swinging before we hit the reef.

  She succeeded, thank God! We were still clear by perhaps fifty feet. Meanwhile, the second line had come aboard again from the Resolute but I cast it loose. If the two lines had not before held us, it was unlikely they would again for long, especially if the gale increased in force. So, taking a chance that the single line to the Intent would hold us off the reef while I executed the maneuver, I both sang out and waved to the Resolute that we didn’t want her line—she was to steam through the gap astern us, get round to our lee side, put her nose against our port quarter, and push against us, full power into the wind, where she could exert her full propeller thrust without worrying about whether her hawser might stand it.

  Captain Byglin on the Resolute waved he understood, and circled around our stern, where he managed to squeeze in between us and the reef, come up on our lee side, and start to push. Before long, we were safely clear of the reef and with the Intent pulling and the Resolute pushing, sure to ride out the tropical storm. I felt better. It had been a remarkable exhibition of seamanship on the part of both tugs and their captains, particularly on Brown’s part in so swiftly repassing his broken line.

  The storm blew altogether for two hours, during which, never knowing what instant they might be piled up on a reef and the ship sunk in a storm under their feet, the salvage men aboard, mainly Reed’s crew, kept all the salvage pumps going and the water pouring steadily overboard.

  Finally, in the late afternoon, the wind blew itself out, the sea in the south harbor subsided, and we found ourselves still afloat but confronted by new problems. I could not stay where we were without keeping both salvage ships steaming all night to hold us clear of the wreck ahead, the wreck astern, and the reef off to port, all of which we were in danger of fouling each time the tide changed. There was nothing to do save to get the waterlogged Frauenfels out of that line of wrecks and anchor her for the night elsewhere. But we couldn’t weigh her anchors, and if we slipped them, we should have nothing to anchor her with elsewhere.

  I finally decided, nevertheless, to buoy both anchors so they could be recovered later; slip both anchor cables, retaining the inboard ends of her cables aboard; and then take her away and try mooring her to one of the mooring buoys in the south anchorage outside the line of wrecks. It would be a ticklish handling job, but I felt my two tugs could manage it.

  So, with one tug heaving on a line forward, and the other tied up alongside her quarter to steer, we slipped the cables, juggled the recently risen Frauenfels clear of the other wrecks we had been dodging in the storm, towed her about a mile away, and managed to shackle up what was left of her starboard anchor cable to the ring of a long unused Italian mooring buoy. I could only hope that the unseen ground tackle holding that old mooring buoy was still in fair shape.

  There we swung all through the night, while we worked to dry out our wreck. Of course, she did some heeling in the process, but nothing like what had occurred on the Liebenfels, since we were never short of workable pumps, nor of men either to keep them going.

  By Saturday evening, we were through. The Frauenfels was completely dried out, high out of water, and upright. That night, everybody, except for a small watch on the pumps, slept.

  On Sunday morning, October 4, again with our solitary American flag flying over her Nazi .swastika, the S.S. Frauenfels, another prize of war taken both from the Nazis and from the sea, was towed in triumph from the south harbor.

  Around Massawa and into the naval harbor, standing high out of water, she proceeded majestically in a striking marine parade, headed by the Intent, which had raised her, and shepherded by the Resolute and the Hsin Rocket to help steer.

  We all felt proud of the Frauenfels job, salvaged in eleven weeks, lifted and dried out in three days, particularly as a contrast to what had happened in the long-drawn-out operation on the Gera, so suddenly ended by us only the week before.

  As a reward for their efforts, I sent Captain Brown and the whole crew of the Intent up to Asmara for a week’s vacation to cool off. And as a somewhat belated vacation for Reed’s men for the small Italian dock, I sent them off also.

  Meanwhile, the raising of the Frauenfels did nothing to simplify matters for me at the Naval Base. I now had five salvaged wrecks-three ships, the Frauenfels, the Gera, and the Liebenfels; and two dry docks, the. larger and the smaller Italian units—to work on, and a negligible force only with which to work on them.

  Repairs on the Liebenfels’ hull were completed, and Hudson, my English engineer superintendent, had her engines and boilers practically ready to go to sea again. The large Italian dry dock also was far along toward completion; but the other three wrecks were crying for work, both on their hulls and machinery and I had absolutely nobody to put on them. If only the 200 workmen promised me from Alex would arrive!

  CHAPTER

  49

  WITH MOST OF MY SALVAGE CREWS away and no emergency jobs on the dry dock, I had a few days over the following week to get closer to affairs at the Naval Base.

  I learned to m
y delight from Captain Morrill that Eugene Zeiner had been performing miraculously as a toolroom supervisor—our loss of tools had dropped almost to the vanishing point—and when occasionally something did disappear, Morrill told me Zeiner came to him to report it with tears in his eyes, almost as if he had lost a relative. He was proving perhaps the most valuable employee we had ashore.

  And one other episode Morrill told me of did nothing to make me regret having gone all out to save Zeiner from deportation. It seems that the week or so after Zeiner had turned to in the toolroom and had inventoried and become sufficiently acquainted with his precious stock of tools to take his eyes off them a few minutes to see what else was going on around the American Naval Base, of which he now found himself a part, he had discovered the existence of the American volunteer militia companies. With great interest, he had gazed on his fellow workmen drilling in preparation for possible action against either Fascisti or Nazis.

  “What do you think that Zeiner did then, Captain?” Morrill asked me. “You’d’ve thought he’d had a bellyful of fighting after all he’s been through and been discharged from the British Army as a shell-shock case, but no! The minute I’d dismissed the company, he rushes up to me and wants to enlist. Since he isn’t an American, and our orders restricted us to American volunteers only, I couldn’t take him in, but I told him I’d put it up to headquarters. The answer came back No-Americans only.

  “When I told that to Zeiner, it nearly broke his heart. If there was going to be any fighting around Massawa, he didn’t want to be left out. I felt so sorry for the poor devil, for once I developed a bright idea! The orders said Americans only as members of the volunteer companies, but they didn’t say anything about restrictions on who might train them. And here was a man who’d been through more fighting than anybody else in Eritrea, against both Eyties and Nazis and knew all their tricks! It would have hurt my conscience to risk all those raw Americans in action without the best training possible, so I gave Zeiner a uniform without any American insignia on it, rated him a drill sergeant, and any day you go out to watch ’em drill, you’ll find Eugene Zeiner, Czech drill sergeant, showing our men how to lay away Nazis and Eyties without getting themselves killed! That boy’s good! And, of course, Captain,” concluded Morrill, “if it comes to a fight, who’s going to kick if the drill sergeant has to get into it too, just to make sure his pupils haven’t forgotten what he’s taught ’em?”

  Morrill grinned at me, and I grinned back. Without breaking any regulations, he had certainly cut the Gordian knot to everybody’s benefit.

  I had a little time also to inspect closely some mechanical betterments. Some of my long since commercially ordered shipyard machinery had finally come in early in September and had been set up, mainly machine shop equipment. To hold it all, we had taken what had once been the Eytie mine depot building, their largest in the Naval Base, and had converted it into a new machine shop. To that had been transferred all the ex-sabotaged Italian machine shop tools, filling one half of it, while in the other half of our new building had been erected all the lathes, the drill presses, the boring mills, the milling machines and the rest that had come to me from America.

  I looked over that vast machine shop proudly; between everything the Italians had left me and what I had ordered myself in America, without doubt I now had the finest machine shop in all Africa. There we could do anything, and we were doing it too, not only for all Eritrea and for the Naval Base, but also for the Middle East Forces in Egypt for whom Austin Byrne, Master Mechanic, was executing both production and repair jobs.

  But my new plate shop, my most badly needed building, which had been under construction since the previous May, wasn’t ready yet to house anything. Unfortunately, priority was being given to housing for the construction forces over construction for direct war purposes. This had an interesting result. A vast quantity of labor and materials had already been wasted on housing at Ghinda, which was now lying idle. Most of the construction workmen from there were now in Massawa, overcrowding the housing facilities at the Naval Base for useful workers for war purposes while they built for themselves, this time right on the Naval Base grounds, permanent masonry residence buildings, mess halls, and recreation rooms to serve themselves. When they got through with all that, they would then themselves move into their magnificent new quarters and start some real work toward providing the extra buildings the Naval Base really could use to expedite its war work. That is, they would, provided they weren’t already too late with it. The war in the Middle East, which on my visit to Alex late in September, I could see was getting ready to swing into action and move westward in a big way, might suddenly move westward so swiftly and so far away from Eritrea as to make anything anchored to the ground there, like buildings, totally useless in the further prosecution of the war. Frankly, I was losing all interest in further construction by the contractor; we had got along quite well in Massawa without any aid from his vast construction projects; now that he was getting around to some of them in Massawa, I was sure the inversion of an early war lament—too little and too late—better fitted the case. Our contractors’ vast projects in Massawa were going to be too big and too late—long before he got around from his vast housing projects to tend to war construction, the war was going to move elsewhere. And while you could move machinery, ships, cranes, and floating dry docks to where else they’d best help the war effort, masonry buildings for housing were going to stay where they were when the war moved on, like those in Ghinda, a double loss, a waste of labor when they were built, a total loss when they were abandoned.

  So, if the machinery in my converted ex-Italian mine depot gave me a lift as I looked at it busily engaged on war work, all the new housing construction on the Abd-El-Kader Peninsula in Massawa gave me a sharp pain every time I looked from it to that far-from-finished plate shop. What, I wondered, had we all been sent to Massawa for—to make ourselves comfortable, or to help keep the war from being lost?

  CHAPTER

  50

  OCTOBER 11; MY SALVAGE MEN came back from their vacation in Asmara. I started Brown and his crew overhauling all the salvage gear used on the Frauenfels, about a week’s job. After that, they were to go back to the south harbor to make a diving survey of the damage to the Brenta, the Italian wreck scuttled astern of the spot from which we had just lifted the Frauenfels, and then to proceed with salvaging her on a plan to be developed after I had the diving survey report.

  Meanwhile, being very short on mechanics for repair work, reluctantly I turned all of Reed’s crew to as repair men for a few days, his salvage mechanics to work on the topside, and his divers underneath, in repairing the smaller Italian dry dock they had salvaged. This hurt me a lot, to have to use salvage men on repairs but somebody had to rebuild the bottom of the small dry dock or we should forever be running compressors on it to keep it afloat.

  For their part, the Resolute, with its one diver, returned temporarily to the wreck of the Moncalieri, and the Chamberlin continued its job on the XXIII Marzo.

  A couple of days went by. Through Commander Davy, liaison officer, for some weeks I had been pressing Alexandria for the promised workmen, but with ever-decreasing hope, for I knew that while no dry-docking was going on in Alex, other repair activities were being resumed and men were being returned to Alex, now that it was certain that in the face of Montgomery’s growing Eighth Army, Rommel’s dream of ever breaking through at El Alamein had completely faded. But I desperately needed those men, and the brighter Montgomery’s prospects became, the darker became my chances of getting any volunteers from Alex.

  I was engaged in discussing this problem with Commander Davy about the middle of the morning of October 13, when unceremoniously, Captain Reed burst into my office, his bronze face flaming. Mad as a hornet, he exclaimed,

  “You’d better get right down into the contractor’s office below, Captain! They’re pulling a scandalous trick on you down there!”

  “Excuse me, Davy,” I said, risi
ng immediately.

  When the contractor started to do anything in Massawa, it was wise to pay attention to what was going on. Already, Reed was on his way out on the run. I followed him downstairs into the office on the first floor directly below mine, used by the contractor’s construction superintendent in Massawa.

  An interesting sight met my eye as I entered that office. Seated at his desk was the Massawa construction superintendent, apparently only a spectator, while standing alongside him, about to pass out some papers, was the contractor’s Assistant Foreign Manager from Asmara, who, being one of the contractor’s major executives deeply involved always in vast projects, rarely found time to steal a few hours off to visit unimportant (and disagreeably hot) Massawa. If he was in Massawa personally, something really was up.

  A swift glance around the office confirmed that conclusion. Seated along the wall were Captain Brown, Captain Byglin and Captain Hansen, while a vacant chair alongside Hansen indicated where Captain Reed (who now remained standing) had probably been seated when he had smelled a rat and walked out to invite me to a salvage conference where the contractor himself had seen no value in my presence.

  What had gone on before, I never learned. But as the Assistant Foreign Manager seemed on the point of distributing a notice of some sort to my salvage officers, I felt entitled to one also, so reaching out, I took one from his startled fingers before he could object. Noting that my name was on the long list at its bottom of those who would ultimately receive copies, I saw I had done nothing unethical in seizing mine then and there, although uninvited. So I started to read it, while the Assistant Foreign Manager, a heavy-jowled, heavily-lidded, heavy-set individual, built like a heavyweight pugilist, hurriedly passed out the other copies to everyone except Reed, who, I believe, refused to accept one.