At one time, that notice on the contractor’s letterhead would have shocked me, but now as I read it, I was shockproof:
October 10, 1942
To: The Area Engineer
Eritrean Field Area
Asmara, Eritrea
From: Foreign Manager
Subject: General Superintendent in Charge of Salvage Work.
Attention: LT. COL. RALPH E. KNAPP
1. Effective Tuesday, October 13, 1942, Captain Edison Brown is appointed General Superintendent of Salvage work.
2. Captain Brown will be in charge of all personnel, and equipment engaged in the salvage work, and will be in complete charge and will direct Salvage Operations.
So! In somewhat more elaborate language than the August before and with a high-sounding title to go with the new responsibilities, the contractor’s Foreign Manager himself was this time relieving me of my command and appointing Brown in my place. And it being October 13, the day the order was to take effect, he had evidently dispatched the Assistant Foreign Manager, who the August before had flopped in putting it over, to Massawa to try his hand again. He should have picked a better messenger boy.
I looked around. Probably everyone had already read the notice. I looked at my watch. It was about 10 A.M.
“This is a working day, gentlemen,” I observed. “Brown, you ought to be on your ship where I thought you were, instead of here. Are you responsible for this?”
“No, sir,” replied Brown. “I’m not sticking my neck out!”
“Very sensible of you, Brown,” I admitted. “Now, you get back aboard your ship immediately and turn to. And I warn you, Brown, if you make the slightest move to act on this paper, I’ll have you court-martialed! I’m in charge of all salvage here by General Maxwell’s orders, and unless and until he relieves me of that responsibility, anyone else who attempts to take over is going to get hurt. Now, Brown, you can go!”
Without a word, Brown departed.
I turned to the other salvage masters.
“I’m sorry, gentlemen, you’ve been dragged off your work for all this foolishness. Get back to your ships and pay no attention to this piece of paper. It means nothing. Leave this matter to me. I’ll clear it up.”
Very willingly they started to go, but each one of them, Reed, Hansen, and Byglin, before he left, served notice on all present that he was quitting if that order ever took effect. I waved them out.
“Don’t worry, boys, it never will.”
They left. I turned to the Assistant Foreign Manager, who, for whatever reason, had stood silent while his conference with my salvage captains was being taken out of his hands and summarily dissolved.
“Now, that’s all,” I told him. “You can go back to Asmara. I’ll have the Army kill this order as dead as its predecessor, which you got out. Meanwhile, you can inform your Foreign Manager which orders you saw Brown and all the others here obey—my orders, as their Commanding Officer, or his in this paper.”
“Now, Captain Ellsberg,” he urged, “you’d better be sensible. This time the order’ll stand up. That appointment has already been approved by the Contracting Officer for the Army and it’s legal.”
I manifested a doubt. After all, I knew Lieut. Colonel Knapp would never give his approval, at least without consulting me first, and I said so.
“Oh, don’t count on Knapp. He’s not Contracting Officer any more and he’s got nothing to do with it. That job has been transferred to Cairo and Major MacAlarney there has got it now. He’s already approved Brown’s appointment as General Superintendent. That settles it!”
So Major MacAlarney, whom I knew slightly, was now Contracting Officer and as such in far-off Cairo had evidently approved that appointment! MacAlarney, I knew, was little acquainted with affairs in Massawa; he belonged in Cairo and had made only one brief visit casually to Massawa months before. MacAlarney had too much common sense, however, ever to have approved any such order if he had known what really was involved. I glanced at the copy of the order in my hand; MacAlarney’s name was not listed among those to receive a copy. Probably, he’d never seen the actual order, didn’t know what was in it when the matter of his approval was requested and had imagined he was merely approving the appointment of someone the contractor wanted to promote to a higher position, involving little else, and certainly not involving his attempting to override General Maxwell’s orders in making me Officer in Charge of Salvage.
Well, Cairo was farther off than Asmara and communication with it was poor. The order had to be squelched for the record and I knew MacAlarney would do it, but this time, it would take longer. Still, there was no use arguing over that.
“Just all of you in Asmara bear in mind I’m Officer in Charge of Salvage here till I’m relieved by General Maxwell’s orders,” I stated flatly. “I don’t take orders to surrender my naval command from any civilians. Anybody who gets in my way in carrying out my duties is going to get hurt! Unless you want Brown court-martialed, don’t egg him on to try to take over!”
“Now, don’t get excited, Captain,” the Assistant Foreign Manager advised me. “We’re not relieving you as Officer in Charge. We’re merely making Brown General Superintendent of Salvage Work.”
“Really?” I asked, taking another careful look at that order. “And after you’ve done that, what does that leave me as Officer in Charge of Salvage to do in Massawa?”
“Oh, all you’ll have to do is to give us a list of the ships in the order you want ’em raised, and we’ll tend to everything else.”
I looked at him in astonishment. Could he possibly be serious? He seemed so. Whether he thought I was another Captain McCance or just a plain damned fool, I couldn’t make out. Why, in that case, should the Navy waste one of its few senior salvage officers around Massawa at all? If that was everything being an Officer in Charge of Salvage involved, I might just as well write out the list, pack my bags, and go home where it was cooler! Turn over all control of the salvage work to a contractor who long ago had admitted to me in New York that not one of his officers knew the slightest thing about it? Ridiculous! I turned on my heel and left. There was no point in staying further to listen to such drivel.
In Asmara I was, of course, backed up both by Colonel Hodges, senior Army officer in Eritrea, who said he neither knew of nor had authorized any such order, and also by Lieut. Colonel Knapp, Area Engineer, in refusing to allow that order to go into effect. But, as neither of them was now designated as Contracting Officer, they could not order its recision—only Major MacAlarney, Contracting Officer in Cairo, technically could do that. And as Cairo was far away and the lengthy coded communication required on such a matter would only overload the radio, in spite of some fruitless correspondence, it wasn’t until several weeks later that action from him could finally be obtained. Then, Major MacAlarney came personally to Massawa to investigate what it was all about; after that, he immediately had the order rescinded.
But during those weeks, that order caused me plenty of trouble. Brown, as he said, wasn’t sticking his neck out. He was too prudent to risk any court-martial, and did nothing to attempt to take over. But also obviously he was receptive—neither did he say or do anything to show he was in any way averse to the idea or ready to assist in scotching the contractor’s ridiculous attempts to relieve me under the guise of appointing a General Superintendent.
So what happened was that during that period, every other salvage master eyed Brown malevolently, ready with most of his men to quit instantly if the contractor, as he claimed he could do, succeeded in making the order stick. Under those conditions, it can be imagined how effectively salvage operations in Massawa proceeded, with practically the whole salvage force, except Brown’s own crew of twelve (and perhaps even some of them), fighting mad over what was going on and ready to quit on a moment’s notice.
As best I could under these circumstances, I ignored the situation and proceeded as if I had the utmost confidence in everybody’s loyalty to his work and to his o
bligations. Oddly enough, it was from Brown himself that I got the only set-back to my attempts to carry on effectively.
The Intent, as ordered, started about October 20 on the wreck of the Italian ship, Brenta. A few days after that, I went out to the south harbor in my boat to see how she was getting along with her diving survey. I clambered aboard her as she lay alongside to port of the Brenta’s superstructure, about all of that wreck which was showing above the sea. I found everyone in a state of great excitement.
A few minutes before, Buck Scougale (now undressed on deck) tended on the bottom by Muzzy, also in a diving rig, had hurriedly been hauled up at his own request long before he had completed his diving inspection. No other diver now was down. Buck himself told me why.
“Cap’n,” said wiry little Buck in even more rapid-fire tones than usual, “I dived a short while ago to inspect her port side from outside, and Muzzy went down with me to tend my lines on the bottom. It’s about eight fathoms to the bottom—not much to bother about. We was both walking along in the mud, pretty tough going, pushing through the water close aboard her port side, when we came to a big bomb hole in her side—a hell of a big hole—opening into her number two hold.
“I took a look at that hole, with the plating blown outboard all around, and I figured I might as well use it for an entrance to see what the number two hold looked like from inside. So I put my helmet against Muzzy’s and told him to stay outside and tend my lines while I went in.
“Muzzy got it, all right, so I left him and walked right on through the side of that ship from the bottom outside her, as easy as if I was going through a big garage door. Of course, the minute I went through her side, it got darker in the water inside her, with only the light coming down through the sea into that hold from her flooded cargo hatches above. But after a minute or so, my eyes got used to it so I could see well enough again and I went ahead slow through the water over her floor boards to see what might be inside that hold.
“And then, Cap’n,” exclaimed Buck excitedly, “I damn near walked straight into’ a submarine mine! There it was, detonating horns sticking out all over it, and me about to walk smack into it in my diving rig and explode the damned thing!
“I stopped dead, took one good look to make sure, and, Cap’n, believe me, I went flying through the water out o’ that hold through the hole in her side out onto the ocean floor again so fast I knocked Muzzy out there flat in the mud before he could even duck! And without waiting for Muzzy to pull himself out of it, I gave ’em four jerks on my lifeline, to haul me the hell up and out o’ there right now!”
So the scuttled Brenta had an unexploded Italian submarine mine, not a bomb, still inside its number two hold! I knew I could believe what Buck Scougale told me—he was one of the two best divers I had in Massawa, if not absolutely the best, and subject to no nightmares on the bottom. If Buck said he had seen a mine down there, I knew he had seen a mine, not just a waterlogged cask which, distorted in the murky water, might to less practiced diving eyes than his have been imagined into anything.
Well, if we had a submarine mine inside the Brenta, standing in the middle of an open hold where we should have to work in patching the hole in the side of that hold, there was nothing to be done save to remove the mine before we proceeded further. But to avoid blowing up the diver in the process and probably our salvage ship too (for a mine carries about twice the explosive charge of a bomb), not to mention so damaging our wreck as to make further salvage on her fruitless even if some of us survived, it was necessary to know all about that mine before we touched it.
Particularly was this so, if by any chance the Eyties had rigged that mine up as a booby trap to destroy us, which might well be the case, seeing that a naval mine had no normal reason for being in the middle of the cargo hold of a merchant ship, even of a scuttled one. Before we went any further, I had to learn all about that mine. Buck, when I should ask him, could give me a rough idea of its size and type, I knew.
The British Navy had data on all enemy mines. From Buck’s description, I could identify it on the British ordnance pamphlets and study both how to remove it without exploding it, and also everything the Eyties might have done to its mechanism to make a booby trap of it. But for the present, we had to leave it alone.
So I ordered Brown to discontinue diving on the Brenta, and to return with his excited crew to the Naval Base, there to cool off while I read up on Italian mines. It might take several days. Meanwhile, they could all rest. I got back into my boat, and Glen Galvin shoved off with me from the Intent while Brown prepared to cast off himself.
Acting through Commander Davy, liaison officer, I had the British fly an explosives officer, a Royal Navy lieutenant, from Alex, loaded with all the pamphlets the British had on enemy mines. He arrived the next evening.
From a somewhat more detailed description of that mine and its lead horns, which Buck Scougale gladly gave us, Commander Davy, the explosives lieutenant, and I were able to identify it as a specific type of Italian mine. Thanking Buck for his aid, we let him go, while the three of us started an intensive study of that mine and every detail of its mechanism and design, however insignificant—a process which took us most of the night.
The explosives lieutenant was quite excited over the situation. While he had a great deal of information on that type of mine, all obtained by British intelligence men through captured or purloined Italian documents, never had they had in their hands one of those complete mines. Here was his golden opportunity as an explosives expert. If only I could recover that mine intact for him, he wanted to dissect it—as effervescent over the prospect as an entomologist about to ensnare in his net an entirely new species of butterfly!
He warned me on all the dangers, all the possibilities of exploding that mine, kept cautioning me on how to avoid damaging it. His earnestness made me smile. It was easy to observe that, all unconsciously on his part, his concern over that mine was for an entirely different reason from my own—if we got ourselves blown up, his tears would be shed over the lost mine, not over us.
By next morning, I knew enough about that mine and how to handle it, including all its booby trap possibilities, to feel willing to go out and remove it, doing all the diving on it myself, if necessary. Pending the arrival aboard the Intent of Commander Davy and the explosives lieutenant, who were to go along with us, I started in to tell Brown of the preliminaries necessary, before we shoved off for the Brenta and the south harbor.
That was when I received my first real shock in Massawa. For the first time in all my salvage experience, I heard a salvage master saying he wouldn’t tackle a salvage job because it was too dangerous! The Intent would not cast loose to work further on the Brenta!
The way Brown put it was interesting—he put the blame on his crew. They were all afraid of that mine on the Brenta and wouldn’t go near it again; it was too dangerous. And, of course, he couldn’t make them.
While Brown, the man who aspired to take over my job, was blandly telling me all that, I observed him with great interest. So here was the man who thought he was competent to take over the whole operation, claiming he was incompetent to get his own salvage crew to work in the face of danger! He wasn’t refusing to go himself, only his crew wouldn’t go! The situation made me laugh inwardly, but outwardly, I only listened gravely to the most astonishing statement I had ever heard from a salvage officer.
Of course, I didn’t believe his crew was afraid to go if properly led. There wasn’t a man in the twelve of them alongside whom I hadn’t myself worked and sweated and stared danger in the face with—I knew them all. They weren’t cowards. I could muster that crew on deck, point out to them I didn’t believe they were the cowards their captain said they were, show them the need in the middle of a war of ignoring danger, and then lead them to work on the Brenta, to do the diving myself to encourage them.
But if I did that, Brown’s value to me as a salvage master was going to be forever destroyed, and I had too few salvage master
s in Massawa to risk losing one of them, however much of a weak-sister in some directions he was proving himself to be. Besides, all the circumstances surrounding salvage at that moment were in a distressing state, and pending action shortly expected on Major MacAlarney’s arrival from Cairo, I had no desire to make them any worse.
So I merely lifted my eyebrows over Brown’s strange story and told him not to be concerned over his crew. I’d let the Brenta go till a little later. Meanwhile, I’d send the Intent out on an easy job I’d been saving for a rainy day—no explosives, no bomb holes, no patching-something any salvage man should be able to do almost in his sleep. That would give his crew a chance to get over their case of nerves, and then we’d tackle the Brenta again.
The ship to be raised was the Italian S.S. Tripolitania, a moderate-sized passenger ship scuttled, not in Massawa itself, but in the Daklak Islands forty miles offshore. She was one of that group of wrecks which Lieutenant Fairbairn, our British Navy pilot, who had almost died out there, had urged long ago that I must see.
Several months before, I had decided to take Fairbairn’s advice. But not wanting to waste too much time covering those widespread islands, I had accepted an invitation from Squadron Leader Feather stonehaugh of the R.A.F., liaison officer between ourselves and O.E.T.A., to fly me out over those islands in his plane while I made my survey from the air.
So, in an R.A.F. plane, I had gone out with Featherstonehaugh (popularly known among us as “Feathers”) and he had very thoroughly covered the islands for me at low altitude so I could see all the wrecks. As Fairbairn had maintained, there certainly was a fine lot of wrecks out there, but the day had long gone by when looking at more wrecks developed any enthusiasm in me. I had wrecks enough in Massawa harbor. So other than noting down how many there were—six—where they lay, and their approximate depths and conditions as regards future salvage, I had paid little attention till my eyes lighted on the wreck of the Tripolitania. Then I became suddenly interested. For over an hour, Feathers wheeled and circled to fly me as low as he dared over that wreck while I observed her from all angles.
Under the Red Sea Sun Page 51