Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  However, that was evidently the major danger. Buck was sure that if we gave him a sling fitted with proper hooks, he could without danger to himself, hook them into the lifting eyes so we could hoist that mine straight up and out the open cargo hatches overhead. But if it exploded on us as it came up?

  I couldn’t prevent its exploding, but, at least, I could avoid the explosion doing us any harm, even if I couldn’t save the Brenta from it. I ordered Brown to rig one of the Brenta’s forward booms, protruding above the sea, so that it plumbed the center of the number two hold. Then I took the Intent down the line of wrecks to the stern of the Colombo, lying with half her port side out of the water, capsized just astern of the Brenta.

  Far aft on the stern of the Colombo, 1000 feet at least away from that number two hold on the Brenta, we rigged up and secured a small portable gasoline-driven winch. I told Brown to reeve off a long line from that winch set on the Colombo’s stern, lead it the whole length of the Colombo and most of the length of the Brenta, then down through a block from the boom on the Brenta’s plumbing the hatch.

  On the end of the line, he was to provide a bridle fitted on each leg at its lower end with a pair of sister hooks to engage the eyes in the mine.

  I gave him the rest of the day to get all that rigged up. Next morning, all of us would come out again and remove the mine. After that, provided we did it successfully, we would proceed to remove the warheads the same way. So I left Brown and his men to do their rigging job, while Davy and I in my boat went back to the Naval Base to ponder the matter further as to whether the Eyties might still be a jump ahead of us in the matter of booby trapping the Brenta.

  The problem had me worried. While I had never said anything on the subject to any of my divers in Massawa, that was part of what Major Quilln in Alex had wanted to quiz me on when in late September, I had so suddenly been called off the docking of H.M.S. Cleopatra to go to Alex for a conference with him. Among other things, he wanted to learn how the proposed blockship might be booby trapped so that enemy divers attempting to lift it might blow themselves up and those few who escaped destruction might get discouraged and quit.

  But with that part of Major Quilln’s problem I had refused to have anything to do or to offer any advice. I felt that salvage men, even enemy salvage men, faced dangers enough on a wreck without trying to add to their dangers by any such damnable devices as booby traps under water. I was perfectly willing to assist in preparing a blockship so it couldn’t soon or easily be raised, but that was as far as I was willing to go. I hoped never to run into any underwater booby traps myself, I told Major Quilln, and I certainly wasn’t going to be any party to preparing them, even for our enemies. Now it began to look as if the Eyties in Massawa perhaps hadn’t been so ethical as regards me and my men. What did that wood plug driven into the hydrostatic piston of the Brenta’s mine mean?

  I made whatever other arrangements I wanted at the Naval Base for the next day’s work, and then spent the rest of the day and all of the evening with Commander Davy and the explosives lieutenant (who had meanwhile arrived from Alex), puzzling over mine pamphlets trying to solve the riddle, but we couldn’t. Unless in some way it was to help in exploding the mine as it rose or after it was up, there seemed no reason for its presence. So we separated and finally turned in.

  Next morning, we started out again for the Brenta. Aside from the Intent, I had need for a work boat, a shallow punt, and a skiff, and I had provided them all. The Intent carried the skiff. The work boat went on her own, towing the punt.

  As a work boat, I selected the Lord Grey, whose broad shallow hull best suited my purpose, though I was certain her Eytie crew, when they learned what was wanted of them in the south harbor, would not be pleased. Still, by then it would be too late for them to rebel.

  There had been some argument after everyone else had started off from the Naval Base, as between myself and Commander Davy on one side, and the explosives lieutenant on the other. At some point in the lifting proceedings, while the mine might be brought to the surface without anyone ever getting near it till then except Buck, who was to engage the lifting hooks, someone else was going actually to have to handle that mine to get it into the punt and get it ashore.

  Commander Davy and I had agreed that we two being the only naval officers around, should do that without exposing anyone else to danger while we handled the mine. Now the explosives lieutenant insisted on going with us. However, we both, being much senior to him, sprang rank on him and refused to allow it. After all, two men could handle the job perfectly; there was no reason to hazard a third. Particularly was this so, we pointed out to him, in case of an unfortunate accident with the mine, when it would be desirable to have someone acquainted with the situation left over to explain to the C-in-C. what had happened.

  We would deliver the mine to him in the south harbor on a deserted beach, if we got it successfully ashore from the Brenta. There it would be all his to dissect at his leisure without our company, and if in that process he blew himself up, we should both be left over and glad to reciprocate by informing the C.-in-C. of what we knew about what had happened to the late lamented explosives lieutenant.

  As I had four stripes and Davy had three, while the poor lieutenant had only two, he hadn’t a chance in the argument with us. We both got into my boat with Glen Galvin and set out to overhaul the Intent, while all he could do was get into my car with Garza (which I had offered him to salve his hurt feelings) and drive around by land to the deserted beach on the south harbor a mile away from the Brenta, on which beach we promised him to deliver the mine.

  My boat could make twice the speed of the Intent. We easily overhauled and passed her, as well as the Lord Grey and its unsuspecting crew of Eyties, and were first alongside the Brenta.

  The Intent arrived shortly and rigged for diving. Buck Scougale was quickly dressed and was preparing to go overboard when the Lord Grey, towing the punt, arrived. I ordered the Lord Grey to move on to the stern of the Colombo and await us there.

  Buck went overboard. It wasn’t necessary to go over his instructions again; he knew exactly what he was to do. Carrying a thin manila line already attached to the slings dangling from the boom plumbing the hatch, he submerged, crossed the Brenta’s deck, was lowered carefully down into the hold. As he went down, Scotty, the Intent’s first mate, slacked away gently on the heavy manila line leading downward from the boom so that Buck would not have to pull it down with him.

  As before, I manned the deck end of Buck’s diving telephone. Buck reported himself on the bottom; he was moving toward the mine. He was close alongside it; we were to slack away a little more on the bridle line. We did.

  Then, there was silence for about ten minutes as below us in the depths, Buck worked cautiously with his bridle to engage the sister hooks in the eyes on the mine and to seize them there with marline so they couldn’t come loose, while all the while he knew and we knew that he must not bang any of the horns or anything else with his lead weights, and that he must keep his lead-soled boots off those torpedo warheads beneath it. If Buck, working engulfed in water on a slimy deck, slipped or moved carelessly, it would be very unpleasant for all hands.

  Finally, Buck phoned up to tell us to take up the slack on the mine-lifting line—it was hooked up. Gingerly, we heaved in slack while Buck stood by the mine to watch that we left the line neither so slack a loop of it might foul a horn, nor so taut we swayed the mine up off its strange foundations. We got the line heaved in to suit Buck’s critical eye, secured it that way, leading far aft to the winch on the Colombo’s stern. Then Buck got clear and asked us to take him up.

  The moment Buck was back aboard, without waiting to undress him, the Intent cast off from the Brenta and herself steamed back astern the wreck of the Colombo where she tied up.

  All was now ready to proceed. There wasn’t anybody closer than 1000 feet to that mine in the fore hold of the Brenta. If it exploded as we lifted it, the Brenta would be the only sufferer.r />
  I took a position well off to port of the Colombo’s stern, where from my boat, I could see over the Brenta’s submerged forward decks, as well as seeing the men of the Intent manning the gasoline winch secured to the capsized stern of the Colombo.

  Brown started up the gasoline winch. I signaled him to start heaving in slowly on his lifting line. Carefully Brown clutched in the winch and took up all the slack in the 1000 foot bight of line between him and the Brenta’s boom; then when he had a strain on the line, he cautiously winched in.

  Probably two or three minutes went by while he took in fifty feet of line and all hands waited for an explosion from the rising mine. Nothing happened. Then the mine, looking somewhat like the Man from Mars with its strange spherical head spiked all over with protruding horns standing atop a square mine anchor case on wheels, burst through the surface and gradually rose some six feet above it. Then I sang out to Brown:

  “Avast heaving!”

  Brown stopped the winch. Very gently the mine swayed on the end of its lifting line, dripping water all over.

  I let the mine hang about half an hour. If there was any delay action to a mechanism intended to explode that mine when the sea pressure was off it, I was perfectly willing to give it a chance to act without coming any closer.

  When at the end of half an hour, nothing had occurred, Davy and I agreed we were dealing only with an ordinary naval mine with only the usual potentialities of death and no added special features, in spite of that inexplicable wooden plug in the hydrostatic piston. So we swung into action.

  I beckoned the Lord Grey to come alongside my boat with the punt it had in tow—a very long punt, twenty feet long, five feet in the beam, and some three feet deep inside its hull.

  Very reluctantly, the Eytie coxswain did, for with that mine now swinging in the open, plainly visible, he began to suspect the worst of his strange invitation to visit the south harbor for the first time in weeks.

  I explained to him his part. Towing the punt astern of him, with only Commander Davy and me in it, he was to tow us on a very long towline, directly under the hanging mine. To do that, the Lord Grey would have to pass over the submerged deck of the Brenta (dodging its not so well submerged ventilator cowls) and directly beneath the mine, but he needn’t worry—he wouldn’t touch anything below with his hull if he steered straight, nor anything above either if only he kept his head down.

  When the punt towing astern came under the mine, he was to stop and leave the rest to us. Davy and I would take care of it while he was a long way off on the far end of the towline.

  Instantly the Eytie coxswain and his whole crew began gesticulating wildly in protest, but they were up against two very hard-hearted men who paid no attention. They were not going to be in any danger, regardless of what they thought—it was only Davy and I who were going to face that. We climbed into the punt, slacked away on the long towline I had provided, and bade them get underway or it would be the worse for them.

  Shepherded by Glen Galvin in my boat (which could not safely navigate that passage over the Brenta or I would have used it) to see that the Lord Grey did not suddenly cast us adrift and flee, the Lord Grey headed for the Brenta and her mine. She made a long sweep to allow her to straighten out so she could cross the submerged Brenta just forward of her exposed bridge and just aft her foremast, from one of the booms of which the mine was suspended.

  If ever that Eytie coxswain steered a straight course, he did that day, with a sunken hull below him, a deadly mine overhead, an awash bridge to starboard, and a mast sticking up from the sea to port. Carefully, he went through over his obstacle course, with every man in his boat stretched practically flat out on the thwarts as they passed under the mine.

  Once he was clear himself he began to take a more intelligent interest, as far astern of him he towed us toward the Brenta. We crossed her submerged port gunwale and waved to him to go very slowly till he had us directly under the mine, then we stopped him while from the punt, we lassoed the wheels of that mine to get a guide line on it.

  Once we had that, we straightened the punt out so the mine hung directly amidships over us, and signaled to Brown who was now in the skiff well off to starboard where he could see both us and Scotty at the winch, to lower away gently.

  Now came the pinch. That mine and its anchor weighed a ton at least. It was up to Davy and me to guide it squarely into the punt so it landed clear of everything without fouling any of those dangerous horns and bending them.

  Brown signaled the winch to slack away gently. Down came the mine between us, Davy astern of it, I ahead. We grasped its wheels as soon as we could touch them, and with more delicacy than I, at least, had ever handled anything, guided that ton of high explosives downward inside the punt till we had it safely landed on the floor boards without it tipping sideways and bending those horns.

  Then we cut loose the lifting slings, and Brown signaled to haul them clear, while swiftly Davy and I passed manila lashings from the mine case to the gunwales in every direction, to hold that mine firmly down and avoid any possibility of its moving any way at all into contact with anything.

  When that was done, we signaled the Lord Grey to tow us and our mine out of there. She did. Once we were well clear of the Brenta, I had the Lord Grey back down to the bow of the punt, when, so to speak, Davy and I abandoned ship, leaving the punt unmanned while we boarded the Lord Grey and hastily paid out all the slack on the towline again.

  Davy and I smiled at each other. Our danger was over. We towed the punt as far up toward the beach as the Lord Grey could safely go without grounding herself, tossed over the towline with an anchor on it to hold the punt, and waved to the explosives lieutenant on the beach that there was his mine intact and he could do with it as he pleased, including either wading or swimming out to it. We were through.

  I may add here, he spent about a week dissecting it, without blowing himself up, which is all I know about the further history of that mine, as he departed for Alex with whatever he learned, including the mystery of that wood plug in the hydrostatic piston, without my ever seeing him again.

  Meanwhile, next day we cleared out the torpedo warheads, which were taken out to sea and sunk, and the Intent proceeded with the salvage of the Brenta.

  CHAPTER

  54

  WHILE I WAS STRUGGLING WITH THE Gera, the Tripolitania, and the Brenta and her mine, these formed only minor interludes in what was really my main task during that period—the salvage of the sunken crane.

  By the latter part of October, I had both physically and officially come into possession of the six pontoons I needed for the job, and had completed the changes required to make crude pontoons out of the first two gasoline tanks. Bill Reed and Frank Roys, in the face of terrific obstacles, had managed to sweep four steel messenger wires under the hull of the sunken crane, and with these, against even fiercer difficulties, had succeeded in hauling through the actual cradle slings needed to lift the derrick.

  Those cradle slings were something to contemplate. They were of almost the heaviest steel wire imaginable—as thick as a man’s wrist, they were of two-inch diameter steel wire—such wire as one rarely sees. That I should ever have found such heavy wire hawsers in Massawa, I should not have believed, but all I had to do to get them was to look into what formerly had been Captain McCance’s salvage warehouse and which now was mine. It contained everything—there was reel on reel of that massive two-inch diameter wire that even in New York I couldn’t have obtained on short notice. That warehouse was a regular Ali Baba’s cave of salvage treasures, all mine now without asking anyone’s by your leave or having even to say,

  “Open sesame!”

  I used that thick wire doubled to make up each cradle sling. Three hundred feet of it, doubled up to give a finished length of 150 feet, formed each sling, strong enough to stand a load of 300 tons before it broke. As I intended to put a pull of only 60 tons at most on each end of that sling, I felt assured my slings, at least, would
not break on me in the lift.

  Meanwhile, with Ervin Johnson diving to find out, I learned the submerged crane hull was 100 feet long and 60 feet wide. That presented me with another problem. Since my impromptu pontoons were each 45 feet long, I could get only two of them, end to end, down alongside each side of the crane hull—that is, only four pontoons altogether, two to starboard, two to port.

  Now four pontoons could lift about 420 tons. If the crane turned out to weigh 400 tons or less, I might lift it with only four pontoons; if it proved to be heavier, I couldn’t do it. I should then have to use all six pontoons, and the last two pontoons could not be placed alongside—there wasn’t room for them there. They would have to go down athwartships, one across the square bow and one across the square stern of that crane.

  However, that would require another pair of cradle slings under the crane, hauled under her the long way of her hull. Inasmuch as dragging two pairs of slings under her athwartships, the short way, had nearly killed us all as we tugged mightily with two huge bulldozers in tandem on the quay heaving on the messenger wires to drag those massive wire slings through the debris and coral on which the heavy crane rested, I hoped and prayed to be relieved of that necessity.

  Even on the short slings, many a time as we heaved with the bulldozers, the inch-thick steel messenger wires, strained taut as iron bars, had suddenly snapped, to come swirling back on us in hurtling coils that threatened to decapitate us should a coil catch us in its path.