Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  And with that off my chest, I turned on the radio again for what later news there might be of Eisenhower’s landings in North Africa.

  Next morning I was out on the Brenta again. Commander Davy and I removed the mine from her to the beach.

  For the next few days, I alternated between the Gera on the dry dock and the Resolute on the quay, where Reed and Roys, with next to no men to work with, were trying to get the changes finished on the second pair of pontoons and the cradle slings for it adjusted in place.

  Then I received a reply from the Navy Department to my message. I was not to start from Massawa unless further advised. Washington would check on the availability of someone there for the survey; if a suitable officer was found, he would be sent instead of me.

  I promptly forgot about Durban and Freetown. Washington was full of officers itching to get away from it and somewhere near the war zone on any pretext at all. As soon as the word got round, there would be a line of officers a block long asking for the job. If the Navy Department couldn’t find a suitable one among them, it would indeed be strange.

  On November 14, starting very early, I got my third pontoon down. It may have been mid-November, and back in the United States overcoats might be coming out of moth balls, but in Massawa it was still hot. Not so hot perhaps as in August—only just as hot as a midsummer day in New York on which half a dozen people die of the heat, a few dozens more are prostrated, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard shuts down and sends all its workmen home because it’s too hot to work in such a heat wave.

  I drank only about three gallons of iced tea and nearly wore out a slide rule figuring buoyancies while I struggled with that third pontoon. Finally I got it down and secured, and left in time in the late afternoon to get back to the Naval Base and undock the Gera, which that afternoon had been finished by Lloyd Williams and practically all our mechanics, salvage and otherwise, who had been working on it night and day for sixteen days.

  As I dragged the repaired Gera off the Persian dry dock to tie her up again alongside the large Italian dock, I reflected that if there was anyone to whom the United States owed a Medal of Merit for helping along the war effort, it was certainly Lloyd Williams—always uncomplaining, always able, always ready to perform a repair miracle on a ship when it had to be done.

  Then on November 15, I was back on the sunken dry dock for (I hoped) the fourth and last pontoon. It went down no easier than the first three, but the human mind and body are fortunately so constituted that once the limit of agony is reached, additional pain causes no more conscious suffering. So it was with all my crew on the Resolute. We got the pontoon down; we secured it in place.

  All next day and the day after we spent installing heavy wire lashings to keep our pontoons and their cradle slings from sliding up and off the bow of the derrick when we raised her bow first (as happened to the unfortunate salvagers of the Squalus). That was a tough underwater job, requiring two divers, so Al Watson came over to help Ervin Johnson with it. We got it done fairly early in the evening of November 17; I sent all hands away then to try to get a decent night’s sleep. Next day we would try to lift the derrick. The salvage crew would need all they had in the way of energy.

  I was myself badly worn out, and my mind was tormented by doubts to which there could be no answers till the trial was made. To most of my men, those pontoons were pontoons, but I knew that really they were only gasoline tanks, far too lightly built. Pontoons always had steel shells much thicker than these had; they had bulkheads inside to strengthen them; their hawsepipes were much heavier to take the lifting loads; they had a big factor of safety in strength.

  I had carefully calculated what the quarter-inch thick shell plating of these tanks would stand, what load the steel pipes I had improvised my hawsepipes from might carry. Normally, those gasoline tanks should stand up under the staggering load of 100 tons each I was going to put on them.

  But the situation was not normal. Every one of those gasoline tanks had been through a terrific conflagration; its steel plating had been red-hot, the top of every tank was wrinkled and corrugated horribly. What effect would that lack of cylindrical symmetry have on those tanks now that they were going to be, as pontoons, subjected to strains they had never been designed for? How much had the fire those tanks had been through weakened the steel?

  And finally, how much did that derrick weigh? Did it run over 400 tons, so that even if my four pontoons held together under the strain, they couldn’t lift it?

  Until actually I made the trial I could have no answers. Was I going to lift that derrick next day, or were my four pontoons going to be inadequate, or worst of all, were my fire-damaged tanks going to collapse on me when the lifting load came on them, leaving me with a third pathetic failure in the history of that crane to add to the two McCance had suffered on it? I could only pray. And feeling that an added prayer might well be in order, I sent that night a brief note home:

  November 17, 1942

  LUCY DARLING:

  We have our sunken derrick with all four pontoons secured to it, and all the lashings on, to hold them in place. Tomorrow morning we shall attempt to raise it. Pray for us.

  With love,

  NED

  I took the letter out to see it got into the outgoing mail in the morning.

  Of course, I knew that long before that letter got home, it would be all over, one way or another. But at least asking for my wife’s prayers for us might be a help. I felt better, and rolled wearily into my bed.

  CHAPTER

  56

  AS AN ACT OF FAITH, NEXT MORNING, November 18, I kept the Persian dry dock clear of any vessel, so that when we brought the sunken derrick in hanging between the pontoons, we could immediately put her on the dry dock.

  Early that morning, I had all Reed’s crew of salvage men, all the Resolute’s crew, and all of Lloyd Williams’ salvage mechanics on the wreck of the sunken crane—some on the Resolute’s decks, some on the quay near by, the rest in the work boats we should need.

  On the Massawa quay itself close by, we had quite a gallery to watch us, mostly British, among whom could easily be picked out McCance’s salvage crew who from their very audible remarks, had come to sneer our failure. (While McCance was failing, I had carefully kept all my men far away.)

  A considerable number of bets were made, which my men eagerly took, for the odds offered them were very attractive. To McCance’s men, who had struggled with that derrick for nine months, the idea of someone coming along with some old gasoline tanks and in four weeks walking off with the crane, seemed ridiculous. But the odds made no difference—if I knew my men, they would have taken every shilling offered at any odds at all. They had never known failure in Massawa, and nothing could make them believe they were going to get acquainted with it that day.

  Ervin Johnson and Al Watson were dressed and both went down to make a final inspection underwater of our lashings, our cradle slings, and our air connections to the pontoons. They came up to report the pontoons still in place, all the underwater rigging in order.

  Lloyd Williams started up the air compressors. On the quay, I had one of the 210 cubic foot Ingersoll-Rand machines from McCance’s warehouse (now mine) which originally I had used in lifting the large Italian dry dock. On the Resolute, I had a much smaller compressor that belonged to her. Between the two of them, we could furnish about 300 cubic feet of air a minute, enough to expel water at the rate of perhaps 6 tons a minute. That would be ample.

  One at a time, I started air going into each pontoon, while Ervin Johnson, down below again in his diving rig, opened up cautiously the bottom valve at the after end only of each pontoon to make sure that the water was going out of it before he opened it wide. Since that happened to be the case on every one of the four pontoons, he opened the after valves all wide and came up again to rest with his helmet off till he might be needed.

  I worked off the Resolute, lying just ahead of the bow of the crane, with a gauge before me to show the pressure ins
ide each pontoon. My intention was to float up first the bow, then the stern, and then have the Resolute tow the sunken derrick away from there.

  About 9 A.M., I opened the compressed air up wide to both bow pontoons, moderately to the after pontoons, and then with the gauges and the air valves before me, like an organist before a pipe organ, I began to play a tune with the compressed air flowing through the rubber hoses to my pontoons.

  For one long hour the compressors throbbed heavily. In front of me, sticking up out of the water was the steel derrick structure of that sunken crane, a mass of interlaced steel standing high out of water, looking like one of the steel piers of the George Washington Bridge as it towered over our heads.

  But except for that massive steel crane-work, built to support a load of 90 tons swinging from its hook high in the air, there was nothing before me but water. Below, I knew, was the sunken hull of the crane; secured just above that hull were my four ex-gasoline tanks. But all of that, one had to take on faith—nothing of it was visible.

  The compressed air went down as the minutes dragged along toward the end of the hour and I watched the pressures. But Captain Reed by my side had, as always, more faith in barnacles and mussel shells as indicators than he had in gauges. He kept his one good eye glued to a mussel properly located on the waterline for his purposes.

  Reed poked me in the ribs.

  “She’s rising, Captain!” he whispered, pointing to his mussel.

  She was Smoothly, slowly, majestically, and to me, beautifully, that tremendous mass of steel in front of me was rising out of the sea, exposing more and more of its barnacled steelwork till the bow ends of our two forward pontoons broke the surface and the lifting stopped. The bow was up!

  Instantly I swung all the compressed air we had into the two stern pontoons, to blow them dry.

  Ten minutes later, the steel derrick structure which was leaning aft at a considerable angle, with the bow end of the hull afloat and the stern still in the mud, began slowly to tilt forward toward me. The stern was rising.

  In another moment, my after pair of pontoons broke surface and there were all four of my ex-gasoline tanks afloat, with the 400 ton load of that Italian derrick swinging in the wire slings between them, a perfect lifting job!

  In no more time than it took to cast loose our shore air connections (which wasn’t much) the Resolute was towing that ex-Italian floating crane away from there, while Jim Buzbee and Jay Smith, salvage mechanics, went racing up the steelwork of that derrick like monkeys to unfurl from a flagstaff previously rigged atop it (another act of faith) the same American flag which proudly had floated out over every wreck we had raised.

  And so, leaving the gallery on the quay gasping at the quickness of it, an hour and ten minutes after we had started the lift, the Italian derrick was on its way out of the commercial harbor to the naval harbor, salvaged at last!

  CHAPTER

  57

  WE DRY-DOCKED THE CRANE, SINCE there was no damage to its underwater hull, no repairs on the dry dock were necessary, though we found its main deck as rolling as an ocean wave from what McCance and his inexpert salvagers had done to it.

  All we had to do, once the derrick was landed in the dry dock, was to pump up the dock a little to take the load off the pontoons onto the dock, then cast loose our pontoons and tow them away. After that as the dry dock was lifted higher and the crane hull came completely out of water, there was nothing required except to let the water in the hull run out the opened sea valves, then close the valves again. As soon as the Eritreans had scraped and painted the underwater hull, we floated the crane off the dock, which it had occupied one day only. So far as its hull was concerned, it was perfectly ready for use again.

  However, the crane machinery, submerged a year and a half, required to be taken apart and cleaned, and that job, together with the rerigging of new steel wires to its lifting winches and hooks, took some weeks. After that, the Italian floating crane went right to work unloading ships in the commercial harbor.

  But I never saw it make its first lift.

  For a few days after we had salvaged it, late on Saturday afternoon, November 24, I received a dispatch from the War Department, transmitted to me by General Maxwell. It had come from Washington in secret code; only a paraphrased version of it was delivered to me:

  Referring to instructions issued by the War Department, Captain Edward Ellsberg is detached from the Middle East Command and will report immediately to General Eisenhower’s headquarters in Algeria for duty in connection with urgent salvage work required in all North African ports. This action has been approved by the Navy Department. Air transportation has been arranged by the War Department via Khartoum and Accra. Proceed at once.

  MAXWELL

  My heart leaped as I read that. The war, I knew, had suddenly moved far away from Massawa. Already Montgomery had chased Rommel completely across Libya. Tobruk had long since fallen back into British hands and somewhere beyond Benghazi, Montgomery was pursuing his fleeing enemy into Tripolitania.

  Massawa’s day was done. Only the portable equipment—the ships, the dry docks, the floating crane, the machinery—could be moved close enough to the new theaters of war to be of any further help. All else shortly would have to be abandoned.

  Hurriedly, I directed Mrs. Maton to send for all my salvage captains. I had very little time left, my plane would be going out of Asmara early next morning, Sunday.

  I said good-by to all of them, after ordering all salvage work knocked off and the ships to start loading salvage gear at once to leave for the western Mediterranean via Capetown immediately they were loaded. The new American army in North Africa had urgent need of them.

  I went back to my room in Building 35 and hurriedly started to pack what little I could take by air, with the rest of my belongings to go on the Chamberlin. Captain Morrill and Lieutenant Woods came in to help.

  I turned my command of the Naval Base over temporarily to Captain Morrill. No doubt, now the Royal Navy would shortly take over.

  My telephone started to ring. Colonel Sundius-Smith, Captain Lucas, other British officers, called to bid me farewell, and wish me good luck in North Africa. My shop foremen came to say good-by. I thanked them all for what they had done—more than I could ever repay them for.

  I worked till 3 A.M. packing, by which time I had to quit and go. My plane was leaving Asmara early in the morning for Khartoum. Trying to sort out everything I should need in North Africa into the few things I could take by air, was troublesome. One thing after another had to be laid aside to go via the Chamberlin. Finally, my aviation bag was jammed, it seemed nothing more could be taken, when my eye, sweeping my bare room for the last time, lighted on our flag.

  It had been retired from service the week before, too frayed, too worn to be flown safely any longer over our Naval Base. The last time it had been used was when hoisted over the Italian floating crane as we had brought her in.

  Impregnated now with the coral dust of the Abd-El-Kader Peninsula, badly faded from battling the scorching rays of the Massawa sun, its days as a flag were over.

  But as I remembered that day on May 20, when first we had proudly hoisted it over our Naval Base and how it had flown over our every triumph since, I felt it had to go with me. Dusty as it was, I hastily jammed it down on top of my few clothes and closed up my bag.

  Below in my car, Garza was waiting to drive me to Asmara. Regretfully, I shook hands with Morrill and with Woods; no commanding officer had ever had two more able and more loyal lieutenants; it hurt me to part with them. I climbed into the car alongside Garza.

  The car started away in the night under the dark stars. Out over the waters of the Red Sea, I saw the lights twinkling across a harbor full of wrecks that I had salvaged; as we moved past the open Naval Base shops, I could see in them the machinery that once had been but sabotaged junk.

  Silently I gazed on everything as rapidly I slid out the Abd-El-Kader Peninsula. I wasn’t sorry to leave Massawa; it
was a nightmare I should be a long time getting over. What had happened in Massawa, I should never forget; Massawa had left scars on me I should carry for the rest of my life.

  We drew out of Massawa and went racing away through the darkness across the hot desert toward the mountains. Soon we were climbing rapidly. I drew my long-unused overcoat around my shoulders. Now I should need it again. North Africa, in the midst of a fierce campaign, might prove to be more hectic than Massawa, but, at least, it certainly would be cooler.

  EPILOGUE

  British Admiralty Delegation,

  Building T-4,

  Navy Department,

  Washington, D.C.

  BRITISH ADMIRALTY DELEGATION

  (British Supply Council in Washington)

  N.1298/42

  15 September, 1942.

  SIR,

  I am commanded by My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to convey to you an expression of their appreciation of the very valuable services rendered by Captain Edward Ellsberg, U.S.N., as officer in charge of salvage operations at Massawa, which have resulted in the successful raising of the floating dock sunk in that harbour.

  My Lords consider that the skill and energy shown by Captain Ellsberg in carrying out this work are deserving of high praise, and would be grateful if an expression of their appreciation could be conveyed to him.

  I am, Sir,

  Your obedient Servant,

  E. A. SEAL

  Deputy Secretary of the Admiralty

  North America