No Banners, No Bugles

by Edward Ellsberg

  A formless shadow, breast high, loomed up ahead in the semi-twilight. A few more steps and I was up against the long fore and aft row of heavy oaken blocks, set one on another to a height of about four feet, which formed the center line of keel blocks on which a ship was docked. They were too close together to pass between. Inflating my suit with a little more air to give me greater buoyancy, I half-climbed, half-floated myself to the top of that barrier, and then after making myself again sufficiently heavy for safety, started to plod aft through the water, using that row of keel blocks as an elevated walkway and counting my steps as I went. The massive oak blocks. were all in place—none had floated up, none had been knocked over in the scuttling of the dock.

  Satisfied of that at last after going some distance, and seeing no signs of other damage to the near by dock floor on either side, I retraced my steps, counting as before to come back to the starting point of my walk down the blocks. Then down I slid to the dock floor and started to push my way through the sea to port for the far dock side wall which I couldn’t see through the water. But, of course, I knew that I’d ultimately bump into it if I didn’t lose my sense of direction and start traveling in aimless circles on the ocean floor.

  I found I’d been fairly accurate; when I ended with that steel wall again in front of me, I wasn’t a fathom away from the descending line.

  I could have spent some hours traveling over the floor of that huge dock at the slow pace at which a diver must go, without covering all of it, but there was no object in trying. I’d seen enough to appreciate conditions and to understand what the men might be talking about as they worked below. I seized the descending line, signaled to be hauled up.

  Reed, who had been taking in the slack of my long lines as I came back, promptly answered the signal. My lifeline immediately came taut; in another moment I was heaved off the dock floor and was on my way up through the sea.

  Not having been down under pressure at ten fathoms any great length of time, I required only slight decompression on my way up. At about four fathoms depth, the heaving up stopped and I was left dangling on the end of my lifeline for five minutes to allow what air might have dissolved under pressure in my blood to work itself out without forming dangerous bubbles to give me “the bends.” During that period, willy-nilly, I could do nothing but study the upper part of the steel side wall of the dry dock, near which I hung.

  I noted almost in front of my faceplate a round opening in the vertical dock wall, perhaps eight inches in diameter. That, I reflected, would be the outlet of the air vent pipe to the dock compartment far below, to allow air to escape from it while that compartment was being flooded in normal docking operation. We should have to plug that opening solidly, together with many more like it, if we ever hoped to keep compressed air in the dock to lift it. I kicked myself forward through the water close enough to push a hand into that hole and feel around inside it to see what was what. The results were discouraging. There was a sharply curved steel gooseneck fitted to the inside of that opening. It made such a quick turn inside that it was dubious that the wood plugs I had already had turned out for the job would drive in far enough to stop up the holes and ever really seal them off airtight. I sighed. Probably we should have to plug them all, fifty of them, by pouring in cement—a damned nuisance to run in under water to start with, and even more of a nuisance to get out of the pipes once it had hardened and after the dock was lifted so we could operate the dock again. But there was no help for it. More work for my meager crew.

  A jerk on my lifeline. My brief decompression time was over, they were ready above to haul me to the surface. I signaled back, then once again I started to rise with the light swiftly increasing about me. In another minute I could see the barnacled bottom of the diving scow floating over my head; right above my helmet was the ladder. I seized a rung, started to climb it, no great effort so long as I was still wholly submerged. In a moment, my helmet popped through the surface, then my shoulders. As I emerged, no longer water-borne, down on my shoulders again came the full weight of that 200 pounds of lead and copper draping me and I was helpless to lift myself further; while instantly, no longer held in by the counterbalancing water pressure, my suit billowed out about me as if ready to burst. Hastily I clamped down on my air valve and slacked off on my exhaust valve to avoid that. Simultaneously from above Buck and Al seized me by both shoulders, passed a safety line under my arms and about my chest to prevent losing me and letting me drown in case I slipped from their grip during the next operation, and then removed my helmet. With that off, and free to breathe in the open air again, they let me rest a moment longer on the ladder before once again grabbing me by my breastplate and heaving me up bodily onto the deck of the scow to be finally undressed.

  A few minutes later, freed of the diving armor and clothed again in my army O.D.s, I went over with Bill Reed and Lloyd Williams, what they were to do. Buck Scougale, who was to dive next, and Al Watson after him, might as well start driving into the air vents below those huge tapered wood plugs we had made. If they went solidly enough in before the goosenecks stopped them, they would probably serve. Otherwise, we might as well give up the plugs and go to cementing up the holes instead. We would soon know.

  With that, while Buck was being dressed, I left them on the scow and went ashore. Next morning I should know whether we were in for a big cementing job on the Grand Dock as well as on the Spahi.

  CHAPTER

  19

  HOWEVER, NEXT MORNING, DECEMber 21, I did not find out. Having some office work to do first in my hotel room, I didn’t come down to the quay till mid-morning, to find then that Reed’s crew were already across the harbor in diving position over the Grand Dock. Since the Spahi diving float was closer, I decided to go out on that first to watch Ankers’ now sobered up crew resume operations on their preparations for their cementing job, a real cement filling for a Gargantuan cavity all in one piece.

  Hardly had I landed on their float, though, than from across the water I heard shouts from the King Salvor’s bridge, and turning to see what might be the trouble there, I saw a considerable commotion and semaphore flags starting to wave. I didn’t wait for the signal to come through; instead I leaped back into the small boat I had just come out in and shoved off for the King Salvor, less than a quarter of a mile off alongside the quay. In a few minutes we were under her rail. Captain Harding leaned down from his bridge to tell me the telephone in the salvage shack (the only one near by) had started ringing wildly with an urgent call for me.

  I clambered from the small boat to his deck, crossed it to the quay, then ran for the shack, about a hundred feet away, to pick up the telephone receiver. The American Port Captain was on the other end.

  “Ellsberg,” he started off instantly I had answered, “we’ve just got a message a big British troopship, Strathallan, with about 6000 aboard, mostly American troops for Algiers, was torpedoed in convoy early this morning sixty miles due north of here. She’s hit in her engine room, port side. She’s reported sinking. The British are sending out about half a dozen destroyers from Mers-el-Kebir, all they’ve got there, to try and take off the troops. Get going!”

  “Aye, aye, Captain! We’ll be underway with the King Salvor in no time at all!” I sang out, banging the receiver back on its hook as I dashed towards my salvage ship.

  Harding on the King Salvor, suspecting some such message, already had his whole crew at quarters and was busy singling his mooring hawsers. He looked inquiringly down from his bridge at me as I hurdled his gunwale on the run from the quay.

  “O.K., Captain! Cast off, four bells!” I shouted up to him.

  Harding needed nothing more. Overboard went the heavy towing hawsers he had out to the Spahi, then the remaining mooring lines, save one only on his port quarter to hang to as he worked himself clear of the quay. Bells started to clang in his engine room, the water foamed violently up under his stern, already he was backing on his last hawser to swing himself clear. In hardly a minute more,
the last line was tossed free and the King Salvor was underway, steaming on one boiler with thick black smoke pouring from her stack as the engineers below opened wide all their burners to shoot heavy jets of oil into the fires, bringing their other boiler as swiftly as possible up to full power. By that time, after helping on the hawsers, I was up on the bridge myself.

  For a few minutes more, not a word was spoken. Harding, a very phlegmatic Englishman, was too busy swinging in a half circle to starboard, first dodging the wrecks of the Hartland and of the Boudjmel, then making sure he was pointing squarely for the middle of the narrow channel between the Pigeon and the Spahi, to pay the slightest attention to anything else, however curious he might have been about the whys and wherefores of it all. We swept by close aboard the float over the Spahi, rocking it violently. Lieutenant Ankers and his men could have been in no doubt as to what our hurried departure and that heavy cloud of smoke pouring from the little King Salvor’s stack meant. As we steamed past, we caught from the men there, unsteadily trying to balance themselves on the heaving float, a ragged chorus,

  “Good luck to you!”

  I waved back to them. Harding, his eyes glued now on the two buoys marking the tight channel between the wrecks, paid no attention. We passed clear between the buoys, straightened away eastward for the jetties forming the much wider exit from the outer harbor. In a few minutes we were out in the open sea, under the high cliff topped by Ravin Blanc Battery frowning down on us as we swung under its guns, heeling far over in a 90° hard turn toward the north.

  Once we had settled on course o° by gyro compass, Harding turned the deck over to Teddy Brown, First Mate. Then with a last word over the voice tube to Andy Duncan, Chief Engineer, down below, to keep pouring on the oil till the safety valves were ready to pop, he relaxed a bit and looked at last toward me for the explanation.

  “Who got it this time, Captain?” he asked.

  “The Strathallan, British troopship bound for Algiers with about 6000 American G.I.s aboard, 60 miles north of here. She says she’s sinking. Know anything about her?” I inquired anxiously, for to me the name Strathallan meant nothing. She couldn’t ever have run transatlantic, or I’d have known of her.

  Harding’s shaggy eyebrows lifted instantaneously, an expression of deep pain contorted his face. Evidently that name meant a lot to him.

  “The Strathallan, eh? What a bloody shame! She’s a P. & O. liner, running peacetime to India. Biggest thing they’ve got. Around 25,000 tons she is. There’s not many ships afloat on any ocean bigger’n the Strathallan. New, too. Where’d she catch it?”

  “In the engine room, port side,” I answered. “That’s all the information I got before we shoved off, except she reports herself sinking. Sounds to me just like the Porcupine torpedo job—same side, same spot, and to hell with any destroyers convoying her—exactly the same attack tactics. It’s got all the earmarks of that same U-boat captain. He’s sure good, but I’d like to strangle him! He’s too damned good for our good!”

  Harding nodded glumly in agreement, then another thought struck him and he looked mournfully at me.

  “Six thousand troops aboard, you said? She’ll never have boats for anything like that number; maybe not even rafts enough for a lot of ’em; and the water’s too cold for a man in a life preserver for very long. How about those troops? Even if we pile ’em six deep, we can never start to get half that many aboard the King Salvor! A hell of a lot of men are going to drown!”

  “Don’t worry yourself over that one, anyway, Harding,” I assured him. “There was one more bit I heard I forgot to tell you. Your Vice Admiral Syfret is sending all the destroyers he has in Mers-el-Kebir out to take off the troops. They ought all to be along soon,” I finished, looking aft toward the coastline astern of us and a little to port towards Mers-el-Kebir.

  They were. Already I could see plumes of smoke and steam emerging from Mers-el-Kebir harbor. It was taking the destroyers longer to get underway and to get clear of the intricate series of defensive booms and nets shielding Mers-el-Kebir than it had taken us, but after that they swiftly made up the difference. At twelve knots now, all she could do on both boilers, the stubby King Salvor with a bône in her teeth was pushing northward through moderate head seas. But in twenty minutes, British destroyers began to stream by us, full out with forced draft blowers roaring, all making over thirty-six knots, shooting past us so fast it seemed the poor King Salvor, left rocking violently in their tremendous wakes, must be anchored. One after another they streaked by through the water, a magnificent sight to watch. There were five of them, all in an extreme hurry.

  The destroyers were in no formation at all, simply strung out helter-skelter at whatever intervals they had cleared Mers-el-Kebir; after that apparently it was every destroyer for herself in the race to get to the Strathallan and take off her troops before she sank. In fifteen minutes more the last of those five destroyers was hull down on the horizon ahead of us, making knots north.

  Like a plow horse trying to keep up with Kentucky thoroughbreds, we plodded along in their wakes at twelve knots, seemingly an even slower speed now than it had appeared shortly before those hurtling destroyers had shot by us, going like projectiles themselves. But it was every last fraction of a knot that Andy Duncan, with his safety valves occasionally popping off, could get out of the King Salvor, and with that I had to be satisfied. She was doing her best.

  I began to do a little mental figuring. It would take the destroyers about an hour and a half from the time they passed us to get to the Strathallan; I prayed earnestly that they might be in time. I could not recall any troopship with that many men aboard ever having been torpedoed before. And in World War I, the losses off troopships torpedoed while carrying far less men had been sickening.

  As for ourselves on the King Salvor, if the Strathallan stayed afloat that long, it would take us about four hours yet to get to her. Assuming she did stay afloat, she would probably be badly waterlogged by then and in a very precarious position, requiring instant attention and all the aid we could give her crew to help save her. I told Harding to turn to with his deck force, breaking out of the holds all his portable salvage pumps, his suction hoses, his discharge hoses. Everything was to be rigged for immediate action with all his booms cleared, ready to swing aboard and start pumping out the Strathallan the instant we laid alongside her—assuming there still remained above water any Strathallan to lay alongside of.

  It was about noon. Cutting short the meal hour, Harding and his Third Mate, Sid Everett, with all the men they had on deck, fell eagerly on the task. The wide deck hatches were undogged, swung back. To the creaking of the steam winches, a stream of heavy salvage pumps started up and out of the holds with the swaying pumps and their gasoline engines dangling from the booms, carefully guided lest as the ship rolled they smash themselves on the hatch coamings or smash some unwary seaman acting as a buffer for them, into jelly. After the pumps came the massive lengths of discharge hose and the even more massive lengths of reinforced suction hose, to be landed in ever-increasing heaps on the King Salvor’s decks till there was no longer room to put a foot down anywhere without clambering on salvage gear.

  In a little under three hours, it was all out of the holds; every gasoline-driven salvage pump had been started up and tested to make sure it would start again when wanted; the ponderous suction and discharge hoses had been coupled up into as long sections as we could possibly mule-haul about the decks of a wreck.

  The King Salvor’s salvage pumps were all readied for action—it would be a big pumping out job that that outfit of portable pumps couldn’t handle. If there was enough of the Strathallan still left above water to set all those pumps on when we reached her, with the aid of the whole crew of that torpedoed ship in handling the pumps, we’d save her.

  The little knot of panting British seamen who had been working like fiends breaking out the holds, now got a few minutes rest while the King Salvor, shaking furiously all over from the excessive load
on her propeller, pounded along northward at her best gait. The wornout sailors flung themselves down on the mountains of heavy rubber hose to ease their aching muscles, the while they (and all those on the bridge) speculated on what was happening ahead of us, in which situation we were now all ready to take a hand.

  Very shortly we spotted light smoke on the horizon a little on our port bow. In a few minutes more, that smoke had materialized into two destroyers, one close astern the other, headed shoreward at full power. They would pass us abeam some miles off to port.

  Through binoculars I scanned them as they drew abeam. They were too far off to make out much detail through the glasses, but their decks seemed to be crowded with men. Apparently they had taken everything aboard they could hold and were now rushing in to unload, possibly to come out again for more. But their distance from us disturbed me; perhaps we were steering the wrong course for quickest contact. I asked Harding to signal the second destroyer,

  “Where is Strathallan and what is her condition?”

  A signalman flashed that out on an Aldis lamp pointed at the second destroyer’s bridge, now broad off our beam. By the time the message had gone through, that scurrying tin can was well back on our port quarter. By the time the message had been given her skipper and he had written out his answer and given it to his signalman to flash back to us, what with our twelve knots in one direction and his thirty-six in the opposite one, he was so far away astern I doubted we’d be able to get any of his reply. Our signalman did manage to catch the first two words,