Around the World Submerged

by Edward L. Beach

  Breakfast was served as I wrestled with the problem. This was not something that anyone else on board the Triton should be concerned with, but the more I thought of it the more certain I became that here, even more surely than off Montevideo, success or failure of our voyage lay in the balance.

  Much has been written about the so-called “calculated risk,” but one of the considerations or calculations which cannot be neglected is that if failure is encountered, the penalty is no less severe than if the risk had been assumed without forethought.

  All the training the Navy had given me, all the background of the Naval Academy and my years at sea, could lead to only one conclusion. As in Father’s case and in every similar case, the final responsibility is on the Commanding Officer. I had to make the crucial decision, and it had better be the right one.

  I resolved not to report our difficulty. Come what might, we would carry on and complete the voyage. Furthermore, I could not permit our situation to be fully appreciated by anyone else aboard. This load, like that of our special mission, could not be shared with anyone.

  At 0105 on the morning of March thirteenth, our search sonar made contact with a submerged peak. Without the fathometer or the precision-depth recorder—which received its data from the fathometer—we were unable to determine the minimum depth of water over this peak.

  We could not, consequently, predict how much water we had to maneuver in. In accordance with instructions, the Officer of the Deck slowed and changed course to avoid. We did so with ease, passing the shallow area well abeam and continuing on our way. Probably our caution was excessive, but my confidence in our ability to detect and avoid shallow water was confirmed.

  At five o’clock in the morning, we brought Triton to periscope depth. Easter Island should be dead ahead.

  From the Log:

  0512 Radar contact on Easter Island at bearing and range predicted.

  As we approached land, to my gratification our search sonar indicated a gradual shoaling of water as we moved steadily toward the island. Because of loss of depth of water information and in deference to the three-mile limit, we had decided to stay well clear of land.

  From the Log:

  0706 Commenced photographic reconnaissance of northeastern coast of Easter Island. About 0930, after careful search of the area, Thor Heyerdahl’s statue is located, right where he said it was. Several other old stone heads have been sighted, none clearly identifiable from a distance, but there is no doubt about this one. The word is passed throughout the ship that anyone wishing to see a stone statue had better come to the conning tower.

  In no time at all there is a regular procession of men coming up for periscope liberty, as was the case off Cape Horn. The statue faces inland and not much can be made out of its features, but the morning sun glints in orange and crimson upon the angular granite—and many details are filled in by our imaginations, reinforced by Heyerdahl’s book.

  In the meantime we have been carefully searching the shore and slopes of Easter Island to detect any movement of people or any possibility of our periscope being spotted. The possibilities are remote; not many island people spend much time gazing at the unchanging landscape of the South Pacific ocean. Nevertheless it is a possibility—but search as we may, not a single moving creature is seen on the island. A number of habitations are seen, one, not far from the statue, consisting of a small but attractive pink stucco house surrounded by well-tended foliage and an apparently nicely graded dirt road.

  1116 Took departure from Easter Island enroute Guam, 6734 miles distant.

  This was Sunday, and it was my turn to be the leader at the Protestant church services. I had never led any type of religious meeting before this, and put in a considerable amount of preparation. I called my “lesson” “Shipmate means sharing,” and tried to describe in simple terms the duty I felt was owing from one shipmate to another.

  My little talk appeared to be well received; under the circumstances it could hardly have been otherwise, but I could not help feeling that the events of the last few days had proved not all things could be shared.

  From Easter Island to Guam would take us about two weeks. Aside from the necessity of threading rather neatly between the outlying reefs of one or two archipelagos, we foresaw no need to slow down, except for such maneuvers as we might ourselves decide on. But I remember having a feeling of concern which I could not shake, as we began this longest leg of our trip.

  The passage from Cape Horn to Easter Island had turned out to be full of very real difficulties. Fortunately, all had been successfully remedied, with the exception of the fathometer, but the experience boded ill for the future.

  We could use a fathometer in the Pacific, for it had at least as many peaks as the Atlantic, but there was one difference. Most of these were coral formations instead of volcanic in origin. They should, therefore, be less precipitous, more gradual in slope in both directions, inherently less dangerous. As we moved along our course, we gained assurance in the various methods we had devised to get substitute depth readings, now that the fathometer was no longer working. Every day we became more certain of our ability to detect shoaling water under any circumstances. More and more, I knew that my decision to press on had been the right one.

  As for our equipment, however, the trans-Pacific leg of our voyage began in a manner by then uncomfortably all too familiar. On the seventeenth of March, in the early morning, George Troffer, Triton’s Electrical Officer, stood solemnly outside my door. One of the air compressors which supplied the air pressure needed for certain automatic control systems had gone out of commission. As George explained it, the electric motor had apparently been slowly failing in its resistance to ground and, overworked as it was, had finally given up the ghost. Inspection of the motor had disclosed that the armature windings were entirely burned out.

  This was disquieting news. Although we had stand-by controls for all essential systems, this would necessitate increasing the watch squad in certain areas. It might also, at the same time, result in some sluggishness in the automatic controls. I listened gravely as the technical tale of woe was unfolded.

  “What about a jury rig, George?” I asked.

  George nodded. “I was going to suggest one, Captain,” he said, “but I don’t know how you’ll like it . . .”

  “Shoot,” I said, motioning him to the tiny built-in stool under my folding wash basin.

  Troffer carefully perched on the stool, which had now been dubbed, so I had discovered, “the one-cheek hot seat.”

  “We can get air from the ship’s main air system, though not at the right pressure,” Troffer explained. “But we do have some pressure-reducing valves among our spares, and I think we can rig them up. We’ll have to use two reducers in tandem and the pressure won’t be quite the same, but I think it’ll work.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Where will you get the air from?”

  “Well, maybe we can take it from the ship’s hundred pound service air main,” he said. “That would be the simplest, provided we can get the right reducing valve arrangement. Otherwise, we might have to take it from the four hundred pound air-pressure header.”

  “You’ll need a pretty good length of hose or copper tubing to run it over to the control air system,” I said. “Do we have enough?”

  “We may have to rob something else, but I think it’ll be OK,” George said. “If we have to take it straight off the four hundred pound header, it will be a pretty long run, though.”

  “Well,” I said, “it looks as if we don’t have much choice. See what you can do.”

  Troffer nodded. “I figured the same thing, Captain,” he said. “We’ve already started—one of the troubles, however, is that if we have to use the four hundred pound air system, we’ll have to run it through a watertight door. This will reduce our watertight integrity, because we won’t be able to shut the door if we should have to.”

  “Not so fast,” I interrupted. “If you have to run a line through a
door, let me know before you do, and at all times while that line is through the door, there’ll be a damage-control ax and a heavy set of wire cutters standing by. That’s easy.”

  George’s face cleared as he stood up. “Aye aye, sir. That’s just what we’ll do.”

  As Troffer disappeared down the passageway back toward the engine room, I could not help but reflect upon the tremendous competence Triton had working for her. One way or another, her control system would be working again soon; and I also knew that in due course the reason for the failure of the air-compressor motor would be discovered; its cause eliminated. Shaking out such bugs is always one of the objectives of a shakedown cruise, and Triton was at the moment indubitably on hers. The only difference was that an ordinary ship on a shakedown cruise is unperturbed by minor casualties, even if they temporarily reduce her operability. No one expects a brand-new ship to function perfectly the first time. We, however, had a mission to complete. Not only was the Navy depending on us, but there was also a tradition that no nuclear submarine had yet failed on a mission to which she had been assigned. No doubt it was this confidence in the dependability of Admiral Rickover’s ships which had inspired this voyage in the first place. We would not be the first to break the tradition.

  I knew that this spirit and outlook had permeated our crew. But even so, I was surprised, a few hours later as I was wandering through the engineering spaces, to discover a group of toiling men, conspicuous among them Chief Electrician’s Mate Herbert F. Hardman—the same who had happily announced achievement of a thirteen-year’s ambition at the crossing-of-the-line ceremony—struggling to remove the ponderous inoperative electric motor from the control air compressor to a workbench some distance away.

  “I thought I understood that we had no spare armatures for this thing, Hardman,” I said.

  “We don’t, sir, but this damned motor shouldn’t have broken down. First, we’re going to find out why, and then we’re going to rewind it.”

  “Rewind the armature!” I expostulated. “I’ve heard of Navy Yards and tenders doing that with all the extra equipment they have, but I know darned well we don’t carry any of that kind of gear!”

  Hardman, as I had reason to know, was a man of great positiveness, as well as being an efficient Electrician’s Mate. His whole bearing spoke determination as he answered, “This damned motor is my piece of gear, and it’s going to be running before we get back.” His jaw muscles bulged slightly as he snapped out the last few words.

  I remember wishing at the moment that I had had some appropriate rejoinder worthy of the occasion. All I could think of to say was, “Good!”

  But if I was surprised in the engine room, what I saw that same day in the electronics technician’s storeroom was astonishing. Electronics Technicians G. E. Simpson, M. F. Docker, and N. L. Blaede had started constructing a new fathometer! A stainless-steel cooking pot had been commandeered from the galley, and a number of stainless-steel rods, plus considerable small, fine copper wire from the engineering and electrical spare parts petty officers. The technicians had calculated the resistances and impedances and were busily engaged in constructing a new sound head.

  “Certainly it’ll work,” said Docker. “The question is whether it will be powerful enough to do the job for us, and whether we can find some way to put its signal into the water.”

  Another project they were working on was the conversion of one of our general announcing speakers into a sonar transmitter, a conversion that involved developing a means of making it both watertight and pressure-proof at the same time, and yet able to transmit and receive sonar signals. A third, and much more primitive idea, beating on the bottom of the hull with a hammer, was ready for trial as soon as we happened into shallow water again. All these projects were based on the hope that we might be able to catch an echo on one of our other sonar sets and, by timing it, ascertain the depth of water.

  I could only marvel at the ingenuity of the American sailor. These experiments might not work, but all three were certainly worth trying.

  The last-named idea required no special preparation other than finding the best spot for hammering on the hull, a suitably heavy hammer, and a brawny sailor. Years ago, when the submarine S4 lay sunk on the bottom of Cape Cod Bay, communication had been maintained with the survivors by means of hammering against the hull. It was just possible that enough energy could thus be placed in the water for our modern and acutely sensitive sonar to pick up a returning echo from a nearby shoal.

  When it came time to make the test, Torpedoman Second Class Wilmot A. Jones drew the assignment of being the human fathometer. The forward torpedo room bilges, beneath the torpedo tubes themselves, appeared to be the most suitable spot for the effort. Armed with a heavy sledge hammer, Jones crawled down into position.

  The number of hours poor Jones spent at his task, hammering with prodigious force upon the unyielding structure of Triton’s hull in the hopes that somehow a faint return might be heard, are unrecorded. We heard him clearly inside the ship, but no matter how hard he hammered or how shallow the water, no echo was ever picked up.

  Had we been able to project all the sounds straight down through some sort of a diaphragm or sound-channeling arrangement, better results might have been achieved, for, after all, that is the principle upon which the fathometer itself operates. But this was not possible, and the only tangible result of Jones’s efforts was a cartoon which appeared the next day in the Triton Eagle, showing a section of the forward torpedo room bilges with an idiotic-looking sailor sucking his thumb and crouched below a set of torpedo tubes. He was labeled “Jones,” to be sure he would be properly identified, and with his free hand he was swinging a hammer and pounding on the hull. The balloon above his head held the words, “Da Da Da, Whee—I’m a fathometer.”

  Nevertheless, we had a good idea of the depth of the water. As we approached the charted shallow areas, our search sonar detected shallow water ahead and to port, where we had expected it. In the meantime, Mike Smalet, our gravity-meter expert, noted definite changes in the gravity readings recorded by the “monkey in a cage.” While the change in gravity might have resulted from some other cause, its correlation with the search sonar could not be ignored.

  Crossing the Pacific from Easter Island to Guam took us two weeks, and it was during this trip that Will Adams decided the greatest danger of boredom existed. The same trip took Magellan three months, during which he and his crew nearly starved to death. Our desire to emulate his feat did not extend to culinary duplication, and the various breaks in our monotony which Will devised were to a large degree dependent upon food (Poi, near Hawaii, for example).

  On Sunday evening, the twentieth of March, Triton reached her closest point of approach to Pearl Harbor, and we held a ship’s party in honor of the occasion. Naturally, it had to be a Hawaiian Luau. My memories of such an occasion stemmed from the war years, for I had not been in Hawaii since then. But Will had, and so had Ship’s Cook First Class William “Jim” Crow. In fact, Will had given the matter some forethought, and one of the announcements before departure from New London was that all hands were advised to bring along some sort of sports togs or shirts (he had been very cute about this), similar to Hawaiian “Aloha” shirts, for our expected ship’s party in the Bahamas. He had also suggested that anyone who had a musical instrument bring it along.

  Bob Fisher and Will Adams spent considerable time on the Luau menu. And even though I had been pretty well prepared for what I was to see at 1800 when the party started, I was amazed at what they had done. A coconut tree, bearing two large brown coconuts garnished with great purple leaves, “grew” out of the deck. A number of Hawaiian leis were strung about the overhead, some looking suspiciously like the commercially manufactured article made with bits of colored plastic paper, others obviously homemade. On the bulkheads were drawings of Hawaiian scenes. Having seen some of Tom Thamm’s work before, I had no doubt that a great deal of this was due to him. There were brightly colored sh
irts and two or three battered but gaudy straw hats. There were even hula skirts, made of cloth strips and string. And the food, with the exception of Will Adams’ poi, was uniformly excellent. There was no octopus, the Navy standard menu having no provision for serving octopus in any form, but we did have raw fish garnished with some sort of hot sauce, French-fried shrimp and ocean scallops, sweet-and-sour pork, fruit, salted nuts, and iced punch.

  To my surprise, even the ersatz poi had a number of takers, although so far as I was concerned, it was just like Hawaiian poi: paste without taste. And when the meal was over, and a large, specially baked cake cut and passed around, we all relaxed for an hour, singing songs of the Navy and the submarine force dating back to the war years and before.

  From the Log:

  Monday, 21 March 1960 Shortly after midnight, as we came to periscope depth for celestial observations, it was discovered that the sextant built into our new periscope has gone out of order. This will be a serious blow if we can’t fix it, ameliorated only by the fact that running continuously submerged as we are, we find that our dead-reckoning is most phenomenally accurate. Rarely has our estimated position deviated from our actual observed position by more than a mile or two. It appears that currents and other forces affecting surface ships during transits are much less a factor during submerged runs. To paraphrase an aphorism, “deep waters run still.”

  0531 Periscope sextant is back in commission as the result of some rather inspired work by L. L. Garlock, FTC (SS) and W. E. Constantine, FT1 (SS).

  Our submerged navigation was accomplished by several methods. One consisted of regular observation of the SINS mechanism, a system so new, however, that it was in effect an experimental model, full of bugs and therefore not dependable. Celestial observations through our special periscope proved to be far more accurate; and to Will’s satisfaction, dead-reckoning also surpassed the SINS. Since the celestial observations were by far the most accurate of the three methods, loss of the periscope equipment would have been serious, despite the stand-by system which, thanks to George Sawyer—who had put long hours into having it ready in case of need—we could have placed in service.