Last Out From Roaring Water Bay

by Joe Lane

  Hamer curled his top lip and resumed his interest in the enlargements. “That’s a Japanese cargo submarine used during WWII?”

  “You’re very observant, Sherlock.”

  “Cut the crap, Speed! Is that why you’re here in Ireland, to find a submarine?”

  “I happen to have a passion for wreck diving.”

  “You’re wasting your time even looking, Speed.”

  Shamus jumped in. “Exactly what I told him, sir.”

  Hamer scowled at the interruption. “There aren’t any such wrecks in these parts.”

  “You’re just as bad as Shamus; spoiling my dreams.”

  “I’d say we’re doing you a favour.”

  “I take it that you’re an expert on the subject of wrecks, Hamer?”

  “I know enough to tell you there are no sunken submarines in these waters. There was only ever one Japanese submarine sunk in this part of the world during the war.” He flicked his head sideways. “And that was out there in the deep blue ocean of the Atlantic in 1944. That’s historical fact. And that particular submarine has already been located by the yanks in recent times, pinpointed and recorded. Besides, Speed, if you’re thinking of an Atlantic rendezvous, I’d give up now. It’s far too deep for you and your flippers.”

  “Have you any idea how long I can hold my breath?”

  “Not long enough, Speed. Save your air tanks. Let’s instead have a nice cruise around the harbour, collect our things and get ourselves back to London to sort out our problems. Then we can think about a holiday to somewhere warm and pleasant and away from the smell of fish. I’ll even get Morgan to finance the arrangement.”

  I gave him a stern look and said, “You’re trying to be bossy again.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Nobody’s stopping you.”

  “You’re forgetting Morgan.”

  “You just decide whether you want to come along and play pirates or not?”

  *

  Hamer made the trip with us to Clear Island after all. His presence suited me. At least I could keep an eye on him. It turned out that Hamer made a lousy sailor. He suffered miserably with seasickness throughout the rough voyage. He grasped whatever he could in the wheelhouse providing it didn’t move and he wouldn’t let go. Not even for a beer. I left him to suffer alone in the corner of the wheelhouse.

  Me! I was excited with the prospect of solving the mystery of the elusive I-52 when we arrived at the proposed diving site; the position Shamus and I had calculated where the submarine would have been at the time when the photograph was taken by Craven’s Spitfire. Shamus dropped the Muff’s anchor.

  I changed into my diving gear. While doing so I explained to Shamus the importance of conducting a rigorous training session for a surface coordinator on line duty and the various pulling signs he must know to communicate and understand the diver below. I also stressed the fact that this practice was what a diver’s life depended on. Twice I went through the procedure with him. Twice I didn’t get the responsive confidence I’d hoped for. Just his expression alone told me he didn’t fancy taking on the responsibility alone. When Hamer made an appearance on deck I asked him if he understood the procedure, but he shrugged, made a mad dash for the starboard side and promptly threw up his half digested morning meal.

  Again I went through the communication rope pulling signals with him while I slipped into the neoprene dry suit, attached the aqualung (double tri-mix air tanks-air regulator-buoyancy compensator), put on an adjustable buoyancy life jacket, weight-belt, fins and silicon facemask resting on my forehead. I illuminated the rubber torch to check it was working; checked the knives were in position, one on my arm and one attached to the side of my leg; checked the wrist attached dive computer (calculated depth, temperature and compass bearings). I attached the safety line and I was ready to dive.

  “Right, Shamus! Listen again! You are the shore and I’m the diver. Okay?”

  “I’ve got that, Shacks sir.”

  “One pull on the rope by shore indicates, ‘are you okay’ to the diver. If the diver pulls the rope once, it indicates, ‘I’m okay’. Understand?”

  “Indeed I do, Shacks, sir. It’s one pull and you’re okay.”

  “Two pulls by shore, indicates, ‘stay still’. Two pulls by diver, indicates, ‘I’m still’. Three pulls by shore, indicates, ‘go down’. Three pulls by diver, indicates, ‘going down’. Four pulls by shore, indicates, ‘come up’. Four pulls by diver, indicates, ‘coming up’. Continuous pulls by shore, indicates, ‘emergency bring you up’. Continuous pulls by diver, indicates, ‘bring me up’. Have you got all that?”

  “Indeed, I do, Shacks, sir.” He prodded the side of his head. “All here, within the confines of me head.”

  “It better had be there, Shamus because I’m depending on you,” I warned him. “Now is the blue flag flying to show other crafts a diver is down in the water?”

  “It is, Shacks, sir, flapping in the wind, it is.”

  I pulled the goggles down over my eyes, put the aqualung mouthpiece in and sucked in some air to test it was working correctly. And then I made a walk-in dive and dropped beneath the water line, brought my knees up to my midriff and threw my head down, kicked the fins and made my descent into the depths of Roaring Water Bay.

  I descended at an energy saving pace. The water darkened the deeper I dived and the water temperature dropped rapidly; not exactly a diver’s paradise. Further down I had to revert to switching on the powerful rubber torch I’d brought with me.

  I made routine checks of my depth on the wrist computer until I’d reached the bottom vegetation. If a large vessel of any description was down on the seabed, especially a submarine of such a massive length, I was confident I would find the frigging thing, that’s if it hadn’t sailed away in 1944, as Shamus had already suggested plus making the annoying point that if it was here why hadn’t it been discovered before now? But I wasn’t to have my confidence dampened by wasteful thoughts so I pressed on regardless; there was a lot of seabed to search and breathing time under water is limited.

  In a short time I’d covered a fair section of seabed, establishing a grid reference search which took me in towards the rocky shores and back out again. I marked the areas I’d covered on my submersible chart. It was tiring work which wasn’t surprising considering the strong currents I had to swim against. I decided to take a break and warm my bones with a hot cup of tea mixed with a tot of paddy’s whiskey. I pulled the rope four times to indicate to Shamus that I was coming to the surface. I began the surfacing procedure with the utmost of care and if I were to apply the wrong application on my return to the surface, I would have ended up inside a decompression chamber with the bends, and that’s not regarded as having a thumping headache but more in line as a close to death experience. I should know because I’ve been there before.

  It was ten years ago now and it hadn’t been through stupidity that I’d surfaced too quickly and found myself abandoned inside the scary atmosphere of a decompression chamber. But it wasn’t as scary as having a great white shark bearing in on me, forcing me to swim for my life. The choice I made was simple. I’d rather experience the agonizing bends than have half my limbs shredded with a set of razor sharp teeth. Apart from that one unfortunate incident of the bends, my competence in scuba-diving was down to being taught under the guidance and supervision of the great Jacque-Yves Cousteau and his simple application: never allow yourself to ascend faster than your last air bubble. Watch the bubbles or you will suffer, he used to harp on…

  When I broke the surface, Shamus’s large hand was there to haul me aboard. I removed my facemask. Shamus stood there with a cocky grin on his red veined face.

  “Now didn’t Shamus O’Malley say there wasn’t anything of interest down there, Shacks, sir?”

  I removed my aqualung. “Take that smug look off your face, Shamus. I haven’t finished the search yet.”

  “O’ well, I be thinking how boring it must be looking f
or the mysterious one. If yer fancy a change, I’d noticed a shoal of fish off the portside. We’ll catch a pan-full that I promise.”

  “Sod off, Shamus! I’ll take a two hour rest, change of tanks and I’ll make a second dive. Where’s Hamer gone?”

  “He’s down below, Shacks sir; from under my feet.”

  “Better join him while you make a mug of tea. And don’t be selfish with the added whiskey or else I’ll dock your wages.”

  *

  In less than two hours I was back down beneath the murkiness of the bay scavenging the seabed once more, swimming in a cross-directional search pattern, interweaving through the vegetation, with small playful fish darting across the torch beam in a game of dare. I checked meticulously every conceivable object large or small that was encrusted with sea-life in-case the submarine had exploded and fragmented over the seabed. Up-turned everything and frustratingly I found nothing remotely resembling even a scrap of submarine.

  I stretched my search area further left, approximately the size of half a football field. Frustrating as it was turning out to be, it’s moments like this when some searchers would be ready for chucking in the towel; that self doubt tapping the back of their skull that they were wasting time and effort. I’d never reached that stage yet but I was getting rather close to quitting myself.

  My overall assessments had me thinking I was looking in the wrong place. Not my fault entirely. It stands to reason that a submarine the size of the I-52 just doesn’t evaporate to metal filings unless it had been lost for a thousand years. There would be pieces scattered along the seabed; big pieces that wouldn’t need even an underwater metal detector to locate. Maybe Shamus was right after all and there would be nothing to find. Perhaps he knew more than he was telling me and was quite happy to leave me to my own devices. It stands to reason that the longer I’m unsuccessful the more he’s paid. I wondered if Shamus was playing the artful dodger underneath his jovial expression. Or perhaps I was just deflecting my own failures on Shamus which was unfair to him.

  I snapped out of my negative thoughts quickly. I was no quitter and I wasn’t about to begin now. My success in finding objects was down purely to perseverance; that and the thrill of the challenge. And if I were to falter in the belief of my abilities I now had the back-up to drive me on: Tommy and Lens, and the horrific way they died.

  I was back into my swimming, concentrating and focusing on the seabed. I’d covered a fair section when I felt the first signs of fatigue beginning to slow me down. I checked my air gauge, my aqualung was showing low. I twisted to make one last run and was about to kick out the fins when something caught my eye.

  I floated over a section of seabed vegetation which I’d noticed was behaving in an abnormal pattern; swaying differently to the rest of the surrounding vegetation So minute the deviation, that at first I thought it was an optical illusion, that was, until I viewed it from three different angles to confirm the phenomenon. The clumps of long sea grasses definitely swayed in the opposite direction than the surrounding forms of mixed vegetation. In theory, the sea grass was being pulled towards the shore, as if in some sort of slipstream. I swam down amongst the swaying grasses. The current was stronger in this area; a sort of vortex. I could physically feel an ebbing flow, to and fro, like the waves crashing against the shoreline of a rocky beach. Using the palm of my hand I traced the flow towards the rock face and came across a large split in the rocks which, strangely, reminded me of a giant woman’s vagina on the verge of penetration. The split rock was approximately two feet wide at its centre point before narrowing at the top and bottom of its approximate four feet in length. It was nowhere near wide enough for me to squeeze through to investigate there and then. I shone the torch beam through the gap and into a fissure, the light losing its way the deeper it penetrated, and I did get the impression that the fissure widened the further it went.

  I dwindled over a few possibilities: the time scale and strenuous effort it would take to widen the split in the rock to fit my frame through? And what would I find on the other side if there was another side to discover?

  I’d plenty to think about as I swam away from the rock face a short distance and surveyed it at another angle. I floated there, seeing an alternative picture. I got the impression that at sometime in the past that particular part of the rock face had been the opening to an underwater cave and an eruption of great magnitude had caused a rock fall which eventually covered the entrance. Right or wrong, whichever outcome, it needed checking. I’d strong urges now, the same urges and tingles I get when I’m close to finding lost treasure in the vastness of an open field, and that in built directional finder I had was at it again.

  I considered what options I had for enlarging the gap. Other than a mechanical digger or a few sticks of underwater explosives, I guessed I’d be limited to a long, strong steel engineers lever, and even then there could be repercussions, as I had no way of knowing if my actions would cause a subsidence that could endanger my life. To understand the principals of what I intended to do, it would require a second opinion from an expert, but that would take time, involve more people, and attract too much attention to myself and it was the attention I was trying to avoid.

  I studied the terrain intensely, shining the torch beam up and down, following the cracks and crevices of the rock-face. I finally came to the conclusion that the formation of the rocks around that particular area was the result of a severe disturbance sometime in the past. When in the past I wasn’t sure about. I marked the area on my chart and kicked for the surface because at that precise moment my safety line was pulled four times: come up!

  Back on board, Shamus shouted in my ear as if he assumed that being below water made you deaf for a while. “Weather’s changing for worse, Shacks sir.”

  I flicked my head towards Hamer who was now sitting in the wheelhouse. “It’s not the only thing that’s changing,” I grinned.

  “He’s in a bad state, Shacks, sir. I don’t think the idea of him coming along was a good choice.”

  “O yes it was,” I winked.

  I glanced up at the darkening skies and felt the sudden rush of a strengthening wind. The crack of lightening far to the West encouraged me to shape myself and quickly squeezed out of my diving gear while I talked to Shamus. “Do you know if there are any charted underwater caves around Clear Island?”

  Shamus rubbed the bristles on his chin in thought. “I wouldn’t be sure of that. I’ve never been one for diving meself, Shacks, sir.”

  “So the possibility’s there then?”

  “We could take a peek into maritime records, Shacks, sir. Maybe ask the locals around the harbour. And there’s a diving school a couple of miles out of Baltimore. We could ask them.”

  “I’d rather not involve anybody else at this time.”

  “Yer found something, haven’t yer?”

  “I’m not sure what I’ve found, Shamus. But I’ll know better on the next dive.”

  Hamer disturbed us when he poked his head out of the wheelhouse; death had almost caught up with him He didn’t look at all well, but he still had a sense of humour when he said, “You still with us, Speed? I came to see you drown and you’re disappointing me.”

  “Why don’t you accompany me on my next dive? There’s nothing like a close encounter to witness a drowning man. You could ensure I’d drowned if you held me under water until I ran out of air.”

  “I’d savour the moment, Speed! Only how the fuck am I expected to get back to shore; you know I’m a lousy swimmer?”

  “Yes, there is that scenario. You might also want to consider this: what if the boat sinks before we get back to Baltimore?”

  Hamer did consider the possibility and took it badly. He dashed to the portside and promptly vomited into the sea. I pulled a squeamish expression, and who could blame me after I saw what Hamer had just ejected over the side.

  The return journey to Baltimore harbour turned out to be an absolute nightmare with the heavy swell challenging
the Muff’s durability. None of the conditions bothered Shamus in the slightest; in fact he looked like he was enjoying the occasion immensely. I soldiered on with the pretence that nothing bothered me. Hamer, as it was, disappointed me considering how he’d bragged about his toughness. The sea definitely wasn’t for him.

  I looked away and beyond where Hamer stood spewing. I’d caught site of what appeared to be a large fishing trawler about a half mile off our position. There’s nothing sinister about a fishing vessel operating in these waters and in fairness I shouldn’t have had any concerns, but I had. The trawler gave me the distinct impression that it was shadowing us. I couldn’t be rightly sure and there was nothing to suggest that the trawler showed interest in the Muff. If anything the trawler was probably and wisely heading for the safety of Baltimore to shelter from the storm, as we were.

  Still, there was something pecking away at my skull trying to get to my brain. The more I observed the trawler, the more I found the whole set-up strange, though I couldn’t quite work out what was missing from the scene. And I would have expected a ship of that size to have the horsepower to stretch its distance between itself and the Muff instead of maintaining equal knots.

  I grabbed a pair of binoculars and went out on deck to check the trawler over. I remembered I’d seen the trawler before, anchored just outside Baltimore harbour that morning. When the binoculars fell on the bridge of the trawler my suspicions were proven right. I was literally staring into another set of binoculars. We were under observation. The problem was, the distance between the two vessels made identification of the watcher difficult for me. The situation reminded me of the cold war days when Russian trawlers use to stalk Navy ships. I say Russian because the trawler was flying a Russian flag.

  I went back inside the wheelhouse and gave Shamus a nudge to distract him from his concentration, shoving the binoculars in hand. “What do you make of that trawler off the starboard bow?”

  Shamus rammed the glasses hard into his deeply wrinkled eye-sockets. “She’s not a regular at Baltimore, Shacks sir. And she isn’t there for the fishing.”