Around the World Submerged

by Edward Latimer Beach

  Not long ago I received a letter from an ex-Navy man who wanted to know, since I bore the same name, if I were related to his old skipper in the Memphis. I responded that I was indeed—and after some additional correspondence it developed that Stanley P. Moran of Wilmington, Delaware, one of Memphis’ quartermasters, had rescued the ensign which flew over Memphis that disastrous day.

  Sam Worth of Cleveland, Ohio, its present guardian, had no idea, last February, why I suddenly had such need of his cherished flag, but he sent it to me by special delivery immediately upon receipt of my urgent letter. Soon he and Stanley Moran and all the remaining survivors of the Memphis catastrophe will know why I wanted it; for when Triton enters the Thames River on May 11, next, this same flag will be flying once again, probably for the last time, over a mighty US man-of-war.

  The Navy is composed of ships, and men, and long-held traditions—all melded together in dedicated service to their country. It is more fitting that the last sight graced by this old flag should be one of gladness and success, rather than disaster and death.

  Father has been gone more than 16 years, but this is something I’ve always wanted to do for him.

  Still from the Log:

  Tuesday, 10 May 1960 0430 Surfaced, having been submerged exactly 83 days and 10 hours [figured on twenty-four-hour days], and travelled 36,014 miles.

  The rendezvous is still several hours hence, but we are now approaching the shallow water off the east coast of the United States, where Triton cannot venture without her fathometer. The long voyage is over.

  The men of the Triton believe her long undersea voyage has accomplished something of value for our country. The sea may yet hold the key to the salvation of man and of his civilization, for it is the connecting link between all the diverse parts of the world. The sea has given us a means of waging war, but even more, it has given us an avenue to hold the peace. Never have wars been fought for the sole purpose of controlling or annexing the sea. The limitless sea, like the air and space above the air, is free to all who would use it peacefully, in consonance with the principles of international humanity.

  That the world may better understand this, the Navy directed a submerged retrace of Ferdinand Magellan’s historic circumnavigation. The honor of doing it fell to Triton, but it has been a national accomplishment; for the power which propels our ship, the genius which designed her, the thousands and hundreds of thousands who labored, each at his own métier, in all parts of the country, to build her safe, strong, self-reliant, are America. Triton, a unit of their Navy, pridefully and respectfully dedicates this voyage to the people of the United States.

  EPILOGUE

  Our Log ended at sea, ready for pickup on the morning of the tenth of May, its last entry written several hours in advance of the event in order to have it properly typed and ready upon arrival. Tying up loose ends took until the small hours of the morning, and I finally turned in, exhausted, to get a few hours of sleep before the rendezvous. It fell to Will Adams, therefore, to have the honor of bringing Triton back to the surface just before dawn. I was awakened by the jolt of high-pressure air roaring into her twenty-two main ballast tanks.

  As we slowly steered toward the appointed place off Rehoboth Beach, leaden gray skies gradually replaced the dark overcast of night. With the day came our first visitor, a curious sea bird winging in graceful circles and figure eights overhead, swooping in civilized instinct low over our wake for the bits of garbage which he and his fellows have long learned to associate with ships at sea. Land itself was not to be seen, and we might as well have been in the middle of the Atlantic, or in the Pacific, half a world away. But this romantic notion lasted only a short time. Soon our sea bird was joined by another type of bird, a land variety with wheels, a fixed wing, and a propeller glinting light from its nose. Behaving like its handsome wild cousin, the small plane flew low to pass by our side at close range. We waved vigorously at its occupants, who could clearly be seen waving in return. One of them, holding a large camera, appeared to be taking pictures.

  Soon, another small plane joined the first one, and then a third. And speeding out of the west, where the shadows of early morning were yet visible in the horizon haze, the bows of a speedboat pushed a white mustache of water in front of it. It looked familiar as it came closer, and in a few minutes, as it turned broadside, I remembered where I had last seen this powerful craft, or one like it. An experimental postwar PT boat, it had been based at the old Washington Navy Yard for the past several years. The Officer-in-Charge was known as a person whose knowledge of the Potomac River and ability to handle small craft were second to none in the Navy. I wondered if it was indeed the same boat, if Walter Slye had been sent to meet us, and indeed whether or not he still held the post. Binocular inspection brought no answer while the boat was still bows on, but when it sheared off and presented its silhouette, the interior of the cockpit became visible and revealed Slye himself, uniform cap, as always, perched squarely on the top of his head. With delight, I waved my cap to him, and he waved back.

  It seemed only a few minutes, though it must have been some time later, that one of the lookouts reported the approach of two helicopters lumbering toward us from the hidden continent to the west. Radioed instructions had prepared us; I went on deck with George Sawyer and the helicopter landing party. When one of the machines hovered over our deck aft to lower a strange inverted mushroom-shaped object to us, I set my hat firmly on my head, ignored the fluttering roar and wind from the whirling blades, and seated myself on it, straddling the center stalk and wrapping my arms around it. To my surprise, the mushroom, which had looked like metal of some kind, felt like foam rubber and was not a bit uncomfortable. I looked down. George was already many feet below me, holding up a signal flag, and Triton was receding at a rapid pace. There was suddenly something alongside me—the fuselage of the helicopter and a yawning door into the interior. Friendly faces stared at me and friendly arms reached out to steady the mushroom seat.

  Dismounting, I pressed my face against the Plexiglass window of the passenger compartment to see the ship in which I had spent nearly a quarter of a year under water. She looked small, out of her element on the surface. Her sturdy sides were mottled where the paint had been stripped away, and they were speckled here and there with discolorations of rust. A small knot of men stood on her deck—the helicopter handling party whom I had just left—and a group of heads were clustered on her bridge. Slowly, under the command of Will Adams, she gathered way on the leisurely course toward New London which had been directed, holding her speed unaccustomedly low and making only a tiny bow wave. Quickly, she vanished in the distance.

  The clattering of the helicopter engine made conversation practically impossible in the passenger compartment, and someone handed me a piece of paper on which was written, “What was your first impression of the world after returning to it?” I wrote back, “It smells fishy!” This was the most immediate sensation, a fishlike odor which had seemed to permeate the entire superstructure of the ship. A number of suckerlike organisms had attached themselves to the bridge area, and there were no doubt many more of them throughout the ship’s immense superstructure. There would have to be a pretty thorough scraping, scaling, and repainting job done during our “post-shakedown” overhaul, I reflected.

  The grinding beat of the rotating blades brought us over a sandy beach, then some green and plowed farm fields. Here and there were houses. We passed one moderate-sized city, then suddenly were over a bigger one. The helicopter dipped lower. I could see streets and automobiles, and people walking on the sidewalks. There was a surprising number of trees, in many cases almost entirely concealing the streets beneath them. Then we were over a large muddy river. A tall stone obelisk, standing in the midst of a great expanse of grass, reached almost up to us. The helicopter ceased its forward motion, swayed gently fore and aft, swung completely around once or twice, slowly settled. Below us was more grass, a carefully kept lawn dominated by a large building. Wit
h a thrill I recognized the White House. The plane landed gently just a few yards in front of the South Portico.

  The next two hours were, to say the least, kaleidoscopic. Scores of well-wishers greeted me. I shook hands a hundred times, and suddenly a pair of arms went around my neck from behind and a familiar kiss landed on my ear. There stood Ingrid, looking somewhat breathless but otherwise exactly as I had remembered her these three months.

  “How is everybody?” I asked.

  “Fine,” she said.

  “Come along,” someone else said—and the next thing I knew I was talking to the President.

  In my hand I carried a letter and envelope addressed to President Eisenhower, carefully cacheted with a replica of our circumnavigation plaque which we had printed with homemade ink. There had been a number of experimental inks concocted, but the most successful one—hydraulic oil, ground charcoal, and insulating paint, as I recall—was extremely slow in drying. To protect the envelope from being smudged, I had wrapped it, along with others for Mrs. Eisenhower, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the Navy, in the only readily available highly absorbent paper we had. Now, standing before the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, I shook his proffered hand, reported successful completion of our mission, and handed him the letter we had so painstakingly prepared for him. Only then, to my horror, did I realize that I had neglected to remove the protective paper covering.

  “What’s this?” the President asked, with a slightly puzzled frown.

  I froze with the realization of the enormity of my faux pas. “It’s—it’s just a little toilet paper we had to use to keep the ink from smudging,” I blurted out despairingly.

  I had worked for the President in the fairly intimate capacity of Naval Aide a few years earlier, but nothing in our relationship had prepared me for this situation. I had never lost my feeling of great awe for him, and I stood rooted to the rug in his office, waiting for I knew not what result of this indignity.

  People who knew President Eisenhower longer and better than I might perhaps have been able to predict his reaction. For my part, it was with the greatest relief that I became witness to a magnificent set of Presidential “Ha ha’s” and “Ho ho’s,” delivered as he shook with mirth, steadying himself with one hand braced on the top of his desk.

  “What in the world did you say to the Old Man?” the Press Secretary demanded, as officials whisked me away again. I told him, and Jim Hagerty chuckled. “That’s probably the most fun the boss has had all week,” he said. “Good for you!” He said something else, too, and there was an undercurrent of seriousness in his manner which came back to me later, but at the time I was too bemused at all that was going on to catch it.

  I had a few minutes chat with Admiral Rickover, and then found myself in yet another room where a large map of our route had been prepared, and several thousand newsmen, it seemed to me, had gathered. Each one had a camera, and each used it constantly. Someone had taken care of Ingrid, I saw with relief when I looked around. There were a lot of pictures and many questions, some humorous and some serious, and after a while the President reappeared to pose with us for a few moments. Then Ingrid stood beside me for more pictures, and a large model of the Triton was handed to the two of us, so that we stood there helplessly with all four arms gripping the six-foot-long gray-and-black replica.

  “Kiss your wife!” someone commanded, and we dutifully obliged.

  “This way—do it again!” We turned toward the latest importunator, kissed again.

  The smile on Ingrid’s face was becoming just a little grim, I thought. She leaned over and whispered, “My heel has come off!” I looked around desperately for a rescuer to take the model. Someone nearby took over Triton, junior, and a White House policeman ran off with the shoe for emergency repairs.

  Later, riding in a White House limousine toward the Pentagon to call on Mr. William B. Franke, Secretary of the Navy, I had my first sight of a recent newspaper. It was full of stories about the U-2, the high-flying reconnaissance plane which had in some manner been forced down in Soviet Russia, and I read the reports with growing concern and understanding. Ringing through my ears were the cryptic sentences uttered by Hagerty as he ushered me out of the President’s huge oval office: “Have you heard about the U-2?” he had asked.

  “No,” I had answered. “What is it—a new German submarine?”

  Hagerty’s laugh had not been one of amusement. “Well, you’ll find out soon enough. Thank God you made it back when you did!”

  This, of itself, might have meant little to me, had it not been supplemented by another comment from another source: “You’ve shown the oceans are still free to all. Of all the things we’d planned to prove for the summit conference, you were the only one to come through!”

  This was the outcome of the secret we had carried around the world! I had not realized that other efforts were being made at the same time as Triton’s, but it figured. A thing this important would not, logically, have been left to the single exertions of a single agent.

  Five hours after leaving the Triton’s deck, I was delivered back aboard in the same manner—full of news, good and bad information, and the plans for the next day’s arrival ceremonies at New London. I took over the ship’s announcing system to pass the word to as many people as possible all at once, and then surrendered to the avid questioners in the wardroom.

  Next morning, Wednesday, the eleventh of May, Triton stood up the Thames River a few minutes before our scheduled arrival at the dock in New London. Except for the temperature, which was considerably warmer, we might have been back in February again. A blustery nor’easter greeted us, with overcast skies and drizzling rain. We had intended to make a grand entrance up the river, with the crew standing in ranks in their whites on deck, the whole ship presenting the formal appearance of spit and polish (except for her weather-beaten sides) traditionally expected of naval vessels home from a long voyage. But not this day. It would have taken a lot to dampen our spirits, and if I had wanted it, I knew the whole crew would willingly have stood on deck, rain or no rain. But there was no point to getting more than the minimum possible number of persons bedraggled and wet. The men in the anchor detail had to be on deck, and a few were needed to break out mooring lines; they wore foul-weather gear and were required to stand in a semblance of ranks when not actually working. Everyone else, except the bridge personnel, was allowed to stay below.

  The weather was not bad enough to prevent a number of pleasure boats from coming out to welcome us and escort us up-stream, however, and on both banks of the river cars stopped, honked their horns at us, and people got out to wave. The Groton Police barracks must have halted all administration of justice, for the windows of the building were full of people waving and shouting.

  The rain was fitful and there was very little wind; so as we came near to the berth which had been assigned to us, we had all the hatches opened and all hands who wanted to, who were not occupied below, came on deck to man the rail. Gently, we eased Triton into her berth, handling her with affectionate care and minimum speed. At the head of the dock, there was a riot of color amid the somber drabness of the New London “State Pier,” and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind what that was.

  We presented, after all, rather a military appearance as our ship inched her way to her mooring. The rain had stopped—or perhaps it was only that we didn’t notice it—and everyone, without orders, stood tall and straight at his post. But it wasn’t quite the Prussian military ideal, either, for there was a certain surreptitious craning of necks, of searching the throng of women and children on the dock for a loved face, and now and then a furtive and thoroughly unmilitary signal of recognition. Studiously, I noticed none of this, kept my attention riveted on getting the ship alongside the dock with the least fuss—except that every now and then I, too, found myself checking over the faces under the rain hats and umbrellas.

  Finally, I found those I sought. Ingrid had promised to have our three chil
dren out of school for the occasion, and there they were, looking rather unhappy and solemn about the whole thing. Ned, Jr., and Hugh were each dutifully holding one of the large “Welcome Home Triton” signs with which many of those present were provided—no doubt a contribution of Electric Boat’s public-relations outfit.

  In a few minutes our visitors were abreast of Triton’s sail, as we warped her slowly in, and I picked up a megaphone and made the shortest speech on record. “Hi!” I bellowed to them.

  Not far away the Coast Guard Band played martial music for the occasion, blowing with gusto and not caring, evidently, whether the rain filled their horns with water or not. And as I glanced above me, a gust of wind caught Father’s old flag, flying from the top of our extended periscope, and straightened its ancient folds in reminiscent glory.

  Suddenly my eyes smarted, and I deliberately looked down on deck to make sure that number one line had been properly led around a fair-lead cleat to the forward capstan.

  A gangway was standing by, ready as soon as our mooring lines were doubled up and secured, and a battery of news cameras was waiting to record the first tender moments of arrival and greeting. Planned for our arrival was a ceremony in which the Secretary of the Navy, having flown from Washington for the purpose, was to award the Presidential Unit Citation to the ship and thereby authorize the entire crew to wear the Citation ribbon on their uniforms. We had designated the Chief of the Ship, Chief Torpedoman’s Mate Chester R. Fitzjarrald, to receive the award in the name of crew and officers. Then the Secretary was to award Allen Steele the Navy Commendation Ribbon for his inspired action in combating the hydraulic oil leak, which had so nearly caused loss of depth control two-and-a-half weeks before.