On the Bottom: The Raising of the Submarine S-51

I

COLLISION

On a dark September night, with a cold breeze whipping up a choppy sea about fifteen miles to the eastward of Block Island, the steamship City of Rome plowed northward towards Boston. Four bells struck. The new lookout took his post in the bow, sheltering himself from the wind by crouching low behind the bulwark.

Light on the starboard bow!

The mate on the bridge acknowledged the report, and sent word to the captain in his cabin. The City of Rome kept on her course. The helmsman went below for an inspection, leaving the mate, who relieved him at the wheel, alone on the bridge.

The lookout watched the light; a single white point perhaps five miles off. Gradually it grew brighter as they overhauled it, but its bearing remained constant, broad on the starboard bow. Twenty minutes went by. The light grew very bright. The lookout gazed inquiringly at his own bridge. The other ship, whatever it was, had the right of way, but the City of Rome made no move to pass astern.

They were very close now. The strange light was almost under their bow when a red side light flashed into view close to the white one. Simultaneously the mate started to swing the ship to port and blew his whistle frantically.

Hearing the noise, the captain rushed to the bridge, took a hasty glimpse at the lights on his starboard bow, and then, disregarding their proximity, ordered his ship swung to starboard towards the lights, trying to pass astern of them.

For one brief second the lookout, peering over the side, saw the dim outline of a submarine as they swung towards her, then came the crash.

The submarine, struck just forward of its conning tower, rolled drunkenly to starboard, then fell away as the City of Rome slipped by. The captain of the submarine appeared on her bridge. The startled passengers on the steamer, looking over the side, caught a brief glimpse of his face looking up, heard one agonized cry from below:

For God’s sake, throw us a line!

The City of Rome, speed unchecked, rushed on by.

II

ON THE S-51

Inside the S-51, except for the few men on watch, the crew were turned in, closely packed in their bunks in the battery room. On the little bridge, two officers and two seamen, heavily clothed, conned the ship;—course northwest, speed eleven and a half knots.

A cold spray broke over the low-lying hull. All hatches were secured, except the single one leading from the bridge down through the conning tower to the control room. The Diesel engines were drawing air from an intake valve just under the bridge.

Lieutenant Dobson, commanding the S-51, dropped into the control room to study the charts. He was closing on Block Island; in another hour he would head out to sea again to continue his twenty-four-hour reliability run.

Shortly after 10 P.M., the lights of a steamer were sighted on their port quarter. They gradually drew closer. The watch on the S-51’s bridge examined her. They had the right of way; under the International Rules of the Road at Sea the S-51 was required to maintain its course and speed. As their own stern light was plainly visible to the other ship, they felt no alarm. The steamer would shortly change course and pass astern of them.

They watched as the City of Rome drew closer and closer, but saw no change in her bearing. A few more minutes and the steamer was looming over their port quarter, very close now. She was evidently going to run them down in spite of the rules. They must look out for themselves.

Hard right! The submarine’s rudder went over and she started to swing to starboard. With relief her officers noted that the steamer, almost on top of them, was starting to turn to port, away from them, as she commenced blowing her whistle. Then to their horror they saw the steamer change her direction, and swing to starboard right for their side. The next instant, there was a terrific crash as the stem of the City of Rome struck the battery compartment.

The S-51 was thrown violently to starboard. Through a huge hole in her port side, water started to rush into the room, filled with sleeping men.

Dewey Kyle, machinist’s mate, flung by the shock from an upper bunk into the narrow starboard passage, found himself in water up to his waist when he hit the deck. Running aft through the battery room, the water followed as he stepped through the door into the control room. A few seamen, clothed as he was, only in their underwear, were climbing the ladder to the conning tower. The men on watch in the room stood by their controls; a chief petty officer there, who might easily have left, helped Kyle up the ladder but himself stayed below at his station.

Kyle scrambled up through the little conning tower and out the hatch to the bridge; as he did so he found himself swimming. The submarine had disappeared beneath his feet. He was the last man out.

A dark hull, looking mountain high, was disappearing in the darkness. The water was cold, the choppy sea made swimming difficult. Kyle thanked his luck he was not loaded down by clothing. Nearby he could see eight other swimmers,—his captain, the lieutenants who had been on watch on the bridge, the helmsman, the quartermaster, a few others. They were struggling desperately to rid themselves of their heavy clothes so they could swim.

One by one they vanished in the dark water, till only two beside Kyle remained afloat. Like him, Geier and Lyra had been catapulted from their bunks by the collision; being nearer to the control room they had escaped before him; now only these three unclothed swimmers of the crew of thirty-six remained on the surface.

Desperately they swam on in the wake of the steamer; after nearly an hour in the water, a small boat picked them up, and brought them aboard the City of Rome. In a few minutes, ship and survivors were on their way to Boston.

Some hours later, when nearing the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal, the City of Rome reported the accident by radio.

III

RESCUE EFFORTS

"COMMANDER CONTROL FORCE TO COMMANDING OFFICER U.S.S. Falcon:

"S-51 reported in collision latitude 41° 12’ N., longitude 71° 15’ W. Falcon proceed to scene immediately prepared for rescue work."

I handed the radio message back to Lieutenant Hartley. Already he was casting off his lines to the pier, and in a few minutes the Falcon was standing out of the New York Navy Yard and heading up the East River towards Long Island Sound.

The delayed report from the City of Rome had been picked up in Boston, and telephoned to the Submarine Base at New London. The Camden, flagship of the Control Force, had passed the word to us at New York.

The Falcon made her best speed, but it was one hundred and fifty miles to the position given in the orders. We could not arrive until after dark.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Hartley, commanding officer of the rescue ship, plotted the position of the accident on the chart while I watched. His dividers pricked a point in the open sea, fourteen miles east of Block Island, fifteen miles southeast of Brenton Reef Lightship off Point Judith. We looked at the sounding printed there. Twenty-two fathoms,—one hundred and thirty-two feet deep. It was a bad position. Exposed to gales from every quarter. Nothing to break up the swells rolling in from the Atlantic when the winds subsided. And Point Judith was notorious as being the meeting place of all the winds that blew.

We steamed on through Long Island Sound, past New Haven, past New London, through The Race as the afternoon wore on. A message informed us that the diving launch from the Torpedo School at Newport, twenty-five miles away, had arrived on the scene at noon. Several destroyers searching had located the wreck by a stream of oil and air bubbles making a slick about two miles from the spot reported by the City of Rome.

Hartley broke out his diving gear and cleared the side for working. We had only two divers,—Chief Torpedoman Frazer of the Falcon, and Shipwright Anderson, whom I had brought from the Navy Yard. Two men in deep water could do little, but there would be a few others there from Newport.

As night fell we cleared the northern end of Block Island and stood out to sea in the darkness. The Falcon started to pitch as we met the waves. Far ahead we could see clusters of faint lights, and steered for these. By 10 P.M. we had arrived.

A weird scene. In the blue glare of searchlights from the mother ship Camden, a submarine stood sharply out against the background of black water, a stream of bubbles and oil frothing up against her side. From her conning tower two hoses led over the rail and disappeared in the sea. One hundred and thirty-two feet below they were attached to the S-51. The S-50 was pumping air continuously to her stricken sister.

A piercing note coming through the water vibrated against the Falcon’s hull,—the S-50’s oscillator was sounding the lost submarine’s call continuously. We listened on our microphones. No answer came from below.

In the darkness we could make out several destroyers, another submarine, some smaller boats.

Blinker lights flashed from the Camden’s yardarm. Our quartermaster spelled out the order:

"Falcon, anchor clear of S-50. Prepare for diving in morning."

Slowly we steamed to a spot about five hundred yards astern of the illuminated submarine. On the forecastle, Chief Boatswain Burnett tripped the locking gear, our anchor chain roared out through the hawsepipe, we came to rest.

Quietness reigned except for that haunting call vibrating steadily through the water. Nothing showed through the darkness except the gray sides of the S-50, shining ghostlike in the searchlight beams.

Soon the coughing of a motorboat broke the silence. A launch came alongside, heaving up and down against the low bulwarks on the Falcon. A petty officer was helped over our rail. Only one brief word from his shipmates,—Bends. He passed into our recompression chamber, the heavy door swung to, compressed air started to whistle in as the needle on the gauge moved up. The first diver on the S-51 was being treated in the iron doctor for the disease that makes the ocean depths so dangerous to penetrate.

About midnight, he came out, much relieved. A slight figure was Chief Torpedoman Ingram, diver on the Torpedo Testing Range at Newport. Briefly he told me his story.

I went down the stream of air bubbles. The sub is lying way over on her port side with a big hole in her battery room. I walked her deck from bow to stern and I hammered on every hatch. Not a sound inside. They’re all dead down there!

Ingram gave us a few more details. Bubbles of air were leaking from around all the hatches. It was very hard to walk on the deck because of the heavy port list. He was the first man down, going over from the side of the little diving launch. They had no time to rig a telephone in his helmet, consequently he could not report what he saw while on the bottom. When he finally gave the signal on his line to come up, four jerks, those on the surface, anxious for the report, had hauled him up with only a short decompression.

A case of bends was the result, with no means of treatment till the Falcon arrived with her recompression tank.

Another diver, following Ingram, had attached air hoses to the salvage connections in the side of the S-51; the S-50 was pumping air below in the hope that she might help any possible survivors.

I looked toward the S-50; the air was coming up in masses of bubbles as fast as she was sending it down.

When morning came, I. was ordered to report aboard the Camden. I learned that the admiral there had hired a wrecking company for the rescue work; two of their largest derricks were already on the way from New York.

It was assumed that the survivors, if any, would be in the stern. If so, the after end of the ship would not be flooded, and the two derricks might be able to lift the stern to the surface.

There was nothing there for me to do. I left the squadron and returned to New York.

Meanwhile, the wrecking company’s divers passed heavy wire slings under the stern of the submarine and held them at the surface with a small derrick. Two large derricks, the Monarch of one hundred and fifty tons and the Century of one hundred tons capacity, arrived and anchored behind the breakwater at Point Judith, fifteen miles away.

Two days had gone by since the sinking of the S-51. If men were alive inside the boat, their case was desperate. But in spite of that, three more days went by. The wreckers dared not tow their derricks out to sea except in calm weather. At the wreck, conditions were good enough for diving, but they were not good enough to permit the lumbering derricks to leave the shelter of the Harbor of Refuge. Twice the sea looked calm and they started, but a few miles out they struck the swells and with their heavy top-hamper swinging dangerously, their owners turned the derricks about and towed them back to Point Judith lest they capsize among the waves.

At last, after five days, came a very smooth sea, the derricks were finally towed to the wreck, hooked to the slings, and heaved down till they were taking their maximum lift. Nothing budged. The S-51 was evidently flooded. Hastily the derricks were cast loose and hurried back to harbor before another breeze should spring up and catch them in the open sea.

There was no longer the slightest doubt. All hands inside the S-51 were dead.

The rescue efforts were discontinued, the wrecking company was discharged, and the Navy Department turned to a consideration of salvage possibilities.

IV

VACILLATION

The Navy Department was in a quandary.

Early in September, Commander John Rodgers, attempting in a Navy plane the first nonstop flight to Hawaii, had disappeared from sight for nine days. A burst of criticism was leveled at the Navy Department. While Rodgers was still missing, the Shenandoah, flying over Ohio, was caught in a storm and destroyed with the loss of Commander Lansdowne and a large part of his crew.

Led by Colonel Mitchell, of the Army Air Service, a storm of criticism now burst around the Secretary of the Navy, who was charged with demoralizing the Naval Air Service.

Hardly two weeks later and the S-51 was sunk with all but three of her company. The criticism now rose to the proportions of a flood and poured in on Washington in a demand that the S-51 be raised and the bodies of her crew recovered.

The situation was difficult. No large submarine had ever been raised in deep water in the open sea. Raising the S-51 did not look feasible, but at least an attempt must be made.

Neither in the Navy nor in private wrecking companies were there any means for the job, any reliable method of procedure.

The wreckers originally engaged on the work offered to undertake the job, provided the Navy furnished all needed equipment and divers, the diving ship Falcon, a sister submarine, and technical officers to assist,—everything in fact except one tug, a wreckmaster, and four divers, which the wreckers would furnish. The government, in addition to furnishing practically everything, was to pay a considerable sum whether the job was a success or not, and a bonus in addition if the S-51 was raised.

This contract, which normally would not have been entertained for a moment, nevertheless looked good to the harassed Department. It was on the point of being signed in Washington, when I went to Admiral Plunkett, Commandant of the Navy Yard at New York, with a method for the Navy to raise the ship itself. The admiral, enthusiastic over the idea, seized the telephone and over the long-distance wire to Washington presented the scheme, only to learn that the Department was not interested. They were about to sign a contract with outsiders to do the work.

Admiral Plunkett was furious. This is a Navy job! If we can’t take care of our own ships, we ought to get out and let someone run the Navy who can! And in that deep voice and in language which all those who ever served with him will easily remember, he burned up the wires till those at the other end agreed to delay the signing till our method could at least be explained.

The admiral dropped the phone, and looked at his watch. His aide went scurrying for a timetable.

Here, Ellsberg, you’ve got twenty minutes to catch the next train. You explain it to them!

I dashed from his office to the admiral’s car; his two-starred flag on the running board took us through the traffic and in a few minutes I was leaving the Pennsylvania Station on my way to Washington.

It took most of that night to convince some of the officers from the Bureau of Construction and Repair that we had a feasible plan, but even so it was impossible next day to get a favorable decision. It seemed as if the Department felt that the raising was doomed to failure, and in the existing state of mind of the press and the public, they did not care to risk another failure by the Navy. Expensive though it might be, it appeared preferable to hire a commercial company so that the burden of failure, when it came, could be assumed by them, not by the Navy itself.

In this atmosphere, little was possible, and I felt that I had achieved a considerable measure of success when I finally obtained a postponement of any decision then and had the discussion transferred to New York.

Back at the Navy Yard next day, reinforced by Admiral Plunkett and several of the officers who had taken part in the early rescue work, we made the proposal to let the job go outside the Navy look so ridiculous that the Navy Department representatives capitulated and agreed to let us proceed. Even the wreckmaster of the salvage company, in view of his company’s lack of equipment and submarine experience, was forced to admit the wisdom of that course.

As he left the conference, the wreckmaster turned and delivered his parting shot:

I don’t know who is going to do this job, but whoever he is, he’ll wish before he gets through that he had been born a girl baby!

Admiral Plunkett lost no time. Inside of ten minutes, orders had gone to the shops, and the construction of the pontoons for the salvage job started.

V

THE SALVAGE PROBLEM

The S-51 was a vessel of one thousand tons surface displacement. Our task was to lift this weight one hundred and thirty-two feet to the surface, meanwhile working in the open sea, and then tow the ship one hundred and fifty miles to New York, the nearest harbor with a suitable drydock.

Ordinary lifting methods were ruled out, first because no derricks existed capable of lifting so much weight, and second because of the impossibility of working them at sea even if the derricks were obtainable.

We felt that we could seal up the undamaged after half of the boat and, by expelling the water, restore about four hundred tons of buoyancy, but that seemed to be the maximum that could be realized from the boat herself. The remainder of the buoyancy would have to be provided elsewhere.

In conference with the Navy Department, it was agreed to use submersible pontoons, which the divers were to attach to the hull, and the Navy Yard immediately started to build six such pontoons, each with a lifting capacity of eighty tons. The Navy owned two more, which had been used eleven years before to lift a small submarine from forty feet of water. These old pontoons were too weak to work in deep water, but we reinforced them while we built the new ones. That was to give us eight pontoons with a total lifting force of six hundred and forty tons, but it would take about four weeks to build the six new pontoons.

For a diving ship, the U.S.S. Falcon, Lieutenant Henry Hartley commanding, was assigned. The Falcon, an oceangoing tugboat, had been built as a minesweeper during the war, and afterwards converted to a rescue ship. She was small, only one hundred and eighty feet long, but well suited for the job. She carried special air compressors for diving and salvage work, extra wrecking pumps, a recompression chamber, and special winches and bitts for handling lines.

Obviously the Falcon was too small to berth all the divers, tenders, and officers required, and there was no room on her for shop machinery, extra boats, or stores. To provide room for these, Admiral Plunkett asked for the repair ship Vestal, Captain Tomb commanding, a large vessel fitted out as a floating machine shop for the fleet. The Vestal had a foundry, blacksmith shop, machine shop, carpenter shop, and large storerooms. She was well provided with small boats, and had ample room for the extra men we required.

As a rehearsal vessel, a sister ship of the S-51 was assigned,—the S-50, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Lenney.

To help the Falcon in mooring, for handling pontoons, and for general service, two seagoing tugboats, the Iuka, Chief Boatswain Augustine, and the Sagamore, Chief Boatswain Cregan, were attached to our squadron. A smaller tug, the Penobscot, Chief Boatswain’s Mate Ashland, was detailed as a despatch boat, to make daily trips to New London, fifty miles away, which was our shore base, and bring out stores, provisions, and mail.

The salvage squadron then consisted of six ships,—Falcon, Vestal, S-50, Iuka, Sagamore, and Penobscot. The whole squadron was placed under the charge of the Commandant of the Submarine Base, New London, Captain Ernest King, who in addition to his duties at New London was designated Officer in Charge, Salvage Squadron. Captain King was unfortunately compelled to divide his time between his duties at New London and these added ones, but he managed to spend half the time with us off Block Island.

Admiral Plunkett designated me as Salvage Officer. I was attached to no particular ship, but worked during the day on the Falcon, had a stateroom and an office on the Vestal, and occasionally slept on the Sagamore or Iuka.

As my assistants, I had Lieutenants Lemler and Kelly; and as a technical aide, Draftsman John Niedermair of the New York Navy Yard.

VI

DIVING

Nothing that the ingenuity of man has permitted him to do is more unnatural than working as a diver in deep water. As a result of this, if a vessel sinks a few hundred feet beneath the surface of the sea, she becomes as inaccessible as if transported to a distant star.

Still, many vessels laden with fabulous cargoes of gold have sunk in water less than a hundred feet deep. The lure of recovering this treasure developed the art of diving, but the divers of generations gone found that the sunken gold was purchased from the sea only at the price of life or health. Those who stayed down long enough to recover anything would shortly after their return to the surface be seized by terrible convulsions resulting, when quick death did not ensue, in paralysis for life. Many a diver working on the hulks of the Spanish Armada, around the coasts of England, or treasure ships off the Azores, learned this to his sorrow.

Because of the contortions of the sufferers, the early divers gave to the disease the name of the bends. Its cause was long unknown, but its results were beyond question. No diver, in spite of fortune’s lure, dared go deep nor remain over a few minutes.

Years ago, on one sunken galleon, access to the treasure room was easy; daily a Spanish diver entered, seized two bars of gold and hurriedly came up. It was slow work. At last the daily glimpse of pigs of gold piled high proved too much; cupidity overcame fear; the diver labored nearly an hour sending up a fortune in bullion. Finally the diver himself emerged, but the treasure was not for him; bends ending in paralysis of the spine ensued; he lived, but only to curse daily the gold which had tempted him to linger on the ocean floor.

The growth of medical skill and in other lines finally solved the mystery of the bends and in a measure provided a way to minimize the effects.

The usual diving dress consists of a copper helmet and breastplate secured watertight to a flexible canvas-covered rubber suit. The helmet is necessary to permit breathing; the suit may be dispensed with in warm shallow water, but is necessary in cold water or in deep water and is always necessary if the diver is to do any work requiring him to bend over or lie down.

Water is heavy; as the diver descends he is compressed by the weight of the column of water over him. Over the surface of his body, for each foot he descends, an added load of almost half a ton presses on him. At one hundred and thirty feet, the total load is nearly sixty tons. To prevent the diver from being crushed into a jelly by this weight, it is necessary for him to breathe air under pressure slightly exceeding that of the water; this internal air pressure is transmitted by his lungs to his blood, and enables him to balance the external water pressure. The diver is then in a condition similar to that of a pneumatic tire on a heavy automobile; the tire stays rounded out in spite of the weight of the car on it because it is inflated with air under sufficient pressure to balance the load. If, however, the inner tube is ruptured and the air escapes, down comes the weight of the car and flattens out the tire. In the same way, the diver inflated with compressed air, stands the weight of the sea pressing on him; but if through any accident, he loses the air pressure in his helmet, like a trip hammer down comes the weight of the sea and crushes him as flat as any blown-out tire.

As he goes deeper, a diver must increase the air pressure in his suit to correspond; it is therefore