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

by Edward Ellsberg

  The Falcon remained, anchored near the wreck buoy, with the waves breaking over her low rail. In the afternoon, the Penobscot, pitching like a cork, came in with stores. It was too rough to transfer anything at sea. We steamed away to Block Island, the Penobscot following us. In Great Salt Pond we found smooth water, and put over our boats. The new lamps were in the stores received.

  We steamed out to sea again, the waves smashing against our bow, the cold wind whistling through our rigging. We reached the Vestal, which rode the seas more easily. A few clusters of yellow cork buoys tugging at the ends of the descending lines, visible occasionally on the crests of the waves, marked the spot where the S-51 rested. The gray sea, wrinkled like an elephant’s hide, cold and forbidding, formed the somber background against which our vessels rolled and pitched ceaselessly to the howling of the wind and the mournful note of the whistling buoy.

  Towards evening, the wind slackened, and the waves started to go down. The Falcon steadied a little, so that it was possible to lie in a bunk without bracing unconsciously to avoid being pitched out on the deck at every roll.

  Before midnight the wind had died out altogether, leaving only a long swell rolling in from the eastward to bother us. By one A.M., when the lights of the Sagamore returning from Newport loomed up alongside, the weather was clearing rapidly.

  The little party of divers came aboard, transferred in the Vestal’s motor launch. They clambered over the rail in the darkness, and disappeared down the hatch. In the divers’ compartment, crowded with bunks ranged two high against the bulkheads, they pulled off their clothes, wet from the flying spray on their brief boat ride, and climbed into their berths. In a moment or two, all were sound asleep. All but one, that is. “Tug” Wilson, chief torpedoman and expert diver, seemed very happy after his brief liberty in Newport, and started to sing.

  Michels woke up and tried to quiet him. The other divers vigorously backed up Mike. Cries of “Pipe down, Tug,” came from every bunk, but it was useless. Nothing could cause Wilson to restrain his exuberance until he finally dozed off about three A.M. Silence reigned below.

  When morning came, the wind was gone, and the sea had died to a long swell which rolled ceaselessly by. We could dive again.

  With the first glimmer of light, the coxswain and the boat crew scrambled over the stern into the surfboat and stood clear. The Falcon’s anchor chain rattled in on deck; with Lieutenant Hartley conning from the bridge, she started ahead and steamed into the circle of buoys, headed for the windward spar. As she neared it, the surfboat ran under her starboard bow, took the end of the first mooring hawser with a pelican hook secured to the eye and ran with it alongside the spar. The bowman speared the ring on the buoy with his boathook; the coxswain threw his helm over to hold position; and as the little boat heaved up and down, two seamen in the boat hanging far out over the gunwale slipped the heavy pelican hook over the ring, dropped the securing link over the bill of the hook, and shoved home the split toggle pin to lock everything. The surfboat backed clear and headed once more for the Falcon. Hartley dropped slowly to leeward, while the surfboat came under his starboard quarter, took a second hawser, and steamed away perhaps one hundred yards to the second buoy where once more the bowman clung to the buoy while they shackled up the line.

  Back again to the Falcon, to run out a headline, and so the surfboat shuttled between Falcon and buoys, till finally the Falcon lay like the hub of a wheel with seven heavy mooring lines radiating from her to the buoys, out on the rim.

  Lieutenant Hartley now paid out on the starboard lines and heaved in on those to port till the little cork buoys on the descending lines floated just abreast the port side, making a lee there with the Falcon for us to dive in on that side.

  The surfboat tied up astern. The Falcon’s crew had breakfast during the centering process. A large motor launch from the Vestal drew alongside and the working party, forty men, clambered aboard.

  The dressers brought out two diving rigs, the telephone men tested out their circuits, the diving air compressors started up.

  Seven o’clock. We were ready for the first divers.

  Chief Gunner Loughman looked into the little wardroom where we were having breakfast.

  “Who goes down first?” he asked.

  I told him. He turned to the dresser behind him.

  “Tell Tug Wilson and Joe Eiben to get ready.”

  I finished my eggs. Coffee with condensed milk did not appeal to me. I drank it black, left the wardroom, and went aft on the lee side. Wilson and Eiben were just ahead of me. In blue woolen union suits, they paraded down the port side. Underneath they each had on two more suits of the same heavy underwear, all tucked into three pairs of heavy woolen socks. They reached the dressing stand on the quarterdeck, sat down on the benches facing me. Wilson was a little pale, Eiben about as usual. I remembered the singing in the early morning and the probable reason for it.

  I looked Wilson over carefully. He seemed perfectly sober. Still I wondered whether he ought to go down.

  “How do you feel, Tug?” I queried.

  “Fine, Mr. Ellsberg, fine! Never felt better in my life!” I thought I had often seen him looking much better, but I decided not to tell him so.

  Both men pushed their legs through the openings in the necks of their suits, then stood up while the dressers, slangily called the “bears,” pulled the stiff suits over their bodies and helped them get their gloved hands into the sleeves. The men sat down again.

  “Listen, Tug; listen, Joe.” Both divers leaned towards me. “The new diving lamps came last night and you’re going inside the sub. Try to get through the engine room door to the control room. You’ve practiced it on the S-50. Think you can make it?”

  Wilson nodded. Eiben looked noncommittal as usual. I paused while their copper breastplates were slipped over their heads. The bears started to bolt the suits to the breastplates.

  “All right. When you get in, keep on through the control room, close the forward door, and dog it down hard. You’ll take a sledge to set the dogs up with. If you have any time left, on your way out see if you can read how the gyro compass heads. And watch yourself in the control room. Don’t get hung up on anything inside. Tug, you go first. Joe, you tend Tug’s lines through the room, and follow him up. Tom Eadie will be the outside man on the sub and tend both your lines through the engine room hatch.”

  Their heavy lead-soled shoes were buckled on. The dressers adjusted headsets, fastened on their belts. Wilson’s helmet was held just over his head while he tested out his telephone set, then the helmet was slipped on, given a quarter turn to lock it tightly. A short-handled sledge hammer was tied to his belt. With a sailor on each side to help him walk, Wilson shuffled to the stage. Eadie, in his underwear, took Wilson’s place on the dressing bench and the bears swarmed over him. Eiben’s helmet was put on.

  Wilson went over the side, stepped off the stage, vanished. A stream of bubbles, slowly working away from our side for perhaps a minute, then:

  “On the bottom!” came over the phone.

  We dropped one of the new lights over the side, turned it on. Eiben was hoisted overboard, and went down taking the light with him. Eadie was ready, and he too went over the side. Wilson had been down about five minutes when Eadie, dropping through the water, landed on the S-51.

  Silently Wilson left the others, slipped through the open hatch into the engine room. Eiben followed with the light. Only Eadie remained outside, standing on the deck playing out airhoses, lifelines, and lamp cord, almost inch by inch.

  Wilson came to the after door. He had minutely scanned the one on the S-50; both he and Eiben had a new plan. Wilson squeezed through the door, slid forward a step, felt his helmet hit where Ingram had been caught. He ducked, gave his helmet a sharp twist, cleared the obstruction, was inside the room. Looking back, he could barely make out the glow of the lamp in Eiben’s hand.

  “On deck! Tell Eiben to come ahead!”

  I took Eiben’s phone.
>
  “Go ahead, Joe! Tug says he’s through!”

  Once more Eadie started to pay out line, feeding it carefully to see he did not allow any slack which might get foul of anything.

  A few steps, and Eiben was alongside Wilson. A narrow passage, between the galley to port and the radio room to starboard, led forward. Wilson, leading, took the light from Eiben and started carefully ahead. Two steps and he was abreast the door to the little radio room. Wilson shined the light through the narrow door. Inside he could dimly see the radio operator, earphones on his head, still at his key.

  Again Wilson started ahead but was halted. A metal bunk, washed all the way through from the battery room, blocked the passage. He seized it, straightened it up, pushed it past him to Eiben. Together they shoved it through the port side opening into the galley. Again they went ahead, cleared the galley, entered the main control space. The sloping deck tended to slide them into the port bilges. Cautiously they moved along, dodging the steering wheels, dodging the periscopes, avoiding the myriad valve handles sticking out from all directions to foul the lifelines trailing behind them and tangle them there forever. Charts, blueprints, floorboards floated round their heads. They passed the compressed air manifolds, passed the ladder leading to the conning tower, entered the narrow passage where the rungs on the bulkhead led up to the gun access trunk. Wilson swung the light up. Over his head was the little oval hatch where Lieutenant Haselton and his companion had struggled and died, where Kelley had stuck trying to crawl through.

  Another step forward, and Wilson was at last facing the door that had balked all previous attempts to reach it. He moved close, trained his light on the door. As we had imagined, the door was open, swung only halfway back which was as far as it could go, due to a diagonal stateroom bulkhead behind it.

  Reaching through the water, Wilson grasped the handle and pulled on the door. It failed to move.

  Wilson carefully played his light all around to find out why. Jammed under the door, one edge projecting toward him into the control room, was a flat brass tread. Evidently the rushing water had washed it through from the battery room.

  Wilson passed the light to Eiben behind him, bent low, and pushed on the tread. It was tightly wedged in and refused to budge. He unscrewed his diving knife, cut the lashing which held the sledge hammer to his belt, slipped the knife back in its sheath, and screwed it home. Getting as close to the door as his helmet allowed, he swung the sledge between his legs against the plate. It still refused to come free.

  Wilson stepped aside, motioned Eiben forward, and pointed to the obstruction. Eiben took the hammer and tried to drive the plate out, but he had no more success than his companion.

  On the surface, I could hear Wilson and Eiben, their helmets touching, talking to each other. Then they reported:

  “On deck!”

  “Hello, Tug!”

  “There’s a brass plate jammed under the door. We can’t clear it!”

  I called the timekeeper.

  “How long have they been down?”

  He looked at his watch, figured in his notebook.

  “Forty-two minutes for Tug. Forty minutes for Joe.” Both men would need all the rest of their hour to get safely out of the boat. I lifted Wilson’s transmitter to my lips:

  “Hello, Tug. Never mind the door. You and Joe come on out!”

  Wilson mumbled something. I could not make it out. I took Eadie’s phone.

  “Hello, Tom! Mind the lines, Joe and Tug are coming out!”

  The minutes went by. The tenders on the Falcon’s rail “fished” carefully, but no slack came up on the air lines for them to take in.

  I listened on both Wilson’s and Eiben’s telephones, one receiver over each ear. Occasionally I heard the metallic ring of the sledge hammer, some very fluent profanity over Tug’s line. The timekeeper called out:

  “Sixty minutes for Tug.”

  No signal from the men below, but I dared not confuse them with useless orders. I waited anxiously till I heard Wilson call at last:

  “On deck! We’re coming out!”

  Ten anxious minutes and the three divers stood once more on the deck of the submarine. First Wilson, then Eiben, then Eadie,—we hauled them up to ninety feet, on to the stage, and started decompression. They had been down nearly an hour and a half. We spent two hours and a half more in decompressing them.

  At last the stage broke through the surface, swung inboard. The bears rushed at the three divers, unscrewed their helmets, pulled off their suits. Eiben was silent as usual, Wilson reported briefly:

  “We got the door closed.” He went below.

  Later Eiben told me what had happened. Neither of them had been able to clear the wreckage under the door. The more they pushed on it, the tighter it got. Eiben had heard the order to come up. Both men had started to leave when Tug stopped again, said he had an idea. From the other side of the door, he could probably pull the plate free. The door, however, was the worst in the ship. In addition to being narrow, it would only swing partway open because of the bulkhead behind it. Wilson tried to squeeze through but failed. Then he lay down on his side in the door, and Eiben, pushing on his feet, finally managed to shove him through. On the battery room side was a little space, and there Wilson, on his knees on one side of the bulkhead, pulled the plate off the deck while Eiben, blow by blow from the other side, hammered it free. With the plate gone, Wilson lay down once more, his feet in the doorway, and Eiben finally managed to drag him back into the control room. “Yes,” Eiben admitted, “it was pretty hard pulling.” Back in the control room, they had swung the door closed, turned down the dogs, sledged them down tightly. Then they came out.

  I gasped. Wilson had taken a desperate chance. Seventy feet inside the submarine, with one door already behind him that no one before had been able to get through, to have himself hammered through even a worse trap, where were his senses? Closing the door was important, but none of us would have dreamed of asking a man practically to throw his life away to close it.

  I found Wilson, asked him why he had taken such a hair-raising risk. In his deep voice, far different from the flat tone while under pressure on the submarine, he answered:

  “Well, Mr. Ellsberg, I know how hard you tried all last month to get us boys a liberty in Newport. And then when we finally hit the beach, oh, boy!”

  “So when we couldn’t close that door and you told me to come up, I took another look at the door and decided to close it anyway, to try to show my appreciation. And Joe helped me, so we did it.”

  Not a word about the dangers he had passed through, no mention of the death lurking behind that door to add him to the silent company inside the boat. Wilson had chosen to risk his life to show his appreciation for a little favor.

  “Joe helped me, so we did it!” The control room door could not resist that spirit.

  XIII

  THE FIRST PONTOON

  It was getting towards the end of October when some of the pontoons arrived, towed out from New York on the deck of a large Navy derrick, the United States. In the wake of the Sagamore, the derrick appeared off the wreck buoy in the middle of a fine morning, rolling gently to an easy swell. We might, I thought, have the pontoons put overboard by the derrick, and let them ride to our mooring buoys till they were wanted. But Lieutenant Hartley thought otherwise.

  “The barometer is dropping. Looks like a blow to me. Better have them get that baby inside the harbor before it comes.”

  The skipper of the Sagamore agreed with him. He started off with his lumbering tow and gradually disappeared to the northward. It was well he did. By three in the afternoon, it was blowing hard, and the Falcon, clear of her moorings, was riding the storm to a long scope on her anchor cable.

  No word from the Sagamore. Hartley spoke briefly:

  “I hope they got inside Narragansett Bay with that tow before this wind hit them, because if they didn’t, they haven’t got a tow any more!”

  There was no argument on that.
The United States, with her heavy tripod and a boom built to lift one hundred tons at its top, would quickly have capsized in that sea. But luck was with us. Because of its early start, the tug had managed to pass inside the Narrows off Fort Adams before the sea had picked up much, and had steamed on towards Newport. As the wind increased, they had difficulty holding the derrick, and steamed into the inner harbor between the Torpedo Station Island and Newport. Here the tug tied up alongside the derrick which dropped two anchors, its ground tackle being much heavier than the Sagamore’s.

  But the skipper’s troubles had only started. Late in the evening, with the wind blowing hard, we intercepted a radio from Sagamore to the Torpedo Station.

  “Send more tugboats. Derrick dragging her anchors. Unable to hold her with Sagamore.”

  Even though there were no waves inside the harbor, the sweep of the wind was too much for the moorings. Another tug went to the Sagamore’s assistance, but in spite of their best efforts, the derrick dragged through the harbor, hooked and tore away the electric cables and the water line from Newport to the Torpedo Station, and left the little island dark and waterless.

  Dawn found the tugs still struggling with their charge,—at least they had managed to keep her off the beach though she was half a mile from where she had first anchored.

  When the wind moderated, they managed to work the derrick against a pier, where she was tied up and remained the rest of the winter. It cost many thousands of dollars to repair the damage to the electric cables and water lines crossing Newport harbor.

  This experience confirmed our opinion that it was impossible to work with derricks in the open sea.

  Alongside the dock, the United States hoisted over the pontoons, and the next day the Iuka towed two of the pontoons out to the wreck, where we tied them up to a couple of mooring buoys.

  No one had ever had any experience in lowering pontoons in deep water,—it had never been tried before. In shallow water, about forty feet deep, it had once proved difficult. The officer who had managed that job had pronounced the pontoons “unmanageable” in lowering; he had found that all he could do was to fill them and let them sink. Having only a short way to go in shallow clear water, they had hit bottom alongside the little submarine he was raising, before they could get out of position. Also his submarine was already so badly damaged he was not trying to make it watertight inside; if a pontoon hit the boat and opened further holes, it made no special difference.