That thought passed in a flash, to be succeeded by a thrill. At last I was seeing with my own eyes the object of our labors! With my own eyes I was finally to do something to start that submarine once again to the world above!
Another moment, and my feet touched something. I was standing on top of the cylindrical pontoon. Fifteen feet away was the hull of the S-51. At the other end of the pontoon I could see Kelley, looking about ten feet high.
I took a step towards him, along the rounded top of the pontoon, then stopped. My head began to feel very light, queer. I braced my feet a little apart, tried to steady myself. Never in my life had I ever fainted but now my head felt dizzy, my heart strange. I felt that it would be only a matter of seconds before I collapsed. My lifeline floated across the faceplate of my helmet. I fumbled for it, wondered whether I still had strength enough to give the emergency signal to be hauled up, before I passed out. My knees felt weak, my head swam. But there passed across my mind the thought that there were twelve new divers like myself on the Falcon; none had yet been down. It would set them a fine example to have their officer ask to be hauled up on his first dive!
I resolved not to signal,—it was better to go up unconscious.
I staggered, grew fainter. Kelley’s figure danced before my eyes, a grotesque giant. It occurred to me that as I was still conscious, I might as well do something while I could. Slowly I pushed through the water toward Kelley, came to the first chain, a few links on top of the hawsepipe, the rest hanging down the curved side of the pontoon. I knelt down, Kelley came toward me. I fumbled for the torch dangling from my left arm, lifted it in front of my faceplate. One by one, I turned on the air, the oxygen, the hydrogen, adjusted the valves. A stream of gas under high pressure hissed from the tip of the torch. I raised the electric lighter.
“Turn on the igniter!” I shouted into my telephone. My head began to clear. Apparently I was getting a little adjusted to the pressure, and doing something was taking my mind off how queer I felt.
I held the igniter in front of the torch, pressed the contacts together, let them go.
As they separated, a spark leaped across the gap. There was a sharp explosion, a ball of orange-colored flame appeared, glowing brightly in the water. It burned with a roar like the exhaust of a high speed motor with no muffler. I adjusted the valves, shortened the flame a bit, pulled the trigger on the torch, and watched the flame lengthen suddenly as a jet of high pressure oxygen spurted through it. I released the trigger; the flame returned to normal.
And so had I. The dizziness was gone. I thanked my stars I had not signaled to be hauled up.
I looked around. Kelley was kneeling on the other side of the chain, pointing to the third link from the hawsepipe. He pulled the link a bit, making it lie flatter with the stud more exposed.
I leaned over the link. The stud, a square piece of iron about two inches thick, was firmly gripped between the two sides of the chain link. I brought the tip of the torch close to one edge, with the flame playing against the corner of the iron. In a moment the iron glowed bright red. I pressed the trigger. An oxygen jet, spurting through the center of the flame, hit the glowing spot. The iron ignited.
A beautifully pure white stream of fire shot several feet through the water, with a mass of fine sparks flying off from it,—a sight stranger and more brilliant than any fireworks exhibition I had ever seen.
In way of the oxygen jet, the iron vanished, leaving a gap perhaps an eighth of an inch wide. Slowly, carefully, I drew the torch across the stud, cutting through the two-inch thickness of iron. In less than a minute it was done, the cut was complete. The severed halves of the stud dropped out of the link.
I released the trigger, turned off all the valves. A warm glow went through my veins. The torch was a success! Many jobs previously impossible to us underwater would now yield to that magic flame!
“On deck!” I yelled. “Take up the torch!” I waited a moment, got four jerks on the torch hoses, let go, and watched the torch and the igniter vanish upwards through the water.
I looked again at the pontoon. Kelley had his knife out, cutting away the lashings of one of the toggle bars. He got it free. Together we dragged the bar over the top of the slippery cylinder we were standing on. Kelley entered the tapered end into the open link where the stud had fallen out. He pushed the bar through a few inches but it refused to go farther. The chain was lying at such an angle to the pontoon that on the other side of the link, the toggle bar was digging into the pontoon sheathing and refused to slide through.
We tried to roll the chain so that the bar could go through, but there was nearly a ton of chain hanging down the side of the pontoon beyond the toggle bar; on the other side the chain vanished down the hawsepipe.
That anchor cable, designed to hold a battleship, was nothing we could budge with only our hands. Time was going fast; we had to get the bar in.
I drew Kelley’s helmet against mine.
“You lean on it, Kelley, I’ll kick it through!” He nodded.
Kelley made himself heavy by releasing as much air as he dared, then pressed both hands down on the long end of the toggle bar. I sat down on the pontoon, and braced myself, my lead-soled shoes against the free end of the toggle.
Kelley suddenly pressed all his weight on the bar, momentarily twisting the links a trifle and lifting the buried end clear of the pontoon. Simultaneously I kicked out, brought the lead sole of my shoe against the end of the bar, drove it through about an inch. Kelley pressed again, I kicked again. Bit by bit we drove it through, till twenty inches of the toggle showed on the other side.
Kelley let go, I got up. He cut away the two small locking bolts hanging by marline lanyards to a nearby eyebolt. We pushed one pin through the toggle bar on each side of the link, screwed down the nuts to hold the pins from dropping out. The first toggle bar was secured.
Together we rose, moved slowly to the descending line tied to the forward end of the pontoon. Over the phone I reported we were done. We looked carefully up our lifelines to see that we were clear of each other, and not foul of anything else.
There came four jerks on Kelley’s lines. He answered with four, took hold of the descending line. The tenders above heaved, I watched Kelley ascend, a stream of bubbles widening out in a cone above him marking his progress for a few feet. Then he faded from view.
Alone, I looked toward the submarine. The after end of my pontoon was just touching the diving rudder guard. Lying against the side of the submarine opposite me was the end of the heavy wire hawser with which the derricks had made their futile effort to lift the stern. It had caught on something, the wreckers had not been able to haul it free.
The submarine herself looked perfect. No rust, the paint was all intact in spite of six months’ submergence; there was only a very fine marine growth, like moss perhaps, covering the hull. A numerous array of frayed and broken manila lines hung draped over the sides,—remnants of our many descending lines and the hundreds of fathoms of manila the divers had used for various jobs so far.
My observations were interrupted by a jerk, four of them in fact. The signal to stand by to rise. I seized my airhose, jerked it four times, then took hold of the descending line. In a moment, a powerful tug came on my lines, I was lifted off my feet and started up, a few feet at a time, as the tenders hauled hand over hand. I lightened myself somewhat by holding more air in my suit to make it easier for them.
I was dragged up some forty feet, when I heard an order, “Look out for the stage!”
I kicked myself around the descending line, looking all around. About five feet above me was the stage, with Kelley standing on it.
“Take me up a little more!” They pulled, I caught the triangular steel bails which supported the stage, clambered on it. Kelley leaned over, unscrewed the shackle pin which held the descending line against the stage. The line slipped away, clear, and left us swinging freely from the Falcon’s boom, ninety feet below the surface.
Kelley was an
experienced diver. He was doing every conceivable form of the “Daily Dozen,”—knee bends, arm swings, body rolls—to help his circulation and accelerate his decompression. I followed suit. It made me smile. There we were, buried in the sea, two ludicrous figures engaged in calisthenics while the fish swam round in wonderment. It was too bad we could not tune in on some radio, broadcasting setting up exercises, that we might have a little music to enliven things.
I paused. For the first time I noticed that I had considerable moisture in my suit. My underwear was soaked from the waist down, water oozed out between my toes while I exercised.
It was the old story. While I leaned over the chain to burn through the stud, the water had leaked by on one side of my exhaust valve while the air was escaping from the other side. I had not observed it in the excitement of working on my first dive. Now that everything was over, the clammy feeling of soaked clothing round my legs and cold water round my feet was decidedly unpleasant. I began to feel the chill of the sea surrounding me. I had nearly two hours to wait before I emerged. Exercise was imperative if I were not to freeze. I started the “knee stoops” again, vigorously.
After that, I tried kicking out, one foot at a time, but I found that shoes which weighed thirty pounds were not lightly flung around. I decided to keep both feet on the stage.
A call on the phone:
“Going up!”
We seized the bails and held on tightly. The water seemed to stream down past us. The stage rose twenty feet, stopped. We would stay awhile at seventy feet depth.
Again we started exercising. It grew monotonous. I could hear Kelley singing to himself, vociferously. I started a monologue about nothing in particular. Now I understood why the divers when below swore so volubly. In that solitude any sound was a relief, profanity a safety valve to relieve the strain.
And so, ten feet at a time, we rose slowly to the Falcon. At last, at the ten-foot depth, we could see the surface, like a silvery sheet waving over us, the red hull of the Falcon close alongside. And finally, the welcome word:
“Coming aboard!”
The stage line creaked, we burst through the surface. Suddenly our suits, no longer buoyed up by the water, became very heavy. We clung to the bails to support ourselves as the swaying stage rose above the bulwarks, swung in, and dropped on deck. I felt a bench jammed in behind me, a pair of hands on my shoulders pressing me down. Thankfully I seated myself.
Two bears grasped my helmet, two others seized my shoulders, held them firmly. A heavy twist on the copper headpiece broke the joint, the helmet gave a quarter turn, was carefully lifted over my head. I took a deep breath, the glory of the sunshine thrilled my eyes. I was up!
XXIII
SEALING UP AFT
We knew now we could handle and secure the pontoons whenever we were ready. We let that matter rest awhile. A more important matter was to complete the sealing up of the interior compartments which had baffled us before.
The motor room was all closed up, but the ventilation valve there had “chattered” and let out all the air when we had put a pressure on it the November before. Then we had no means of sealing it off, now we did have.
The leaking valve led directly from the top of the motor room into a watertight main underneath the deck. If we could get at this main, remove a section of it, and put a blank flange across the end leading to the motor room, the air leaking from that valve could no longer escape.
Kelley went down with the torch, burned away the steel deck over the ventilation main, cut out the steel superstructure between the deck and the hull of the boat so as to expose the pipe as much as possible.
Carr, Michels, Eadie, Wilson, Smith,—followed one after another with wrenches to unbolt the flanges at the forward and after ends of the section of the main we wished to pull out. The divers worked on the job two days. There was a confined space to work in, the bolts came out slowly. Carr, coming up after his second day on the job, reported trouble.
“All the bolts are out that we can reach, Mr. Ellsberg, but there are five bolts left on the underside of one flange, where the pipe bends around close to the hull that are hell to get at. I lay on my ear a whole hour trying to unscrew the nut on the easiest one to reach, and I only got it backed off a little over one turn. I think it’ll take the whole gang at least a week to get those five bolts out!”
And I had provided Carr with a set of open-end wrenches, specially shaped by our blacksmith, to make it easier for him to work on those nuts!
If it took Carr an hour, a whole dive, to get one turn on the easiest nut to reach, he was probably conservative in his estimate that a week’s work by everybody would be enough to back off all five nuts. We could not afford that much time. I asked Kelley to dress, got dressed myself, and together we went down, Kelley carrying the torch, to see what else we could burn away without ruining the watertightness of the engine room below the pipe, that would make it easier for us to get at those five bolts.
Kelley went down first. I followed him down on a descending line attached to the boat itself this time. Going down the second time was easier, less nerve-racking.
Soon I made out the conning tower of the submarine below me, slipped down through the water a few feet more. Something grazed my side. I held to the descending line, stopped a moment. Jutting out from the after side of the conning tower past which I had been sliding was the ship’s bell. I paused to read the inscription:
U.S.S. S-51
1921
I examined it more carefully. It was a bronze bell about a foot high. What a wonderful souvenir of the ocean floor that bell would make! I determined to slip it out of its bracket, and take it up with me when I rose.
I loosed my grip on the descending line and slid the remaining few feet to the hull. This time although I noticed the pressure as before, my head stayed clear. With a gleam of elation, I walked aft, for the first time actually treading the deck of the S-51 herself. But the walking was not easy. The deck sloped so badly to port that each step had to be taken carefully to avoid slipping overboard. I went slowly, hanging tightly to the low railing on the high side.
I came to the open engine room hatch, looked into the engine room. A black hole, nothing more, except slight traces of oily water slowly floating out. A little abaft the hatch, a large valve casting with the bonnet missing marked the spot where Frazer and Smith had struggled a week to close the fouled main engine air induction valve. How long ago that seemed! Poor Frazer, he would not again tread the submerged deck where now I stood.
A little farther aft was Kelley, gazing into the opening he had burned in the upper deck. I joined him, and crawled down into the gaping hole in the superstructure. I must be careful. The jagged edges of the remaining steelwork would quickly gash my suit if I rubbed over them.
We examined the ventilation main. Carr was right. The forward flange was touching the watertight hull of the submarine. The five bolts on the lower side of the flange there could hardly be touched. A diver would practically have to stand on his head to reach them, and as for getting a wrench on them, I marveled that Carr had been able to do even the trifling amount he had accomplished. That flange looked hopeless.
Kelley stood by with the torch, ready to burn away what I indicated, but there was nothing underneath that we could cut out without ruining the tightness of the engine room.
I glanced aft along the main towards the motor room. The pipe rose away from the hull as it ran aft. The after flange on the section we wished to remove was some six inches clear of the hull,—here the divers had managed to remove all the bolts which held the after pair of flanges together.
I saw the answer. As long as that pair of after flanges remained uninjured, it made no difference how we removed the pipe section we were after.
I shut off my air. The roaring in my helmet ceased. “On deck! Send down a wire hawser! Stand by to heave on it when I tell you!” I opened my air valve again.
I went to the descending line. In a few minutes, the end of
a one-inch steel wire hawser slid down the line, guided by a shackle. Kelley unscrewed the shackle. Together Kelley and I dragged the end of the hawser aft along the deck, brought it to the point where the fully unbolted flanges lay.
With some difficulty we succeeded in bending the wire around the section of the ventilation main near the flanges and shackled the end of the hawser round its own standing part to form a running loop around the main.
We crawled out of the hole, went forward a few feet to get clear.
“On deck! Take up the slack gently.”
The drooping hawser straightened out. The shackle slipped a little down the wire, tightening the loop around the pipe.
“Heave round slowly!”
A strain came on the hawser, it tautened like a bowstring. For an instant nothing happened, then the unbolted end of the twelve-inch pipe bent slowly up, came clear of the rest of the pipe leading to the motor room. Dragged by the hawser, the main kept bending upward. It had lifted at least two feet, when the forward end of the pipe, still held by the flange with the five inaccessible bolts, suddenly tore away from that flange and leaped about six feet over our heads as it swung free, dangling from the end of the wire.
“On deck! She’s all yours! Take her up lively!”
In another second, the pipe had disappeared overhead. It was less than twenty minutes since Kelley and I had come down to examine the job that was going to take a week.
On the Bottom: The Raising of the Submarine S-51 Page 12
