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

by Edward Ellsberg

  I listened carefully on Kelley’s telephone, meanwhile keeping my eyes on the regulators between the gas flasks and the torch hoses. Kelley was turning on the gases; one at a time the air, the oxygen, and the hydrogen started to flow.

  “On deck! Turn on the igniter!”

  I threw in the switch, called out:

  “The igniter is on!” I heard a bang, a steady muffled roar. The torch was lighted. I switched off the current to the igniter.

  On the S-51’s forecastle, Kelley lay down flat, carefully thrust the burning torch down the opening, shoved his arm through after it as far as it would go. He brought his helmet over the hole. Near the brilliant orange flame, a heavy black streak ran fore and aft. Kelley swung his torch against it, pressed the trigger. A long spurt of white flame shot across the locker with a shower of sparks. Slowly Kelley drew the torch upward. There was a sharp snap, the two halves of the cable flew apart, and with a rumble the anchor let go and dropped down the hawespipe.

  “On deck! Take up the torch!”

  The tenders hauled up on the torch hoses. I looked at my watch. Only forty-five seconds since Kelley had lighted the torch. Quite a change since the day when he had shouted from the sea bottom that if he could only get his teeth on it, he could chew a wire cable in half faster than the old Navy torch could cut it.

  Another minute and we got a signal from Kelley that he was at the gun, ready to come up. He had been down only ten minutes, the shortest dive we ever had on which any work was accomplished. Kelley needed only twenty minutes decompression to come up.

  For the third time that day we dressed a pair of divers to pass the forward reeving line. Wilson and Eiben went this time, each with a small manila line tied to his wrist. They landed on the submarine, dropped off, one each side of the bow, crawled in under the keel. As I expected, they found the mushroom anchor buried a few inches in the clay, but its shank still ran up inside the hull. Eiben pushed his line through to Wilson just abaft the anchor shank, Wilson bent the lines together, told us to heave round. Hurriedly, so as to finish while the divers were still there, we rove round the four-inch manila and then pulled through the wire line. All the lines went round without a hitch. The divers came up.

  It was late in the day, too late to lower a pontoon, but the weather was good so the Falcon remained in the moorings overnight, holding up the wires. Next morning, with no untoward occurrences, we brought alongside, rigged, flooded down, and sank a pontoon with its two chains on the port bow of the S-51, though the job took us all day long, and by evening with the weather growing worse, we were compelled to run out and buoy off the two wires which were to act as guides for the second pontoon.

  Coming back two days later into the moorings, we picked up the two buoys on the wires. As we feared, the wire cables were snarled and tangled in spite of the care used in laying them out on the sea bottom. It took the whole morning, several dives, and all of Hartley’s skill as a sailor to get the wires untangled enough to let us proceed. Finally with only a few kinks left in the cables, we had the Sagamore bring another pontoon alongside us, rove the wires up through the hawsepipes in the pontoon, flooded down, and slowly lowered the pontoon on the starboard bow of the submarine. Near the bottom, we held it while Carr went down on it, sighted the submarine to make sure we were clear of her, and then rode down till the top of the pontoon was flush with the S-51’s forecastle. Here we again held the pontoon, while we heaved up on the guide wires to draw the chains from the opposite pontoon through under the keel and up through the hawsepipes. Carr counted the links showing above each hawsepipe, but in spite of our heaviest pulling on the capstan we were unable to pull quite as much chain through as we wished. Evidently the other pontoon was sitting on part of the chain and we could not haul it through. When it looked as if a stronger pull would probably break the wires (they were good for about thirty tons each) we decided to take what we had and call it quits. We lowered the pontoon to the bottom, slacked off on the wires till the ends of the chains rested on top of the pontoon, and then sent Kelley down with the torch to burn the wires off the chain ends. We had found that once the screw shackles had a heavy strain on them, the divers could not unscrew the pins to release the hauling wires. Burning off the wires turned out to be the quickest and easiest way of release.

  I decided to let the insertion of the toggle bars go till later.

  XXV

  THE FIRST TUNNEL

  At bow and stern we had been able to pass our reeving lines under with no great difficulty, because there the keel, due to its rocker shape, rose clear of the bottom. However, for the other pontoons amidships, the case was far different.

  Amidships the S-51 was buried about six feet deep in a bed of hard blue clay, overlaid with a thin layer, a few inches thick, of hard packed gray sand. To get the reeving lines and the chains through here required that we provide a tunnel for their passage. There was only one way which appeared practicable for digging the tunnel. At that depth it was out of question for the divers to undertake the continued physical exertion of swinging pick and shovel in an excavation, disregarding the mechanical limitations of trying to do it in a diving rig. We all felt that the best solution lay in washing out a hole under the ship with a stream of water from a fire hose.

  We coupled up two hundred and fifty feet of the Falcon’s two-and-one-half-inch fire hose, with a regular hose nozzle screwed to the end. Bailey was selected to go down and start the tunnel. I took him aboard the S-50 and showed him the spot abreast frame forty-six, where he was to start. A torpedo davit projecting from the deck was the nearest visible mark. He was to spot this on the S-51’s side, then measure off five feet forward of it, and start the tunnel there.

  Bailey was small, but he was an excellent diver and a careful man. We could rely on him to hit the right spot and, in case of any doubt, to ask questions rather than to guess.

  Bailey was dressed, went down on the forward descending line, the fire hose dragging after him on a lanyard to his wrist. He found the torpedo davit, tied a small line to it, which he threw over the port side to mark the location, and then slid down the line to the bottom. He measured off the five feet against the side of the submarine, dragged the hose nozzle over, braced it between his heavy shoes against the sea bottom close to the ship’s side, and sang out:

  “On deck! Turn on the water!”

  A sailor opened wide the valve to the Falcon’s wrecking pump. The hose swelled out, and throbbing with each stroke of the pump as the water rushed through, disappeared over the rail.

  Another call from Bailey:

  “On deck! Turn off the water! I’m about fifty feet from the sub and I don’t know where the hose is!”

  We shut down the pump and the hose flattened out, hanging limply over our bulwarks.

  It was easy to imagine what had happened. I remembered in my boyhood days the sight of four firemen clinging to a hose nozzle, trying to direct the stream against a burning building. Bailey, all alone, had tried the same thing except that his stream instead of meeting air, was discharged against solid water, making the reaction worse. The writhing hose had torn itself from his grasp and sent him flying backwards through the water.

  Bailey picked himself out of the sand, located the submarine, and after a search, found the hose again. He dragged the nozzle back, braced himself against the hull.

  “On deck! Turn on the water again! Easy this time!”

  Once more the wrecking pump started to throb. Gently we opened the valve from the fire main to the hose, watched the hose swell out slowly as we gradually raised the pressure. At forty pounds on our gauge, Bailey sang out from below:

  “Hold it, that’s enough!”

  The engineer at the pump throttled it carefully to hold the pressure steady. We watched the stream pulsing through the hose, which was not very hard. A thumb could make a dent in the canvas covering.

  Bailey worked his hour and came up.

  “I could just hang on the second time, but I didn’t get much
done. That clay is awful hard, and the stream I had hardly made an impression. I don’t think I made a hole a foot deep, and part of that was through the sand on top.”

  Other divers followed Bailey. We helped matters a little by tying a one-hundred-pound weight to the hose, just behind the nozzle, to assist the diver in holding the hose down. Still the low pressure prevented much progress—the stream had not force enough to cut the clay. We needed more pressure. To get it, we removed the last section of hose and replaced it with a one-and-one-half-inch length and a nozzle to match. With the smaller nozzle, we were able to raise the pressure to sixty pounds before the divers complained. (The usual pressure on a two-and-one-half-inch fire hose is one hundred and twenty pounds.) The sixty-pound stream had force enough to do a little cutting, but of course the smaller hose greatly reduced the size of the jet.

  Day after day, we worked on the tunnel at frame forty-six. It was slow work. We were never able to get more than six men in any one day down on the job, because of the loss of time in getting the old diver out and clear before his relief could get down, pick up the hose, and crawl in. Other complications arose. The clay turned out to be so heavy that when cut, it would not stay in suspension in the water, but after floating back a foot or so, would settle down in the tunnel around the diver. Consequently after cutting ahead for a few inches, the diver had to stop, and crawling out backwards, turn his nozzle and wash the cuttings all the way out to the tunnel mouth before he could again advance.

  As a final aggravation, after one or two days’ work, a storm would drive us away. Coming back, we always found our tunnel filled in with hard packed sand, washed along the sea bottom by the currents, and this had to be removed regularly before we could again drive our bore ahead.

  We worked along against constant difficulties. Hoses got fouled in the submarine’s superstructure and tore in half when we tried to pull them free. Sometimes the divers could not find the tunnel, and wasted half their precious hour searching out the small entrance hole under the port bilge. Others, lying down in the tunnel, had their suits fill with water, and had to be dragged up, half frozen and nearly drowned.

  We made progress, yes, but it had almost to be measured by the inch. As a result of two weeks’ desperate work in May, the tunnel had advanced sixteen feet under the port side,—about an average of one foot a day.

  We were still two feet from the keel on the port side. Francis Smith was in the tunnel, burrowing his way along. Imagine his situation. In ice cold water, utter blackness, total solitude, he was buried one hundred and thirty-five feet below the surface of the sea. No sight, no sound, no sense of direction except the feel of the iron hull of the S-51 against his back, as he lay stretched out flat in a narrow hole, scarcely larger than his body, not big enough for him to turn around in. Ahead in his outstretched arms he grasped the nozzle, burrowing his way deeper, while around him coursed backward a black stream of freezing water laden with mud and clay.

  He had been working about twenty minutes, when on the Falcon the man at the telephone got a call from Smith. He could not understand and passed the telephone set to me.

  “Hello, Smith!”

  In an agonized voice came the reply:

  “I’m in a very bad position, Mr. Ellsberg. Send someone to help!”

  Joe Eiben was working aft on the other side of the submarine. I dropped Smith’s phone, seized Eiben’s, ordered Joe to stop whatever he was doing, climb over the boat to the tunnel, and help Smith. Eiben acknowledged the message, started forward.

  Meanwhile I tried to figure out what had happened.

  The fire hose leading over the rail was throbbing violently. Perhaps the nozzle had torn itself from Smith’s grasp, was thrashing him to death.

  I took Smith’s phone again, called down:

  “Shall I turn off the water?”

  Almost a scream came the answer:

  “No! For God’s sake keep it going! The tunnel has caved in behind me!”

  I felt faint. Hastily we coupled up another fire hose, slid it down the descending line for Eiben’s use. But it had taken two weeks to drive the tunnel to where Smith lay! On deck we looked at each other helplessly. Over the telephone, I could hear Smith’s labored breathing as he struggled in the darkness.

  No further messages came. The sailors stood silently around the deck, waiting for Eiben to arrive at the tunnel, wondering what good he could do when he got there.

  Eiben reached the descending line at the gun, cut loose the new hose, dragged it forward with him, and dropped over the port side to the bottom. Finally after what seemed an age, he reported himself at the tunnel mouth, said he was trying to enter.

  I waited; then over Smith’s telephone, I heard Smith say to Eiben:

  “I’m all right now, Joe. Had a little accident. You go on back to your own job.”

  Though he could not turn round, Smith had managed to pass the nozzle back between his legs, and guiding it with his feet, he had washed his way out backward through the cave-in!

  Eiben left. Smith sat down on the ocean floor a few minutes to rest, then picked up his hose, crawled back into the tunnel and for half an hour more continued to wash his way towards the keel.

  No deed ever performed in the heat of battle with the enemy where thousands cheer you on can compare with Francis Smith’s bravery, when in the silent depths of the ocean beneath the hulk of the S-51, he washed his way out of what well might have been his grave, then deliberately turned round, went back into the black hole from which he had by the grace of God escaped, and worked his way deeper and deeper into it.

  Other divers followed Smith; in a few more days we reached the keel on the port side. Then, marking the corresponding spot on the starboard side as carefully as possible, we started to drift another tunnel from that side to meet the port side hole. As the boat was heeled far over on her port side, the tunnel on the starboard side was not much over half as long as on the low side. While the divers worked on the starboard side hole, we sent one or two men a day into the port tunnel to keep it cleared out.

  Only the most experienced of the divers managed to make any headway in the tunnels. Carr, Smith, Wilson, Eiben, Kelley, Eadie, Michels, and Bailey did practically all the work. We tried a few of the most promising of the newer divers on the job, but they never got anywhere at it. The reason was clear enough. Years of experience were necessary to develop the iron nerve and the forgetfulness of surroundings which were essential to allow the diver to concentrate on the job and ignore his situation.

  The job proceeded, the divers coming up sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs. Eiben and Eadie, who had been working, one in the port tunnel, the other in the starboard one, met at the gun on the submarine’s forecastle, climbed on the stage at the ninety-foot mark, and, according to ritual, began their setting-up exercises while decompressing.

  Those two men were safely off the bottom. On the quarterdeck, we turned attention to the next diver, who, except for his helmet, was ready to go over. He was testing his telephone.

  A voice came from the superstructure.

  “Tom Eadie said something, but I couldn’t make it out. I can’t get him now!”

  Hartley tried, I tried, Gunner Tibbals tried. None of us could understand, though it did sound as if Eadie were shouting something. Eiben was on the stage down there with Eadie. I took Eiben’s telephone.

  “Hello, Joe! Ask Tom what he wants!”

  A pause, then Eiben replied:

  “Tom’s not here! What did you pull him up for?” Surprised, I looked at Eadie’s tender. He had not pulled Eadie up.

  “Where’s Tom?” I asked him.

  “He’s still down there, sir. I’m trying to signal him. I’ve given him ‘One’ on his line, two or three times, but he doesn’t answer.”

  A shout over the telephone from Eiben. “Eadie just fell back on the stage. His suit’s nearly torn in half and he’s full of water. Take him up quick!”

  Half a dozen bears grabbed Eadie’s lines and he
aved hard. The weight was tremendous, evidently Eadie’s suit was wholly waterlogged. Others grasped the lines wherever they could lay hands on them and we heaved rapidly. Over the side went another stage, two men on it, dropped into the water up to their waists. Hand over hand Eadie’s lines came in, then at last Eadie’s helmet. The men on the stage seized it, dragged his limp form on the stage; the winchman jerked the stage up, swung it in on deck.

  Eadie’s suit was nearly completely torn in two just below the breastplate, the leather straps over his shoulders were broken, his lead belt was hanging round his ankles. No need to take off his helmet. We cut loose his shoes, dragged him out of the suit through the hole around his breast.

  Eadie was very pale, bleeding badly from the mouth and nose, but apparently still conscious. We did not wait to investigate. The tenders who pulled him out of the suit dragged him hurriedly to the recompression tank and thrust him in together with Surgeon Flotte, who hastily ran the pressure up to fifty pounds.

  Hours later, after Eiben had come up, and Eadie was below, wrapped in blankets in his bunk, with Eiben resting in the next berth, I asked them what had happened. Eadie told me.

  “Joe and I were on the stage at ninety feet, I was jumping up and down to decompress myself and I guess Joe was doing knee stoops.

  “All of a sudden my exhaust valve jammed shut and my suit started to swell out. I tried to reach my control valve and turn off the air, but before I could swing my arm around, my suit stiffened out from the pressure inside, and it spread-eagled me. Both my sleeves shot out straight sideways and I couldn’t bend my elbows to get my hand in on the control valve.

  “By that time I was so light, I started to float up off the stage and I yelled in the telephone to the man on deck to turn the air off on my hose. I guess he didn’t understand me.”

  I interrupted Eadie and turned to Eiben.

  “Say, Joe, didn’t you notice it when Eadie started up?”