Eiben looked at us sheepishly.
“Yes, I sort of saw him go, out of the corner of my faceplate, but I just thought he was taking an extra-high jump, and I went right on exercising. I wasn’t thinking about Tom and I didn’t look around again for him till you called me from the deck.”
Eadie went on.
“As I started to float up, I thought fast. Of course I knew if I ‘blew up’ without any decompression I’d probably get ‘the bends,’ but that wasn’t what worried me most. We were hanging from the Falcon, and if I came up from the bottom with all that buoyancy, I’d be going as if I’d been fired from a gun by the time I hit her hull. My copper helmet would flatten out like a pancake and that would be my finish right there.
“As I shot up, I saw the top of the steel bails from which the stage was hanging flash down past my faceplate. I couldn’t do anything with my hands, but as I went by, I shoved out the toes of both my shoes, and I managed to hook the brass toe caps on my diving shoes into the triangle where the bails join. That stopped me with a jerk, and there I was, hanging onto the bails with my toes and just praying that the caps wouldn’t tear off the shoes!
“I tried again to pull my hands in but I couldn’t. My suit swelled out some more in a hurry, and burst the shoulder straps holding my belt up and my helmet down. The lead belt dropped around my feet, and my helmet flew up over my head. As it went by, the breastplate hit me a lick under the chin that nearly broke my jaw, and my suit then stretched out so the helmet was nearly two feet over my head. When the straps let go and the suit stretched, that gave me still more buoyancy, and the pull on my toes was awful.
“I tried to yell in the telephone to you to have Joe climb up to me, shut off my air and open the petcock on my helmet so as to let some air out of my suit, but the telephone transmitter was up in the helmet and that was two feet over my head and I couldn’t make you understand.
“Then the pressure increased with a rush and nearly broke my ears,* and I started to bleed from my mouth and nose. The strain on my toes was fierce, and I was wondering how much longer I could hang on, when all at once my suit tore apart under all that pressure, let out all the air, and I nearly burst as the extra pressure suddenly disappeared. My helmet sort of dropped back, my suit all filled up with water, and I fell down again on the stage.
“I felt you starting to pull me up. I tried to hold my breath, because there was no more air in the suit. Then I remembered that the lines you were hauling me with were only secured to my helmet, and I could feel that my suit was nearly torn in two just below the breastplate. I was down in the rest of the suit and I could feel my heavy shoes and that lead belt hanging round my ankles. I was afraid that what was left of the suit wouldn’t stand the strain and it would tear all of the way across. Then you’d pull up the helmet and I’d just sink with those lead-soled shoes and the lead belt as anchors. I thought how surprised you’d be when my helmet came up empty. I tried to kick the belt free from round my feet. No use, I couldn’t get it off, so I just held my breath and prayed that the suit wouldn’t rip any more. I tried hard not to swallow any water, and the next thing I knew, they were dragging me onto the stage.”
A terrible experience. In less than a minute’s time, Eadie had seen death in four different horrible forms, successively staring him in the face,—“the bends,” concussion against the Falcon, sudden heavy pressure, and drowning had each in turn seemed about to kill him. He came through, saved by his quick thinking, weak and wounded, but with unshaken nerves. A wonderful diver, Tom Eadie. All the world learned what we already knew, when he later won the Medal of Honor on the S-4.
We examined Eadie’s helmet to see what had jammed his automatic exhaust valve shut and stopped the air from escaping. We found out, but drew little comfort from the knowledge. While Eadie had been stretched out flat in the tunnel, washing, some mud had been carried into the exhaust valve of his helmet by the water that inevitably leaks in whenever a diver stoops over or lies down.
A few grains of sand had entered the sleeve in which the valve stem worked, jammed between the sleeve and the stem, and prevented the valve from sliding open. It was just as likely to happen to the next man working in the tunnel, and added another danger to the multitude we had. We thereafter warned all divers working in the tunnel to leave the petcock on their helmets cracked open a trifle, while they were in the tunnel and later while coming up, so that if their exhaust valves jammed shut, they might have a brief period to shut off their air before the pressure could build up enough in their suits to spread eagle them and prevent them from using their hands. The partly open petcock meant that a tiny stream of water would continually run into their suits while they lay down in the tunnel, but it had to be borne. If anyone ever spread eagled and then had his suit burst inside the tunnel, he was sure to drown before aid could reach him.
There was a little delay on deck after Eadie was hauled up before Carr, the next diver ready, was finally dressed and on his way down, but in about thirty minutes all was quiet again on the Falcon’s quarterdeck. The pulsating fire hose hanging over the rail and vanishing in the water showed that far below, Carr, prone in the tunnel, was carrying on. Eiben, hanging at the fifty-foot stage, still had an hour to wait before he came aboard. The Falcon pitched easily as the waves rolled by; near at hand the Vestal, the Iuka, the Sagamore, and the S-50 tugged at their anchors, and far off on the western horizon, a thin wisp of smoke indicated that the Penobscot was coming out with the mail. Altogether, the squadron presented a very peaceful scene, with no indication of the swift drama that had just been acted ninety feet below the gently heaving surface of the sea.
A few more days went by, and from the starboard side, the men reported that they could touch the box keel, which extended sixteen inches below the hull, with their hose nozzles. We knew we could do the same in the port tunnel.
To finish the job, Tug Wilson and Tom Eadie went down together, each one taking a fire hose, and each with a small manila line tied to one wrist. They entered the tunnels, Eadie on the port side, Wilson on the starboard side. When both had crawled in as far as they could go, they asked us for the water, and started from both sides to wash away the clay under the keel.
For communication, I wore Eadie’s telephone receiver over one ear, Wilson’s over the other one, with a transmitter in each hand.
The divers worked nearly an hour, digging steadily. Neither one made any report. On deck we waited anxiously for news, but did not wish to bother the men with needless conversation. Still it seemed as if they should have been able to wash away the barrier under the keel in that time. As the minutes dragged by without a junction, I began to feel that the two tunnels had not met, that one or the other had been drifted at the wrong angle or perhaps a few feet too far forward to meet its mate. Considering the difficulty of locating anything below, and the impossibility of checking up on the tunnel directions once they ran in under the hull, such a failure of the tunnels to meet would be quite natural but nevertheless it would be heartbreaking after all our struggles.
A call in my left ear. Wilson talking.
“On deck! Turn off my water. I think I can feel the water from Tom’s hose!”
We shut down on Tug’s hose. It hung limply, while the other hose throbbed vigorously.
“Tell Tom to point his hose aft.” I gave Eadie the word. A few minutes went by, then:
“Tell Tom to point his hose forward.”
I passed that order also down to Eadie. Wilson, lying in the darkness below, fumbled blindly around the keel, trying to locate the direction of the current of water he could feel washing by him. He could find nothing definite.
“On deck, turn on my water again! I’ll try to wash further aft along the keel!”
The hour was up, but with the prospect of finishing the tunnel, it looked best to leave them alone a little longer. Alternately, I shut off Eadie’s water, and then Wilson’s, each one hoping to feel a stream coming under the keel from the other side. Nothing happened, both men kept o
n digging.
A call in my right ear. Eadie talking.
“Turn off my water, Mr. Ellsberg!”
I ordered the water shut off. Eadie resumed:
“I got a hole under the keel. I’m going to shove my foot under. Tell Tug to look out for it!” I turned off Wilson’s water, told him to stand by.
Eadie crawled out of the tunnel, turned round, crawled in feet first, lying on his face, till he touched the keel, and then shoved his right foot, heel up, under the keel till his knee passed through, then bent his foot upward as much as possible.
“On deck! I got my foot through! Tell Tug to look out for it!”
“Hello, Tug! Eadie says his foot is under! Feel around for it!”
Wilson fumbled in the blackness and the mud but encountered nothing.
Two hours had gone by, the men were long overtime. I could hear Wilson cursing volubly as he fumbled in the water-filled tunnel.
“On deck! Tell Tom to wiggle his foot! I can’t feel a damned thing!”
I told Eadie. Burying his face deeper in the mud, Eadie struggled to push his leg through a few inches further, and wiggled his foot desperately.
A message in my right ear.
“Something is holding my foot!”
I seized Wilson’s phone.
“That’s Tom’s foot you’ve got hold of, Tug! Don’t let go!” and in Eadie’s transmitter:
“Stop wiggling, Tom! Tug is going to tie his line on your foot!”
Then to Wilson, “Get a couple of good round turns and two half hitches with your line on that foot before you lose it!”
Carefully holding the foot with one hand to avoid losing it in the darkness, Wilson worked up a little slack in the line tied to his left wrist, wound it round Eadie’s foot, then drew his knife, cut away the line from his wrist, and firmly secured the end to Eadie’s ankle.
A faraway growl came from Tug.
“All right, tell Tom he can have his foot now! I’m coming up!”
Wilson crawled out backwards from the starboard hole. Eadie crawled headfirst out of the long port tunnel, dragging on his foot the first reeving line under the body of the ship. Outside the tunnel, he pulled through a little slack, cut the line off his foot, bent it to the line on his wrist, and we had a complete line around the ship.
Eadie and Wilson started up, cold and stiff. Their suits were filled with water nearly to their waists.
It was two hours and twenty-three minutes since they had gone down. It took nearly five hours to decompress them. They came aboard finally, utterly fagged out. They had won a point in our struggle against the sea, the first tunnel was at last completed, but on the Falcon we spent an anxious night till finally Surgeon Flotte assured us that neither pneumonia nor “the bends” would attack either Tom or Tug.
Another pair of divers took the reeving line, tied it securely to the rail on each side of the S-51’s deck, cut off the excess lengths going to the surface, ready for running the larger lines through when a good day offered for pontooning.
* With no escape for the air, the pressure in Eadie’s suit went up till it balanced at the Falcon’s compressor pressure of one hundred and thirty-five pounds, equal to diving to a depth of water of three hundred and four feet.
XXVI
THE CEMENT GUN
To finish sealing up the interior of the ship, we had two more ventilation valves, one in the engine room and one in the control room, both just like the valve in the motor room, to block off against leakage. The ventilation main leading to the valve located in the engine room we could get to just abaft the conning tower, under the deck, and blank it off as we had the main leading to the motor room valve. But the ventilation main running to the valve in the control room was so buried under pipes of all kinds beneath the superstructure around the conning tower that it practically meant tearing the ship to pieces to get at the necessary flanges on that main. Remembering the trouble that a few inaccessible bolts had given us in sealing off the motor room ventilation main, I looked around for an easier method of blocking the valves against “chattering.”
An examination of the S-50 showed that the valve bodies, inside the hull, each had an inch and a quarter drainage line tapped into the castings just above the valve seats. These drains were intended to remove undue moisture which might leak into the exterior ventilation pipes while the boat was submerged. If we could remove the drain lines and couple hoses to the nipples on the castings, we might force cement in to fill up the valve bodies and the ventilation pipes just above. Once the cement hardened, the valve disks could not possibly spring off their seats and leak when the pressure came on.
Two things were necessary. One was to couple up the hoses, which I was sure the divers could do; the other was to get a cement that while liquid enough to flow freely through two hundred feet of hose from the Falcon to the valves in the S-51, would still be sure of setting hard after it had forced the water out of the valves below.
For a week, Niedermair experimented with various mixes of cements, but we could find no brand of Portland cement that would do what we wanted. We asked the Navy Yard to help; they sent us out fifty bags of a special quick-setting cement called Lumnite. We experimented with it in various mixes and found it filled the bill perfectly. As a final test, we lowered the piece of ventilation main which Kelley and I had torn out of the S-51 to the bottom of the sea, with a rubber hose tied inside the pipe and a wooden plug to seal the lower end. We ran down about five cubic feet of cement through the hose, left the pipe submerged all night, and next day pulled it up. The pipe was solidly plugged with hard cement.
That settled the question of the cement to be used.
To plug off the control room valve, it was necessary to enter the control room again. We had sealed it up the autumn before, closed the door to the engine room, and tried to blow it dry, but as we learned to our sorrow, the ventilation valve “chattered” and released the air. Now we had to open the door to the engine room in order to enter.
Eadie went down, entered the engine room, tripped all the dogs with a pipe wrench, and tried to pull the door open but failed to budge it. It had been jammed so tight that the rubber gasket was stuck to the knife edge on the door frame, and pull as he would, Eadie could not tear it free.
We sent down a one-half-inch wire line which Eadie shackled to the door handle. On the Falcon, we took the line to the capstan, gave it a jerk. Eadie reported the door had flown open. He let go the wire and came up.
The next thing was to remove the drain pipe and connect up a rubber hose to the large valve. We examined the job on the S-50. The control room ventilation valve was just over the gyro compass, immediately forward of the little radio room. Between the valve body and the radio room bulkhead, in a space only about one and one-half inches wide, we must break a union in the drain line, force the drain line out of the way, and insert an elbow with a new half union to match the existing fitting. To the new elbow we would connect our hose.
The Vestal’s plumber came over, provided the necessary equipment, and the divers Wilson and Eiben, who were to do the job, rehearsed it.
We fitted them out with the necessary assortment of Stillson wrenches, crowbars, pipe fittings, and lights.
The divers went down on a three-man dive—Eiben and Wilson to go into the boat, Smith to tend their lines outside the engine room hatch.
Eiben went down first with the light, Wilson next with the tools, and Smith last. Wilson and Eiben entered the engine room, squeezed and twisted their way through the little door into the control room, and went slowly forward through the narrow passage there between the galley and the radio room.
They felt their way to the point where the radio room ended. Just beyond it they could feel the gyro compass, with the ventilation valve overhead.
Wilson telephoned.
“Conditions down here are fierce, Mr. Ellsberg. Much worse than they used to be. The water is so black we can’t see the light six inches away!”
Wilson fum
bled over his head between the valve and the bulkhead for the union that he was to disconnect. After several tries, he managed to get a twenty-four-inch Stillson wrench on the nut, but neither Wilson nor Eiben, nor both of them together, pushing up on the handle, were able to start the joint. It is exceedingly difficult for a diver, on account of the encumbrance of his breastplate and helmet, to use his arms overhead; here it was necessary to reach overhead to handle the wrench, and then to add to their trouble, the union was so set that to break it they had to push up on the wrench handle instead of pulling downwards, which they might have done much more easily. And that was as far as they got that dive. They spent their whole hour on it, but failed to start the union. The three divers came up.
Next day they tried again, this time with a special extension on the wrench handle which bent down so they could exert some force on it. With both men heaving upward, they started the union turning, and then, one-sixth of a turn at a time, Wilson backed it off with a smaller wrench. After that, in went a short crowbar, and he bent away and clear of the job, the drain pipe which he had disconnected.
The next step was to couple up his new half union with the elbow screwed into it. This was tied to his belt. He cut it loose.
Wilson wanted the light thrown on the spot where he was to work, so he could note conditions. He looked toward Eiben, but in the blackness he could see neither Eiben nor the light. Still Eiben must be within a couple of feet of him.
Wilson telephoned.
“On deck! Tell Joe to move closer so I can feel him, and put the light against the big valve!”
I got Eiben. “Joe, Tug says for you to stand alongside and put your light against the big valve!” Eiben acknowledged, moved over till he touched Wilson, and then feeling over his head, found the valve and shoved his one thousand watt searchlight against it. Wilson pushed his helmet over till, touching the light, he could vaguely make out the outlines of the union he was to connect to. Again he telephoned:
“Tell Joe to move the light away a few inches so I can get in and work!” And a few minutes later: “Tell Joe to take the light away! I can’t see anything with it anyway, and the reflector is in my road!”
On the Bottom: The Raising of the Submarine S-51 Page 15
