Three days had passed since we started on the hatch. That cover and its fittings had been down on the submarine and then up again for modifications or repairs three different times.
Smith and Carr were once more out of their bunks and around on deck, still weak but full of fight. They asked for another chance at the hatch. Since everyone else had tried and failed, and the job had to be done, I described to them the new assembly, and let them go down to try again.
They were dressed, hoisted overboard, slid down. For three days and nights they had dreamed about that hatch,—now they had their hands on it again. Carefully they lined up the strongback bolt, sighted it from all sides to get it true. Gently they hoisted the cover plate up over the bolt, and slowly lowered it down over the threaded part of the bolt till it touched the knife edge.
They had been working nearly fifty minutes. I wanted no repetition of a dangerously long dive; it might be fatal to them the second time. I had on both their telephones, one on each ear.
I called Smith.
“Hello, Smith! How are you making out?”
“Fine, Mr. Ellsberg. She’s down on one side, only a couple of inches off on the other side, and we’ll have it in a few minutes!”
I dropped the transmitter, a little sick at heart, and called the timekeeper over to my side. They would stay no longer than their hour this time.
The divers were talking to each other. I heard Carr say, “I’d better jump on it and jam it down.”
“No, don’t,” Smith replied. “You’ll burr up those threads again and the nut won’t screw down!”
Silence. They worked a few minutes more, trying to nurse the cover farther down. Apparently no success.
Smith became desperate. I heard him say to Carr:
“All right, go ahead and jump on the — — — —!”
I listened. Carr jumped, there was a clatter of lead shoes on the steel plate, and then I heard a joyous cry from Smith:
“Hooray, Willie! We got it!” As the cover went down under Carr’s feet, Smith leaped on the nut, and he afterwards claimed that before it hit the knife edge all around he had four full turns on the nut to keep it from bouncing back!
The fish thereabout saw the strange spectacle of two heavily weighted divers wildly dancing a hornpipe on top of the hatch.
Smith asked for a large wrench, begged to be allowed to stay a few minutes to tighten down the securing nut. We sent an open-ended wrench three feet long, and with that Carr and Smith turned the nut down with such a will that later, when the boat was raised, we had great difficulty releasing it.
The divers started up. They had, after all, been down only ten minutes over their allotted hour.
And so the engine room hatch was finally sealed up, completing all the work inside the boat.
XXIX
MORE PONTOONS
The day after Eadie and Wilson had managed to reeve a line through the tunnel, it being then a little past the middle of May, the weather looked calm enough to proceed with pontoon lowering. We ordered the Sagamore, which was standing by in Newport, to come out early with a new pontoon. Meanwhile, we rove off a pair of four-inch manila lines through the tunnel, ready to proceed with the pontoon.
In the middle of a beautiful May morning, one of the smoothest days we ever had, the pontoon was towed to the Falcon’s port side, a pair of chains dangling from its hawsepipes, and we prepared to rig it for lowering.
The hauling wires were shackled to the lower ends of the chains. The four-inch manila lines were spliced smoothly into the eyes on the opposite ends of the wires, to make as small obstructions as possible to running under the keel. Then we hauled up to starboard on the after manila line, slowly pulling it through while we paid out to port on the wire cable tied to it.
There was a little difficulty when the eye in the wire reached the box keel of the submarine. The eye caught on the underhanging keel, and considerable pulling both ways was required before it slipped free of the projecting angle bar on the keel and let the wire reeve through. We kept on pulling and at last drew the end of the after wire hauling line in over our starboard rail, where we secured it.
Next we started to haul up the forward four-inch reeving line, spliced to the other wire cable. We had the manila line on the winch coming in steadily and evenly over the starboard rail while we paid out the wire from the opposite side at the same rate to prevent it from getting slack and kinking up. Without warning, the wire stopped running out. I glanced at the winch to see why it had ceased heaving, but the winch was turning as before. Not quite, however, as I saw when I ran over to the starboard rail, for the manila line coming in there was coming up slack, and its frayed end flopped over the rail, the strands looking as if they had been cut with a knife. An extra strain on the hauling line had drawn the manila hawser tightly across the starboard bilge keel and the sharp edge of the rolling chock had instantly cut the line in half.
I knew the starboard bilge keel was about one foot clear of the bottom at a point near the tunnel. There might still be perhaps a foot of the other half of the line sticking out of the mud to which we could bend a new line and pull our wire through. Bailey dived with another manila line tied to his belt. He crawled along the bottom on his stomach, feeling under the bilge keel, and finally found the frayed ends of the hawser just showing clear of the clay, some three feet forward of the tunnel. In the reeving process, the line had apparently sawed its way along the keel, out of the tunnel, and we were pulling it and the wire attached to it through the solid clay beneath the boat. No wonder the line had jammed and cut.
There was hardly enough of the broken end of the line showing for Bailey to get a grip on, but he managed to scoop enough clay away to grip the strands in his gloved fists and pull the line taut, giving him perhaps a foot of unstranded manila to bend his new line to, which he did as well as possible in the cramped quarters and strained position in which he lay.
Over the telephone, he reported the knot tied, and crawled a little clear to observe results. Bailey meanwhile warned us:
“This bilge keel has a rough edge just like a saw. Look out when you heave!”
Seeing what had already happened, it was certainly not safe to pull the line across that rolling chock again. I got the forty-foot motor launch from the Vestal, took the end of the line Bailey had tied on, and steamed away from the Falcon with it perhaps one hundred fathoms. With that length of line leading at an angle down to the submarine, Bailey reported we were not chafing over the sharp bilge keel.
Three seamen hauled in the slack over the stern of the launch, took a few turns around the samson post, and the coxswain went ahead slowly on his engine till the line tautened out, when we gradually applied more power to pull the line through. The launch suddenly leaped ahead, the line came aboard all slack. We stopped our engine to avoid tangling the line in our propeller. The launch ran alongside the Falcon. That attempt was a failure; Bailey reported that the frayed ends to which he had bent the new line had let go. There was not enough left showing clear of the bottom to secure another line to. Bailey was coming up.
We changed our tactics. Once more the fire hose was rigged up, and Michels went down with it to wash away enough clay around the end of that line to let him get a decent hitch on it. We turned on the water, Mike washed a little hole down the line and widened it out somewhat under the overhanging bilge keel so he could, lying down, get his hands in to work. After nearly an hour of washing, Mike exposed about a foot of the undamaged manila; on this he tied his new four-inch line, with a rolling hitch and a couple of half hitches. Mike came out, and we hauled up both Mike and the hose.
Once more I set out in the motor launch and we went ahead till the full power of our gasoline engine was pulling on that one hundred fathoms of line leading away to the ocean bottom. Nothing happened, we could not pull the wire through under the keel. I signaled for a second launch.
Meanwhile the weather was changing. The bright spring sun was gone; the water had turned from
a beautiful blue to a dull gray and the wind had started to freshen up. Our little launch was pitching vigorously as the waves rolled by.
The second launch arrived, we took a line from it around the king post in our bow. Both launches went ahead, till their gas engines were running with wide open throttles and their propellers were kicking up a white foam under the sterns of each launch. But we were anchored, the line would not reeve through, and I dared not put any more strain on the line for fear of breaking it. The weather was getting worse, we could not try longer. I cast off the leading boat, and coiling the line down inside the other launch as we ran, we steamed back alongside the Falcon.
Conditions were in a dangerous state there. It was now dark, and a storm was blowing up. The sea was rough, the wind already bad, and increasing. The Falcon was rolling heavily, and the pontoon alongside was rising and falling violently as the waves rolled by, hammering our side and threatening to crash in over our rail as it rose to the crest of some of the waves. Two three-ton chains, ninety feet long, hung vertically through the hawsepipes of that pontoon down towards the submarine, and from the lower ends of those chains our reeving lines ran under the submarine.
The situation was bad and rapidly growing worse. If we let the Sagamore tow the pontoon away from our side, she would pull out from under the submarine the reeving lines that the divers had fought so hard to pass through the tunnel. If we wanted to save those lines, it was necessary to leave the pontoon battering our side while we hooked each anchor chain separately, with our wildly swinging boom, hoisted it up through the pontoon onto the Falcon’s deck and unshackled the wires from the lower ends of the chains.
One of the boatswains objected.
“You’ll tear the mast out of the Falcon trying to lift those three-ton chains while we’re rolling this way; and those swinging chains’ll kill somebody sure when we try to get ’em in on deck. Let the Sagamore take the pontoon away, reeving lines and all, or we’ll get sunk!”
He was probably right. The seas were breaking over us, the pontoon was one moment awash, the next leaping over our heads threatening to crash down on our deck. But I thought of the fight Eadie and Wilson had put up to get those lines through. I could not cast their work away without a struggle, and turned to Hartley.
“Will you try it, captain?” Back came the sailor’s answer, the old, old call of the seaman unafraid:
“Aye, aye, sir!”
He looked over his men crowded into the narrow passage at the rail, beckoned to one.
“On the pontoon, Badders! Hook on the falls!”
The boom swung over the side, plumbing the pontoon. On the next roll, Badders, poised on the rail, leaped to the top of the pontoon as it dropped away in the trough of the sea. A boatswain’s mate slacked roundly on the falls, the heavy block from the boom alternately dropped onto the pontoon and lifted away from it as the Falcon rolled. The Falcon’s searchlight cast a blue glare through the darkness, framing the heaving pontoon and the man on it against a black background of flying spray and tumbling seas.
A wire strap was flung to Badders; he caught it, slipped it through the end of one chain. On the next roll, as the hanging block shot down on the pontoon and paused a second, he dragged it to the chain link, caught the hook in the strap, leaped clear. The chain rose with a jerk ten feet out of the hawsepipe as the Falcon rolled away; the boom flew over and the Falcon’s mainmast whipped violently under the sudden strain. Hartley shouted to the winchman:
“Heave round smartly!” The winch groaned under its load, the fall came in, the heavy anchor chain rose through the hawsepipe. Badders rode the pontoon, clinging tightly to the valves.
The falls came two-blocks; we could hoist no more as the boom had only forty feet of clearance over the rail. The sailors slacked one guy, hauled in on the other. The boom swung in over the deck, the chain swayed violently from boom to pontoon. Boatswain Hawes leaped to the rail, passed a stopper around the chain where it crossed our side, secured his stopper to the bitts. The chain could not run back. Hartley slacked away on the boom; forty feet of chain came clattering down on our deck, with all hands standing clear to avoid being brained by one of the flying links.
The block lay slack over the heap of tangled chain; the boatswain’s mate unhooked the block, passed another strap around the chain at the point where Hawes had stoppered it to the rail, hooked the block in again there. The fall was taken up. Once more the weight came on the boom. More chain rose up through the hawsepipe; the bight of the chain to the tune of creaking lines, ascended toward the head of the boom, and Hartley as his mast swayed and whipped in the seaway, eyed his standing rigging anxiously and wondered whether it would hold.
Up went the second flight of chain, dangling from the block,—one bight leading to our deck, the other to the pontoon where, link by link, the chain banged the top of the hawsepipe as it was dragged clear. The last link came out, the chain swung in to our side dragging the end of the reeving wire with it. In came our boom again, down came the block, all the chain hanging from it this time, to be dumped in a heap in the passageway.
The block was unhooked, the wire unshackled, a manila line with a number of small cork floats tied onto the end of the reeving wire.
Again the boatswain threw a strap to Badders, who ran it through the top link of the other chain. Once more the boom swung out, the block swung wildly over the pontoon. Badders hooked the block in, jumped aside as the chain jerked out of the pipe.
Again the mast whipped crazily but the rigging held; up went the second chain; finally it also lay in a heap on deck. Its reeving wire was unshackled and a manila line with buoys also secured to it.
A husky seaman heaved the end of a six-inch manila hawser aboard the pontoon. Badders ran it through the towing eye on the pontoon, took a few half hitches, then leaped back on the Falcon; thoroughly soaked.
“Man the surfboat!” shouted Hartley. Boatswain Hawes, the coxswain, four seamen, tumbled over the Falcon’s stern into the boat, stood off a little from our port side.
A heaving line shot from the Falcon’s deck, fell across the boat. A sailor leaped on it, pulled it in. The boat crew hauled it aboard, getting at its end the six-inch towline, which they dragged over their stern as they headed for the Sagamore, which was standing by a few hundred feet to leeward. The surfboat, bobbing like a cork among the waves as our searchlight followed it through the darkness, ran close aboard the Sagamore, caught another heaving line from her, watched the hawser end being dragged over the Sagamore’s rail and made fast to her bitts.
Four sharp blasts came through the night from the Sagamore’s whistle; she was under way. The six-inch hawser ran out from our deck in the Sagamore’s wake; when it was all gone, two axes swung against our rail on the straining lines which held the leaping pontoon to our side. The pontoon rose over our rail on the crest of a wave; the towline tautened with a jerk and the heaving cylinder fairly jumped thirty feet clear of us as it fell away into the trough. Lieutenant Hartley breathed a sigh of relief as he watched it vanish in the darkness.
“Well, commander, I didn’t think the old boat would stand it. Did you see the way the mainmast whipped when the weight came on?”
As the pontoon pulled away, we paid out on the buoy lines and the wires ran back down through the hawsepipes, sinking to the sea bottom. Soon we let go the buoys. They were dragged through the water, up over the pontoon, and shot down through the hawsepipes as the pontoon drew far enough away to take up all the slack in the buoy lines. The pontoon disappeared astern of the Sagamore. Our searchlight cut back and forth in its wake. There were the buoys, floating clear, safely secured to the ends of our reeving lines!
The searchlight picked up the surfboat; in its beam, we watched Hawes and his men tossing madly in the sea as, one by one, they ran alongside the mooring buoys, harpooned the toggles with their boathooks, cast loose the pelicans. One by one we dragged in the water-soaked hawsers till only one straining line to windward held us. The Falcon steamed ahead
on that to slack the strain; the surfboat tripped the hook, the storm swung us flying down to leeward till the ship picked up headway enough to steer, when we steamed up to make a lee for the surfboat. One at a time, the crew tumbled over our rail, wet as usual. Towing the surfboat by a long painter over her stern, the Falcon steamed well clear to anchor and ride out the storm.
A day of heartbreaking disappointments.
XXX
A TUG OF WAR
The storm blew for two days. When the sea flattened out somewhat afterwards, we moored again. As expected, we found some kinks in wires when we picked them up, but the divers finally worked them free. After much labor, Michels and Bailey, working from opposite sides of the submarine, managed to saw the forward line, which was jammed under the keel, back into the tunnel, where the eye passed through without much resistance, and we were ready again to lower a pontoon. The Sagamore towed back the pontoon we had struggled with before, we took it alongside, secured the hauling wires to the chains (which the Vestal had replaced in the hawsepipes), secured our lowering lines, connected up the airhoses. The pontoon was to go on the port side of the submarine. We started to flood down, meanwhile taking in the slack of the wires on the starboard side as the pontoon filled. By early afternoon, the pontoon was awash and ready to sink. We let it submerge, held it just under the surface till it took in about five tons more water, then Badders and Weaver swung over the side on the stages and closed the flood valves. Everything was ready.
With Hartley at the after line and myself at the forward one, we slacked out on the twelve-inch hawsers, and the pontoon started down on our opposite side of the Falcon, the boatswain heaving in on the hauling wires as we paid out on our hawsers. The lowering went beautifully,—for the first fifty feet. Then came a cry from across the deck. I ran over to investigate.
On the Bottom: The Raising of the Submarine S-51 Page 17
