Eadie went down with the new nozzle, carefully spotted his position on the port side abreast the conning tower, braced himself with the nozzle pointed at the clay close to the buried hull, and sang out:
“On deck! Turn on the water!”
Slowly we opened the valve from the fire main to his hose till the pressure rose to thirty pounds, then held it there. The hose swelled out moderately. Far below, Eadie started washing. He worked a minute, then I heard:
“On deck! More pressure on the hose!”
The valve was opened a little wider, the pressure went to fifty pounds. Shortly another call:
“More pressure!”
We had never been above sixty pounds, even with the small hose, but if Eadie could stand it, we could, so the gauge went up to seventy pounds. Still not satisfied, Eadie called for more, and we opened the valve wide, gave him the full force of the pump, one hundred pounds. The hose stiffened out, became hard as iron, in a long bend swept over the rail into the sea. At the valve, a seaman stood by to close off hurriedly if the nozzle tore from Eadie’s hands. I listened anxiously. Another call.
“On deck! Give me some pressure!”
“You’ve got one hundred pounds already!”
“Give me some more then! I’m just starting to do some real digging!”
I yelled down the hatch where an engineer stood by the wrecking pump.
“Speed up on that pump. Give her the limit!”
He opened the throttle. The needle jumped,—one hundred and twenty, one hundred and thirty, one hundred and forty, one hundred and fifty pounds,—the limiting pressure for which the wrecking pump was built.
A terrific pressure for any man to try to hold. But no complaint came from Eadie. The pump labored on.
Another call from below:
“More pressure!”
I looked down the hatch where the engineer waited.
“Shove her up till she breaks!”
The chief engineer screwed down on the safety valve, shot more steam to the pump. Up went the pressure again. One hundred and sixty, one hundred and eighty, two hundred pounds. The gauge needle would go no further. We paused there. The domed cast iron head over the pump cylinder was pulsing back and forth with each stroke as if it were made of rubber, not iron. The pump was laboring far over its normal capacity. I dared go no further. We stopped there.
Another call from Eadie.
“On deck! Give her some more!”
“Sorry, Eadie! You’ll have to get along with what you’ve got. If I give her another ounce, the pump will blow up. You’ve got two hundred pounds now!”
Eadie, handicapped by only two hundred pounds of pressure, was nevertheless making famous progress. The hose on deck was so stiff it would have been impossible to make a dent in it with a sledge hammer. Under that pressure, a jet of water, hard as a crowbar, was shooting out of the nozzle, cutting through the stiff clay easily, while the side jets shot a cone of water astern that widened the hole made by the main jet and at the same time carried backward the broken clay. In less than an hour, Eadie had tunneled six feet under the boat and disappeared beneath the hull.
Eadie turned over the hose to Wilson and started up. Wilson continued the job. The wrecking pump pulsated, threatened to let go at any minute, but the divers were doing so well it seemed unwise to cut the pressure. Wilson finished his hour, advanced another six feet. Eiben relieved Wilson, Kelley succeeded Eiben, Carr followed Kelley, and when darkness fell and Carr, the last diver for the day, finally started backwards out of the tunnel, he had reached the keel. Five divers in one afternoon had done what had taken weeks on the first tunnel.
The pump stopped, we pulled up the hose, admired the shiny brass nozzle. Eadie explained the secret.
“There wasn’t any kick at all. I could have held everything you could send. And the harder the water came, the faster the clay went. She’s a wonder!”
Everyone on the ship braced up. Instead of weeks of work and hours of terror, the last tunnel would go through in a few more hours. Eagerly we waited for the dawn.
Next morning, Wilson took the hose, went down to start the tunnel on the starboard side. With great care he noted the tunnel entrance on the port side, and then threw a weighted line down the starboard side of the ship, exactly opposite, to mark the location. There he braced himself, directly below the huge “5” of the “S-51” painted on the side of the conning tower.
“On deck! Turn on the water!”
The valve was opened wide, the pump speeded up. The gauge needle spun round to the two hundred mark and steadied there. The pump started to pant once more, as the fire hose, swelled to the bursting point, carried the pulsating stream to the nozzle in Wilson’s hands.
Twenty minutes went by. A loud crash from the hold, a fountain of water shooting from the pump room hatch. The fire hose went limp. The wrecking pump was racing like mad when the soaked engineer finally worked his way through the deluge and shut off the steam. The expected had finally happened. The cylinder head on the pump had blown up! The cast iron plate lay in pieces all over the fire room.
We started several smaller pumps, put all of them on the fire main, but could get no more than sixty pounds on the hose. Wilson worked with that a few minutes, asked for more. He learned there was no more.
“On deck! I’m coming up. I can’t work without any water!” And only a few weeks before, sixty pounds on a small nozzle was all we had dared give the divers. Wilson came up.
We surveyed the wrecked pump. A new casting, twenty inches in diameter, to fit the cylinder, would probably take several weeks to cast and machine. We could not afford to wait. A boat raced to the Vestal for her repair officer and the boilermaker. Shortly they came aboard and we pointed out what we wanted. Back again to the Vestal with all hands taking the pieces of the broken head as a pattern. We found a boiler. plate one inch thick. From this the boilermaker cut a disk the size of the old cast head, and a ring liner to make up for the curvature of the broken casting. Hurriedly these were marked out, rushed to the drill presses, while several lathes turned out a new set of longer studs to bolt up the double thickness of liner and plate. Back again on the Falcon, where the pump waited, the old studs removed. The new studs were screwed in. On went gasket, steel liner, gasket, steel cover plate, retaining nuts. Socket wrenches spun round, the head was tightened up. In four hours from the time the pump blew up, a jury head was on, the pump was running again. Today, two years since, that makeshift head is still doing duty on the Falcon’s wrecking pump.
The pump was ready again, but the weather turned bad and we ran for shelter.
Next day, Kelley took the hose down to work in the hole Wilson had left. He came up an hour later, sure he was not far from the keel. Michels and Wickwire followed Kelley, and Carr followed Michels. The pressure pounded from the pump. The new head pulsated even more than the old one, but being boiler plate instead of cast iron, had much more elasticity. Carr worked away steadily.
Thirty minutes went by. Carr should have reached the keel. We dressed Eadie ready to go down in the other tunnel and try to pass a line under the keel to Carr, as he had done in the first tunnel.
A message from below.
“On deck! Turn off the water!” We stopped the pump. The minutes went by. No word from Carr, though evidently he was moving around as his tender was kept busy hauling in and paying out on Carr’s lifelines.
Another call, repeated by the telephone man perched in the superstructure:
“On deck! Send me down a line!”
Hartley rove off a small manila line, shackled it to the descending line going down to the submarine’s gun, and paid it out. It reached the bottom, Carr cut it loose from the shackle, became active again. What, we wondered, had gone wrong with him?
Soon we learned.
“On deck! Hoist away on the hose, pay out on the line!”
We obeyed. Hand over hand the tenders heaved up the hose, which came in over the rail while the manila line ran out. Fina
lly the nozzle came up, the small line tied firmly to it. We stopped, asked Carr what next?
“On deck! That’s all, I’m coming up. You got a reeving line through the tunnel!”
Carr had worked his way to the keel, washed a hole under it into the tunnel on the other side, and then crawled all the way through, dragging the fire hose and his own lifeline under the boat Coming out on the opposite side, he found the broken radio antennae dangling there. Dragging some slack on his lifeline through the tunnel, he climbed the antennae to the bridge, and then crawled to the deck. Here his airhose made nearly a complete loop around the submarine, down the starboard side, through the tunnel, and up the port side,—a risky thing, for a tunnel cave-in would have blocked off his only avenue of retreat.
Standing on the S-51’s deck, near the gun, Carr had received the manila line; with this he had slid down the side and tied the new line to the hose nozzle, then crawled back through the tunnel and ordered us to haul the hose up.
And so the first reeving line went through the amidships tunnel, a far different scene from the one in the forward tunnel, when Wilson struggled for hours to find Eadie’s foot wiggling in the darkness and the mud under the keel!
Smith and Eadie dived next, each carrying a line. They met under the keel where Smith backed out, taking both lines which he bent together. I had no desire to have anyone repeat Carr’s stunt of crawling all the way through,—the cave in danger was too great when we could play it safe by using two men.
We rove round stronger manila lines, and with them pulled through our pair of wire hauling lines. On deck, we shackled the anchor chains to the wires, carefully fitted the tapered steel cones over the shackles. The weather turned very bad, but we were determined to get the chains down before our reeving lines got tangled up; in spite of seas breaking over our rail, we lowered the heavy chains one by one, and managed to drag both through successfully.
The tunnel was larger this time,—the chains slipped through under the boat with comparative ease. That done, we unmoored in a hurry and ran for shelter.
Four stormy days went by before we could dive again. At last, in a moderate swell, we finally moored.
The surfboat drew alongside towing a pontoon obtained from the Sagamore, while nearby the Iuka anchored with the last pontoon in tow.
The pontoon was flooded, the flood valves closed, and the cylinder lowered. Grube and Carr dived, put the toggle bars through the chains, saw the pontoon land on the bottom, then cast off the lowering lines. Carr burned off the wires from the chains, leaving only a pair of airhoses secured to the blowing connections on the pontoon, which lay on the port side of the submarine.
The divers came up in a rougher sea. The breeze was freshening from the east, and the Falcon moved uneasily. We had another pontoon riding astern of the Iuka. If we hurried we could get it down. We brought it alongside, rigged it for lowering, opened the flood valves. It took an hour for it to go awash, and spray was flying over the pontoon when Badders and Weaver swung out on their stages and closed the flood valves.
The twelve-inch hawsers groaned and stretched as we slacked them away on the bitts and the pontoon sank. On each up roll, the Falcon jerked heavily on the hawsers, and with each jerk, the diameter of the manila line shrank a little.
Hartley watched his line, I controlled the forward one; fathom by fathom slipped out. The pontoon was down one hundred feet. Kelley and Boyd, dressed and ready, were hoisted over into the waves and disappeared down the descending lines. It was getting dark.
“On the pontoon!” came from below.
At the bitts, we held the hawsers. The Falcon was rolling badly, her side moving some twenty feet up and down every few seconds. Far below us, the pontoon, straining on the hawsers, was compelled to follow our motions, and the divers were having a desperate time trying to maintain their footing on top of the slippery cylinder as it heaved irregularly, jerking them up and down with it. They cut loose the toggle bars. Kelley managed after numerous misses to shoot them through the yellow links and Boyd finally got the locking pins through. We sent down the torch. Kelley burned free the wires and we pulled them up.
I had an idea that we might level off this last pair of pontoons afloat just above the submarine, in the position they would occupy while lifting. To do this, it was necessary to open the flood valves, so we could blow out some water and make the pontoon buoyant enough to float up against the toggle bars in the chains.
Boyd and Kelley had taken a set of wrenches in a canvas bag with them for this purpose, and as soon as the wires were burned clear, were to open the flood valves, but matters began to go wrong.
Boyd’s tender got a signal on his lifeline to take him up. The telephone man asked him his reason. It came back in broken sentences, interrupted by expressive pauses.
“On deck! I’m seasick from [gulps] trying to ride this pontoon! If you don’t take me up [another pause] my insides are coming up anyway!”
We started Boyd up.
Smith was waiting, dressed except for his helmet, as the emergency diver. I told him to stand by.
Meanwhile Kelley, alone now, crawled on his stomach along the top of the pontoon to its forward end. Stillson wrench in one hand, he tried to cling to the pontoon with the other, as he attempted to get his wrench on the valve stem just beyond the edge of the cylinder. The pontoon plunged erratically, sweeping him through the water and bouncing him up and down as he clung to the lowering ring. He was unable to steady down on the pontoon. Finally he telephoned:
“On deck! This pontoon keeps falling away from me. I can’t hang on long enough to get the wrench on the valve. If you can send someone down here to sit on me, maybe I can make it!”
“All right, Kelley. Smith is coming right down!”
We put on Smith’s helmet, hoisted him over and watched him disappear.
“On the pontoon!” Smith crawled to the forward end where Kelley lay, sat on Kelley’s legs. With this extra ballast, Kelley tried again to adjust the wrench, but on the back of that pontoon, which in spite of its huge size, was heaving up and down just above the submarine like a bucking broncho, it was like trying to brand an untied mustang. Smith could hardly hang on himself, let alone hold Kelley down.
Another minute, and Kelley could stand it no longer.
“On deck! Take me up! I’m sick!”
Kelley started up.
Smith took the Stillson wrench, stretched himself out and tried, unaided, to get at the valve. Over the telephone, I listened to him, heard his heavy breathing, his gasps as he was thrown against the pontoon, his curses as he was flung back from the valve stem. Smith was the mildest tempered diver we had, a very quiet man, but after a few minutes of tossing up and down in futile efforts to turn the valve, he was swearing profusely. At last he ceased long enough to call:
“On deck! I can’t make it. The — — pontoon won’t stay still long enough to get a look at the valve; and I’m damn near flying off every roll! Lower her to the bottom, or I’m coming up!”
If Smith couldn’t do it, nobody could. We lowered the pontoon the last twenty feet, and slacked out the lowering lines when the pontoon came to rest. With the pontoon lying quietly on the sea floor, no longer hanging from the Falcon, Smith cast off the lowering lines, disconnected the airhoses, and then crawled aboard the submarine and started up.
Our day’s work was over. The Falcon unmoored. The last pontoon was down.
As Smith was hoisted over the rail, I noticed casually a canvas tool bag upside down on the stage at his feet. Queer. Had he lost his tools? I lifted the bag. There, neatly hidden, lay the bronze bell of the S-51!
I remembered that I had intended to bring that bell up myself once; I had often directed other divers to retrieve it when their work near it was done, but always the men were so worn out that the extra minute’s work on the bottom to uncouple the bell was never undertaken. Now Smith had it, apparently intending to make away with the trophy unnoticed.
I sent Lieutenant Kelly to t
he Vestal with the bell, directing him to lock it safely in a chest under my berth there.
Some hours later, Smith came out of the recompression chamber, found me and asked for the bell.
“I’m sorry, Smith, but that bell is going to Annapolis as a trophy of this job. Nobody is going to have it personally. But I’ll be mighty glad to have your name put on the nameplate as having recovered it and as being the donor.”
“No, I want the bell myself, Mr. Ellsberg. If it goes to the Naval Academy, it’ll be lost in a crowd of other things in a museum. If I take it back home with me to Pittsburgh, it’ll mean something. Come on, be a sport. If you hadn’t seen that bag for another minute, I had one of the bears all set to take it away, and you’d never have known. Besides, the bell had pulled out of its socket and was lying against the sub’s rail, ready to fall overboard and get buried in the mud, and then none of us would have had it. Come on, I rescued it, it ought to be mine!”
But I was adamant. The bell was government property, the Naval Academy should have it. Smith left disappointed. For weeks afterward, my usual morning greeting was a grin from Smith, and the query:
“Well, Mr. Ellsberg, have you decided to give back that bell you stole?”
My stock reply was:
“No, Smith, it’s going to be presented to Annapolis with your compliments.”
Gradually we both forgot the affair.
XXXII
LASHING UP
The S-51, when we lifted her, was bound to come up one end first. Even on a submarine in commission when running submerged, it is a delicate matter to maintain her properly trimmed fore and aft. With no free water in the boat and all the machinery available for balancing, it is not unusual for boats to rise at a considerable angle. For us to attempt to bring the S-51 up horizontally was wholly out of the question. We could only choose which end we should raise first, and we elected to bring up the stern first, as in that position we could expel the most water from the rooms inside. Our spillpipes were in every case located in the forward ends of their compartments. With the stern at the surface, all the water left in the bilges of each compartment would run to the forward end of it where it would blow out through the spillpipe hanging there, and thus lighten the boat still more.
On the Bottom: The Raising of the Submarine S-51 Page 19
