Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  Lunch over, Captain Damant went back to his office, while I spent the afternoon with Commander Rithon, looking over several of his beached wrecks, his salvage crews, and his salvage gear. I was astonished to note that though his operation was all Royal Navy, the equipment he had couldn’t start to compare with all the salvage gear the Admiralty had so plentifully placed at the disposal of the incompetent McCance and his commercial basis operations in Massawa.

  In particular, Rithon bewailed how his shortage of underwater cutting torches, for burning away protruding steel on the hulls of his wrecks, had set him back. He had possessed several British make underwater torches, but they were cumbersome and slow for a diver to work with; he had needed far more to cover his work properly.

  “Then I had a bit of luck with this underwater burning, Captain,” he confided to me. “I’ve got one torch now that’s tops; it does more work under water itself than all the torches together the Royal Navy’s given me. And where do you think I got it? Out of the junk heap! Along with some other gear shipped here from home, there was a box full of junk of all kinds; stuff perhaps they had an idea in England I might find useful in repairing something else. I was pawing that box of junk over—bolts, nuts, copper piping, old brass valves—when I came across an old underwater torch I’d never seen before. Worn out, all green with verdigris it was, evidently discarded as junk itself. My men and I took it apart, cleaned it up, repaired it a bit, put it together again, and took it down on a wreck to try it out. Mighty handy torch it proved; beat everything we had all hollow! Let me show it to you.”

  Commander Rithon drew forth from a tool kit an underwater torch, considerably battered from long years of hard use before he salvaged it from the junk pile, and proudly handed it to me.

  I took one look and laughed. If the Centurion was a British joke on me, that torch was my joke on them. It was my underwater torch—one of the original torches I had invented over fifteen years before for my first salvage job on the submarine S-51! How it ever got to England and then to Port Said, I couldn’t imagine. But it was an Ellsberg torch, all right; the most battered one I’d ever seen, still doing its bit under water in Port Said to help win the war.

  “Well, that’s certainly interesting! Thanks for the unexpected compliment!” I told Rithon as I explained to him what that unknown torch was. “Now if you’re still in trouble over torches, I can help you out. In a shipment I got from New York just lately, there’s a whole case of these torches, half a dozen new ones, the very latest model. I can spare you one; I’ll send it to you as soon as I get back to Massawa; the new ones are much handier even than this old model.”

  But with typical British conservatism, Rithon refused the gift. The one he had suited him fine; it wasn’t by any means worn out yet and he didn’t want anything better. Only in case some diver lost his most prized possession in the deep sea would he take me up on my offer to give him another and a newer one for nothing.

  So Commander Rithon and I parted very good friends (in spite of his associate’s bet on the dry dock which still remained unmentioned) and I started back for Cairo. From Port Said, while roundabout the whole Delta, going via Cairo was still the quickest way by road to get to Alex.

  CHAPTER

  41

  THE NEXT MORNING I WAS SEATED at a long conference table in the Alexandria dockyard, facing an array of Royal Navy officers and British civilian dockyard superintendents.

  I had already met Admiral Harwood—the biggest admiral I had ever set eyes on. I was willing to bet that when he walked out to the end of the flying bridge, his flagship heeled appreciably to that side. After a brief discussion with him and an invitation to come back and spend the night with him as his guest when I had finished, I was turned over to the Royal Navy captain serving as Superintendent of His Majesty’s Alexandria Dockyard. The latter had already received his instructions from the admiral.

  The conference opened. Admiral Harwood had instructed the dockyard superintendent to go all out in providing me what I needed at Massawa. The first need was the seven naval officers as assistants, whom America had stated to General Maxwell wouldn’t be furnished me from home.

  That was agreed on without argument—the need was obvious. The only question, a tough one, was which seven British naval officers should be ordered to go. Massawa was a highly undesired station. Finally they were selected—two Royal Navy commanders, two lieutenant commanders, three lieutenants. If the Admiralty in London approved, they would be ordered to Massawa.

  Next came the problem of mechanics. I wanted two hundred shipyard men in assorted trades; I had a list of what I wanted. There wasn’t any argument over that need, or over their distribution by trades, nor even over their availability now that the dockyard at Alex was functioning to a limited degree only. But didn’t I understand that British dockyard workmen were like Americans; they were free and equal citizens of a democracy and couldn’t permanently be shipped about from one city to another without their consent?

  Now the discussion waxed really hot, with the civilian dockyard supervisors doing most of the discussing. Their men were scattered everywhere over the Middle East by the “flap”—Suez, Port Said, Beirut, Haifa—even getting in touch with them to canvass their willingness to go was no simple matter. Then Massawa had a terrible reputation. They doubted they could get any volunteers at all. Perhaps if a sufficiently high bonus were offered, they might get some. What bonus would be offered?

  I offered to pay a very handsome bonus; one I thought would prove attractive; I would see that the men sent earned it. Then there was a fierce argument over that. Not that the bonus I suggested wasn’t large enough, but that it was too large—it would cause repercussions on the wage scales at the Alexandria dockyard itself when the men finally came back to work again there. The conference became very heated. Finally the bonus was cut down radically to what wouldn’t hurt Alex in the long run. I didn’t feel it was enough to help Massawa much right then, especially as the wages all American workmen were getting in Massawa made the offer to the British mechanics, bonus included, look very sick. But I got nowhere on that; Alex and its future came first.

  The Captain of the Dockyard ordered his civilian assistants to start canvassing their scattered workmen for volunteers to go to Massawa on the terms finally set; obviously it would take some time. The conference broke up. The civilians and most of the officers left. The Captain of the Dockyard and another officer, the fleet naval constructor, Commander Mann, R.N., began a private discussion over a damaged light cruiser they had on their hands.

  I couldn’t help overhearing them since apparently neither of the two regarded the matter as confidential so far as I was concerned, and immediately I pricked up my ears. It appeared that the light cruiser, H.M.S. Dido, was in serious trouble. Her stern, beneath her steering engine room, was flooded, apparently as the combined result of concussion from near-miss Axis bombs while she was bombarding Rhodes, and too light a hull structure aft. (This last was a result of lightening up her whole structure during the idiocy resulting from the Geneva naval agreements on limiting warship sizes, where the British, as we did also, had lightened up warship hulls so much trying to keep weights inside arbitrarily assigned class limits, as to get themselves in serious trouble now there was a war on and ships had to fight.)

  The Dido had to be dry-docked for a considerable underwater repair job to her stern before she could fight again. Since they dared not dry-dock her in constantly bombed Alexandria, they were discussing the final arrangements for sending her 5000 miles to Durban in South Africa to dock her there and carry out the repairs. She would be gone from the fighting line in the Mediterranean well over a month, perhaps nearly two months. That was all too much for me, and I broke in on the discussion.

  “Captain,” I asked, “why send the Dido to Durban if she’s only a light cruiser? She has to pass right by my front door in Massawa on her way through the Red Sea to Durban. Send me a few workmen right now, send her to me, and I’ll dock her
in Massawa, repair her, and have her back here again throwing shells at the enemy in less than a quarter of the time she can possibly get to Durban and back for that job!”

  Commander Mann, the fleet naval constructor, explained to me why not. The “light” cruiser Dido was not so light; she actually displaced over 7500 tons in her fighting trim, somewhat more now that she was flooded aft. I couldn’t possibly dry-dock her in my Persian dry dock, the only one I yet had operating, which could lift only 6000 tons at best. Besides that, the Dido was far too long for my floating dry dock. She was 530 feet long from stem to stern, my Persian dry dock was only 410 feet long. Even if my dock could lift the weight, docking a ship with such a terrific length of her hull overhanging the dock with no support, would break her back.

  It was too bad, Mann added. They had considered sending her to Massawa at first, but once they had checked the size of my Persian dock against the Dido’s dimensions and weight, of course they had dropped the idea. Now if only that large Italian dry dock I had salvaged were repaired already, that would be a different story, but of course it wasn’t yet. Serious as sending one of the few major remaining Mediterranean warships away for so long was, there was nothing for it except to take the knock and send her to Durban.

  I gnashed my teeth. If only someone, America, Britain, anybody, had sent me the modest quota of men and the materials I had begged for, I could long since have had that salvaged Italian dry dock back in commission, ready at that vital moment to dock this damaged warship! Now God alone knew what damage to the Allied cause might result from her long absence from the weakened fighting line at sea while she went to Durban. But what Commander Mann had said was true—my salvaged Italian dry dock wasn’t yet repaired. I said nothing further and left the conference room. I spent the rest of the day looking over the half-deserted Alexandria dockyard, the damage there to ships and naval shops the Nazis had already done with their constant bombing, and what damage the Nazis and the Eyties together had done to Alexandria itself.

  But I wasn’t seeing the bomb damage, even though I was looking at it. Hour after hour as I wandered on foot over Alexandria there kept running through my mind the picture of that cruiser, H.M.S. Dido, steaming 10,000 miles to Durban and back to be repaired, a terrible waste even in a war when waste is accepted as a matter of course. But her long absence from her fighting station—there was a danger nobody could laugh off! How could I fit that overweight and overlong cruiser into my little Persian dry dock and avoid both the waste and the danger? My eyes were looking at collapsed buildings, bomb craters, sunk or burned-out ships along the dockyard quays, but I wasn’t seeing them; instead all my mind saw was every conceivable and inconceivable fantasy of the Dido and that Persian dock being somehow fitted together—truly a miracle if it could be done.

  In the late afternoon, my steps turned finally toward the Egyptian mansion taken over as a shore residence by Admiral Sir Henry Harwood, K.C.B., O.B.E., R.N., Commander-in-Chief of the British Mediterranean Fleet (if anyone could still call it a fleet without blushing, seeing it was composed mainly of a few cruisers and one dummy battleship). There I was to dine with him and spend the night.

  My bag was already at his house, left by my Army driver. I was escorted to my room by a British petty officer, apparently detailed temporarily as steward to me. He had already opened and been all through what I had in my aviation bag. Spread out on the huge Egyptian bed in that large room was my best white naval uniform, gold buttons already inserted, shoulder marks attached, campaign ribbons pinned on. My only white shoes, newly whitened, reposed on the floor alongside. That steward knew what was appropriate when one dined with the Commander-in-Chief; he was evidently taking no chances on any non-reg American from even more non-reg Massawa appearing in the wrong clothes.

  “Anything else I can do to ’elp, sir?” he inquired anxiously as he pointed to what was laid out. “Your bath’s already run, sir,” and he indicated the bathroom with its well-filled tub.

  “No, thanks, steward. You seem to have tended to everything; that’s all, I think,” and I waved him out, a little fearful he might insist on staying to dress me, which I doubted I could stand up under. After all, I wasn’t too sure of what was customary from British valets.

  I stripped and climbed into the tub, the first time in months I had used one instead of a shower. After drying myself on a huge towel, the like of which I never knew in Massawa, I started to dress for dinner. And then in a flash it came to me!

  If only they would give me the Dido, I had the answer—I could dry-dock her in Massawa; repair her; return her swiftly to the Mediterranean! She need never go to Durban! The prospect positively dazzled me as it dawned on me how it could be done!

  And then the first glow swiftly faded. My method would probably sound unorthodox, and I was dealing with the very conservative British. Would they ever let me try anything so unconventional on one of their precious cruisers? Hardly likely. There, for example, was Commander Rithon in Port Said, so conservative he wouldn’t even let me give him as a gift a new and improved underwater torch to help him out—he was perfectly content to continue with that old model of mine I had discarded over ten years before.

  But the idea was too good to drop without a fight, and then it struck me that after all, I might be in luck—my chance of getting the Dido might be excellent. For in a few minutes I was to dine with Admiral Harwood himself, who would have the last word on my proposal and Admiral Harwood just couldn’t be the conventional Englishman—his bulk was unconventional and so also must be his ideas, for he had won his fame, while a commodore, by fighting off the River Plate, in 1939, the most unconventional naval battle a British admiral had ever fought.

  There with simply three small cruisers, armed only with six-inch and eight-inch guns, he had fallen in with the Nazi pocket battleship, the Admiral Graf Spee, armed with six eleven-inch guns in heavily armored turrets. Against the heavy guns and the thick armor of that battleship, built by the Nazis with the boast that her guns could sink anything her engines couldn’t outrun, and that her engines could outrun anything her guns couldn’t sink, the guns and protection of Harwood’s little cruisers were mere popguns and tinplate.

  Had Harwood been the conventional admiral, he would have formed his three cruisers into prescribed line of battle ahead and engaged the Graf Spee, broadside to broadside, to go down with all his ships firing to the last, flags nailed to their masts, the very symbol of dogged British courage against overwhelming odds, while the Graf Spee, without a scratch on her after the battle, would have continued her career of destruction in the South Atlantic. Queerly enough, exactly that had happened in World War I, when another British admiral had fallen in off Chile on the other side of South America with a superior German force commanded in the flesh by the very Admiral Graf von Spee for whom Harwood’s antagonist was now named.

  But had Harwood fought a conventional battle? He had not. Did he go down in conventional style as he should have with guns still firing and flags flying? He did not.

  Instead when all the smoke had lifted from over his very unorthodox tactics in that battle off the River Plate, the bewildered captain of the Graf Spee lay dead by his own hand, a suicide, and the battered and defeated Graf Spee lay on the bottom, also a suicide, scuttled in despair by her own crew!

  The unconventional Commodore Harwood, all his own little ships battle-scarred but still afloat, had gone on triumphantly to become Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. With him I was to dine in a few minutes. I felt sure that with Harwood, my unconventional scheme for the Dido would get an O.K.

  Dinner was soon announced, and I sat down to a very formally served meal at which the others present, aside from the host, were his Chief-of-Staff, Rear Admiral Edelstein, R.N., unlike his C.-in-C. very thin and gaunt; and his naval aide, Flag Lieutenant Sinclair, R.N.V.R., like all flag lieutenants, a paragon of attention to his admiral’s guests.

  The conversation roamed all over the world—from Block Is
land to Rabaul; from the River Plate to the Red Sea. While the soup was being served, Rear Admiral Edelstein, the Chief-of-Staff, apparently as well qualified for the diplomatic service as for the fighting line, asked the C.-in-C. whether he had ever read a book by me, “On the Bottom,” relating to the raising of the American submarine, S-51, sixteen years before. But despite the obvious diplomacy of this opening remark, he came to grief with his question.

  Admiral Harwood, whom I had found very human and very unaffected, also proved himself very honest. He confessed he had never heard of “On the Bottom,” a terrible statement to make regarding any book in the presence of its author.

  “My word, Admiral!” exclaimed the Chief-of-Staff. “You simply must read Ellsberg’s ‘On the Bottom.’ It’s one of the most thrilling books I ever read; a real classic of the sea! All the London critics so acclaimed it when it came out!”

  Admiral Harwood promised that in between battles he’d get himself a copy and read it.

  Then the admiral steered the conversation down the Red Sea, praising wholeheartedly what he called my remarkable achievements in getting the Naval Base there going, in raising the Italian dry dock and the Liebenfels, and in putting his supply fleet in some decent shape for efficient action, all of which aid he highly appreciated. While he had to confess he’d never heard of my book, my reputation in salvage he well knew of before and he was deeply gratified to see it so much enhanced by my performance at Massawa.

  “Tit for tat, old man,” I thought to myself, so I told him that for three years I had glowed inwardly over his remarkable performance at the battle off the River Plate, even going so far at the time as to write a special article in an American seagoing journal calling attention to it as not only a brilliant victory, but as one unique in the tactics which had brought victory to the side to which no naval “expert” would have given the slightest chance. Now that I had the opportunity to tell him of my admiration in person, I wasn’t going to pass it up.