Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  “There aren’t any conditions,” I replied angrily. What did he think I was, anyway? “I’m just lending you some pumps, that’s all. It’s in return for some air compressors and a couple of pumps Captain Lucas once got from your warehouse for me. All I ask of you is that you see your men don’t put any salt water in these radiators and ruin them too.” I turned to Captain Roys. “Swing those pumps aboard her, Frank, and let’s get out of here. They seem to think we’re a gang of pirates!”

  We delivered the pumps and steamed away from the terribly heeled over Gera. Those were four fine new pumps. If McCance couldn’t straighten up his wreck with them, he wasn’t any good at all.

  He wasn’t. Over the next couple of days, the Gera careened as crazily as ever from side to side. On September 19, I departed on my way to Alexandria, leaving the Cleopatra just dry-docked. On September 24, I got back; the Gera was no nearer safety than when I had left. That day and the following day, I could pay little attention to her antics; I was too busy seeing to the rehabilitation of the crushed keel blocks in the Persian dry dock. When I left my room in Building 35 early on September 25 there was the Gera still badly over to port.

  It seemed unbelievable. Three weeks had gone by since that ship had lifted off the bottom and she was now no nearer safety from capsizing than the day she had lifted. At least by accident in all that time, one would have thought they might have got her straightened up. Evidently McCance had a far greater capacity for blundering incompetence than I had given him credit for.

  In the early evening of that day, Friday, September 25, Captain Lucas phoned me to ask if I could come immediately to see him. I went, leaving Lloyd Williams to struggle alone with the keel blocks in the Persian dry dock.

  Matters in respect to the Gera had apparently reached a climax. McCance had just sent a message to inform Captain Lucas that again all the pumps, including mine now, were broken down and he was helpless to do anything further to save the Gera. Whether that meant he was voluntarily throwing up the sponge, I didn’t learn, but I believe that was what was meant. At any rate, Captain Lucas, acting on cabled authority from the Admiralty to use his discretion, had decided the time had come to use it—he was canceling completely the contract held by McCance and his company in London. Would I be willing to take over everything, and particularly was I willing to take over instantly and try to save the Gera?

  I told him if he would give me an official order canceling the British contract and authorizing me to take over, I’d take over at once. He had the order already made out—he handed it to me. It was about 6 P.M.

  I hurried from his office to organize an emergency salvage party for the Gera. Hastily I started the crew of the Resolute, just in from her wreck and alongside our Naval Base pier, out to both salvaged dry docks to pick up from them all the salvage pumps still on those docks; rounded up Captain Reed and all his salvage men; got hold of Bob Steele to help on stability calculations, and at 7 P.M. everybody steamed away for the commercial harbor on the Resolute with half a dozen assorted pumps on her fantail.

  At 7:30 P.M., we were alongside the port side of the Gera, listed now so badly to port it was impossible to stand on deck without holding on to something and with her port gunwale very nearly awash. She was in a very bad way; no pumps of any nature were running on her.

  Far up on the high side, clinging there to the railing, I spotted Captain McCance. Telling Captain Reed only to start unloading pumps, to get them down inside the hatches, and to get some running in one hold forward and one hold aft as fast as possibly he could, I left him. I clambered with great difficulty up that inclined deck to where McCance stood, bedraggled in his white clothes, for once without his monocle, looking wan and haggard as he clung to the upper rail to keep from sliding down the deck and overboard. I was sorry for the poor devil; nobody looking at him then against a background of complete failure could help pitying him.

  Hanging to the rail with one hand myself, I handed him a copy of the order from Captain Lucas, acting in the name of the Admiralty.

  “We’ll take over now, Captain,” I said, as sympathetically as I could. “Better luck to you elsewhere in the future.”

  “What do you want of me?” asked McCance, reading the brief order.

  “Nothing at all, Captain. You’re all knocked out. Better get off and go home to get some sleep. We’ll take care of this ship. Don’t worry any more.”

  But I was wasting my sympathy on McCance, I swiftly found. He began to insist that I give him a receipt for the Gera, afloat in safe condition. I looked at him in astonishment. He wanted me to sign a certificate which, if the Gera immediately capsized on me before I could do anything to her to save her, would put all the blame on me? I promptly quit feeling sorry for Captain McCance; even if he’d lost his monocle, he hadn’t lost his monocle manner.

  “If you’ll get down this deck after me, on to the Resolute where I can get a hand free to write without breaking my neck, I’ll give you a receipt for the Gera ‘as is’ and no conditions. And that’s all you’ll get! Take it or leave it!” Very cautiously, hand over hand, I worked my way down that dangerous slope on to the Resolute, wrote out the receipt as promised, and saw McCance off. Then I turned to.

  But I had little to do myself. Captain Reed, elderly as he was and with only one good eye for observation in getting about, knew his business; so did Captain Roys; so did all the salvage men I’d brought out. To all of them the Gera was a challenge—for three weeks they’d all observed her teetering crazily on the verge of going over, itching to get their fingers on her. Now at last she was theirs—they would show everybody round about that harbor in Massawa what salvage men could do.

  On careened decks on which a monkey would have had difficulty in getting about, they manhandled the pumps aboard, got them down terrifically inclined hatches, coupled up discharge and suction hoses. Then in one hold forward and another aft, I got pumps rolling over and pumping out water, so as to get two holds dry and give the ship some stability before she rose high enough to make her topheavy and capsize her—the one thing McCance, trying to empty, all holds together, hadn’t had understanding enough to do.

  Of course it was an all-night job; we didn’t start until 7:30 P.M. Our greatest hazard we found as darkness caught us was to avoid breaking our necks on those sloping decks falling over McCance’s collection of broken-down pumps littering the Gera. Every kind of pump I’d ever seen or heard of was there in profusion, every one a piece of junk at the moment—gasoline-driven pumps; steam-driven pumps, both reciprocating and centrifugal; diesel-driven pumps; electric-driven pumps, both ordinary motor-driven centrifugals and special submersible units; together with donkey boilers to furnish steam and massive diesel-driven generators to furnish electricity for their special pump units. There was nearly enough broken-down salvage machinery on the Gera’s decks to make her topheavy enough to capsize from that cause alone. And that was only what was up on deck. There was plenty more broken down inside the holds, including, from what causes I didn’t know, the four new pumps I had loaned McCance.

  We worked all night. By noon on Saturday the Gera was fairly well dried out in all her holds, floating erect, and no longer in any danger. At noon on Sunday, September 27, with all holds and machinery spaces dry, we towed the Gera, stable and upright for the first time in three weeks, out of the commercial harbor and around inside the naval harbor, to moor her there, waiting a propitious moment when from somewhere I could get men enough to repair her damaged hull when I docked her. All my temporary English mechanics had departed with the Cleopatra three days before. Perhaps soon I should get some of that batch of 200 mechanics promised me from Alex, and for whom, with Captain Lucas’ co-operation, I was already preparing quarters.

  At any rate, there in our harbor near the Liebenfels lay now the Gera, on which Captain Reed and his men, together with Captain Roys and the Resolute’s crew, gazed with much pride. In two days, aided by a little knowledge, they had accomplished what all McCance’s men
and machinery had failed to accomplish in three weeks. Seeing that it was already Sunday afternoon, I let Reed and Roys and all their men have the rest of the day off as a reward, and decided to take the rest of the day off myself. So far, September had been rather wearing.

  September, however, was not quite through with us. Next day, Monday, September 28, with all work on the keel blocks of the Persiandock completed by Lloyd Williams, I dry-docked the next supplyship and then settled back for a few days of only routine work tillon October 1 the Frauenfels would be ready for lifting and all handswould go to work again.

  Everything seemed propitious. The weather was as hot and humid as ever. But September, at least, the month (so I had been assured by my British friends who knew Massawa better than I) which would certainly knock us out with the heat even if June, July, and August hadn’t, was practically gone and we were still on deck with a considerable amount accomplished. I no longer had any cause to worry about the Massawa heat stopping operations at my Naval Base, though the contractor had long since cut off working in the middle of the day on his construction jobs.

  Monday ended in the most gorgeous evening I had ever seen in the Red Sea. I can’t describe it better than by a direct quotation from the end of a letter I wrote my wife that evening (and finished next morning):

  However, it is Monday night now and all is calm and peaceful on the shores of the Red Sea. I went down to the waterfront in the night to look over my collection, and we had a most marvelous harbor scene—no moon, but the brilliant stars glowing over the dark water which was absolutely smooth and like a mirror in which was reflected the inverted image of the nearest ship, our first salvage prize. And farther off sparkled the lights of the salvaged dry docks and our other salvaged ship. A lovely night—but utterly wasted here alone by your devoted

  NED.

  P.S.

  Tuesday morning, September 29

  About 2 A.M., our quiet night went all to hell. It started to rain (very unusual here) and blow like the devil. Our first ship [the Liebenfels] dragged its anchor down the harbor about half a mile before I could get some tugs alongside and drag her back to a safe anchorage. And our second one [the Gera] parted her stern mooring and swung round on her head mooring till she grounded astern. We’ll have to pull her off at high tide tonight.

  Quite an exciting life.

  It was.

  When high tide came, late at night on September 29, with the Resolute, the Intent, the Hsin Rocket, and the Pauline Moller all tugging together on heavy hawsers, we managed by morning of September 30 to drag the stern of the Gera off the mud flat on to which the sudden gale had driven it hard, but fortunately not damaged it. Most of September 30 was spent in remooring her again with such steel hawsers as Massawa afforded.

  And so ended September. September had been a very hectic month for me.

  CHAPTER

  48

  ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, ALL UNDERWATER work on the scuttled Frauenfels was completed, as scheduled, and with practically everything I had at my command, I started out to lift her.

  During the eleven weeks since July 16 when he had started, Brown and his little crew of twelve had struggled faithfully, underwater and on the surface, to patch up with cement the two large holes, one forward and one aft, which Nazi bombs had blasted in her, and to seal up watertight all seachests, close or plug all inside valves, build cofferdams around the submerged deck hatches, and rig up the pumps.

  In every way, the Frauenfels was a harder task to salvage than the Liebenfels had been. She was somewhat bigger, she had twice as many holes in her, she lay in considerably deeper water, which made necessary some inside shoring of her decks by divers to avoid their collapsing under the heavy waterload on top of them when we pumped out inside.

  I had made a few dives myself on the Frauenfels for inspection purposes and had often visited her to check the progress of the work. Most of the actual underwater work had been done by little Buck Scougale, for whose energy, skill, and daring as a diver my respect constantly increased. Buck had been aided by Dorcy, the Intent’s only other diver who, while he lacked Buck’s skill and ability to get about in tight places, nevertheless put everything he had into helping out underwater. Buck and Dorcy together had done all the work inside and outside the submerged hulk of the Frauenfels, a terrific job for only two men in such a short time. To some degree, they had been aided by a shipmate, Herald Bertolotti, “Muzzy,” who was learning to dive. “Muzzy” proved an able student, and was of considerable assistance on the bottom.

  Now the Frauenfels was ready for her rise.

  I had no intention of a repetition of the man-killing episode on the Liebenfels. This time, I had a magnificent set of salvage pumps of my own, big ones as well as little ones, which the Chamberlin had brought out from the United States. My pumping equipment, already mounted in place on wooden platforms standing island-like on the cofferdams rising from the submerged hull of the Frauenfels, was topped by four huge 10-inch Jaeger pumps. These mounted, two forward and two aft, had twice the capacity each of the 6-inch pumps I had used on the Liebenfels—each of those 10-inch pumps could throw 3000 gallons of water a minute. Then, in addition, I had four 6-inch pumps, half-a-dozen 4-inch pumps, and finally some small 2-inch pumps which could be carried around by hand.

  Accompanied by the Resolute and carrying Captain Reed, Lloyd Williams, all their salvage men, and the ten South Africans to help out, the Intent steamed into the south harbor early on October 1 to commence. I had forty-eight men all told this time; I intended to have enough to work round the clock and still let everyone get some sleep by working only in shifts.

  With the Intent and the Resolute both tied to port alongside what little of the Frauenfel’s superstructure amidships showed above the water, we started up our pumps. The effect was magnificent—the rhythmic roar of over a dozen pump engines and the huge fountains of water cascading from one end of the wreck to the other into the sea, made a scene that for sound and sight was unforgettable!

  It so happened that the wreck of the Frauenfels lay in the exact center of the line of wrecks with her bow very close to the wreck ahead of her, the Vesuvio, while the stern of the Frauenfels hardly cleared the wreck astern of her, the Brenta, by ten feet. Under these conditions, I considered it best to raise her bow first, to give us a better chance of keeping her clear of the neighboring wrecks when she floated.

  Consequently, we pumped to lighten her bow more than her stern. With all the pumping capacity I had, by mid-afternoon, I had the forward holds pumped far enough down so by all of Bob Steele’s calculations, she should start to lift forward, but she didn’t. I checked Steele’s figures; they were right, but the bow wasn’t lifting.

  Brown, Reed, Roys, and I all knitted our brows over that puzzle, but we couldn’t find the answer. However, not wishing to get so much buoyancy forward as to make the bow lift finally with a sudden jolt that might cause trouble, I slowed down all the forward pumps and speeded up those astern. We would have to lift her stern first now, in spite of hardly any clearance aft.

  We did. By late afternoon, the stern started to rise and by early evening we had the afterdecks awash and rising steadily. When I had the stern high enough to insure that nothing the submerged bow might do could cause the stern to go under again, we slacked down aft and went all out on the forward pumps.

  The water in the forward holds went down continuously, but the bow didn’t rise. Already during the daylight hours, we had once lowered all our pumps down the cofferdams, a tough job, since those 10-inch pumps were veritable mammoths to handle in getting them down onto new scaffoldings inside the wet holds. Now to avoid losing suction forward, we had to lower away the pumps again, this time in the darkness. We managed it successfully, after which half my combined salvage forces flopped down at random on the decks of the salvage tugs, and the other half kept on servicing pumps—they were consuming huge quantities of gasoline and fresh water for their radiators.

  We kept on pumping forward.
We certainly had buoyancy enough to start the bow up, but obstinately it refused to lift. There was no reason apparent, there was nothing to do but to keep on pumping.

  At midnight with a sudden jolt, the bow broke free of the bottom, jumped ten feet at least in a violent leap that sent water cascading off both sides of her forward in solid cataracts like twin Niagaras, and then rose hurriedly till her forward deck was fairly well out of water, at least as high up as her stern. It took a diving survey outside her to disclose the why of that performance. Then we learned the answer. The bomb exploding forward had laid part of her port side steel plating flat out some feet to port and flush with her bottom. This protrusion, buried under some five or six feet of mud in the sea floor, invisible to the divers working on her previously, had been acting as a huge anchor, holding down her bow till we had developed sufficient excess buoyancy to tear it free when the bow had come rushing tip.

  But as all our pumps had been well lashed down in anticipation of such trouble, no damage had resulted. We had our ship afloat fore and aft, and coming up steadily through the night as full power was put on all the pumps.

  Friday morning saw the Frauenfels, encrusted all over with mussels like her previously risen sister, with her decks all well above water and her sides far enough up to make her look like a ship again. By early Friday afternoon, I had her far enough up to consider drying her out that night and towing her into the Naval Base Saturday morning.

  But no salvage job is ever completed without unexpected trouble of some kind and the Frauenfels proved no exception. About the middle of the afternoon, with no warning at all, it started suddenly to blow a full gale. Hurriedly, I cast loose both the Intent and the Resolute and sent them steaming full speed through a gap in the line of wrecks to take up positions to starboard of the Frauenfels, the windward side, in case of trouble. Hardly had they got round to the starboard quarter and each passed us a six-inch manila hawser which, on the Frauenfels, I hurriedly secured to the starboard quarter bitts, when the Frauenfels which had been straining heavily on the old wire hawsers holding her stern in position, snapped both those long-submerged steel cables. Instantly, her stern started to swing down on the sunken bow of the Brenta not over ten feet astern of her.