“Thank God for that!” I murmured. “If only we can keep her that way, she’ll be saved!”
Harding completed his second turn, swung the King Salvor hard in against the high side of the Empress of Australia. Someone above dropped him a line; I shouted upward through the gloom for a Jacob’s ladder. Down it came. I told Harding to hang on there, started to climb myself. I struggled up the steep steel precipice clinging to that precarious ladder. At the rail the ship’s First Officer and her Chief Engineer met me, all of us practically invisible to each other in the murk and all nearly lost immediately in a crowd of olive-drab soldiers packing the bulwarks.
The First Officer confirmed my suspicions that the ship was dead and drifting. They had been trying to make Mers-el-Kebir. The engines hadn’t lasted. Could we in the King Salvor tow them the rest of the way in; it wasn’t far now?
I told him, no. We couldn’t, nobody could; not such a big ship. For Mers-el-Kebir was a difficult harbor for a large vessel; at night, an impossible one to tow into. But for God’s sake, tell the captain to anchor instantly! The Empress of Australia was drifting straight down and that swiftly on the seaward breakwater fringing Oran harbor. They couldn’t see it; it was low in the water and blacked out, but it was there in their lee. Not much longer now and their helpless vessel would drift hard on the jagged rocks forming that long breakwater, to have her bottom torn wide open by the seas pounding her against the rocks the moment she grounded.
The First Officer ran for the bridge; in brief minutes I heard the chain cable of the Empress of Australia rattling out the hawsepipe; a most welcome sound. One wreck hard on the beach, the Thomas Stone, was enough for me; I wanted no more.
I turned to the Chief Engineer, Henry Pratt, to congratulate him on a most brilliant stroke; rolling the Empress of Australia to port was exactly what she needed to help save her; nobody could have done it better; how had he achieved it?
His reply astonished me. He hadn’t done it; he didn’t know why it had happened; the ship had just rolled to port on her own. The ship was just highly unstable with all that free water in her; nobody could tell what she’d do next. She was quite as likely next second to list back to starboard again. She was listing from side to side like a drunken sailor; already several times she’d reversed her heel; only each time she’d listed over more than before. The next time to starboard might finish her for all anybody could tell; that hole in her side was going deeper under each time the starboard side heeled down.
“Come on, Pratt!” I said, forgetting all about the King Salvor. “Let’s get below! We’ve got to hold her down to port this time and keep as much of that starboard hole out of water from now on as we can! Nothing else counts for anything!”
That Chief Engineer was good. We started. Immediately we were inside the superstructure, he switched on a pocket flashlight, began to guide me down the stairways in the passenger quarters, heading below. Not a pleasing prospect; while we were down there in her bowels, she might turn turtle on us. The topside was safer.
It was blacker inside the ship than on deck; a perfect blackout both inside and out. But why? She should be lighted up inside, especially now to facilitate the troops escaping.
“Where’re all your lights?” I asked the Chief Engineer. “Why the blackout here, too?”
“Everything’s dead!” he replied laconically. “After engine room’s flooded, every bloody generator I’ve got’s submerged down there; there’s no juice for anything; not a single lamp. All my electric auxiliaries are out too. No power for ’em. That’s what’s killed the boilers; can’t get air to my boiler fires any more; the electric blowers are deader’n a kippered herring. And the lower part o’ my engine room’s flooded too; that finished the main engines even before they completely lost the steam. It’s all a bloody mess!”
Well, it didn’t make any difference whether she had power to steam any more; she wasn’t going anywhere; she was anchored. And if that U-boat didn’t come nosing too close inshore, there was nothing to worry about that way. All that mattered now was to keep her from capsizing. I hoped there’d be steam enough to run a few ship’s pumps, but if not, Harding had plenty of portable salvage pumps right alongside. One way or another we’d make out for pumps if we needed them, but I wasn’t worried about that.
For the only thing that concerned me was not to get any water out of her, but to get more water into her and that fast. It sounded suicidal and crazy to take a flooding ship and flood her some more, but it was her only hope. She must never list to starboard again! The only way to insure that was to flood so heavily some large port compartments that she stayed heeled hard down to port and the harder the better—it would lift more of that open hole in her starboard side out of water.
We did it. That Chief knew his business—a brave man and a capable one. Working by flashlight far down in the black cavern that was his main engine room, already flooded over the floor plates, and with the after engine room abaft us completely flooded to the height of the waterline far above and spurting sea water down on us through the badly strained bulkhead between, he and his engineer assistants started to flood empty port compartments, empty port double bottoms, empty port storerooms—everything to port still empty of sea water that we could get the sea into quickly. Meanwhile over our heads the water was coming through the hole and spreading forward and aft along the lower deck there. This inflow if free to flow to either side would ultimately destroy her stability and capsize her. But now it also all ran to port as we heeled her down, and all of it helped to hold her there.
I suggested to the Chief that it would be a good idea also to flood his port shaft alley—that shaft alley would take a lot of water very low down, add to our stability, and help considerably to hold us over. He agreed; he started to flood it, only to find to his amazement, he couldn’t—it was already solidly flooded! Apparently the shaft alley sliding watertight door had not been seated tightly or something else had leaked and that shaft alley (thank God it wasn’t the starboard one) had already flooded from the lower engine room. It must have been that which had given her the port list just before I came aboard!
We worked all night. We got her so well down to port all hell couldn’t have listed her back to starboard again. And we lifted the gash in her starboard side (it came abreast the after engine room) so far out of water that with the little head of steam the Chief Engineer could maintain with next to no air going to his boilers, we were able to keep up with all the fresh inflow from the sea. We sluiced it through a partly opened sliding watertight door from the wholly flooded after engine room, to come pouring like Niagara into the partly flooded main engine room, a hair-raising sight. There the huge condenser circulating pump, running all out, managed to suck it up and push it overboard again as fast as it came in.
Dawn came at last on January 2. The ship was heavily heeled down to port and looked terrible, but looks didn’t matter; she was safe. Slowly the anchor was heaved in by the steam-starved anchor windlass.
Then with a stout hawser from her bow, the King Salvor took station out ahead of her, and with every French tug in Oran alongside pushing also, proudly dragged the towering Empress of Australia the last few miles through the sea to Mers-el-Kebir. Then came the tortuous and difficult passage amongst the torpedo-defense nets into Mers-el-Kebir harbor, past the submerged and capsized hulk of the French battleship la Bretagne, till at last she was pushed by the puffing tugs gently up against the quay, starboard side to, safe finally with all her troops! After that, while we all watched, the Empress of Australia disembarked them alongside the quay there, exactly on her original schedule; over four thousand soldiers more and all their equipment, for Eisenhower’s build-up to meet the rising threat of von Arnim and Rommel in Tunisia!
Hastily I got Lieutenant Ankers and some of his divers over from the Spahi. We worked all the rest of that day while the troops were disembarking and all night too and part of the next day. When finally on January 3 we finished, we had a heavy temporary wo
od patch (built by divers over the underwater part of the hole) all set as a watertight cofferdam for Commander Bell’s shore party to pour a thick concrete patch completely up to her main deck. And we had all the water pumped out of her so once more she was dry, stable, and on an even keel. With the work the shore repair gang would shortly do to clean up her machinery, pour concrete, and install a temporary diesel electric generator, she could steam full speed back to England for permanent repairs.
With that, I went back to my room at the Grand Hotel and crawled into bed. It had been a long New Year’s Day.
CHAPTER
33
JANUARY 4 CAME. ANKERS AND ALL his divers were back at the harbor entrance. Their diving float now more resembled a factory construction site; two power-driven mixers were busily mixing concrete. Into their churning maws went bag after bag of quick-setting cement, gravel by the ton, crushed rock almost in mountains, all generously seasoned with fresh water. Thirty tons, all told, of concrete went down through the sea into that patch to seal the cavity the Ardois had left in the upper side of the Spahi.
Down below, divers spread the concrete as it came down to them in the form they had built, as usual cursing fluently all the while the pilot, the Commandant du Port, the Ardois, and those Americans who might have stopped the Ardois but hadn’t. My impression, listening on the diving telephones, was that for each ton of concrete we sent down, we got back from below at least another ton of heartfelt imprecations. But neither I nor Ankers said anything—divers on a wreck must have some release for their emotions or they’ll crack up.
By noon, we had all the concrete leveled off below. The divers came up, the topside crew turned to to clear away the mess the mixers and the materials had made of the float. We had nothing more to do now save to wait a few days for the cement to harden so we could start the lifting operation. All the 500 hogsheads of wine required to be removed (plus a few dozens more for safety) were already safely ashore under guard in the warehouse.
January 5 we spent in rigging air hoses to the various compartments of the Spahi, all running below to her from a single control manifold on the diving float. Meanwhile, the King Salvor began to rig herself for her part. The long idle air compressors were once again lifted off the quay to her decks, secured there, tested out, piped up to supply the air. Harding broke out his heaviest towing hawsers—steel cables thick as a man’s wrist, which were to be used in towing the Spahi clear. Reitzel arranged for a few French tugs to help.
At last came January 7, the day on which we were to put all to the touch. Very early, all hands, men and ships, took station. But January 7 was such a day as I had never seen before in any climate, in any season. The heavens opened to send down such a downpour as no one there had ever witnessed. It seemed to be coming down in a solid mass, no separate raindrops at all distinguishable. You could practically swim in it.
In no time at all, the whole harbor area was flooded solidly with all traffic halted. From one vast lake ashore, the overflow poured in a continuous waterfall more than six inches thick over the quays into the harbor like a river going over a spillway several miles long. That kept up all through the day; it seemed that the skies were determined to wash Oran completely into the Mediterranean.
Drenched in spite of raincoats and boots, we all took our stations. The King Salvor lay close by the bow of the Spahi, her air hoses running to the control manifold on diving float, hawsers secured from her stern to the bow of the sunken Spahi, more hawsers run out from her bow to the salvage quay a quarter of a mile off toward which we should tow the lifted Spahi.
With great difficulty we finally got all the watersoaked portable air compressors going, the King Salvor started up her own compressors below, and we began to pump compressed air. Some hours went by. With all those compressors pounding, the King Salvor sounded like a boiler factory. On the diving float, Ankers and I took the air from her, distributed it from the control manifold to hose lines to the wreck below, watched the few pressure gauges we had. Wet, cold, miserable, nearly drowned, we stayed there in the open, tending the air manifold, while all about us, seeking what little shelter could be improvised out of tarpaulins, were the rest of the salvage crew, just as miserable, standing by for eventualities.
The hours dragged along, the compressors throbbed, we tended the manifold, and all the while we shivered in the cold flood. It seemed incomprehensible that mere clouds could ever hold that much water; I could have sworn that somehow the whole Mediterranean outside the harbor was being pumped skyward in a solid mass to be dumped on us there inside.
A little before noon, the pressure gauges showed we had driven the water down inside the Spahi’s holds so that shortly something should rise. No ship can ever be raised evenly; one end or the other will come up first, no matter how fine the control. And our control I knew was very crude; I wasn’t even going to attempt it. I elected to raise the bow first, then the stern, then to tow the whole wreck, still lying half-capsized on its starboard side, toward the shore out of the channel, and sink her where she could never again interfere with the entrance. After that, once the war was over, if the French wanted either the rest of those hogsheads of wine or the Spahi herself, they were welcome to do what they pleased with her.
So far all was going well; the leakage of air from the submerged Spahi was negligible; our big concrete patch was holding splendidly. I shut off the compressed air to the stern, put everything we had into the bow, and particularly into the forepeak tank, to raise the bow end first.
It worked. In a few minutes more, the hoses to the bow started to slack off and rise in snaky coils undulating on the surface. A few seconds later, there was the bow of the Spahi, looking like the rounded side of a whale, bobbing on the surface of the sea, only a few feet above water!
That was fine. Now for the stern, and the job was done. I quit blowing air forward, sent every cubic foot of compressed air we had aft and amidships to raise the after end.
But that didn’t work. Apparently with the vessel on a steep slant now, bow up, stern down, the athwartship bulkheads weren’t tight enough to hold the air in the compartments aft into which it was being pumped. The air leaked forward and uphill; soon we saw as much air bubbling up through the sea in line with the forward cargo hatches as we were pumping down into the stern compartments. I had always suspected those ancient bulkheads as being practically worthless for watertightness or airtightness—now they were proving it. It was no go. I had to give up.
But, I thought, it might be possible to do it if we reversed the process; that is, if we raised her stern first. So I tried that. I quit pumping air down below altogether, and instead opened wide the vent valves to the floating bow to let the compressed air there escape to the atmosphere and the sea to flood it again.
Soon we saw the bow of the Spahi disappear beneath the sea. Shortly it hit bottom again. With that, I sealed off the bow air lines and started once more to pump air down to the stern. In no very long time, the stern floated up, exposing part of her propeller as well as her starboard counter.
Now for the bow once more. Again all the air was shifted forward to lift that. But it no more worked that way than in reverse. The bow didn’t rise; instead all the air leaked aft and began to escape from the after cargo hatches.
There in that pouring rain, I gazed at the stern of the Spahi and cursed her fluently for a leaky tub which should have been sent to the boneyard decades before.
But that was all the good it did me. Several times more I juggled that ship, seesawing her up and down, first one end up, then the other, but never could I get both ends up together. She just wouldn’t hold air well enough.
Finally I gave up trying. My job was to open the harbor of Oran and I wasn’t tied down as to how I did it. I sank the Spahi again entirely and sent Ankers away with a pair of French tugs to get a 100-ton floating French crane that belonged in the harbor, the only crane left afloat in the place. Shortly he was back with it.
We towed the crane into place
over the once again sunken bow of the fully submerged Spahi; the divers went down and secured the crane hook to the heavy towing bridle we already had around the Spahi’s bow. Then I ordered the crane crew to take their maximum lift and they started to heave till their full 100-ton pull was being exerted. With that pull for insurance to make certain the Spahi didn’t develop any idiosyncrasies and roll upright on us to spill out all the air during what was to follow, again I blew air into the bow, lightening it till the crane was just able to pull it to the surface, leaving the ship with her stern down and as a whole somewhat negatively buoyant this time.
When once again the bow showed above the sea, we went to work to pull the stopper out of the harbor bottleneck. I had no further idea of trying to raise the stern. Instead, with the King Salvor heaving on hawsers to the Spahi’s bow and to that floating crane over it, we started to swing the Spahi’s bow inboard into the inner harbor, letting her pivot on her sunken stern like a gate.
Round she came, smoothly and slowly, for I had no desire by rushing matters to tip her so she might spill trapped air out her cargo hatches and get heavy enough again to tear away from us.
In the midst of all that, the rain turned suddenly to hail! Down came that hail in stones big enough to knock us all dizzy in no time at all, if, as always, we hadn’t had our tin hats handy. On they went; after that, to the rattling of shrapnel from the heavens on our tin roofs, we proceeded.
We got the Spahi swung round a good 90°, opening wide the harbor gate. For good measure, we swung her about 20° more. After that, the King Salvor went full out on everything she had—full ahead on her propeller, winching in meanwhile full power on the hawsers she had over her bow to the quay a quarter of a mile ahead. With all that, caring no longer what the Spahi did nor what happened to her, we dragged her by main strength along the bottom, sliding her submerged stern through the mud till finally she stuck and would budge no further shoreward. When that occurred, we slacked away on the crane, released the air from her bow, and for the last time let her bow sink again. All hands had had enough of her and everything connected with her—the Ardois, the Commandant du Port, his French pilot. With no tears at all to mark her going, Ankers and his men and all the others who had had their very hearts torn out struggling with that wreck, watched the Spahi take her final plunge and disappear.
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