Around the World Submerged

by Edward L. Beach

  This was, at least, a weight off my mind. We would be approaching shoal water shortly, and would need this piece of equipment.

  “Good, Dick,” I said. “Tell your people that was a fine job, and I’m very much relieved and grateful.”

  “Will do, Captain,” Dick said, sounding pleased.

  I hung up. “Well,” I said, “that’s one problem solved. The fathometer’s OK, anyway.”

  But our somber mood could not be lifted for long. Triton’s machinery was too well designed, her research engineers and builders too careful for anything to go wrong. And yet, the evidence could not be denied. Instinctively, I realized, we were all waiting for the check observations, even then in the process of being taken. But we all knew what the results must be.

  The watertight door at the far end of the compartment opened and Pat McDonald entered. Immediately following him were Jack Judd and Harry Hampson, both Chief Electronics Technicians. Pat walked directly to Don Fears and handed him a slip of paper. “I took the readings myself this time, Don, just to be sure.”

  Don scrutinized the figures, pursed his lips, silently handed the paper to me.

  The readings had reached the allowed limits.

  “Shut her down, Don,” I said. “As she cools off, get everybody back there and start making a thorough check as soon as you can get into the space. We have to get to the bottom of this immediately.”

  Fears excused himself. In a few moments, the mighty beat of Triton’s huge propellers slowed.

  The atmosphere of quiet gloom could be felt, as it settled over the ship. I could sense it in everyone’s attitude, in the subdued manner in which people went about their duties, in the care each man took that nothing he said or did would make matters worse.

  Don came back in a moment, sober-faced. “Well, it’s done, but I still can’t believe it,” he said. “Let’s start over again at the beginning.” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him. “The first sign of anything was when Jim Stark started to notice a steady climb in certain readings . . .”

  We all looked on as Don went through the entire episode.

  “An hour later,” he said, glancing at me, “we notified the Captain. “Then we went over everything again . . .”

  Step by step, feeling our way, we reviewed the events of the past two hours. The strenuous training all of us had received during Triton’s precommissioning period was never more valuable than now, as we tortuously reworked the data.

  Finally, Don struck the paper lightly with his index finger. “Here’s the crucial item, right here,” he said.

  “That’s what it read, all right,” said Pat.

  “Something wrong here,” Don muttered. “Your last reading is one-tenth of what they had the time before.”

  McDonald compared the two sheets of paper, side by side. “I know mine was the right reading,” he said, “I read it off the dial myself. The decimal point is tricky, but this is correct.”

  Hope suddenly flooded through my mind. The matter was more complicated than a simple misplacement of a decimal point. The readings we were required to take and record were sometimes to the millionth or ten-millionth of a gram or an ampere. A mistake in conversion was understandable.

  “If this is right, Don,” I said, “we don’t have any problem at all. Could the readings have changed that much in this short time?”

  Don and Pat shook their heads.

  “Judd, who took these first two sets of readings?” Fears suddenly asked.

  Judd told him the names. “They’re both good men, sir,” he said. “They know what they’re doing.”

  “Well, what about this one, then?”

  Hampson shook his head. “We saw Mr. McDonald take these readings, sir,” he said. “I know they’re right!”

  “Let’s see the calculations again,” said Don.

  They were put before him in a moment. Silently, we watched while Don compared one set of log readings to another and checked the three sets of calculated results. Pat McDonald did the same, alongside him and sharing his slide rule. I scratched them out too, on a third piece of paper.

  After long minutes, Don looked up. “It looks as though we made a mistake, Captain,” he said. “The first two sets of readings were written down in a slightly different way from Pat’s here, but they made a mistake in working them out. Look, here it is.”

  I guarded myself from being overeager to accept this sudden release. “This is too easy, Don,” I said. “You mean, while I’ve been standing here, after we’ve gone through all this flap, now you say there never was any problem?”

  Don nodded. “Let me go through this whole thing once more very carefully, Captain,” he said. “It looks as though we have a couple of problems to straighten out, and I’ll be up making a report to you within the hour.”

  “Very well,” I said, not knowing whether to be angry or relieved. “Have a fourth set of readings taken—you and Pat had better do these yourselves—I need to know exactly where we stand.”

  Both nodded soberly.

  “You may not have permission to start the reactor,” I told them, “until you report to me that you’re absolutely sure it’s all right and always has been.”

  With a considerably lighter step, I made my way forward once more. We would be absolutely sure of the plant before starting it again, for the instructions were explicit, but it now seemed morally certain that our five hours of concern had been merely a mental exercise. I could feel my confidence in Triton resurging. With the fathometer fixed, the only problem now was Poole, and even he looked improved.

  The first of March had been a long day, but we were snapping back. We were going to come out of this all right!

  The first of March had indeed been a long day, and at two o’clock on the morning of March second I knew that not all our problems had yet been solved. Poole was having a second attack.

  As Jim Stark explained it, perhaps he did not pass the stone a few hours before, despite indications that he had. As a matter of fact, Jim wasn’t really sure that the tiny speck we had seen in the bottle Poole had produced for inspection was a kidney stone. It might have been a tiny grain of sand or dust that somehow had gotten into the bottle after it had been carefully washed. There was always the possibility that Poole had not actually passed the stone; another possibility was that more than one kidney stone might have been involved. This second attack was more severe than the first one, and Poole had to be drugged once more.

  Under the morphine, Poole was not too uncomfortable. The question again: what to do? According to Stark, kidney stone attacks frequently clear up by themselves—as Poole’s first one did—and then a second stone causes a relapse. In such cases, the discomfort of the second attack is compounded by the lacerations and swollen tissues resulting from the first. After an hour’s earnest consultation with Jim, I decided we could continue running for Cape Horn. In the back of my mind, however, a firmly rooted thought had taken hold: the nearest help was the Macon, if my several-weeks-old information was still accurate. After that, it was Pearl Harbor or a foreign port. The problem would, somehow or other, have to be sorted out before we rounded Cape Horn.

  I had hardly got back into my bunk, it seemed, when the Officer of the Deck sent a messenger to call me. There was a possible submarine contact on the sonar. I was on my feet in a moment, heading for the sonar room.

  Some three hundred miles to the west of our course, on the coast of Argentina, lay Golfo Nuevo, a large landlocked bay with a small entrance where, within recent weeks, the Argentine Navy had had a first-class flap. According to the press reports, an unknown submarine had been detected in Golfo Nuevo by patrolling Anti-Submarine units of the Argentine Navy, which had subsequently made several attacks. The submarine, so the newspapers said, had once or twice surfaced in the gulf, and by its maneuvers was apparently damaged. Argentina blocked off the exit to the bay, and at about this time there came evidence of the presence of a second submarine in the same area. Shortly afterward, contact on bot
h of them was lost.

  The supposition was strongly supported in the South American press that the second submarine had rendezvoused with its damaged fellow, either to render assistance or, as was considered more likely, to divert attention to itself while the damaged one got away. In my own view, having had intimate experience for many years with the difficulty of making and holding contact on submarines I was not completely ready to accept the story at face value. It is an easy thing for inexperienced people to convince themselves they have made a contact and then, in their gradually increasing excitement and interest, to continue to deceive themselves for considerable periods of time. Whether or not there had actually been a foreign submarine in Golfo Nuevo, however, one thing was pretty certain: ASW units of the Argentine Navy had been convinced of it.

  Upon initial observation of our own sonar, it was not possible to tell whether the contact we had picked up was on the surface or submerged. Our plot was busy with it, and there was no question that it had movement of its own. It was not bottom effect, that was clear, nor a sharp submerged peak. It was something moving in the water.

  I directed the Officer of the Deck to slow down to minimum speed for a sonar investigation. Then, in a few minutes, following standard sonar investigation techniques, we turned Triton’s head around to the north. After a few more minutes of careful checking, it was evident that we had a real contact. The question was, what was it?

  It could be a surface ship cruising about, but it was not maintaining a steady course or speed, a fact suggesting that it was not a merchant ship. It might be a vessel of the Argentine Navy, perhaps one of the ASW ships searching offshore. If this were so, her Captain’s probable state of mind was not apt to be relaxed. We certainly did not wish to create another international incident or, worse, have a depth charge or two tossed toward us by some nervous skipper who might not stop to consider that a submarine submerged three hundred miles at sea is not the same thing as an unknown submarine in your inland waters. Triton should be able to evade Argentina’s best ASW ship, but even so, I could well imagine the reports that might reach the US Navy Department and the questions that I would inevitably have to answer.

  A second possibility was that this was another submarine. If this were true, it would almost certainly be confirmation of the submarine contacts in Golfo Nuevo. In that case, the matter would be of importance to the US Navy also, and we should probably find it necessary to send a message stating the situation.

  A third possibility, one which submariners and ASW people have long since learned to be alert for, was that our contact was not a man-made vessel at all, but a school of fish. Large fish generally separate into several distinct contacts at some moderate range. A number of small fish moving about as a group can sometimes fool the most experienced sonarman.

  At about 0300, Triton’s periscope broke surface for a cautious search around the horizon, followed by a radar search. Results of both were negative. There was no surface ship around. Back into the depths we went. It was either a submarine or fish. If the former, circumspection was indicated. Slowly and cautiously approaching the contact, we slowly relaxed, for the contact lost its sharp decisive contours, began to fade, and developed wavy outlines. Finally it broke into two parts, and we set Triton once more on the way to Cape Horn. No doubt the school of fish we had so gingerly approached was heartily glad this huge intruder was not hungry.

  Some fishermen might have given a lot to have had Triton’s sonar at this point, for shortly after four o’clock that same morning we detected a second school of fish. Since the characteristics were identical, this time there was less difficulty in making a positive identification, and we were quickly rewarded by seeing the contact break up into numerous smaller blips.

  Poole’s condition was getting steadily worse, Jim Stark told me, yet there was nothing he could do for him but wait and see. Poole’s senses, at least, were dulled by the morphine.

  After seeing the patient at about five o’clock in the morning, my recollection is that I finally was able to get a little sleep. Upon awakening, I was astonished to find Poole dressed and once again on his feet in the radar department. As before, Jim Stark just happened to be only a few feet away, ostensibly looking over some of his medical supplies in the pharmacy. Jim could not be sure that the second stone had safely passed.

  The only other event of this day was the receipt of our second babygram, for Chief Electrician James DeGange. Another girl, born March 1, 1960; the message from Admiral Daspit gave the further information that mother and Patricia Ann were both doing well.

  The third of March began propitiously. We were still watching Poole carefully, but all looked well for the time being. He had been free of pain for some eighteen hours. Our course for Cape Horn had been laid out to bring us close to the Falkland Islands and permit us to run near Port Stanley, their biggest harbor. For drill purposes, we intended to make a photo reconnaissance; that is, take a series of photographs through our periscope. This was a technique submarines had developed during the war, by which important information was brought back to our Marine and Army landing forces.

  The Falkland Islands are famous for the naval battle which took place there on the eighth of December, 1914. A month earlier, on November first, a strong German squadron of cruisers under Admiral von Spee had overwhelmed a weaker British squadron under Admiral Cradock off the cape of Coronel on the coast of Chile. The two biggest British ships, including the flagship, were sunk with all hands. Then Von Spee headed for Cape Horn at a leisurely pace, intending to capture the coaling station at the Falkland Islands, refuel, and head back to Germany. His big mistake was in moving so slowly, for when the English heard of the defeat of Cradock, they sent two of their battle cruisers, under Admiral Sturdee, from England direct to the Falkland Islands, with orders to coal at Port Stanley and then search out Von Spee. It was the ideal mission for a versatile British Navy and its new battle cruisers, as they were fast heavily armed ships which far outclassed Von Spee’s armored cruisers in both speed and gunpower.

  After a high-speed run the length of the Atlantic, Sturdee reached the Falkland Islands the day before Von Spee showed up. Von Spee’s second mistake was in making his appearance at about eight o’clock in the morning, with a long summer day ahead of him. The Inflexible and the Invincible were coaling at Port Stanley when the German cruisers appeared on the horizon. Hastily casting off, Sturdee set out in pursuit. When Von Spee realized that the two big ships sortieing from Port Stanley were battle cruisers with twelve-inch guns, he turned and tried to escape. This might be termed his third mistake, for, with a fight inevitable, he should have got his own shorter-range guns into action while he could. Once lost, the opportunity never returned. Inexorably, the British overhauled him sufficiently to open fire—and then, when necessary, used their superior speed to stay out of range of Von Spee’s guns.

  One of the stories of that battle is that an old sailing ship which happened to be in the area suddenly found herself directly in the line of fire. Great ripping sounds were heard as the armor-piercing shells whistled overhead, but the extreme range of the British caused all the shells to pass harmlessly thousands of feet above her.

  Von Spee’s two bigger ships were the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, both of which had held the Fleet Gunnery Trophy in the German Navy and were known as crack ships. But now the tables were turned, and in a few hours Von Spee, with his two fine cruisers, joined Cradock and his Good Hope and Monmouth at the bottom of the sea.

  Scharnhorst and Gneisenau went down fighting; there were no survivors. They had not been able to inflict any damage of any kind on the British ships, any more than Cradock had been able to hurt Von Spee in the first encounter. But there was established a proud tradition in the German Navy, commemorated in World War II by some more recently remembered names of men-of-war.

  According to Will Adams, we should sight the Falkland Islands at about ten o’clock in the morning. A little before this we came to periscope depth, put up the ra
dar, and there, precisely as predicted, was a “pip” on the radar scope obviously made by land. The photographic reconnaissance party under Dick Harris, with cameras and equipment, was standing by in the conning tower ready for the initial approach, when Jim Stark sought me out. His face was like a thundercloud.

  “What’s the matter, Jim? Is it Poole?”

  “Yes, sir. Worse than ever.”

  Thoughts of the impending reconnaissance vanished. “Let’s have it,” I said.

  Choosing his words carefully, Jim explained that in his opinion Poole might still be having trouble with the original stone. It might not have passed at all. Temporary remissions of the type Poole had experienced were not unknown in such cases. On the other hand, it was possible that he had been passing a series of kidney stones and that this was the third one. In either case, said Jim, there was no telling how long this would continue, nor to what condition poor Poole might ultimately be reduced. While we had been heretofore running on with the idea that each attack would perhaps be the last, the Doctor felt that he could no longer leave it at that. As we talked, we neared Poole’s bunk.

  Poole himself, though obviously in great pain, was not yet completely under the effects of the injection which Jim had been forced to give him. Sensing the reason for my presence, he croaked out a plea that we not turn back. “This is the last time, Captain. I swear it!” he said, but he was in such pain that he could hardly articulate the words.

  I could both see and sense everybody staring at me. Their eyes said much, but nobody spoke a word.

  A sort of hiatus descended upon the ship. In the conning tower, Dick Harris and his crew were waiting for the word to go ahead, but, having heard of Poole’s new attack, simply stood by quietly.

  With Adams and Stark, and Operations Officer Bob Bulmer, I went over the argument again. It was not as though I hadn’t had plenty of opportunity to think it over before this. I had, in fact, already assumed that a decision must be reached one way or the other before we got to Cape Horn.