Cold is the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

“The way I see it,” said Rich, “he well knows we were once together on this boat. So when BuPers wanted to know if one of us could come out here, he volunteered all three of us. Not telling us what he was up to is simply his way of doing things. He’s trying to do something for us. It’s like that time he sent us to look over the NEPA project. It’s a day off, a holiday trip, sort of.”

  “Then he must be trying to make up for his bitchiness to you more than anyone,” said Buck, “and he must think you come pretty cheap. He knows doggone well it was you who kept the reactor running that day, and that it was you who saved that woman’s life in Arco, whoever she is. Both of these things make him look pretty good, you know. So, he holds up your exam long enough so that you had to stay up all night to do it, and on top of this, even though it was a tougher exam than ours and you got almost a perfect mark on it, he made Dusty hand you a lower-grade nuke certificate than we got. Don’t tell me what a grand old guy he is!”

  “Maybe there was a little hazing going on,” said Rich, “but it didn’t hurt us. Don’t forget, he’s the source of our nuclear submarines, and we ought to overlook about anything because of that.”

  “How about that telephone call after we finally got you to turn in?” said Keith. “Dusty tried to talk him out of it, but he said you had no business sleeping in the daytime when there’s work to be done. He knew our work was finished, and that you’d been up all night because of him besides! And then after he made Dusty get you to the phone, all he wanted was to say he’d decided to build the cafeteria after all! That had to be deliberate. He knew exactly what he was doing!”

  “The main thing is, now all three of us have our nuclear ratings. I’m lucky he even let me join you two. He wasn’t going to at first, you know.” The look on Richardson’s face signaled his two juniors to leave the topic. Experience had taught them that his thought processes could not always be predicted. Something, perhaps their arguments, perhaps his own greater awareness of the political structure within the U.S. Navy, perhaps something totally unrelated to anything they had been doing, caused him to want to close it off. They would have been astounded could they have known they had evoked the memory of Joan. Might she have caused Brighting to reverse his initial rejection of Rich? Could she, just yesterday, have had something to do with his relenting on the business of the examination? Could it have been she who had suggested this last visit to their old wartime submarine? After all, she too, had had her connection with the Eel!

  Boggs had certainly been right in his characterization of San Francisco Bay as a most pleasant place to cruise in. Smoky brown hills teeming with life surrounded it, a warm sun turned its mud-gray waters iridescent, great bridges vaulted across it, and in the distance the tall buildings of the fabled city of the hills beckoned. Nearer, like disorganized flocks of wild birds, the sails of countless pleasure boats followed their own aimless quests, some in a cohesive pattern, perhaps a race, others without discernible motivation or objective except that of simply being there.

  The combined ambience of industry and pleasure could be both seen and felt. A group of cylindrical white tanks to port, marching away from the water in stubby silhouettes up a steep brown hillside, marked a refinery. Trim white sails, tiny in the distance, softened the outline of the land, disappeared against the white oil tanks and the nearby buildings, and stood out, etched in slowly moving white silhouettes against the salt-streaked hulls of two oceangoing tankers anchored in the distance. To starboard an old freighter, her broad bows pushing a bulging wave despite her slow speed, was heading for some unknown destination up one of the rivers feeding Carquinez Strait at the north end of the bay. Beyond her, another cargo ship, newer, a moving forest of masts and booms, was heading away, probably bound out the Golden Gate for a distant and foreign shore. A white-sided passenger liner, suddenly visible against the exotic spires of San Francisco, was also steaming toward the Golden Gate Bridge, and thence to Acapulco, Honolulu, Seattle—or anywhere. And the shores to starboard were pocked with the evidences of people: houses of many differing colors, glints of glass windows, shifting flashes denoting the speeding windshields of automobiles. Great numbers of small boats, both sail and power, clustered along the benign coast.

  The sight of some member of the mothballed fleet being ignominiously barged through San Francisco Bay was probably a familiar sight on its waters. The tug skipper, indeed, had boasted having made the same trip countless times, sometimes to deliver a well-scavenged hulk to the wreckers, sometimes, as now, to start a discarded lady toward a new and different life. For the three submariners, once they had assured themselves that all was proceeding normally, that Eel was not unexpectedly taking water into her bilges, that the tugmaster’s charts of the navigation hazards agreed with theirs and the course he had laid out was to their liking, it was a pleasure trip with overtones of nostalgia.

  Richardson found it was easy to stand on the bridge where he had stood so many times, shoulder hunched into one of the TBT wells (the target bearing transmitters themselves had been removed) and imagine Eel moving under his direction in enemy waters, responsive to his will, alert, alive, alive to the quintessence of being alive in the face of mortal danger. The pleasure boats, the friendly shores, even the distant ships on their peaceful missions, could fade out of consciousness. It could be a bright moonlit night; strange how well he used to be able to see at night, without lights of any kind to bother his eyes. More than once Eel had been in waters far more confined than this, had seemed to be hemmed in by the forbidding hills of the seacoast of Japan. More than once he had, somehow, summoned up the necessary—it seemed only days ago, instead of years—on this very bridge, at this very spot.

  That tanker, now, about a mile ahead, crossing from starboard to port: were she an enemy he would have by now opened the torpedo tube outer doors. A small order to the rudder to reduce the angle between the torpedo course, controlled by its gyroscope, and that of the submarine (the less the gyro angle, the more accurate the old torpedoes); Keith would be giving the bearings, Buck running the TDC, the torpedo data computer, and shooting the fish at his command. The setup was so similar to one he remembered from Eel’s third patrol: the tanker, unescorted, moving confidently in the shallow waters where no enemy submarine had ever dared to enter; the submarine, keyed up, but equally confident because of past successes. Except that it was just before dawn, instead of broad daylight, as now. The ship, in fact, had looked almost exactly like this one. You had to hand it to her skipper. When he saw the submarine, he had instantly turned to ram. Stupid of Rich to have tried a surface attack with daylight so near! With the U.S. Fleet pressing ever closer to the mainland of Japan during those closing months of the war he must have forgotten the caution he had learned during previous patrols. A routine approach (no approach was ever “routine,” but this one had seemed simple, uncomplicated) had been suddenly converted into near catastrophe. The ships speeding toward each other, bow to bow. Too close to shoot! Get everybody below! The tanker opening fire (how had he been able to get his guns going so quickly?)—large-caliber shells whizzing overhead. Desperate maneuvers to avoid. The ships slipping past each other, the tanker swinging toward, trying to strike the submarine’s side, Eel turning toward the tanker, swinging her stern clear. Enemy machine guns spitting, striking the bulletproof bridge bulwarks (a good thing they were made of special armorplate); Rich ducking at the last minute, just in time, as the Eel rocketed clear.

  Looking through his binoculars at the approaching tanker, musing at the coincidental similarity of ship and situation to the one creased in his memory, Richardson saw the curved front of her bridge growing wider. The tanker should be passing ahead; soon it ought not to be possible to see the front of her bridge at all—but instead the curved surface was becoming broader. Then it hit him. Were this war, were he on the alert for changes in enemy course and speed instead of in a nostalgic reverie, he would have seen it instantly. The tanker ahead was turning toward! Her rudder must have been put hard over left
! This was exactly the way it had been! The bearing must soon become steady, a collision situation! Rich drew a deep breath to begin the maneuver to avoid, order the watertight doors shut through the boat. It was so much the same, but there was no one below to shut the doors, no one steering in the conning tower to handle Eel’s rudder and annunciators. In the binoculars the oncoming bow was tremendous. Somewhere behind—he had forgotten the tug—a series of angry blasts on an air horn. Eel began to vibrate as the tug’s engine went into full reverse. More blasts from the tug. Now some answering blasts from the tanker. What could they be thinking of, over there?

  Swiftly, the distance narrowed. Eel’s speed, never great in her captive condition, was decreasing. She had almost come to a complete halt, was swinging left, the wrong way. Her whole fragile side would be exposed to the collision. If the loaded tanker could not stop her forward motion she would plow into the submarine’s starboard ballast tanks, surely rupture her pressure hull as well, ignominiously sink her in the middle of the ship channel.

  Now it was clear the tanker had also gone into full reverse. Her bow was swinging again, away, to her own left. Her way had hardly reduced—a laden ship is very hard to stop—but her engines were thrashing water up under her counter. Her bow swung away more. No danger of a bows-on collision now, but she’s going to sideswipe us. Eel, now dead in the water, began to gather sternway. The tug captain had slacked his stern line, was now nearly perpendicular to the submarine’s side, backing frantically, as powerfully as he could, trying to drag Eel bodily sideways out of the sweeping path. One hundred yards—fifty yards. People staring over the tanker’s side, from her bridge, her bows.

  The onrushing tanker’s bow was now abeam, no longer headed straight on, but close! The flare of the great profile overhung Eel’s deck, so far below. If that huge anchor nearly directly overhead were to be let go, it would land right on deck, crash clear through and carry Eel on down with it. Ludicrous for Eel, after all the dangers she had been through, to meet her fate here, in a well-known American harbor, at the hands of a lubberly U.S. tanker skipper! That must be he up on the bridge, or maybe the pilot—if he had a pilot—peering over at the wreckage he was about to cause. The wash from the tanker’s single propeller was up alongside her after deckhouse, reaching along the rusted slab-sided bulk of her gigantic hull. Her bridge was now abeam, and still she moved sideways under the impetus of her rudder. The turbulence from her screw began to reach Eel’s side. This might help to lessen the impact. Less than twenty-five feet between the ships now. Maybe the thrust of water from the tanker’s propeller would help to push Eel away, form a cushion between them.

  But the huge vertical side of the tanker was also coming sideways. If it continued it would inevitably strike. No danger of being pierced by her stem now, but the whole side of the submarine, her light tank structure, would be bellied in, ribs crushed and bent, its clean symmetry ruined, Eel’s ability to float upright destroyed. She would be brought to the dock at Hunter’s Point listing to starboard, her side smashed, instead of clean and straight as she should be. Hunter’s Point could fix the damage, could build a new side if necessary, or replace the wrecked portion. But this was not the way the U.S. Navy had wanted to deliver the replacement for the Orca. Maybe Rich could reach the tanker skipper, or pilot, that seemingly impassive figure almost directly above. He, or whoever that was in some kind of uniform coat, looking as if mesmerized by the approaching collision, had not uttered a word, given an order, that Rich could see.

  No megaphone. There should have been a megaphone. No doubt the tug carried one. Rich cupped his hands around his mouth, bellowed with all his strength. “Shift your rudder! Put your rudder right full!” Several times he repeated the words, pitching his voice at what he considered to be its best carrying level, straining neck, jaws and lungs to force the maximum response from his vocal cords. Once the pitch rose almost to a scream. No matter. Most people, except perhaps Keith and Buck, would call it a scream anyway.

  There was some wind. The tanker’s engines must be making noise. The tug’s diesels were rumbling loudly behind him. The splashing of the water between Eel and the tanker was louder still as it was driven forward by the big backing propeller, was forced in white turbulence between the ships. The tanker was deep in the water, still moving forward with speed hardly slackened. The edge of her rudder post was barely visible under the counter stern. Her rudder was fully submerged, could not be seen. Had the tanker helmsman gotten the word? Had Richardson been able to reach through the noise and confusion? Again he shouted through cupped hands, his voice cracking with the effort.

  A wave of the arm from the man on the tanker’s bridge. He turned, shouted something toward his enclosed pilothouse. Richardson had to hope it was an order to his helmsman. Was the rudder post turning? It was wet, gleaming. Rust-colored. No seaweed or bottom growth; a tanker’s waterlines are much too variable for anything to attach itself this high. Because of the slick shine of the round vertical forging, it was not possible to tell if it was turning. Even if the rudder was now at last reversed, put hard over right toward Eel, there was little effect it could have in the time remaining. Stopping the slide to starboard of that tremendous bulk, with its 50,000 tons of momentum, would take several hundred yards of forward motion. She was still crabbing sideways, would hit Eel’s thin ballast tanks soon.

  Ten feet—five feet—separated the low-lying submarine from the overbearing steel cliff that was the side of the tanker. A huge, obscene, rust-streaked monster, nothing but an oil tank formed into a blunt bow at one end with an engine tacked on at the other, she towered shapelessly over the submarine and extended probably at least twice as far below the surface as above. From a fisheye view, Richardson thought, Eel must resemble a lifeboat just launched alongside. The thin canal of water between the two ships was insane with turmoil. Frenzied currents boiled to the surface, whipped themselves into frothing waves, surged into the narrow crevasse.

  Because of her light condition, floating high, Eel’s rounded sides were essentially vertical where they entered the water, but beneath the waterline, as above, they curved away from the tanker. The point of contact would come right at the waterline, right where the screw wake thrown up by the other ship’s beating propeller would exert its greatest effect, obviously was doing so, for the water level between them was now raised, “bunched,” if such a word could be used to describe a fluid condition lasting only a few moments.

  The tanker’s bridge and her unconcerned skipper were now well past. Her speed had not perceptibly slackened, despite the thrashings of her propeller. Perhaps her crabbing motion had somewhat reduced, if indeed the rudder had been shifted, or maybe it was only that the tug was at last beginning to drag Eel sideways and away from the approaching bulk. That big single propeller, now. Good thing this tanker had only a single screw. Twin screws were more dangerous, because they usually projected beyond the side, but the single propeller was bigger and would not be far below the surface, even with a deeply laden ship. And the tanker’s stern was still swinging toward, although more slowly.

  The water channel between the two ships had widened toward Eel’s stern, but was correspondingly narrower in the vicinity of her bridge, Eel’s widest point, where Richardson, Leone and Williams were standing, helplessly watching the oncoming catastrophe. No longer, however, did it appear the ships would strike broadside to broadside. Now, the rounded portion of the tanker’s stern, where her ungainly middle section began its compound curve to meet the rudder and propeller cavity, would be the point of contact.

  “Better step back, Captain,” said Keith suddenly. “There’s a lot of overhang coming our way.” Rich felt two pairs of hands gripping his shoulders, physically pulling him to the port side of the bridge just before the overhanging stern quarters of the tanker swept through the place where his head had been. There was a scraping, grinding, metallic crunch, oddly similar to the noise of a cardboard box being crushed, and then a higher-pitched sound of sheet steel b
eing dragged over a rough surface. Eel heeled far over to port, heaved sideways, stayed there. Towering overhead, her stern quarter projecting into the airspace above the submarine’s bridge, crushing in its side plating, the huge ship scraped and ground past. In a moment she was clear, leaving a last indelible impression of the big letters emblazoned on her stern: Forward Venture. Monrovia.

  Eel lurched back to an even keel. The three officers dashed back to the now ruined starboard side of her bridge. There was still a tiny water channel between the two ships, and the submarine’s rounded side was well into the concave space under the tanker’s quarter. Richardson wondered why he could not hear, or feel, Forward Venture’s big propeller blades slashing into the ballast tanks, instantly saw why. Water was no longer being churned up. The tanker had stopped her engine. Forward Venture’s skipper, evidently not quite so heedless as Richard had been willing to believe, must have ordered engines stopped just before contact.

  A quick evaluation. No visible dents or even scratches on Eel’s smooth rounded side. With the tanker propeller stopped as the two vessels ground past each other, it was even possible that momentary contact with the propeller had merely rotated it slightly to where the blades cleared. At worst, a single blade might be bent near the tip, and there might be a dent in the corresponding part of the Eel’s underwater surface. The only visible damage was on the submarine’s bridge, where the side plating had been smashed in and the TBT cavity crushed out of recognizable shape.

  “Good thing he hit us on the bulletproof steel bulwark,” said Buck, grimacing. “That’s pretty strong stuff. With the tug pulling, that bump pushed us out of the way. I don’t believe we hit at all, down below, so there’s really no damage.”

  “That’s what I think, too. This whole bridge is going to be ripped off in Hunter’s Point when the snorkel is put in, you know. So, far as Brazil’s concerned, there’s no damage at all. Looks like old Eel’s luck is still good.” The unalloyed relief in Keith’s voice matched Buck’s. Richardson also felt it. It would of course be necessary to alert the Navy yard people to check for underwater scrapes and dents, but the danger of crippling damage had passed.