During the evening and into the early morning of 14 August we continued to examine the underside of twenty-one very large icebergs before Captain Steele decided to call it quits. I was fortunate enough to be diving officer of the watch for most of the late evening’s and early morning’s work. As a result, we learned much that had not been known before. Besides being unstable and unpredictable, icebergs are of such varying density that the old rule of thumb that one part above indicates seven parts below did not necessarily apply. The ratio of iceberg above the surface to that below could, in fact, range anywhere from 1:3 to 1:23. We learned further that many dangerous, steel-hard spurs could extend well beneath the water’s surface for tens of feet away from the berg. Most could not be seen from the surface and were quite difficult to detect with the under-ice sonar. The lesson to be learned here was that it would be wise for any ship or submarine to give all icebergs a wide berth. This was solidly brought home to me when I had the dive during our last pass beneath a deep-draft iceberg. The captain decided to do it at a higher speed than before. Just as we cleared its ragged bottom, a huge mass of ice became detached, probably as a result of our wake. At the first sign of what was happening, I well remember the captain opening his mouth to say, “Emergency deep!,” but it was too late: hundreds of tons of ice came crashing down immediately astern of us. Fortunately, no damage was done.
Lt. Alfred S. McLaren, diving officer of the watch, Baffin Bay, August 1960.
Completely satisfied with what we had learned about icebergs and what would be required to operate safely in their near vicinity, Seadragon set a westerly course for Lancaster Sound and the Northwest Passage. Later on the morning of 14 August, as we crossed Baffin Bay on the surface en route, a very large iceberg suddenly loomed out of the fog. Captain Steele couldn’t resist examining it and then passing beneath it, to the great amusement of Commodore Robertson, who remarked to Captain Steele that he was “exactly like an alcoholic with icebergs!”17
CHAPTER 9
Through the Northwest Passage
We entered Lancaster Sound, 650 nautical miles long, during the evening of 14 August.1 It was quite deep and almost forty miles wide in some places. The next day we spent submerged, pushing slowly westward along the main channel en route to Resolute on the southern tip of Cornwallis Island. We surfaced south of Devon Island shortly before noon and fixed our position. We then established communication with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) station at Resolute. After informing them of our expected arrival time, our captain invited the squadron commander and two of his staff to join us for dinner.
We remained on the surface the rest of the afternoon as we proceeded toward Cornwallis Island. It was a beautiful but chilly sunlit day, beginning with excellent views of the bleak and seemingly endless mountainous southern coast of Devon Island. We arrived just off the small bay at Resolute at approximately 6:00 p.m.. Seadragon carefully maneuvered its way through an increasing number of small ice floes as she approached the seaward edge of the anchorage recommended and dropped her mushroom-shaped anchor. We were the first submarine to visit Cornwallis Island.2
A boat soon delivered Squadron Leader S. E. Milikan, commanding officer of the RCAF contingent, Flight Lt. W. Owstan, RCAF, and Mr. Paul Adams of the U.S. Weather Station to us. Honors were rendered, and they and their boat crew were ushered below to join the wardroom and crews mess, respectively, for dinner. Our guests presented us with the latest meteorological and ice information for the route we would be following through the Northwest Passage. They had no more information than we had, however, concerning depth soundings along the way.
Since they were all special guests, the captain, at Seadragon doctor’s suggestion, spliced the main brace with medicinal brandy as we junior officers looked on with envy. As they talked we wondered irreverently what these two RCAF officers might have done to warrant such an arduous duty station, but didn’t dare ask.
Dinner was served amid the exchange of lively sea stories around the table. Our guests were as amazed at our description of life on board a continuously submerged submarine as we were at their harsh life at such a bleak, northern outpost. The continuous threat of polar bear attack certainly caught our attention. We traded gifts over dessert and coffee, and Seadragon received a beautifully carved seadragon of walrus tusk ivory as imagined by a local Inuit carver. Captain Steele, in turn, presented the squadron leader with our bronze plaque, which portrayed a fierce, fire-breathing dragon angrily emerging from the depths with an atom in one claw. On the rim of the plaque were the words USS Seadragon (SSN 584) and the boat’s motto in Chinese translated as, “From the Depths I Rule.”
Wishing us good luck, our visitors took all our mail in several large bags and reluctantly left us about 10:30 p.m. We retracted our anchor to its stowed position flush with the underside of Seadragon’s hull and slowly eased our way through ice floes to an area sufficiently clear and deep for us to safely submerge.3
Once submerged, we set course for the narrow eastern entrance to the Barrow Strait, located between Cape Hurd on Devon Island to the north and Prince Leopold Island to the south. It was approximately thirty miles wide and less than eight miles away. It was here where we would resume our survey of the Northwest Passage. The strait overall was approximately 170 miles in length from its eastern junction with Lancaster Sound to its junction with Viscount Melville Sound to the west. The strait separated several large islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago—Devon and Cornwallis Island to its north and Somerset and Prince of Wales Islands to the south. If there were to be difficulties in finding a safe, deep, submerged route through the Northwest Passage, it would be within this largely uncharted and relatively unknown segment. Although we entered with some degree of trepidation, we knew that if we were successful in finding the passage it would be one of the major achievements of the entire expedition.
The first to discover and navigate the Barrow Strait was Sir William Edward Parry, leader of the British naval Northwest Passage Expedition, in HMS Hecla during the summer of 1820. Sailing close to the northern shore of the strait, he discovered and surveyed the south coasts of Cornwallis and Bathurst Islands. He continued on into Viscount Melville Sound, where he discovered the south coasts of Byam Martin and Melville Islands. Heavy ice conditions prevented him from proceeding farther west into the McClure Strait; otherwise, he might have been the first to discover and transit the Northwest Passage almost a full century before the famed Norwegian explorer, and first to reach the South Pole, Roald Amundsen.4
Our plans upon entering were to determine the deepest and safest passage through the four known islands in the area: Griffith, Young, Garrett, and Lowther. A suspected fifth island, Davy (reported by Parry in 1820), was also plotted to the west, along our intended route. Its position was marked as doubtful, however.
Excitement rose throughout the boat as Captain Steele announced we were about to enter largely uncharted waters, where the U.S. Hydrographic Office had stated, “Depths are shallow, and this area is poorly surveyed. . . . Pinnacles have been reported.” It was thus no surprise that the latest charts Seadragon had of this region showed nothing but large blank areas.5
A New, Safe Passage
Our official orders did not, in fact, require a survey of the Barrow Strait. Seadragon was directed only to “investigate the feasibility of a submarine passage through the eastern segment of the Northwest Passage, the Parry Channel.”6 During a lengthy evening conference with Commodore Robertson and Waldo Lyon, and follow-on discussions drawing on the commodore’s knowledge of the geological morphology of the area and the lines of glaciation, Captain Steele made his decision: the most valuable thing Seadragon could accomplish would be not just to find a narrow opening to pass through the Barrow Strait, but also to try to “find a deep-water pass in the channel that could be used by a nuclear submarine under the worst conditions in winter’s darkness.” Ruling out a far northern track followed by Canadian icebreakers through the strait, Captain Steele aimed firs
t to make a series of four survey runs between Lowther and Garrett Islands to find the most likely deep-water passage—the northern part of the strait. We would follow these runs by a series of three runs in the less likely southern portion between Lowther and Young Islands.
Seadragon surfaced early on 17 August and obtained a radar fix in choppy seas generated by a stiff wind from the east. She then submerged to 120 feet and commenced the first survey run at seven knots, becoming, as Captain Steele later put it, “the first ship ever to take extensive soundings of this little-known corner of the world; in a modest fashion, we were now entering the great company of explorers.”7
We proceeded without incident in what proved to be surprisingly deep water for most of the day. Ice-chart reports from Resolute indicated that we could expect to encounter a sharp ice boundary beginning about longitude 96º W, just beyond Griffith Island along our intended route. Total ice coverage of the strait was expected to begin shortly thereafter. To everyone’s amazement, we did not encounter any sea ice when we reached this meridian. It was thus deemed prudent to return to the surface around 6:30 p.m. and take another radar fix so as to solidly anchor our track, soundings, and position relative to the nearest islands. We would also visually assess our surroundings before we reached the heavy sea-ice boundary expected to lie farther to the west.8
Our navigator, Al Burkhalter, soon reported that he could not obtain a good fix from the islands within view. They appeared to be as much as four miles farther apart than indicated on our chart. Needless to say, an error of this magnitude could easily result in our going aground following resumption of the submerged survey. Accordingly, Captain Steele concluded that the safest strategy would be to determine our location relative to the islands ahead of us, as they were the only ones that posed a danger.9
The remainder of this first survey leg, during which I was diving officer of the watch for at least four hours during the night, proved to be anything but tranquil. The water beneath us began almost immediately to become more shallow, forcing Seadragon to decrease depth, to slow, and to adjust her course as necessary to remain above whatever appeared to be the deepest canyon. Complicating the situation was that our under-ice piloting sonar, or iceberg detector, was indicating heavy ice ridges ahead of us. Either a collision with ice or a bottoming of the boat was imminent if we were not careful. But then, thanks to the discovery that our upward-beamed fathometer was not registering any ice overhead, we concluded that the iceberg detector was actually picking up reflections from the bottom ahead. From this, we realized that the iceberg detector could be used as an under-ice obstacle-avoidance sonar as well, for example picking up shoals and seamounts that could threaten the safety of the boat.10
Once we were certain there really was no chance of colliding with ice along our intended track—because there was none—and the bottom began to recede fortuitously into a seemingly deeper valley, we finally began to relax. It was at this time that Captain Steele pulled out the huge leather-bound first volume of Parry’s 1820 journal and began reading aloud what Parry and his crew of the sailing ship Hecla had encountered in roughly the same area some 140 years earlier. It was a magical, almost Twilight Zone moment. It was if we were in direct communication with this renowned explorer of a much earlier era.
At 4:15 a.m. on 18 August Seadragon passed through the Barrow Strait and was back in the seventy-fathom water of Lancaster Sound.11 Reversing course, we headed back into the strait, taking a survey line about a mile and a half to the northwest of our original track. At 7:30 a.m., while approaching Garrett Island from the east, the water beneath our keel began to shoal rapidly from 106 to 26 fathoms. We quickly headed for the surface and into turbulent seas. Our radar revealed that we had been swept off course by an unexpected current and that we would have run into the island if we had remained on our track.12
The less-than-tranquil survey runs between Garrett and Lowther Islands in the Barrow Strait were completed late that same day. The captain, navigator, and Waldo Lyon concluded that, although the bottom topography was irregular in the northern portion of the Barrow Strait, and although a submarine would find this first route or passage tricky, it could be used year-round. The boat would have to have the proper charts, however, and a necessary modification to the iceberg detector, enabling it to better delineate deep-draft ice directly ahead.13
Shortly after midnight on 19 August, Captain Steele, with Waldo Lyon, Commodore Robertson, and Lieutenant Burkhalter, discussed the possibility of discovering a better route through the Barrow Strait south of Lowther Island. The commodore thought it likely that we would encounter shoal water but agreed that it would be worth a try.14
Seadragon took a southwesterly course at seven knots at a depth that would be certain to provide us safe clearance beneath the sea ice. Our sea ice expert and hydrographer Walt Wittmann continued to marvel at how ice-free the passage had been thus far and stated, “We’ve never seen the Barrow Strait like this in our generation.”15 Captain Steele informed the crew over the 1MC what it was we were embarked upon, producing a perceptible wave of tension in the control room. There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that, during the next several hours, we would be running into the shoal water forecast by Commodore Robertson. The captain resumed reading aloud portions of Parry’s 1820 journal that he deemed of general interest. I was privately struck by the difference in the degree of control and overall safety between our respective ships: sail power versus nuclear power, the former greatly affected by weather and environmental conditions, the latter hardly at all.16
Several long and uneventful hours passed, and although the bottom rose gently, we remained in very deep water without the slightest indication of the expected shoaling. Our ships inertial navigation system, reported Electronic Technician 1st Class John E. Pendleton, indicated we had already gone aground, but that was because, as we already knew, the islands in this area were not charted correctly.
By 2:45 a.m. the suspense had built to the point that we had to come to the surface to fix our position. The bottom was still irregular and relatively deep. The navigator’s fix confirmed our dead-reckoning position, and we continued. We soon passed through the expected shoal water without a hitch. To our surprise the bottom began to grow slowly deeper: so much for the commodore’s dire prediction. Robertson shook his head in disbelief when by 6:00 a.m. we had successfully and quite easily transited the Barrow Strait once again.17 The crew was jubilant when the captain announced this over the 1MC. There was no doubt now that Seadragon and her crew had discovered a completely safe, new passage through the Barrow Strait—one that avoided all the problems of the more northerly one surveyed earlier.
Our next task was to determine how wide our newfound passage might be. Course was reversed, and Seadragon followed a parallel track three thousand yards to the north of the survey run just completed. The iceberg detector soon revealed an isolated seamount dead ahead that the fathometer confirmed during several close passes. We made a quick excursion to the surface to fix our position as well as that of the seamount. A series of passes over the seamount subsequently revealed it to be small and forty fathoms deep. We resubmerged, completed the run, and then reversed course for a third and final survey to delineate the width of the passage running to the south, which paralleled the previous two.18
By early afternoon we had come to the end of this last survey line. Captain Steele announced that the new passage was “wide and deep with a single shallow spot that will serve as a convenient landmark for future submarines coming here.”19 In his book, Seadragon, the captain was to write of our accomplishment:
A sense of history gradually came over me. Sir John Barrow, so many years ago, was sure that a way lay through here to the Far East. How startled he would be to see us probing the cold depths of the strait he imagined in London. What would the world see here one hundred and forty years from now? I seemed to see Arctic communities, furnished heat and power by nuclear reactors, busily engaged in exporting the mineral wealth
of the Canadian Northwest Territories. The Barrow Strait and the Parry Channel would then be a great Arctic waterway for the commerce of the world, served by nuclear submarine cargo vessels and tankers. One day this very passage that we were the first to examine might be a principal thoroughfare of the world.20
The captain announced to the crew, “We are now bound for the Arctic Ocean via Viscount Melville Sound and McClure Strait!”21 He increased speed to sixteen knots and the depth to two hundred feet and ordered me to turn over the dive to the chief of the watch and assume the conn. This was a special occasion for me, because Captain Steele now considered me a qualified officer of the deck and submerged conning officer. We entered the next portion of the Northwest Passage, Viscount Melville Sound. The water was much deeper there, with the fathometer indicating some one hundred fathoms beneath the keel.22
Basing his decision on the superb and accurate performance of the ships inertial navigation system, sonar, and iceberg detector, Captain Steele considered the desirability of completing our survey and transit of the classic Northwest Passage with a high-speed run through the approximately four hundred nautical miles of the Viscount Melville Sound and McClure Strait that remained between the Arctic Ocean and our position. Although both the navigator and the exec expressed their concerns about the possibility of unknown currents, compass error, heavy ice overhead, and the still poorly charted route ahead, the captain made the decision to proceed. A speed of sixteen knots, in the captain’s opinion, would emphasize the advantages of the Northwest Passage over the Panama Canal for submarines passing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.23
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