Pigboats

by Ellsberg, Edward

  Pete’s befuddled mind gradually took that in. He looked at the slope of the periscopes for confirmation, then let go the handle.

  “Yeh, ye’re right. Shure, an’ they been open all the time.” He looked forward. “Kingstons all open, sir.”

  Rolfe turned toward Arnold at the high pressure air manifold.

  “Blow the main ballasts, chief.”

  Arnold looked at Tom; the latter shook his head slightly. Arnold made no move. Instead Tom turned to the captain behind him, said quietly:

  “We’re in a tight fix, captain; we can’t afford any more mistakes. The boys want to know first what you’re aiming at.”

  Rolfe glared at him, then with an effort choked back his rage, faced the quartermaster.

  “Lighten the boat, of course, and float up. That’s plain enough, isn’t it?”

  Tom nodded.

  “Yes, sir, it’s plain enough, but how about all this water inside the boat?”

  “We’ll blow enough out of the ballasts to overcome it, and when we get up, we’ll pump this overboard.”

  “It won’t work, captain. Against the pressure down here, the air we’ve got left in our banks won’t expand enough to blow the ballast tanks dry. Oh, it would, all right, if we were nearer the surface, but down here — nix! It won’t half blow ’em dry. And so far as I can figure, we’ve got more water here in the C.O.C. and in the engine room than we can blow out of the ballasts with the air we got. So that’ll still leave us too heavy to float.”

  “Maybe your figures are wrong. Anyway it’s our only chance.”

  “Chance, hell, it’ll be our finish! Haven’t you noticed where all the water is in here? It’s in the after half of the boat. What’ll happen to the trim if you lighten her up? The bow’ll rise, the water’ll all run into her tail, and the stern’ll stay on the bottom, then the boat’ll be vertical. And then?” Tom noticed his shipmates gathering round him listening. “This boat’s only long enough to reach half way to the surface. We’ll hang that way a couple of minutes while what air you’ve put in the ballast tanks blows out of ’em because, with the boat on her tail, the Kingston valves won’t be in the bottoms of the tanks anymore; they’ll be in the sides and they’ll act like air vents.” He paused to let that sink in. “And when that air blows out, down goes the bow again.”

  Arnold added slowly:

  “And then we’re through for keeps. No more air.”

  Rolfe turned on him like a flash.

  “Quit your God-damned croaking. I’m captain here. Do what I say, or I’ll have you sons-of-bitches shot for mutiny when we get back!”

  A shriek pierced the room. Randolph was clinging to his controllers, laughing hysterically. Wolters stepped through from the battery room door, dipped up a hatful of water, dashed it into Randolph’s face.

  “Pipe down, Sparks,” he ordered. “We’re all right.” Biff turned to the skipper. “That’s enough from you. Do what you say! Hell! That’s the surest way of never gettin’ back to get shot fer mutiny nur nuthin’ else!” Randolph’s hysterical laugh again.

  “He’ll have us shot! Why didn’t he shoot ’em on the L-18? They wouldn’t go! They knew him!”

  Rolfe winced as if struck, then, glancing round, saw the rest of the crew massed in the passages. Sullen, hopeless. They were all against him. His authority, the Navy Regulations? Three hundred and fifty-one feet of water had crushed them out. Doomed men anyway. Obey the man they mistrusted? Not in the face of certain death. Rolfe’s head sagged.

  Wolters took him by the arm, eased him forward over the flooded deck, pushed him past the wheel. Rolfe tore free, swung violently at him. Biff ducked, seized Rolfe from behind, pitched him bodily forward to the little wardroom, heaved him through the green baize curtains.

  “You’re through,” he panted, “stay there. You’ve sunk us onct, ’n that’s enough. If we get up, you kin have us all shot fer mutiny — if ye wanna take a chance on facing a court yerself when y’ tell ’em how we got here!” Biff pushed back through the door, joined his mates.

  Heartsick, Tom Knowles scanned the little group.

  Mutineers now, all of them. In wartime. Death if they stayed, death if the enemy caught them, death before a firing squad if they escaped the sea and the enemy, and returned to Queenstown. But enemy and firing squad were remote. The sea — the water splashing round his feet, was cold, close. They might elude the Germans, they might never face a court, but with the sea they must make no mistakes. Baker had made one. Had his old crew died like this, slowly, hopelessly? No, they were lucky. That diver had testified the C-3 had collapsed. Only a second of terror for them, then oblivion. He looked at his shipmates, crowding into the C.O.C. Like the crew of the C-3, they had already suffered the pangs of sudden death, the expectation of having their boat collapse as it whirled into the depths. Now they could die again, more at leisure, of cold, of suffocation, as the air grew worse, as the wintry sea chilled their prison. And this time he would die with the crew. He laughed bitterly. Erhardt was safe. He would be dead in truth this time.

  Wolters was speaking. “An’ that’s that, boys. When we git back, if there’s any talk about court-martials, I gotta hunch they’ll be investigatin’ why the L-18 never went out before they go shootin’ any of us.”

  “Yeh, that’ll hold him a while,” agreed Arnold. “But right now we’d better shake a leg about gettin’ under way ourselves.”

  “O.K. mates. Let’s go.” Instinctively, they turned to Tom. Unhesitatingly, he took charge, smiling grimly at the thought. Captain of a submarine again. He surveyed his boat. Waterlogged. The air? Thick, lifeless. His crew? Hopeless men, desperate in the face of death.

  And the end of everything only a few hours away if they did not raise the boat. The water was rising steadily.

  “We’ve got to get rid of this free water, boys, to float her up and to balance her trim when she floats. Bill, you take a suction through the drainage manifold to your high-pressure pump and set it to discharge overboard.”

  “Aye, aye.” Arnold waded through the deepening water, worked swiftly over the set of dull brass valve wheels which faced him, row on row. He cross-connected the drainage and the high-pressure manifolds, opened wide the valve to the bilge suction line in the C.O.C. Meanwhile Mullaney, fumbling through two feet of oily water, clawed for the strainer valve in the little drain pit in the deck alongside the forward periscope. His numbed fingers finally clutched the wheel, turned it. Pete stood up, shook the water from his dripping arm.

  “Ye’re open to the bilges,” he announced.

  Close alongside Arnold, Tom waited while the intricate piping adjustments were made to tie in the high-pressure pump for a service never expected of it. The drainage pump down behind the bank of Kingston valve levers usually took care of pumping overboard what little leakage accumulated in the bilges. But that pump, intended only for low-pressure service, could not discharge overboard except at the surface.

  Tom looked intently at the high-pressure pump. It was jammed in behind the drainage manifold, a mass of gears, packing boxes, and pistons; like everything else in the boat practically inaccessible. And like everything else, to economize space and weight, its motor did double service, driving the periscope hoists on one end of its shaft, and the little high-pressure pump on the other end. A couple of clutch levers, barely projecting through the maze of piping behind the manifold, disconnected the end not in service.

  Randolph squeezed in alongside Tom, peered at the pump a moment, then whispered in Tom’s ear:

  “Lucky we’re not waiting till tonight. Look at that.”

  Tom looked. The water was already washing round the base of the motor.

  “A little higher and the motor’ll be shorted and then ‘Good night, high-pressure pump.’” Randolph’s wan face seemed whiter than ever.

  Tom nodded.

  “O.K., Sparks. But not yet. Throw in the switch on this circuit.”

  Randolph splashed across the deck to the switchboard,
reached in over the maze of contacts, pressed home an ebony handle.

  “All set on the juice to the h.p. pump.”

  Arnold opened the last valve, the sea connection, shoved in the clutch to the high-pressure pump, pressed his starting button.

  With a whir the motor speeded up, the hum of machinery echoed again through the silent boat. The pump groaned as its gear-driven pistons laboured to expel the water against the pressure of the deep sea. A slight whirlpool appeared on the surface of the water over the suction well, as the pump started to draw. A knot of dripping sailors, knee-deep in the icy flood, watched the whirlpool with rapt faces. The water was going out!

  And then slowly the whirling ceased, the surface of the water calmed again, only a few eddies rippled across the C.O.C. Uncomprehendingly the watchers looked at Arnold. Had he stopped the pump? No, the whirring of the motor still filled the room. But the groaning of the pump had stopped. The pressure was too great. The clutch was slipping.

  In agonized silence, Tom watched a thin haze of smoke rise from the leather-faced clutch disks as the motor strove to revolve the pump. No use. The pump was not designed to work at a greater depth than 200 feet.

  But it had to. Tom motioned Bill Arnold to stop the motor. In the deep silence that followed, the trickle of the water, as he poured a hatful over the smoking clutch to cool it, sounded through the boat like the babbling of a mountain torrent.

  With difficulty, sprawling out on top of the manifold, Tom worked his fingers down between the piping and managed to feel the adjusting nut on the clutch spring. But he could not turn it.

  Bill Arnold ran back to the motor room, yanked a small spanner wrench from the tool board over the main motors, splashed hurriedly back with it. Tom fumbled through again with the wrench, could not get a bite on the nut. No room for him. He withdrew his arm, hastily surveyed the anxious men grouped round. Sanders, the little third-class quartermaster, was by far the smallest.

  “Here, Joe, you get in on that nut and set her up for a full due.”

  “An’ fer Christ’s sake, don’t lose the spanner behind those pipes,” Arnold exclaimed. “It’s the only one that’ll take that nut!”

  Sanders crawled up on the manifold, started to reach through.

  “Wait a minute.” Tom reached over to the little mess room just forward, ripped a yard of edging strip from the green baize curtain. Carefully he took a clove hitch around the spanner wrench handle.

  “In the old Navy, it’d be marline, Joe, but in these pigs we’re lucky there’s a little upholstery to use for lashings.” Tom tied the other end of the baize strip to the quartermaster’s wrist. “You won’t be losing it with that preventer. Now go to it, lad.” He clapped Sanders on the shoulder.

  Stretched out on the mass of valve wheels, his head jammed against the periscope-hoisting wires, his arm straining full length through the intertwined piping, Sanders wiggled his spanner over the clutch-adjusting nut, managed to get a partial turn on it now and then. Time after time as he pushed, hardly able to keep his finger tips on the wrench, it slipped off the nut, splashed into the water below. Each time he fished it back from the bilges with his improvised lanyard, nursed it again over the nut, with set teeth and tendons in his neck standing tautly out, he worked the nut slowly up. In spite of the cold, beads of sweat gathered on his forehead. And all around, straining their muscles with him as he pushed, gritting their teeth with him as he struggled, stood his shipmates, fighting with him as he fumbled with his fingertips to set up the nut on which their lives depended.

  A last turn. The nut was jammed up hard. Stiffly Sanders pulled out his arm, rolled wearily off the manifold. Another half hour had gone by. The water had gained two inches.

  No time to lose. The machinist’s mate pressed his button; again the motor hummed and the pump started to churn. But only for a moment. A wisp of smoke rose again as the clutch slipped once more. The groaning pistons slowed down, gradually came to rest, while the motor whirled and the clutch facings started to burn.

  “Shut her off, Bill,” coughed Tom, leaning over the smoking disks. “The air’s bad enough already.”

  But Randolph, running over to the switchboard, pulled out the switch instead.

  “I killed the circuit, Tom. A little more water’ll short it if we leave the juice on up to the motor.”

  Tom nodded. The pump was useless anyway with that clutch. He looked at Sanders. The little quartermaster, his face still bathed in perspiration, was staring dejectedly at the scene of his fruitless endeavours.

  “You sure she’s up tight, Joe? Can’t you get a little more pressure on that clutch?”

  Sanders shook his head wearily.

  “No use, chief. I got it all already. That spring’s up metal to metal now. She won’t go no more.”

  Knowles leaned down and felt the motor. A little higher and the salt water would be into its windings. And that motor represented their only real hope of life. The water must not get any higher while they struggled to make it work. He turned again to the silent knot of men abaft him.

  “Pete, you and a couple of the other boys get some buckets. Bale some of this water into the engine room so it doesn’t get any higher in the C.O.C. till we get this pump going.”

  “Now, Bill,” he said to Arnold, as Mullaney moved aft on his task, “there’s just one thing left now. You’re a machinist. Get a few bolts through those clutch disks some way so’s to make a solid coupling of it, and then that pump’ll have to keep going round!”

  “Yeh,” replied Arnold wearily, “we gotta do that. But I can’t get no bolts through where she is. You kin hardly touch that clutch in there, let alone do any work on her.”

  “O.K., Bill. We’ll pull the whole thing out here where you can drill some holes through those clutch disks. Get your gang.”

  While Pete and three other sailors baled vigorously, tossing bucket after bucket of water over the high coaming of the open door into the engine room, a stream of machinist’s mates and stillson wrenches flowed into the C.O.C. and gathered behind Bill Arnold.

  But a fresh shock awaited them. Tom discovered that they could not get at the high-pressure pump and its motor without first removing the drainage manifold in front of it. And if they broke the pipe connections on that manifold they would leave wide open two connections to the sea which would promptly flood the boat!

  Twice Tom traced through the piping to verify that discovery. And it was as if sealing their death warrant, that finally he turned to Arnold, waiting, stillson wrench in hand, to start on the piping, and announced dully:

  “It’s no use, Bill. That manifold was only meant to work on when the boat’s in drydock, not in the water. We can’t get at that clutch!”

  An inarticulate groan answered him. Tom watched the hope die away in the eyes of the men around, a lack-lustre dullness take its place.

  He had only one thing more left, the compressed air. There couldn’t possibly be enough to expel the water and float them up, but who knew? He must try.

  “Well, the pump’s out, boys. We’ve got to play our last card now.” He looked down the little passage toward the galley where Mullaney was still manning the buckets. “Never mind baling any more, Pete. We’ll have to try something else.”

  Knowles reached over to the manifold, where Arnold sat.

  “Gimme your wrench, Bill.” He took the stillson from the machinist’s listless hand, broke a joint in the vent line from the top of the adjusting tank, so that he could vent it into the C.O.C. Randolph watched him apathetically.

  “What good’s that?” he finally asked as Tom uncoupled the union.

  “You’ll see in a minute.” Tom reached down, worked again over the half submerged manifolds, opening one valve, closing another. He finished, walked over to Randolph.

  “We’ll need the drainage pump now, Sparks. Let’s have the juice on it.”

  “What’s the use?” asked Sanders dejectedly. “That’s only a low-pressure pump. Ye can’t pump nuthin’ ou
t with that.”

  “O.K., but we can get something in with it. Juice on, Sparks?” Randolph nodded.

  The chief quartermaster pushed his way aft near Mullaney’s abandoned Kingston valve levers, reached in behind them against the curved steel shell of the room to the starting switch. He pressed it. The drainage pump, a direct connected centrifugal, started to hum. A large sized vortex appeared in the water in the centre of the room, and a moment later the sound of air whistling out a vent added to the noise. The water in the C.O.C. slowly fell.

  Amazed, the sailors watched the whirlpool as the water disappeared, looked anxiously at Tom. Arnold jumped up, stared.

  “Where’s that water going?” he demanded.

  “Nowhere to get excited about, old man,” replied Tom. “She’s still in the boat. I’m only pumping it into the adjusting tank so’s we can get an air pressure behind it.” He wandered slowly over to the vent line from the adjusting tank which he had broken, placed his hand over it. “Here’s where that air’s coming out,” he explained. “Now watch.”

  Another moment and a stream of water shot out the open vent, sprayed against the useless periscopes nearby.

  “Enough,” called Tom. “Stop the pump.” Sanders reached behind the levers, pressed the button. The motor stopped. The water in the C.O.C. had gone down at least half a foot.

  “It’s inside the adjusting tank now, boys. And in a minute, it’ll be overboard.” Tom worked rapidly. He closed the vent on the tank, shifted the manifold connections. Then moving to the air manifold against the wardroom bulkhead, he worked over the heavy bronze fittings to the air banks, bypassing the low pressure regulator on the 100 pound air line so he could put the necessary pressure on the adjusting tank to blow it against the resistance of the sea. If only they had sufficient compressed air in their banks! He gazed hopelessly at the air gauge. 1500 pounds. Not enough for all that water. Why hadn’t he closed off that smashed ventilation main before so much water had poured in? Well, he was ready.