Although we live in an enlightened age, superstition is still rife, and
not many people would care to dive for the first time in a submarine
bearing the unlucky number 13. Yet in spite of the fact that sailors
are generally credited with being more superstitious than most people,
no thought of danger crossed the minds of the seventy-three men who
during the war stepped aboard the British submarine K.13 in order
to carry out her trials. She was a wonderful craft, 334 feet long,
just under 27 feet wide amidships, and as she lay at her moorings she
displaced 1880 tons.
Like her sister ships of the same type, she was one of the fastest
submarines afloat, capable on the surface of overtaking most
battleships in order to send them to their doom, able to take her place
with the Grand Fleet and steam along with them at top speed without
being left behind. This wonderful speed was attained by fitting her
with steam turbines in addition to the usual oil engines and electric
motors. Her stumpy funnels folded down when she was diving, and the
introduction of steam made it essential to fit fairly big ventilators.
In order to dive she could take into her ballast tanks 800 tons of
water in four minutes, but with a big submarine over 100 yards long,
all divided into many compartments, diving was a delicate operation
that depended for its safety upon all the men carrying out their duties
instantly. It was necessary that the crew should be quite conversant
with their craft and that there should be perfect team work. But an
absolutely new craft is bound to present some strange features to
her first crew. In this case she was a new development in submarine
practice, and it was probably the fact that the K.13 was unfamiliar
that brought about the ensuing disaster.
Built on the Clyde, she was taken along to the Gareloch to be put
through her paces. The Gareloch was quiet, away from spying eyes, free
of the attentions of the unwelcome enemy submarine, and here the K.13
carried out her surface trials satisfactorily. The conning tower was
closed, the funnels were dropped back flush with the deck, and orders
were given to trim the boat for diving. The watertight doors were shut
and the sea began to flow into the tanks. Then, as the craft submerged,
came disaster. A mighty rush of water swept into the after part of the
ship, drowning instantly the thirty-one men on duty there, and carrying
the K.13 stern downwards to the bottom. It was afterwards discovered
that in diving some of the ventilating scuttles had been left open and
these had flooded the stern of the ship. It was a tragic oversight that
in a moment swept thirty-one men into eternity.
In the forward part of the K.13 forty-two men were imprisoned, held
fast on the seabed by the weight of water in the ship. There was no
trace of panic. Nobody turned a hair. As quietly as though they still
floated serenely on the surface, they stood by and carried out their
commander’s orders.
For hours they strove to get the ship to move, to lighten the tanks
sufficiently to bring her to the surface again. The ship remained fast.
No trace of movement was to be detected. The watertight bulkhead across
the centre of the vessel held death at bay for the moment, but no one
knew how long it could withstand the terrific pressure. At the other
side of the bulkhead lay their dead companions, and the hungry sea was
waiting to engulf the living. Death threatened them from all quarters,
death from drowning, death from asphyxiation owing to the exhaustion of
their air supply, death from starvation even if the air held out. Hour
by hour death came nearer. They realized it only too well, but still
they remained cheerful.
When it was seen that all their efforts were useless, Commander Godfrey
Herbert, D.S.O., who was in command, and Commander F. H. M. Goodhart,
D.S.O., who was aboard to watch the behaviour of the vessel before
taking over the command of K.14, conferred and agreed to try to get to
the surface, 90 feet above their heads, in order to obtain help. They
knew perfectly well that they were probably going to their deaths, that
the odds were so tremendously against them that they were not worth
considering. They did not think of themselves; they thought only of the
forty men caught in that death-trap.
The one way of getting to the surface was through the conning tower.
But the terrific weight of the water above closed the lid so tightly
that the strongest giant in the world could never lift it. To raise
it were beyond the strength of mere human beings. The only way of
accomplishing the feat was to let into the conning tower compressed air
until the pressure of the air equalled the pressure of the sea, and as
the air burst a way upwards the gallant officers hoped to be carried
with it to the surface.
Quietly they entered the conning tower, and partially flooded it. The
compressed air was turned on. Minute by minute the pressure increased,
minute by minute the officers waited, wondering if death or life was to
be theirs, whether their attempt was to succeed or fail.
So great grew the pressure that the air could no longer be kept within
bounds. With incredible strength it burst upwards and Commander
Goodhart was dashed violently against the steel sides of the conning
tower and killed instantly.
By the greatest good fortune Commander Herbert missed the full force of
that deadly upthrust of air. Still he, too, was hurled upwards and, as
the water rushed in and the air gushed out, was carried clean through
the conning tower to the surface.
Already the disappearance of K.13 was arousing anxiety up above, and a
salvage craft had been called to the spot. A couple of men in a boat,
noticing the figure of Commander Herbert as he came up in the Gareloch,
pulled quickly towards him and dragged him over the side. He was almost
dead with exhaustion, and the wonder is that he ever survived that
terrible ordeal.
As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, he gave an account of what
had happened and told how the men were trapped in the submarine. The
urgency of the case was obvious. It needed no stressing.
Then began one of the most thrilling salvage fights in the history of
the human race. It was a fight, not for treasure, but for human life.
It was a race against time, a long tussle with death.
Divers dropped down the shot-ropes to the bed of the Gareloch and began
to search for the sunken submarine. The light was none too good, owing
to the water being fogged with mud, but they were searching only a
short time when the dark hull of the submarine loomed in front of them.
They hurried up to it. One drew an axe from his belt, hammered hard at
the side.
Answering knocks came from within, and those waiting anxiously on the
surface heaved a sigh of relief as the divers telephoned up:
“We’ve found her. They’re still alive!”
Surveying the wreck, the divers discovered that the bow of the
submarine was about 20 feet higher than the stern, which was already
covered by a dozen feet of mud. Wading in slime sometimes up to the
armpits, the divers worked their way round her, then quickly sped to
the surface and reported her position.
At once the experts summed up the situation. The K.13 with her stern
full of water, covered up aft by a dozen feet of mud, was too heavy to
raise bodily. She was well over 3000 tons, and up to that time nothing
like this weight had ever been lifted from the seabed. The only thing
to be done, the sole hope of saving the imprisoned men, was to strive
to lift the nose of the craft to the surface while leaving the stern
resting on the bottom. Nothing else was possible.
“The first thing to do is to get through supplies of food and air to
them,” the salvage officer remarked.
The divers slid down to the bottom and, disregarding all thought
of their own safety, laboured hard and long to connect up with the
entombed men. They must have broken the endurance record of the world,
for one worked for over twelve hours continuously on the seabed without
taking food, without resting. Time was too precious for them to waste
a second. They realized the risk, but they accepted it as gladly as
Commander Goodhart ran the risk which led to his death. They worked
until they were ill and dizzy, floundering in the mud, wrestling with
giant steel cables.
Forty men were depending on them for their lives. The thought nerved
the divers to prodigious things. It was essential to communicate with
the imprisoned men, to let them know that everything possible was
being done for them, to strive to sustain their spirits. Commander Kay
of the Salvage Section found the way. Sending down a submarine flash
lamp, he instructed the divers to rig it up in front of the periscope.
By peering into this instrument the prisoners were thus able to read
the messages that were flashed to them in Morse Code, and were made to
understand that they were not entirely cut off from the world after
all. With many a struggle, the divers managed to open a valve in the
hull and to attach a pipe through which food such as Bovril, bottles of
hot soup and chocolate, as well as life-giving air, were passed from
the surface. All this entailed long hours of endeavour.
The coolness of the men in the submarine was almost unbelievable.
“Send us down a pack of cards to while away the time!” one shouted up
the pipe.
The cards were procured and sent down, and these British seamen played
cards while Death peeped over their shoulders.
Up to then the men had been carefully conserving their supplies of
compressed air, not knowing how long they would need them to keep
alive. Now that air was being pumped from the surface, they were able
to use what was left of their own supplies to blow all the oil out of
the forward tanks. This lightened their craft considerably.
After a terrific struggle, the divers managed to fix mighty steel
cables under the nose of the submarine. Salvage craft and lifting
vessels strained away. For a time they made no impression. Then slowly
the grip of the mud began to relax and the bow of the submarine,
lightened by the blowing out of the oil tanks, began to rise nearer and
nearer the surface until, about midnight, it broke clear into view.
It was a weird sight. Great arc lamps lit the scene, and under
their glare the salvage men attacked the steel hull of the K.13
with oxy-acetylene blow-pipes. Every one was desperately anxious,
afraid that the submarine might slip. Under the intense heat of the
blow-pipes, the steel grew soft and melted. Gradually, laboriously, the
salvors burned their way through the stout outer plates.
[Illustration: HISTORY REVEALS NO MORE THRILLING RESCUE THAN THAT OF
THE SURVIVORS OF THE K.13 AFTER SHE HAD BEEN AT THE BOTTOM FOR TWO AND
A HALF DAYS. THIS RARE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS THE BOW OF THE K.13 AFTER IT
HAD BEEN HAULED TO THE SURFACE TO ENABLE THE MEN TO BE CUT OUT]
They now made an onslaught on the inner hull, directing the flame on
the steel shell. The metal glowed and flowed. A rush of air leaped
upwards from the interior of the vessel and blew out the roaring flame
of the blow-pipe.
“Get us some matches!” the divers called to those above.
Under their very noses a hand from inside the ship suddenly slid
through the hole in the metal, the fingers holding up a box of matches.
“Here you are,” said a cheery voice, and the divers knew that all was
well.
Another period of strenuous endeavour and the hole in the metal was big
enough for a man to squeeze through. Then, as the forty prisoners were
helped and carried to freedom, the cheers of the salvage men echoed to
the shore.
Never will men be nearer death than those saved from the K.13. For
fifty-seven hours they were imprisoned in the sunken submarine at the
bottom of the sea, for two and a half days they lived with death at
their elbows, not knowing when the end would come. Their ordeal has
never been equalled, and their rescue is one of the most thrilling
deeds in the annals of sea salvage.
Barely were they rescued when a storm arose. The cables holding up the
K.13 snapped asunder, and the submarine plunged again to the bottom.
The men had been cut out not a moment too soon.
In due course followed the salvage of the unlucky K.13. It was effected
solely by the use of compressed air, which was pumped down one pipe
into a compartment until it had driven all the water away through
another pipe to the surface. In this way she was pumped out compartment
by compartment, but even when all the water was expelled she still
stuck in the mud. For two or three days the salvors strove to drag her
from the clinging mud, but not until she was freed of the overlying
silt by sand-pumps did she bob to the surface just like a cork. Proving
little the worse for her adventure, she was put into commission again
under another number, so the unlucky K.13 vanished for ever from the
British Naval Lists.