Quite as thrilling as the experience of the men who went down in the
K.13 was the adventure which befell the crew of an American submarine,
the S.5, and it is doubtful if any popular novelist, with all his
imagination and powers of invention, ever thought out a more remarkable
situation than that in which these American sailors found themselves.
The American submarine concerned had been travelling on the surface,
when the commander gave the order to prepare to dive. Down she went,
and for a time glided unseen in the depths. Then her commander got
ready to bring her up once more.
Of a sudden something went wrong. The air failed to blow out the
forward tanks. The men felt the floor slip away under their feet as
they rose. They were thrown on their backs, on their faces, rolling
sideways in all directions. There was no shock, not the slightest jar.
The submarine just swung like a pendulum, and when the officers and
men managed to disentangle themselves from the various positions into
which they had been thrown, they found the bulkheads had changed places
with the floor of their craft.
The submarine was actually hanging perpendicularly, bow downward, with
just the end of the stern showing above the surface. It was a terrible
plight to be in, and every man aboard recognized at once that he was
face to face with death. Their only hope was that a vessel would sight
them and manage to rescue them before their air gave out, yet there was
so little of the stern peeping above the surface of the sea that the
odds against it being noticed were tremendous.
Most submarines nowadays are equipped with a portable telephone which
can be floated to the surface, where it is supported by a buoy. This
telephone was designed for just such an emergency, and the commander
quickly uncoiled the cable and sent the telephone floating upward.
Followed a most nerve-racking experience. For hour after hour they
swung about under the sea, rocking this way and that, spinning
sometimes like a top, ringing on the telephone at regular intervals,
and waiting tensely for the sound of a voice to tell them that they
were found. All day they waited without any reply. Air was being used
up every minute, and death by suffocation was not pleasant to think
upon. Even worse was the thought that at any moment the submarine might
cease to swing, and would plunge to the bottom like a stone, fracture
her plates and wipe them all out in a few seconds.
Twenty-four hours passed. All through the darkness of night until dawn
those insistent signals went up to the telephone and a sailor waited
tensely for an answering voice. None came.
Another day of suspense began. The men were like prisoners in a
condemned cell, not knowing whether they were going to their doom or
whether a reprieve was coming. All the time they were striving to find
out what was wrong, struggling to right their craft again. The task
was beyond them. Their efforts were of no avail. Still they rocked
and swung like a pendulum in the broad Atlantic. It was a nightmare
situation. For men to remain so strong and yet so helpless was
maddening. So the dreadful hours crept by.
An American transport, the _General Goethals_, was steaming down to
Panama when one of the men aboard thought he heard the sound of a
telephone bell.
“What’s that?” he said.
His companion looked at him, “What?”
“Sounded like a telephone,” said the first man.
His shipmate was about to retort when he, too, heard the sound of the
bell.
“There it is again,” said the first man.
“Sure!” answered the companion.
Other men came crowding up.
“What’s wrong?” they inquired.
“Didn’t you hear it?” asked the first man.
“What?”
“The telephone!”
At that moment the sound came to them again. They looked at each other.
Some wondered if they were bewitched. They were far out on the open
sea, and it seemed impossible that a telephone bell could be ringing
there.
More and more men crowded round, and more and more heard the bell.
There was no mistaking it. It was certainly a telephone bell. So plain
was it, so insistent, that at last the captain signalled down to stop
the engines.
Half a dozen seamen took their places in a boat. Outwards it swung from
the side of the ship and a moment later sat with a splash in the sea.
Rowing in the direction of the mysterious sound, the sailors at last
sighted the buoy with the telephone attached. The stern of the craft
was barely visible.
Imagine the transports of those unfortunates when voices hailed them
cheerfully from above! They had been swinging about in their awful
predicament for thirty-five hours when the telephone was picked up, and
air was running so short that they had only enough to last them for an
hour or two longer.
Instantly the men below made clear their peril. The troopship flashed
out her wireless call for help.
Not a ship within radius heard the call.
Then cropped up another of those strange tricks of Fate. An American
schoolboy, named Moore, keen on wireless long before the wireless boom
set in, was experimenting with his home-made set when he picked up the
call. Proudly he sent out this message of life and death on his own
transmitter. The nearest naval depot picked it up and destroyers with
special plant aboard were hurried at full speed to the rescue.
Meanwhile the captain of the transport had managed with the greatest
difficulty to get strong hawsers round the submarine, lashing them
tightly to his transport in order to keep the stern of the submarine
above water. Then his engineers after a deal of labour cut a small hole
in the steel skin and began to pump fresh air in to the prisoners.
This was the situation when the destroyers appeared on the scene.
Immediately they fixed more hawsers round the submarine to prevent her
from slipping to the bottom, and with the special appliances at their
command they managed to cut through the rivets and force out one of the
plates of the up-ended craft.
One by one the twenty-seven men and their commanding officer scrambled
through to the open air again, after being imprisoned for forty hours
in that crazy submarine swinging about under the sea. Thus a telephone
ringing in the open sea, where no telephone could possibly be expected,
and a boy playing with his wireless set were instrumental in saving
the lives of an entire crew after a most terrible experience.
Not so fortunate were the crew of a British submarine which, like the
K.13, met with a mishap that sent her plunging to the bottom. All were
killed except one man, who with his own lips afterwards related how he
had battled with death and won his way back to life after one of the
most amazing adventures that have ever befallen man.
He happened to be in the engine-room when he perceived the water
pouring in through the conning tower in one mighty cascade. In a flash
he realized that the boat was doomed. Rushing along the engine-room he
shouted at the top of his voice to warn his comrades in the other parts
of the ship. The sea swept into the engine-room after him. In a moment
the floor was flooded.
Fast as he moved, the water was faster. Before he could get out, he
heard the sinister sound of the engine-room door slamming. He turned
and thrust his shoulder against it. It would not budge. He was trapped
in the engine-room of a sunken submarine! The rush of water had closed
the bulkhead door, and the space beyond was completely flooded, making
it impossible for the imprisoned man to move the door. Even if he had
succeeded in opening the door, it would have been merely a matter of
seconds before the hungry sea drowned him.
He stood to compose his thoughts, to make up his mind what to do. More
than once he had imagined himself trapped in just such a manner, and he
was well aware that if he could succeed in equalizing the pressure of
the air inside with the water outside he might get out of the submarine
and escape.
But to work things out in theory is much easier than to carry them out
in practice, especially if your life depends on your doing everything
exactly as it should be done, when the least little slip means death.
The man reached out his hand to grasp a metal lever. His fingers closed
on it. He recoiled from a severe electric shock. He touched something
else, and again felt the jolt of electricity. His knee knocked against
one of the engines and he felt a big shock in his leg. Very gingerly
he put his finger on another metal object, and once more experienced
the sensation of electricity. Everything around him was charged with
electricity, and it was some time before he realized that the flooding
of the engine-room had short-circuited the electric current.
Now another factor crept in to make the situation still more desperate.
The sea water, flooding the electric batteries, began to set free
chlorine gas. The smell of it grew stronger, made him gasp. So to the
risks of drowning and suffocating was added the danger of gas poisoning.
In like circumstances few men could have kept their nerve. Most men
would have abandoned themselves to their fate, would have given up all
hope in the face of so many perils. But not this British sailor. With
all his strength he began to fight to get out of the submarine, to put
his theories into practice in order to save his life. He must have
possessed tremendous will power, wonderful courage and determination.
He tried the torpedo hatch, to make quite sure that the pressure above
was such that he could not shift it. He might have been pushing against
Mount Everest itself. Wasting no time, he set the bolt of the hatch so
that the merest touch would release it, then he opened a valve to let
in more water. As the water flooded the compartment, the air in it was
compressed more and more. Higher and higher crept the water, greater
and greater became the pressure of the air until he felt he could stand
it no longer. He slipped the bolt of the hatch, and as he felt it give
to the pressure he slipped a hand on the outside. A gust of air swept
out, held up the cover momentarily, then the great metal lid slammed
down again, crushing all the fingers of the brave man’s hand.
Maimed though he was, his courage remained unshaken. Giving up his
idea of escaping by raising the air pressure, he determined on the
most desperate expedient of all. He made up his mind to flood the
compartment completely, when the pressure of the water inside and
outside would be equal, and he could open the hatch--if he were not
drowned in the attempt.
Opening more valves, he scrambled on top of the engines and watched
the water pouring in. It rose to the hatch coamings, till only his
face was above the surface. Then with a quick heave of his shoulder he
pressed against the hatch. The imprisoned air burst out and the water
rushed in, sweeping over his face and head. Holding his breath, he
thrust again at the hatch, which luckily passed the vertical and fell
backwards with a clang. Then he struck out desperately towards the
surface.
A destroyer steaming along saw a tiny patch of white in the water.
It was the face of the hero of the submarine. He was to all intents
lifeless, practically dead. Wasting not a moment, they forced the water
from him and after a hard struggle succeeded in bringing back to life
one of the bravest men who ever breathed.
Not without its amusing side was the adventure which befell three
unhappy men on an American naval submarine. She was engaged in making a
series of cinematograph pictures, and orders were given to prepare for
a very rapid dive, known as a crash dive.
Two cinema men were still standing on the deck with their cameras, and
the commander was in the top half of the conning tower, which was,
of course, open. To their consternation the boat began to submerge.
Realizing that there had been some misunderstanding, and thinking only
of saving his ship and crew from a terrible disaster, the commander,
who had no time to enter the ship, shouted to the men to close the
hatch under his feet.
It was slammed not a moment too soon, and the commander inside the
conning tower was carried beneath the surface. His first thought was
to escape. He scrambled upwards towards the opening. Something stopped
him, held him fast, kept him a prisoner.
What had happened was that a projection in the conning tower had caught
in his open pocket and was holding him down.
Struggling desperately, and swallowing a deal of water, he managed to
tear himself free and kick up to the top. Gulping in the fresh air, he
looked around him. One cinema man was swimming strongly some little
distance away. Of the other, there was no trace.
Just as the commander was beginning to give the other man up for
lost, the submarine herself reappeared. The commander gazed at her
in astonishment, hardly believing his own eyes. With her came the
half-drowned cinema man, his arms thrown round his camera and the
wireless mast, and clinging to them like grim death.
“What the dickens did you go down with her for?” asked the amazed
officer, when he was taken aboard.
“I couldn’t swim a stroke, so I thought it safer to stick to the ship,”
explained the camera man naively.
Luckily for him the crew instantly saw that something was wrong and
brought the boat up at once.
So recently as the last days of October, 1923, two American seamen,
Henry Breault and Lawrence Brown, were immured for thirty hours in a
submarine at the bottom of a bay near the Panama Canal. Breault most
heroically dashed into the ship as she was sinking to see if he could
assist anybody who happened to be within. He found Brown asleep in the
torpedo-room, and they just succeeded in closing the door when the O.5
went down in 40 feet of water.
There was not a morsel of food aboard, not a drop of drinking water.
First the lights failed, then the batteries exploded and caused a fire
which blazed furiously for some time.
Meantime, a third man, Charles Butler, caught in the engine-room, took
refuge in an air pocket, stripped off his clothes and made for the
hatchway. Emulating the plucky fellow who escaped from the British
submarine, he thrust open the hatch. So enormous was the pressure
that he was blown right out of the water, breaking the surface like a
leaping salmon. He was soon picked up, after being at the bottom for
eight minutes.
In three hours the other two prisoners heard the knocks of a diver and
knew that attempts were being made to rescue them. Nine hours later
they felt the submarine begin to move upward. For a little time she
continued to rise, then their hopes were dashed by a sharp snapping
sound and they felt their craft fall with a bump to the bottom again.
The ticking of the clock for hour after hour, the dreadful dragging of
the hands round the face of it nearly drove them distracted. They could
not bear to watch it longer. There they sat, wondering, hoping.
Another sixteen hours passed before they felt the submarine again begin
to rise, moving so slowly that both men were consumed with anxiety. The
maddening clock ticked on as the craft was wound up. Water splashed on
the deck, the pent-up air gushed out, footsteps sounded and they knew
deliverance was at hand. Breault pushed open the hatch and both men
stood blinking blindly in the dazzling sunshine.
Their heads reeled. So sick and ill were they owing to the sudden
change of pressure that grave danger was only averted by quickly
placing them under the same pressure in another submarine, and then
slowly reducing the pressure in accordance with the recognized diving
practice. Thus they came unscathed through their dreadful trial.
The K.5 during battle practice with the British Fleet in 1921 sank
in such deep water that no attempt was made to recover her. But the
American naval experts, when a similar disaster overtook the submarine
F.4 at Honolulu in March, 1915, were so anxious to find out what had
happened that they determined to do their utmost to retrieve the
sunken craft.
Going out for a practice spin, the F.4 quietly submerged and was
never seen again. Boats were soon in search of her, and the result of
dragging operations led to her discovery on the bottom outside Honolulu
harbour in just over 50 fathoms, or 304 feet, of water.
Unhesitatingly the greatest salvage experts in the world would have
pronounced her lost beyond recovery. She was 100 feet deeper than the
British record dive of 210 feet, a depth which no other divers in the
world had ever reached, and she was far deeper than any craft hitherto
lifted from the seabed.
The experts of the American Navy, aware of these and other facts, knew
that they desired to achieve the impossible, but instead of admitting
that it could not be done they straightway set about doing it. A big
rise and fall in the tide would have been of tremendous assistance to
them, but at Honolulu the tide rises and falls only 18 inches. It was
of no help to them at all. So they made their plans to haul her up
bodily by winches and tow her into shallower water until she grounded;
while for the last stage of the journey into the harbour they placed
their faith in six pontoons, each sheathed in a jacket of timber 4
inches thick to prevent the cables from cutting it. This stout timber
casing successfully protected the pontoons from all damage when they
were brought into play. Nor was it unnecessary, for, incredible as it
may seen, the chafing of the submarine during a sudden gale quickly
wore through the mighty steel cables as she rubbed them against the
bottom.
It was in connection with the cables that the greatest diving feat in
all history was accomplished. The cables were swept underneath the
submarine by surface craft in the usual way. But the salvors could
not be sure that the cables were exactly where they ought to be. With
cables too near the bow and the stern, the submarine would just fold up
as she was lifted and break her back, the two halves, falling apart,
probably defying recovery. Even if they could be raised, the damage
would be so great that all traces of the original accident would be
destroyed and the experts could never learn why the submarine had
foundered.
The one way of finding out whether the cables were properly in place
was to send down divers to see. A diver in Lake Huron in the ’nineties,
trying to recover sunken treasure, was crushed to pulp at a depth
of 198 feet; even a diving bell, operating later on the same wreck,
was unable to withstand the pressure, consequently it seemed like
sentencing a man to death to order him to dive to a depth of 304 feet.
However, the cleverest diving expert in the American Navy pondered
over the matter and, in the light of recent experiments, considered it
could be done provided all the rules were most rigidly observed. The
finest divers in the American Navy, men who had been specially trained,
were thereupon sent to Honolulu to carry out this gigantic task.
The leading diver struggled into his suit. For aught he knew, he would
never come up alive; the enormous pressure of the water might squeeze
his unprotected legs and body and arms until it had squeezed all the
blood in his body through his eyes and ears and nose and mouth. He knew
that the metal helmet protected his head from the sea pressure, which
was the reason why the nip of the sea drives all the blood in the body
up to the head. But he smiled cheerfully as his helmet was screwed into
place.
A few moments later he was sliding down the shot-rope. Down and down
he went, the sea pressing heavier and heavier on his body. Up on the
surface the air pumps heaved quickly to pass down to him the air that
would prevent him from being squeezed to death.
Reaching the wreck at last, he found the pressure so enormous that it
was almost impossible for him to lift his hand in the water. To move
at all was really like pushing his way through some solid substance.
Nevertheless, he managed to survey the wreck and was slowly drawn up
again to safety, after spending ten minutes at the bottom.
Several times he and his fellow divers penetrated to these startling
depths to see that adjustments were properly made. Then, just when
everything seemed all right, the sense of impending tragedy gripped the
watchers on the surface. They had drawn up one gallant diver to 200
feet, when he found that his lines were entangled and that he was stuck
fast. It was a fearful situation. For a diver to be caught at this
great depth is almost certain death.
Relays of divers were sent down to his aid, and for two hours they
struggled and fought to release their comrade who was dangling there
at death’s door 200 feet below the surface of the sea. In the end they
disentangled him, and he was drawn up in a most critical state. Double
pneumonia struck him down, and for months his life was despaired of.
Eventually a fine constitution and tireless nursing enabled him to pull
round and regain his lost health. But it was a desperately close shave.
That any man could reach this depth and still live is little short of a
miracle.
Eventually the ill-fated F.4 was towed into harbour. In raising her
according to plan, the American Navy broke three records. By attaining
the incredible depth of 304 feet, the American divers wrested the
diving record from the British Navy; that unfortunate diver who was
forced to remain at 200 feet for two hours, without fatal results or
permanent injury, created another record; and their third record was
achieved by lifting the submarine from the greatest depth at which any
wreck has ever been raised. It is impossible to praise the divers and
salvage officers too highly for these magnificent feats.
If the American Navy has robbed the British Navy of the diving record,
the British Salvage Section still has a few more records left. For
instance, when a German submarine was put down in 190 feet of water
off our rocky northern coast, the British Admiralty calmly ordered the
Salvage Section to bring the submarine to port.
In the face of a definite order of this sort, there was nothing to be
said. The Director of Salvage hastened to the spot, and sent divers
down to survey the wreck and if possible recover the papers. They found
an arm protruding from the partly-closed conning tower, the fingers,
stiffened by death, clutching as in a vice some of the secret orders
which the commander was endeavouring to cast away when he saw that
capture or destruction was inevitable. Before he could rid himself of
the papers, the submarine plunged to her doom and the cover of the
conning tower slammed down on his arm.
With an effort, the divers unlocked those clammy fingers and took the
papers. Then they managed to raise the lid of the conning tower and
enter the ship, although it was practically at the limit of the depth
at which divers can possibly work. Their submarine lamps lit the gloom
of the interior, and a search brought to light the log and other
papers, which were sent post haste to the Admiralty.
The order to take the wreck to port was much more difficult to obey.
She was down on such a rocky coast in such a position that lifting her
in the ordinary way was quite out of the question. Commodore Young
thereupon decided to do what had never been done with a craft of this
size since the world began, that is, raise her from the depths by sheer
mechanical power. The cables were swept underneath, and divers saw that
they were properly in place. Then the powerful machinery installed in
the salvage ships began to work, and slowly but surely the great steel
cables, thicker than a man’s wrist, were wound up until the U-boat was
within a few feet of the surface. It was an extraordinary feat to lift
this wrecked submarine, weighing nearly 1000 tons--practically four
times the weight of the American F.4--from a depth of 190 feet by the
sheer power of machinery.
The salvors crowned this remarkable effort by carrying the submarine in
her cradle of slings nearly 40 miles round the coast, which was another
record the British Salvage Section made that month. Just as they got
her to the mouth of the harbour, she slipped from the slings and went
to the bottom again. Picking her up once more, the salvage men towed
her into dock so that the submarine experts could dissect her.
Another astonishing feat performed by British salvage men was the
raising of a collier that sank right in the fairway at Rosyth. The
danger of other ships striking her and piling up was so great that her
removal became imperative. To pick her up in the approved style by
sweeping cables under her and using lifting craft to swing her clear of
the bottom was the obvious way of clearing the channel. But she was a
dead weight of 3000 tons, or about 1000 tons heavier than the heaviest
wreck raised by such methods.
If her cargo had been bales of cotton or something easy to handle,
divers would have gone down and removed part of her burden in order to
lighten her. But coal is about the worst thing in the world to deal
with under water. Consequently the salvors tackled the job with a brace
of lifting craft, which enabled them to master 2400 tons, and a couple
of mighty pontoons, which provided the power to lift the remainder.
Everything was fixed, and as the tide rose the salvors managed to
drag the wreck out of the way of other ships, and eventually, after a
terrific fight lasting a considerable time, succeeded in beaching her.
Commodore Sir Frederick Young also mastered a weight of about 3000 tons
in lifting Captain Fryatt’s ship, the _Brussels_, at Ostend, and these
two feats performed by British salvage experts constitute a world’s
record for the greatest deadweight ever raised in recent times from the
bottom of the sea.