“It was at 3.30 in the afternoon that _K-13_ came to rest upon the
bottom of the Gareloch, and the short winter’s day in the North
was drawing towards sunset. As soon as the commander of the E-boat
had marked the spot where _K-13_ lay, he pressed at full speed for
Greenock, flashing as he went aerial signals to the Senior Naval
Officer in Glasgow. A salvage steamer, which was lying at Greenock,
went off at once and picked up two hoppers and two tugs as consorts.
Telegrams were dispatched to Fairfields and to Glasgow, and the news
spread quickly through those circles whose business it is to be well
informed. Not a moment was lost by those upon whose shoulders rested
the responsibility of the salvage operations. By the early hours of
Tuesday, long before daylight, a fleet of seven vessels had collected
at the spot below which, seventy feet down, _K-13_ rested motionless
in the mud. There were the Greenock salvage steamer, the two tugs,
the two hoppers, and two E-boats. With them, in charge of everything
and responsible for everything, was the S. N. O., Captain (now
Rear-Admiral) Brian Barttelot, and with him was his naval assistant,
Captain Corbett.
“The problem before the salvors bristled with novel difficulties. In
peace and war we had lost many submarines, but never had a live man
been taken out of one which had sunk. Barttelot was limited by what
was mechanically possible. He had not—as I confess now that I had
when composing ‘The Last of the Grenvillas’—the guiding light of a
precedent. First he had to get into continuous communication with the
survivors of _K-13’s_ company, for without their coöperation he was
helpless to aid them. Then he had to devise a rapid and effective means
to supply them with air and food for a period which might stretch into
days. And, lastly, he had to get them out. That was the worst of his
problems—how to get them out. For remember _K-13_ was a great bulky
double-skinned lump of a vessel of two thousand solid tons and of more
than three hundred feet in length. She was not the kind of craft which
could easily be raised.
“But although Barttelot’s difficulties were great his advantages were
greater. He had nothing to fear from bad weather—the Gareloch is narrow
and well sheltered. He had within reach the incalculable resources of
the biggest shipbuilding center in the world. And there in Glasgow he
had, too, just round the corner, the builders of _K-13_, who knew the
work of their own hands as a man knows the picture which he has painted
or the book which he has written. There was yet another advantage, and
one which was not small. There inside _K-13_, if they could be got
at, were four of Fairfields’s experts who would supply that intimate
technical knowledge of the craft which the salvors themselves could not
possess. Once communication had been established, Fairfields in Glasgow
and Fairfields in _K-13_ would be linked to the chain of salvage, and
would lift success from the barely possible up to the almost probable.