So far as my personal experience goes, the sinking of the U.S. submarine S-51 started with a telephone call. About 4:30 a.m., September 26, after its clamor had sounded through the house a dozen times or more, I sleepily removed the receiver from the hook.
“Submarine gone down with all hands off Block Island,” came the night desk man’s voice. “That’s all we know.”
From home to the Boston office where I was to meet my photographer was a matter of 20 minutes in a taxi. There were no traffic rules observed that morning.
At the office I could get only a few more details on the disaster. The submarine had been struck and sent to the bottom by the City of Rome, bound for Boston the night of September 25. First word of the happening had been received at about three o’clock. The sunken submarine’s position was given roughly as 14 miles off the southeast lighthouse on Block Island. Three survivors had been picked up and were aboard the City of Rome. From a study of the map, which occupied all of 30 seconds, we determined that Newport was the nearest seaport to the spot.
Three moving-picture men were also ready to start for the Rhode Island city. There were four cars, but it was deemed advisable to split the party three ways; so, after filling tanks with gasoline and oil, our little group headed south in three of the cars with a clear road before us. It was just half-past five as we drew away from the filling station, and there was never a sign of daylight.
Out through the suburbs we went, bowling along at a good 45- or 50-mile clip. I thanked the lucky inspiration which had prompted my wearing a heavy overcoat, for a white frost had fallen during the night. Before we reached Fall River, the sun had jumped clear of the horizon, and the morning mists were rising.
One of the incongruous sights which greeted us as we raced through the rear of that mill city was the sight of women factory workers on their way to the day’s labor. Shawls drawn about their heads and huge aprons about them, they looked like a bit of the Old World as they clumped along.
A few minutes found us on the last lap into Newport; and at half-past seven, six hurrying, half-frozen newshounds were searching the docks for a boat to take them to the scene of the sinking.
Of boats there were seemingly none. From one dock to another we went in vain. Finally, we found that a short time before a tug had left a coal dock, bound for Melville with a lighter in tow. A gasoline launch was lying at the dock; and making hurried arrangements with the tug’s owner and the owner of the gasoline launch, we cast off with cameras and equipment to pursue the tug.
A few miles out of Melville we overtook her. After several minutes of argument, precious minutes to us who sought more news of the submarine, the towboat skipper cast off his lines and took us aboard, leaving the lighter in charge of the gasoline launch. We came about and headed out of the harbor, and again the cautious skipper asked for details. Our coming had brought him first news of the under-sea boat’s sinking; but when we were unable to give him more than the sketchiest of directions, his salty pessimism offered little encouragement to our hopes of locating the right spot.
However, he set a course which would bring us up somewhere within 10 miles of the position we sought; so out through the harbor we steamed with the engineer giving her all she could stand. As we lined up on the tug’s deck, there was Coolidge of the Pathe News, Ellis of the Fox Films, A1 Moffatt of Kinograms, Hill, a Wide World photographer, and yours truly, the only newspaper man.
Picking up Brenton Reef Lightship to starboard, we set a course almost due south with a little leaning towards the east. A naval vessel coming in approached us. I called up my half-forgotten signal knowledge, acquired during an invaluable war experience, to attract the attention of her quartermaster. I asked for directions. The best he could do, so he informed me by semaphore, was latitude 41.14; longitude 71.17.
Now, far be it from me to belittle any captain’s seamanship; but frankly, although our skipper looked very wise when I told him of the information received, I have not the slightest idea that latitude and longitude meant anything more to him then than it meant to me who had not seen a navigation chart in some years. Yet we were heading in the right direction, which was after all the important point.
Out of the east came a plume of smoke, long, and trailing far to the north. We were sailing along at about 10 knots. The smoke was closing at about 30. Out of the west came another plume of smoke, rapidly gathering. In the east a foremast showed; then a cutwater with white in its teeth; and finally, hull up, was a destroyer, and she was certainly stepping. The same was true in the west, and as these two speed merchants went by us some 5 miles away, they converged towards a spot over the horizon. Figuring that they knew what they were doing, our captain headed right along in their wake —only it was pretty far in their wake!
Presently we saw dead ahead a submarine at anchor, a destroyer hove to, and another destroyer circling. For a few minutes it darted here and there, and then suddenly dashed off towards the east. We learned a few minutes later that the destroyer was the Putnam, the ship which located the sunken S-51. As we approached the submarine at anchor, we saw her number, S-49; and, again by the use of the semaphore, I found that she was the first vessel to arrive on the scene after the news of her sister-ship’s sudden end.
From all parts of the horizon, it seemed, ships suddenly began to appear. First a wisp of smoke or a foretop, next a grey blotch, and then the full length of an approaching destroyer, a tug, or a submarine. From the S-49 we steamed towards a spot some hundred yards distant, and there witnessed what was probably the last expirations of the huge sea monster 130 feet below the surface.
Bursts of bubbles came to the surface, broke, and lost themselves in ugly blotches of spreading oil. A gentle swell stirred the bubbles, but the oil seemed to lie heavily in patches which covered an area of about 100 square yards.
That was all to meet the eye, with the exception of a bobbing red buoy which floated some hundred yards from the spot where the bubbles burst. It was an emergency buoy placed there to mark the location when the bubbles and oil should no longer be present. A stillness pervaded the scene; men lolled about the deck of the submarine close by, for nothing could be done about those seemingly frantic bursts of bubbles until diving equipment arrived from Newport.
Spread out in fan-like formation, the ships which a few moments before had been mere blotches on the horizon gradually bore down upon us: destroyers, submarines, naval tugs, and lastly, the U.S.S. Camden, submarine mother-ship, flying the flag of Admiral Christy.
As the Camden, which was senior ship, approached to take up her position, the tug Triton, with diving lighter in tow, came in from Newport. With few preliminary movements the Triton hove to, placed the lighter in position with a score of men aboard, and stood by for orders.
Immediately the scene lost its lethargy. The men on the lighter’s deck were swarming over one another in their haste to begin working. Two divers were being made ready; and air pumps and lines were hastily arranged. A signalman jumped to the miniature bridge and called the Camden. His waving flags dipped, flashed, and swirled through the air as he spelled out a message to the flagship.
Here again my knowledge of the naval signal methods was a help. Each message as it was sent from ship to ship gave me a little more information on what had happened and what was about to be done. From the Camden came the orders to the ships present to anchor in given positions and stand by.
From the diving lighter, which now occupied the center of a huge stage with dancing sun flashes on the waves as footlights and a thousand sailors as audience, came the prologue to the first act of a stirring drama. Two puny man-beings, clad in grotesque bits of canvas and ropes and heavy steel helmets and shoes, were about to do combat with 130 feet of water, a 900-ton sea monster which meant to keep its secrets, and that demon uncertainty, which is the sea.
There were backings and fillings, the usual squaring off and sparring before the battle. The bubbles still broke the surface with their despairing summons to hurry. The oil still spread itself in long talons and writhing coils. A plane flew overhead, breaking the silence with its staccato rat- a-tat-tat. A moving-picture operator leaned from its cockpit, cranking his camera, recording on film the opening passage of the struggle.
At twenty minutes after one, Saturday afternoon, September 26, one of the two grotesque figures on the diving lighter stepped from its deck to the ladder leading downward. A half dozen of his fellows raised the huge helmet, screwed it into place, and cleared air lines; and, as he slowly lowered himself round by round from the ladder, one of them turned a wheel on the pump to supply the oxygen.
On board the ships of the little fleet gathered there, the men went quietly about their usual tasks as if nothing of special moment were happening; but whether coiling down a piece of line on one of the decks or washing paintwork, a thousand sailors kept an eye on the diving lighter and waited.
Aboard the diving lighter, too, there was comparative calm. Most of the men there had been in submarine work for years. Many of them had been in similar situations before. There was but one point of interest for them, and that was the little line of bubbles which marked the progress of their shipmate down below. The man at the pump still turned his wheel slowly, and his eyes were continually bent on the dial before him as he kept the pressure at the proper pitch.
Shortly after two o’clock the diver signaled to be raised; and slowly, 10 feet at a time, to ease the terrific weight of the water, he was brought towards the surface where his message was awaited by men with drawn faces.
He found the ladder; he climbed a round or two; stopped for a rest; then reached the step which brought his helmet level with the deck. Again his fellows jumped to the screws and nuts which held the steel globe to his suit. It was removed, and with his blonde head almost in the scuppers, James Ingram, Chief Torpedoman, U. S. Navy, gave a waiting world first word of the stricken submarine’s condition. As he ended his short, tired flow of words, he was lifted to the deck, while a hurrying signalman waved his flags toward the Camden.
“Diver has been down,” he signaled. “Reports S-51 resting on keel, slight list to port. Gash in hull on port side just forward of the conning tower. All efforts to communicate failed.”
As another diver was lowered into the water, the fleet again became active. Signals were sent back and forth. More details were sought. Rested from his efforts, Ingram talked more fully on what he had found at the bottom. He had rapped on the hull with his diving knife. He had stamped on the deck with his heavy diving shoes. He had been unable to get any response from any part of the submarine. All hatches except the conning tower hatch were closed.
Using the semaphore again, I managed to find out roughly what sort of craft the S-51 was. Her sister-ships, the S-49 and S-50, were on the scene. From them I learned that the submarines in that class were divided into six compartments: a forward torpedo room, battery room, central operation control chamber, engine-room, motor-room, and tiller-rooms. Water-tight doors connected the compartments; and if the men had succeeded in closing them, there was hope that many had saved their lives and were waiting for rescue.
However, one fact gave the pessimists basis for the opinion that there was little chance for men imprisoned on the bottom. The rent in the submarine’s side had caused the central operation control compartment to become flooded. The nerve center and brain of the ship was filled with water, and submarine men expressed the opinion that most of the crew had probably met their deaths in that flooded control chamber or in the one forward, the battery room. According to the figures offered by men on the S-50, probably 20 men had their bunks in the battery room; and what water might leave unfinished in a battery room, chlorine gas would quickly end.
Thus was the theorizing during a long afternoon while divers made trip after trip below the surface. A line was attached to the sunken under-sea boat, and, late in the afternoon, the S-50 was moved into position almost directly over where bubbles still came to the surface in ever decreasing quantities. Two air lines were dropped over her side, and a diver attached them to the conning tower intakes of the S-51. The idea behind this move was, as I gathered it, to force water out of the flooded compartments, if possible, by using compressed air.
We stood by in our tug until dusk fell; and just before the lights of the fleet were turned on a signal quartermaster on the Camden called me. My call letters during the time that I was on the scene of the wreck were MAC. Across a quarter mile of darkening water came his message telling me that an attempt would be made to raise the submarine the next day.
The Admiral had sent for 100-ton cranes, and one of them would arrive probably before noon the next day. He went on telling me in semaphore that there was nothing more to do until the cranes arrived. Hope in submarine circles was slight that there was life left in the S-51.
The captain of our tug waited until I had thanked my informant, then swung his wheel over; and as we started towards Newport, the ships gathered about us flashed on their riding lights. The night had begun, daylight was awaited; the S-50 pumped air through the two lines over her side. Like a little city transplanted to the middle of the ocean, the fleet gradually grew dim as we steamed away.
On the bottom, imprisoned by steel bulkheads and a double hull, were more than 30 men. They might be floating dead in a flooded compartment, or possibly huddled together behind a water-tight door. Of what they talked if alive, or, if dead, of what they thought when struck down by tons of water the world had little chance of ever knowing.
Shortly after ten o’clock we arrived at our dock in Newport. Newspaper men from New York, Providence, Boston, and other cities had thronged in during the day. Only a few of them had been able to reach the scene of the sinking. There was but one subject of conversation, and that was whether or not there was life aboard the sunken submarine.
For myself, I based my opinions on what experienced men had told me during the day. Chances of life were slight, and I filed my story with that idea in mind. It was after midnight before we left the telegraph office, and the tug was scheduled to be ready at four o’clock in order that the camera men might start their work at daybreak.
Sunday dawned on our group of six as we were nearing the scene of operations. The sea had grown a little choppy during the night, but not sufficiently so to hamper the rescue work. A large diving lighter, the Chittenden, had been brought from New London by the tug Resolute. As we arrived on the scene, the lighter had been placed in position a hundred yards or so from where the S-50 still pumped air below.
The tug Resolute was steaming here and there, dropping mooring buoys and passing lines. In incredibly short time an area of 100 square yards was roped off and the boundaries marked by buoys. Civilian divers went to work on the bottom. The work progressed with great speed. Roughly the plan of attack was to bend a sling about the stern of the S-51 and make ready a cable for the arrival of the 100-ton cranes. An attempt would then be made to raise the hull from the bottom.
Where the day before there had been little movement, Sunday saw a bustling scene. A signalman from the Camden had been placed aboard the Chittenden, and as the work progressed he sent reports.
The afternoon drew on. The crane Century, towed by two huge Navy tugs, was sighted. The signalman reported that the sling had been attached. All was in readiness for a quick try at raising, for the wind had been picking up all day, and the sea grew more choppy hour by hour.
Shortly before dusk the tug Resolute warped the great crane into position between the Chittenden and the submarine S-50. Lines were passed from one buoy to another, from the lighter to the crane. All was made fast, and the crane’s tackle with its huge boom was slowly swung outboard to catch up the cable leading below.
In another few minutes the signalman jumped to his position on the Chittenden, faced the Camden, and reported that the Century had taken hold and was ready to heave in. Like a huge fight ring that little roped-off, hundred-yard area suddenly became the scene of a battle. The sea was rising, the wind was picking up; time and tide were elements to be combated.
As the message was passed, every vessel’s rail was lined with men. In the rapidly fading light a thousand seamen strained their eyes toward the Century. The silence was oppressive. In tense expectancy the fleet watched while the huge boom swung out, was raised a little, and came to rest with the cable leading downward like a plumb line.
A lone figure stood close to the crane’s starboard rail. His hand went up, and the huge drums slowly turned over as the steam went on. Movie men cranked, still photographers watched their ground glass; but the rest of us just hung on to rails, stanchions, halyards, or whatever was handy, straining, unconsciously trying to help those drums to keep turning.
The cable was taut; it seemed to stretch. More steam was turned on. We waited. More steam; more turns; and then, like the brick walls of a fire-gutted building, the huge crane tipped a little, a little more, and with steam full on she listed until her starboard rail went almost 3 feet under water.
In the excitement of the minute we almost expected to see her go completely over like the fire-gutted walls; but as a groan from a thousand throats indicated that all realized a failure, the steam was turned off, and the crane slowly righted. Thus ended the first attempt to raise the S-51. A signalman jumped to his place on the Chittenden, but no one had to await his report. Everybody knew that the Century was defeated.
As though to express the idea in every mind, darkness fell as the cable was slacked off. Another night had come, and for almost 48 hours the submarine had rested on the ocean floor, defying all efforts to solve her jealously guarded secrets. Another crane was due at daylight if the weather continued favorable. Back we went to Newport to tell the world again that possibly a very little hope still remained.
Having filed our stories and snatched a couple of hours sleep, we set out again Monday morning at four o’clock. Our tug headed into the teeth of a stiff blow. The sea was running too high for comfort; in fact, more than one newspaper man was hors de combat that day, and we returned to port as soon as we had been informed that nothing could be done until calmer weather.
The eyes of the country were turned towards Block Island Sound; a 50-word message over the radio was as good as a column on most stories, and reports on progress, however meager, were demanded and devoured. The Navy was getting desperate, for millions of people, far away from a seacoast like New England’s, would not understand that high seas and winds could halt man’s will.
At ten o’clock Monday night I started towards the telegraph office to file my story. I had been covering both the morning and afternoon paper, which meant that my stuff for the morning paper had to be on the wire early. Coming along the main street in Newport, I saw the diver Ingram, almost recovered from an attack of the “bends” which he had suffered as a result of his work on the first day. With him were three other chief torpedomen.
I scented a story of some sort and hurried towards them. To my astonishment, they surrounded me on all sides, demanding that I come along, saying that they had just received a hurry call from the Admiral on the Camden and were bound out to begin diving as soon as possible. Explaining that I had to inform my office, I darted off to the accompaniment of peremptory orders to hurry.
At the telegraph office I arranged hastily to have a wire open at seven o’clock in the morning and dropped word to the morning paper that I could not file. I reached the government dock just as a speed boat came alongside to take the party to the torpedo station, which is on a little island.
Reaching the station, we clambered to the dock and headed for the C.P.O. quarters after hurried instructions from an officer. The tug Triton was standing-by, waiting to take the diving party to the scene of operations. As a newspaper man I suppose I had no right to be there, but also as a newspaper man I had to be there.
In the chief petty officers’ bunkroom I was instructed to remove my civilian clothes; and in less than ten minutes from the time we had arrived, five C.P.O.’s— instead of four—trotted back to the dock. I must say that I felt right at home in my dungarees and other borrowed raiment.
In less time than it is taking me to write it, the lines were cast off, and the tug stood down the harbor, carrying the diving party which the Admiral had requested, and an uninvited newspaper man who sat tight and listened. In a little cabin aft near the fantail a group of six men talked of submarines and their peculiarities. They were the four men whom I had accompanied from Newport and two others—one, a decompressing man, and the sixth one of the most interesting men it has ever been my pleasure to meet.
Luke Daley, chief torpedoman in the Navy, during that sail out of the harbor told me more about under-sea boats than a naval constructor had been able to tell me in an entire day. He explained the system of tanks, and banks, and air bottles, and pumps. From him I learned about the German hatch into the battery room, which could be opened either from the inside or outside; and he told me that he and his companions intended to go through that 27-inch-wide hatch to explore the sunken craft.
The conversation was sprinkled with amusing anecdotes of the naval service and yarns about diving and its thrills. From Ingram came the story of Gunner Tibballs, his courage, and his wonderful ability in submarine accidents. Tibballs, who now holds a warrant rank in the Navy, is a former enlisted man; and his career has been dotted with episodes of daring until, to submarine men at least, he is almost a demigod. Tibballs had been sent for by Admiral Christy and had arrived Monday from Pittsburgh where he had been experimenting with helium for use in deep-sea diving. To him my party attributed the sudden call which found them back on the scene shortly after midnight.
Not until we had sighted the lights of the fleet did the men let me realize that they were about to do dangerous work. Clad in diving suits, to lower themselves through a hatch 27 inches wide, 130 feet below the surface, with the air lines in momentary danger of fouling in deck gear; that is what they planned.
The sea had calmed somewhat; and as several of the party left the cabin to look towards the lights of the fleet, one of the men came close to me and murmured, “Say, Mac, I wish you would do me a favor. You see I told my wife I would write today, and the chances are we’ll be busy. Of course, she doesn’t know what diving is and,” here he laughed as though at a huge joke, “she might worry. Just drop a wire when you go back to Newport, will you? Here’s her address.”
Admonishing me to tell her that there was not the slightest danger, he slipped a paper into my hand and went out. A minute later one of the others handed me the address of his wife also, and so it went. Only then did I realize what the life of a diver could mean; and as for the diver’s wife, well, what can one say?
We drew close to the Camden. The blinker flashed and flickered from her signal bridge. A motor sailer came towards us, and with a last “So long, Mac, see you in the morning,” one after another of as fine a set of men as one could wish dropped over the side of the tug while the motor sailer bucked and pitched and rolled close by.
Her work finished, the Triton turned about; and shortly after five o’clock I found myself again at the torpedo station. Unable to get my civilian clothes because they were stored in a half dozen lockers, I sat down in the office of the school building and wrote my story while waiting for a range boat to take me to Newport at half-past six.
A few minutes after seven o’clock found me leaving the telegraph office, my story well on its way. To the hotel I went, where, greeted by a dozen flabbergasted newspaper men, I sought black coffee in soothing quantities. Sleep had been at a premium on that story if ever it was; and in less than an hour afterwards I started again for the scene of the wreck, this time with the knowledge that something had been accomplished.
We steamed out at full speed, and on the way I told the other newspaper men of the plans outlined by the divers; of the German hatch, and the daring required for the job. I was still clad in my chief petty officer’s clothes, and although the crew of the Triton had been in on the secret, they delighted in chaffing me by calling “Chief,” every once in a while.
It was not long before we picked up the masts of the fleet, and then we saw the flags. There were at least a half dozen vessels within a radius of a half mile, and each vessel carried her colors at half-mast. The first bodies had been recovered from the sunken submarine; and as we drew close to the Camden, two still forms were laid out on the forecastle, which on the Camden is used as the quarter-deck.
To a waiting country the Navy had replied in terms of action. The bodies of John L. Gibson, an engineman, and William C. Teschmacher, seaman, had been brought out of a flooded battery room after divers had opened the German hatch. It was heartbreaking to see and hear those men in the fleet who, the day before, had hoped against all the evidence that some of those imprisoned below would be saved. Tuesday morning found the same men who, on Saturday morning, had so bravely gone to the rescue of their imprisoned shipmates, walking about decks, gloomily realizing that their Navy had suffered a crushing blow.
From that time on the work proceeded mechanically. The last hope of rescue was dead. I do not mean that the work did not progress swiftly, for it did; but everywhere was the admission of defeat.
I returned to Newport that afternoon after receiving the information that another attempt would be made to raise the submarine as soon as weather permitted the cranes Century and Monarch to be brought out.
The only way to keep large bodies of men in order is by dividing and subdividing of them, with officers over each, to inspect into and regulate their conduct, to discipline and form them. Let the ship’s crew be divided into as many companies as there are lieutenants—except the first lieutenant, whose care should extend over the whole. These companies to be subdivided, and put under the charge of mates or midshipmen; and besides this, every twenty-five men to have a foreman to assist in the care of the men, as a sergeant or corporal in the Army.—Kempenfelt.