In mid-December 1916, the USS H-3 had gone aground on the California coast. All efforts to free the stranded submarine with tugs had failed. Now, the 10,OOO-ton cruiser Milwaukee was on the scene. The surf was running dangerously high but there was no choice—the H-3's rescuers would have to come in perilously close to the breakers.
Samoa Beach!
Breakers creaming on a coral strand? Grass skirts swishing; steel guitars throbbing? Enticements to lure a sailor shoreside?
Not at all. Just an ugly foreshore of sand dunes along a stretch of northern California coast. But plenty to lure a mariner, wary though he be, to his destruction. Such as varying currents and a high incidence of foggy days. And even when the fog bank is no more than a threat on the horizon, a low overcast hangs in the redwood treetops. Thickened by smoke from logging camps and lumber mills, it obscures landmarks on the higher ground inshore.
During the winter season, gale chases gale across the North Pacific, lashing the coast with pounding combers, which, even when moderating between gales, spell danger. During northwest gales it is, of course, a lee shore. Mariners call this area the "graveyard of the Pacific." As this drama opens, 27 vessels had, in the preceding years, gone ashore in this vicinity, many with loss of life.
Moderate draft vessels can shelter in Humboldt Bay, provided they get across the entrance bar in time. This bar, though a 30-foot draft can be carried across, breaks whenever a sea is running. Once inside, ships may be prisoners until the bar flattens out again. Lumber schooners have touched bottom, trying to get to sea when loaded, dismasting themselves and losing their cargoes. Fishing vessels have turned over.
Humboldt Bay is more an inlet of the Pacific than a true bay. It is created by a long sand spit about half a mile wide that forms a natural dike against the Pacific Ocean. This natural barrier is broken by only one restricted opening through which the tides gush in and out—the ship channel—creating tricky currents along the seaward shore. Inshore, is the lumber and fishing port of Eureka. Between the town and the sand spit there is good holding ground in smooth water, and wharves accommodate lumber schooners for loading.
The seaward side of this sand spit is Samoa Beach. Here the water is seldom smooth. The 30-foot curve parallels the shoreline about half a mile off, where, during winter gales, great green combers hump up and crest. From there to the shoreline nothing can be seen but the smoky spume of crests blown off by wind.
Not far off this 30-foot curve, the USS H-3—a modern submarine of the time—was feeling her way toward the entrance early on the morning of 15 December 1916. The sea was moderate, but the H-3 had experienced bad weather farther north, and coming out of the Columbia River she had had battery trouble. On the way south, she had been running through fog, with few navigational fixes, and now, though the fog had cleared, visibility was low. With a diesel temporarily disabled, she was running on one engine.
Loran had not yet been heard of. Radar was still in the making, and Radio Direction Finder Stations on the Pacific Coast were few and far between.
Submarines of that day had no lofty "sail"; conning towers were close to the water, affording little visibility; operating space was limited and navigating equipment crude as compared to present-day bridge aids.
The sand dunes along the stretch of coast that the H-3 was now approaching were hard to see, harder still to recognize as landmarks. A rumbling diesel could mute the growlings of distant surf. The tall brick chimney of a lumber mill on the sand spit might have been mistaken for a beacon on the south jetty that guards the entrance. At any rate, the first warning of disaster that the skipper of the H-3 had was a foaming, hissing crest keeping pace with him alongside the conning tower.
Running with the waves straight for the beach, the H-3 was already inside the first line of breakers. Full astern on the one good engine was not good enough.
When, in answer to the S.O.S. sent from the H-3, a crew from the Samoa Beach Lifesaving Station arrived—having hauled their surf-boat on a cart along three miles of sand—the H-3 was broadside in the breakers about 300 yards offshore, pounding, and rolling fearfully.
Heavy surf made launching a boat a doubtful undertaking. So the lifesavers unlimbered a Lyle cannon, and, on the second try, shot a line across the sub. This was the first step in rigging a breeches buoy. But was there anyone on board the sub with strength enough left to haul the messenger out? It seemed doubtful, for the deck was swept by heavy seas, and no one was in sight. However, a man appeared from below and managed to get the line to the conning tower and make it fast as high as possible. Then the sub rolled away from shore, clear over on her side, and the line parted.
Another line was shot across but now, after the vicious pounding and the stupefying effect of fumes below decks, no one on board had strength enough to fight the seas breaking topside.
Remembering the first S.O.S. from the sub, which stated that all were alive but several were injured, and requesting speed because of battery gas, the lifesavers decided to risk launching their boat. In fact, there seemed no other choice, if they were soon to get a breeches buoy rigged. So the cart was rammed into the surf by the shore crew, assisted by gathering onlookers, and the boat got afloat. without being thrown back. Sea after sea nearly swamped it, but finally it got close to the pounding submarine. But to rig a line, the sub must be boarded, and to get close enough for that, the boat was in imminent danger of being smashed against the steel hull. Waiting, watching the breakers, judging his chance, finally a man with a line tied around his middle managed to jump aboard, while the boat sheered clear. Fighting his way along the wave-lashed whaleback to the conning tower, he climbed to the highest point and there made fast his line. This time it did not part, and soon he had hauled the breeches buoy block aboard. After that it did not take long to get the traveling breeches ready for operation. More coastguardsmen boarded the sub to assist the first man, and one by one, the 27 battered, half-conscious officers and men of the H-3 were hauled safely ashore.
Thus closed the prologue to a naval tragedy in which I would be cast to play a part, a part that remains, despite the passage of so many years, a vivid memory.
The destroyers and submarines of the Pacific Fleet had, only a short time before this, been combined in a task command called the Coast Torpedo Force. Destroyers in that day were the most effective, if not the only counterforce against submarines, and by this combination it was planned to train the personnel of both types in one organization under a single Force Commander. Thus, all would become familiar with the capabilities and operating techniques of the two types—hunter and hunted, killer and victim. Furthermore, although radically differing in structure and operation, both types relied on a common weapon—torpedoes.
The Force Commander, although only a commander in rank—gold lace being thinner at the top in those days—had had more than 20 years of experience since graduating from the Naval Academy. As additional duty, he was commanding officer of the Force flagship and tender, the first class cruiser Milwaukee of 10,000 tons.
She was then lying at Mare Island, completing an overhaul which included the installation of heavy machine tools, fitting her as a tender with shop equipment capable of all routine repairs to coast torpedo vessels short of major navy yard overhaul.
During the Milwaukee's long stay at the navy yard, the Force Commander had been detached. The senior officer on his staff—a lieutenant—was ordered to temporary command until the new, regular commanding officer arrived. Although this did not promote him in rank, he did succeed to the honorary title of "Captain." Since he has long since come to his last anchor, instead of by name, he will, throughout this account, be called just that—"Captain."
Since graduation from the Naval Academy ten years before, the Captain had—except for a tour of shore duty—spent a great part of his time in submarines. The next senior on board, the executive officer who was also the navigator, had been out of the Academy six years and was in his second year as a lieutenant (j.g.). Thus, upon detachment of the regular Force Commander, command and administration of the Force dropped from 20 years of experience to ten, with the next senior in the chain of ship command having had only six.
This presented no immediate problem, since the Milwaukee was not yet ready for sea, and a new Force Commander and commanding officer of the ship had been ordered. He had had even more years of sea experience than his predecessor, so it could be assumed that, upon arrival, administration of the Force and sea training would proceed under experienced guidance.
But tide and marine disasters wait upon no man. The new Force Commander had not yet started west from his previous station on the Atlantic Coast when the H-3 grounded.
At the time, I was in command of a vintage destroyer assigned to the Coast Torpedo Force, lying in reserve at the Navy Yard, Mare Island. When news of the H-3 disaster broke, the acting Force Commander—the Milwaukee's temporary Captain—called me on board to tell me that he was proceeding to Eureka in the Fleet tug Iroquois to pull the stranded sub off. The job presented no great problem, as he saw it. Weather offshore was reported good; the Cheyenne, an old monitor acting as tender for the division of H-boats to which the H-3 belonged, and the Coast Guard cutter McCullough were standing by to assist in salvage operations. The H-3 was lying on sand, no longer pounding, and was seaworthy in every respect.
He was taking several officers with him, the Captain said, for watchkeeping and other duties. He directed me to report on board the Iroquois for temporary duty. As senior of the three officers he was taking with him, I became executive officer of the expedition.
The Iroquois was, at the time, being used to assist vessels in and out of the Navy Yard and berthing at the docks. Although a seagoing tug, she was not equipped for salvage operations. Nor, when we sailed for Eureka, were any on board, experienced in salvage work, except, perhaps, the Captain. His experience, however, was probably more misleading than instructive. He had, a year earlier when in command of the submarine we were now setting out to salvage, run her ashore at Point Sur. The conditions had been entirely different. There was no surf, and the H-3 had slid up onto a cradle of smooth-worn, mossy rocks. Deep water steep to and no breakers, which had facilitated this unexpected dry-docking, permitted the armored cruiser Maryland to come in close, run a towing hawser, and, with her great power, pull the H-3 from the slippery cradle to proceed on her way, undamaged.
It was an experience to make submarine salvage seem very simple. But to pull a submarine from a bed of sand out through breaking surf was going to be considerably more difficult. For this a specially equipped salvage vessel was needed. A vessel with oversized, old-fashioned anchors whose great palm flukes would but dig deeper the harder the pull on the anchor cable. The patent anchors carried by most naval vessels would be of small value under such conditions. There must also be a powerful winch. Then, at anchor, favorably located with reference to the stranded vessel, with a towing hawser well secured and taken to the winch and a steady strain kept on it during rising tides, success could be expected. That is the way experienced marine salvage operators do it. But we were not salvage men.
As for equipment, whether or not we had the proper gear for pulling, no pull of any sort could be undertaken until a hawser had been run. That became our first objective upon arrival off Eureka.
We at once established communication with the people ashore, the crew of the H-3 having pitched camp on the sand spit near their vessel. Although from the Iroquois, lying to seaward of the first line of breakers, extending some 500 yards offshore, we could not see the submarine across the smoking crests, we were informed that she was now high and dry at low water, resting easily on sand, her pressure hull undamaged.
The surf was too high to risk losing a boat crew by running a line through it. So, while impatiently waiting for the breakers to moderate, we tried to float a buoy ashore with a light line attached. Dropped as close as possible to the first line of breakers, the buoy refused to go in. It bobbed around just outside the surf.
We next rigged a life-raft with an improvised sail. It was no more obliging than the buoy. The weight of the line was the trouble, we decided. A larger, heavier trawl or float was needed to overcome the drag of the line. So a ship's boat was made expendable and cast adrift close to the breakers with a line attached. It was no more willing to enter the surf than the buoy and life raft.
This was frustrating but not hopeless. The surf was moderating—even the forecasters of failure had to admit that. In another day or two—provided a new gale did not blow up—we could take a boat through under oars.
But while we hoped, and watched the weather, patience ran out for the submarine crew waiting at Camp H-3. If the vessels offshore could not run a line in, they would run a line out. Generally speaking, this was the better way. A boat stemming the breakers is under better control than one running with them, for then there is always great danger of broaching. But first they must have a proper boat.
Lieutenant (j.g.) Harry Bogusch, skipper of the H-3, had pulled in the varsity eight at the Naval Academy, was physically strong and mentally keen. He borrowed a surfboat from the lifesaving station, and, with a volunteer crew, pulling stroke oar himself, turned the trick. Using the light line which he brought out to the Cheyenne as a messenger, successively heavier lines were hauled out until, at last, a 10-inch Manila connected the Cheyenne with the H-3.
At the next high water, with the Iroquois towing in tandem ahead of the Cheyenne, the first pull began: 2,400 horsepower turning up in the monitor; 1,000 in the tug. Could their combined 3,400 horsepower start the H-3 from her bed of sand, haul her out through surf into deep water?
The hawser grew taut, but once the slack had been taken up, the towing ships stood still, although propellers were churning up great whirlpools of water. Under the pull, the H-3 swiveled a little in the sand until she was headed more directly out to sea. But that was all. And, after awhile, the 10-inch Manila, drawn thin, parted somewhere between submarine and monitor.
By this time, the highest high water of the month had passed; storm warnings were flying; a sea was making and the surf again building up. For the time, at least, salvage operations must be suspended. The salvage fleet headed for the smooth water of Humboldt Bay to let the gale blow itself out. But the sea was piling up on the entrance bar in great mountains of white water. Unwilling to risk another marine disaster, all ships proceeded to San Francisco.
So fell the curtain on Act I.
This ended the show for me. At least I thought it had, when, upon return of the Iroquois to Mare Island, I resumed my regular station and duties. The show was over, everyone thought, so far as Navy salvage was concerned. The Commandant, Navy Yard, Mare Island, upon whom responsibility for salvage now fell, had decided to turn it over to civilian experts, and had called for bids.
But it was only an intermission.
Soon after the Christmas Holidays, the Captain again called me on board the Milwaukee. Only two bids had been received for the salvage of the H-3, he told me. The largest marine salvage company on the coast—the only one equipped to handle so big a job—had bid $150,000. They would use a specially equipped salvage vessel to pull the submarine off, delivering her to the Navy in deep water offshore.
The only other bid had been from a lumber company at Eureka. They proposed to lay a track of balks across the sand spit, build a cradle around the H-3, jack her upon rollers and haul her across the spit, relaunching her in smooth waters of Humboldt Bay. It sounded very much like moving a house. For this they asked $18,000.
The bid of $150,000 had been rejected as too much; the house moving job as too little. Too little, in fact, to be taken seriously. So we were going back to Eureka to do it ourselves. Only this time, in addition to the Cheyenne and the Iroquois, we would take the Milwaukee. Where their 3,400 horse power had been inadequate, the Milwaukee's 24,000 would be more than ample.
Because of my previous experience on board the Iroquois, the Captain told me, when I must have acquired knowledge of local waters and conditions that would be helpful, I was to report aboard the Milwaukee for temporary duty.
Upon reporting, the Captain assigned me the duties of navigating officer, thus relieving the executive officer of that part of his normal responsibilities. And so we sailed, the Captain never having commanded anything larger than an H-boat; the next in seniority never having commanded anything, and I, next in line, a year junior to him. As navigator, I was closely associated with the Captain day and night, which probably led to the more difficult assignments he was to give me later.
When the Milwaukee anchored to seaward of the breakers abreast the H-3, things looked about as before. The gale that had interrupted the first attempt to salve her had blown itself out, but the high surf still running left evidence of its force. We could not, across the smoking crests, see the exact condition of the sub. But information from Camp H-3 ashore said that she was further up on the sand than before. At low tide a man could walk around her and come away with only damp feet.
Our position, anchored, was not salubrious, and the Captain understandably was nervous. The view from the bridge of a 10,000-ton cruiser anchored only about four ship lengths from breaking surf is not sedative. The view from shore, as I was to find a short time later, was even more alarming. From the beach where the H-3 lay, the Milwaukee seemed already to be in the breakers.
The ship and her equipage were valued at $7,000,000. Not a great sum as ships are valued these days, but in 1916 a very large sum indeed. Her value in dollars was exceeded by her potential value in services rendered the Coast Torpedo Force as flagship-tender. But above dollar value and service value were the lives of her nearly 450 men.
The roar of surf muffled conversation on the bridge; the great combers, pounding along the sandy bottom, created shock waves that could be felt through the ship's steel skin. It was all quite different from planning the operation on a chart desk, the ship moored securely at a wharf in the Navy Yard. The Captain, no doubt, was having second thoughts.
Not that there was any great danger at the moment. We were anchored safely enough for the conditions then existing. But suppose the fog bank clearly seen to seaward should move in, blotting out all visibility? What then if the anchors should drag? Or suppose unusual swells from across the Pacific rolled in, cresting farther offshore than the first line did now?
Yet, if we were to pull the sub off, we must get close, since there was a limit to the length of the steel wire hawsers we could handle.
The Captain was a small man, physically active, his mind as agile as his body. He could cross from one wing of the bridge to the other in nothing flat, and he was hopping back and forth now—looking seaward at the fog bank one minute, shoreward toward the pounding surf the next. He would start giving an order while in one wing, be in the other wing before finishing. Which was quite something, since he had a verbal delivery like the putt-putt of an old destroyer's one-lung motor boat. Words came popping out, trying to keep pace with his racing mind. Whatever his shortcomings may have been, indecision and timidity were not among them.
He told me to take a whaleboat and plant two buoys about 500 yards apart, as close to the first line of breakers as the boat could safely go. As reference marks, with a searchlight kept on them at night or in fog, the buoys would warn him if the ship dragged shoreward.
Surf that looks dangerous from the deck of a big ship can look murderous from a small boat. Cautiously we edged close, watching those great humped backs crest and rush shoreward away from us. Having ridden the hump before the cresting, we could, while on top, catch a glimpse of the beach through the gray smoke of driven spray. But in the valleys we saw nothing. Not the beach, not the ships anchored off—just angry, green-black water. Not yet the moment of truth, but surely a moment of deep loneliness; a wish to feel the deck of a ship underfoot and hear the voices of shipmates instead of the surfs roar.
When we returned aboard, the buoys did not look as close to the first line as we knew them to be. The Captain thought that we could have planted them closer. He had not yet seen those breakers as we had or heard them, or felt them beneath the lifting boat.
Profiting from the difficulty experienced on the previous expedition in running a line from sub to salvage ship, the Iroquois had towed a large steel barge from Mare Island. It had been fitted with fin-like protuberances, which, it was hoped, would drive the barge into and through the surf, its bulk and weight sufficient to overcome the drag of the light line. Several specially winged buoys had also been provided. If the barge would not drift ashore, perhaps a buoy, dropped inside the first line of breakers, would. And there was the hope that the submarine crew ashore, having run a messenger once, might do it again.
But the surf was higher now than it had been when we abandoned the previous attempt; the people ashore showed no eagerness to try a repeat performance. The Captain, his patience exhausted by the refusal of the buoys and the barge to enter the surf, decided that, since the shore party could not or would not, we would run a line from the ship. He told me to take a whaleboat and assemble a volunteer crew and run the surf.
While the exec was getting a crew together, I looked for a good surfboat. But the Milwaukee's boats were all run-of-the-mill as issued to battleships and cruisers. For this job a true surfboat was needed, the kind used by the Coast Guard in rescue work. Such boats have a wider, flatter bilge, more buoyancy chambers, and, along the gunwales, cork floated loops of line to give men something to grab hold of if the boat turns turtle.
At my suggestion, the Captain signaled the cutter McCullough, again at the scene, asking to borrow a boat. The reply was prompt and affirmative.
Having obtained a good boat, the immediate need was for a good crew. The Milwaukee had been converted to a tender—a floating machine shop and storeship. Machinist mates and storekeepers were many, seamen few. Probably no boat drills—aside from taking stations for abandon ship—were ever held. But the Coast Guard boat, pulling toward us, was something to see.
It was a model of spit and polish capped by efficiency. The men not only looked like seamen, they handled the oars as seamen should, pulling a powerful stroke in smooth unison. At the steering oar stood a warrant officer—solid, bearded. The sort of seaman you would want to steer your boat through storm and shipwreck. He brought to, close to the accommodation ladder, and his crew lay on oars while he waited for instructions. This was the right boat; how I wanted that crew!
Something of the same idea struck the Captain at the same time, for hailing through a megaphone from the bridge, he asked the warrant officer if he would run a line ashore. He got a blunt, no! But more than that—the warrant officer looked toward the bridge as if he thought the man up there must be crazy. His orders, he shouted, were to let us have the boat, not to run any lines. So the Captain told him to come alongside, get his men out, and we would take over.
When he came on board with his crew, having left both a bow and a stern man to hold the boat alongside, the exec greeted him and introduced me. The warrant officer took a look at me, glanced at the volunteer crew waiting nearby to take over the boat, and said, "Don't be a fool!"
"What do you mean?" I asked, knowing well what he meant.
"You can't run that surf," he said. "You'll turn over, if you don't go end for end. You can't swim out through those breakers, so you swim in. You may get close enough to the beach to think you're going to make it; but there you'll hang. There's a strong undertow close inshore. Hard as you swim, it will suck you back out. You'll slosh in and out while your lungs fill up with sand and water. It's sure death."
It was quite a speech, delivered with conviction, and from his looks he did not deal in loose talk. Behind it I detected the contempt of hard-shell seamen for amateurs. But there was sympathy there, too. He felt sorry for us. I began to feel sorry for myself.
I had been married somewhat over a year earlier, and my wife was waiting in an apartment in Vallejo, just across from the Navy Yard. My ship was in reserve, which meant that I could spend three nights out of four at home. Death seemed particularly uninviting.
When, going to the bridge, I reported the Coast Guardsman's remarks to the Captain, it apparently had little effect. He was determined to pull the B-3 off, and it was now or never. The highest high water of the month was only a few days off. Fog might set in. Another gale was about due. A line must be run, and run now. But he compromised on his first plan. Test the surf, he told me. If it looks too big when you get into it, drop one of the special buoys and come out. But leave the buoy inside the first line, where it can't get back out.
There were eight men at the oars, a coxswain at the steering oar, with a helping hand from me if necessary, and a man in the bow to tend the big coil of light line, faked down clear for running. He would attach it to the special buoy and throw it into the surf, if I decided the course was getting too tough.
As we pulled away from the Milwaukee, I checked the line. It was paying out smoothly. Then, moving aft to the stern sheets, I checked each man's cork lifejacket in passing, making sure that every tie-tie was secure with a square knot. Everything shipshape; everything ready. Then I heard someone say, "He ought to put on a lifejacket himself. Officers can drown, too."
I never knew who said it, but I owe him a debt of gratitude. In my preoccupation with the boat's equipment and the men's safety, I had forgotten about a life jacket for myself. Fortunately, there was an extra one in the boat.
Nearing the first line of breakers, we swung the boat around and began to back in, keeping the stem headed straight to seaward. Thus the light line could payout smoothly without getting foul of the oars or caught under the boat. A second advantage would be better control of the boat, once in the surf. A boat with headway has a much better chance of riding up and over a crest than a boat running with the sea.
We had not yet got into the breakers when, to seaward, I saw the incredible. The distant horizon was lumping up in a long dark ridge, into the longest, highest, most murderous lump of ocean I had ever seen. This was papa-san wave, straight from Japan. Mama-san would be coming along close behind.
"Hold water!" I ordered. And then, without waiting for the sternboard to be checked, "Give way together!" The oars bent under the reversing pull; the boat moved seaward to meet what looked to me like a tidal wave.
The Cheyenne, anchored to seaward of the Milwaukee, caught it first. From the boat, she seemed to rise skyward as if on an elevator. At the top, her bottom, clear to the bilge keel, showed red against the dark roller.
Next the Milwaukee went over the top, her propellers sticking clear out, her bilge keels showing for half the length of the ship.
Meanwhile, the boat crew was pulling for dear life. "Put your backs into it!" I told them. It wasn't needed. They were putting backs, guts, and all into it. What they saw in my face and the coxswain's no doubt made words unnecessary.
The ships had safely ridden the great roller before it crested. The boat was not so fortunate. We met it at the moment of cresting.
It was a wall of water, concave in form, the leading edge reaching out over us. For a brief moment that mass of tumbling white spume was closer to shore than we were—a roof over our heads. Then the roof fell in.
Oars went flying; men, too. For the next few seconds, all anyone could do was hang on. If you had nothing to hang on to, you went overboard. But when the turmoil sub sided, we hauled them back into the boat, recovered what oars we could, and again tried to get clear.
The boat was swamped, yet the men started pulling again. Those without oars bailed with anything they could get hold of—just their hands, if nothing else. It was only a futile gesture—I suppose we all knew it. We had had it.
Now came mama-san. We smashed straight into her solid midriff, unable to get either through or over. The boat stood straight up; the water we had shipped earlier flooded aft; the over-weighted stern dipped under, becoming a fixed pivot while the boat kept going. End over end it went—a cart wheel spewing out oars and men.
The stern took me with it, down into darkness. I swallowed a lot of the Pacific before seeing daylight again. But, when at last I surfaced, I was clear of the boat. It might have brained me.
Suddenly, while trying to get my lungs clear and my brain working, I felt myself being towed out to sea like a hooked fish. A loop of the light line that had been coiled in the bow was fouled around an arm and shoulder. This was not surprising, since the line coiled in the bow, would, when the boat stood on end, fall into the stern. And some of it had fallen across me. But why the strain; why was it pulling me out to sea? I got the answer later.
On board the Milwaukee, when they saw that the boat was in trouble, the order was given to haul away on the line, haul the boat back out through the surf. But almost immediately came the realization that this was impossible-the line would surely part under the strain. So the order was given to slack off the line—let boat, line, and all go in.
In the brief moment that the line was being hauled on, the tautness of it prevented my getting clear. But when it slacked, I threw it off and swam back to the boat. The gun'l's were barely awash; I knew that it would be of no further use to us as a boat. But it might be useful in that undertow the Coast Guardsman had warned of. If we had the boat to hang on to, even though it was nothing more than a raft awash, we might keep our heads out of the sand and water until the people ashore shot a line across with a Lyle gun. Then, maybe they would be able to haul us in.
"Stay with the boat," I told the men,
"Don't try to swim ashore." How many heard me, if any, I couldn't tell in that maelstrom of tumbling water. But they seemed to get the idea. A few had climbed back into the boat and were trying to get it under control. Others were clinging along the gunnels, arms hooked through the lifelines.
Now it was men against the sea. A cruel sea—battering and numbingly cold. My world had suddenly shrunk to a small circle. At the center was the boat and the clinging men. Around this nothing but sea, and not much of that, for visibility had dropped to almost zero. A wave would smash down on us, almost pulling arms from sockets as we clung to the lifelines. A moment of blackness under water; then smoky light and a glimpse of the wave's back, rushing shoreward, spume blowing from its crest like smoke. Waves obscuring the shore, waves obscuring the ships to seaward. No sun; not even a patch of blue sky. A cruel, battering, bruising world, yet we fought to keep it.
In a lull, someone started to sing "Nearer my God to Thee."
The waves were breaking faster now, and closer together, but not so steep. Instead of being engulfed each time in a Niagara of pounding water, the boat would roll over and over. And each time that it steadied again, there were fewer men clinging to it.
Once or twice, when rolled under, I struck bottom. We must be getting close to shore. It had to be soon, if ever. My strength was ebbing; my grip would soon be broken and I would join those who had already been torn adrift, sloshing around in the undertow, lungs filling with sand and water.
At last I could see but one man—a young sailor sitting astraddle the keel as the boat steadied, bottom up. He might have been riding a fat-backed horse, for all those pounding seas meant to him. He seemed completely undaunted by disaster. He looked down at me, clinging to the gunnel lifeline, and yelled: "Hang on, sir! I can see the beach! Hang on—we're gonna make it !"
Hang on? Desperately, as the boat rolled over and over. But the lad astride the keel had nothing to hang on to. When the boat came out of that one, he was gone.
The next breaker tore me loose. When I surfaced, choking, gasping, my eyes clouded by salt water and weakness, not even the boat was there. My moment of truth had come.
I struck out toward shore, thanking the Heaven which I could not see that my insurance premiums were paid and the policies clear. Blackout.
The lights come up—dimly. Low voices are talking. Something about a Pulmotor from Eureka—maybe it will bring him to. Movement. Figures passing across a dim rectangle of window. Visible through the window, a tall brick chimney. Where am I? Ships don't have brick chimneys.
Someone sitting beside me on a bed, calling me by name. A voice I know, though I can see him but dimly. Harry Bogusch, Skipper of the H-3, a Naval Academy classmate.
He calls off to someone, "We won't need the Pulmotor. He's come out of it."
"It's my heart coming out," I try to say, but have no voice. It was pounding like a pneumatic hammer and twice as fast.
Harry's hand on my chest felt good: it would hold that pounding heart in. He said, "Good work, fella! You brought home the bacon!"
Bacon? What bacon? What's going on here?
"We got the boat in with the line still attached," he went on. "We're running heavier lines right now."
I remembered the boat then, and that no one had tried to cut the line loose so that we would drift in faster. No one had suggested it. And I knew why my heart was pumping and my throat felt raw from mouth to belly. Scoured raw. Holystoned by a mixture of sand and water.
"How about the men?" I asked.
"Okay. Banged up but okay." He didn't tell me until later that one was missing.
The people ashore had seen the boat go end for end—wind between boat and water, men and oars flying. The watchers—and there were many, for since the beginning of operations the sand spit was usually dark with people come from Eureka to supervise—spread out in patrols along the beach. Eureka being a fishing as well as a lumber town, there were many seamen among them who knew these waters well. All of them, lumberjacks or fishermen, were tough and rugged, afraid of nothing. Whenever they spotted a swimmer, or a man floating in a life jacket, they would form a human chain into the surf to grab him at the first moment he got close enough.
In this fashion, the boat crew had been pulled out one by one. Two had made a quick passage, having clung to the special buoy, which, having no line attached, came driving in. But the boat, with the line dragging had taken longer.
A few of the men were unconscious when hauled out; several were delirious. The coxswain had a dislocated shoulder, the ball having pulled from its socket when he had clung to the steering oar, trying desperately to keep the boat under control as it stood on end and reversed direction.
All but one man accounted for; no sign of him could be seen in the surf. Then someone said, "How about the officer?" No one knew my name; they only knew that there had been an officer in charge.
So patrols went out again, north and south along the beach, looking for two bodies. Farther north than a survivor from the boat could be expected to drift in, a patrol saw something splashing. Again a human chain was formed and they hauled me out. Next day they found the missing man. He had drifted south while I, caught in some sort of surface counter-current, had drifted north. His body washed ashore near the harbor entrance.
The injured men were cared for in the infirmary of the Hammond Lumber Company, where the coxswain's dislocated shoulder was set and bandaged. Some of the men were taken into private homes. I, when hauled out of the surf, had been carried into a nearby house, the home of an executive of the lumber company. The kindness and care shown to me by this family during the two days that I remained a patient and guest quickly had me on my feet again. I can never forget them.
To rig for the pull, the line brought in by the capsized boat was used to haul successively heavier lines to the Milwaukee, now anchored even closer to the breakers than when I had left her. Two wire hawsers—a 5-inch and a 6-were fastened securely to a towing shackle in the submarine's stem, reinforced by wire straps around the hull. To take the seaward ends of these wires aboard, the Milwaukee had moved in so close that, from shore, she appeared to be in the breakers.
The folly of this was the talk on the beach when, on the second day ashore, I went there to look the situation over. Not only on the beach were they alarmed for the cruiser's safety, but in Eureka and the surrounding countryside.
The Skipper of the lifesaving crew told me that the Milwaukee had already taken one pull on the sub, moving her only a few feet. However, that had not been at the highest high water. This would come at about 0300, and he understood that the Milwaukee's Captain was planning to try again at that time. It would be asking for disaster, the Skipper said. Chances were that the fog bank, hanging offshore not far out, would move in during the night. If the Milwaukee got her anchor up and tried to pull in darkness and fog, she would be set down by the strong southerly current and go ashore herself. The Skipper felt very sure about it.
Many people talked to me about it, all feeling the same way. The beach was crowded with onlookers, and, to be sure that no one who wanted to see the final disaster should miss it, they had arranged to pass the word to all. Five blasts on the lumber company's steam whistle would announce that the Milwaukee was in the breakers. Great quantities of driftwood had been gathered and made into piles along the beach, ready to light off as bonfires when the time came.
The Mayor of Eureka talked to me, urging, along with the lifesaving Skipper, that I get back on board and warn the Captain. They felt the Milwaukee to be in great danger. The Skipper offered to take me out through the ship channel over the bar in his powered lifeboat.
I was quite willing, and the men of the boat crew were anxious to get back on board, get into clean dry clothing, get "home" again. The Skipper said that he would use this as an opportunity to drill his crew in handling the big self-righting, self-bailing lifeboat.
The bar was breaking as we went out, not dangerously, the Skipper assured us, but just right for holding drill. He would roll the boat over as an exercise. He told us what to do. There was no danger at all, he said. I hoped he knew what he was talking about. One dip in that cold surf was enough for me!
The boat was double-ended, whaleback-decked at each end. The floor boards were at a level above the load waterline, with freeing ports along the sides so that if green water came aboard, it would drain off quickly. This was the self-bailing feature. A heavy bronze keel made sure that, should the boat capsize, it would roll a full circle to come right side up again. This was the self-righting feature. And to prevent the people in the boat from spilling out when the boat rolled over, there were heavy cleats cut away to provide hand holds, on the floor. At the Skipper's order, we got down on all fours, grabbed a cleat and hung on, when, while breasting the seas lumping up on the bar, the Skipper swung the boat to take a grayback broadside. Struck beam on, the boat capsized. But, true to its nature, it rolled clear around and ended right side up again. Green water came aboard, but the engine-sealed in a watertight housing-never missed a beat, and the water scooped up in the boat "self-bailed" quickly.
One go at this satisfied the Skipper, and his passengers, too. So he headed north toward the Milwaukee, the lifeboat rolling easily in the ground swell seaward of the line of surf.
Now, for the first time, I saw the Milwaukee in relation to the surf, lying broadside on. A trim, four-stack, first class cruiser, 12 years old—young as ships go—capable of 22 knots under the drive of nearly 25,000 h.p., captive between an anchor that held her stem to seaward, and a "dead man" in the sand. She was, in effect, moored bow and stern, with her stern less than four of her own lengths from breaking surf. And, offshore, hung a thick bank of fog.
As the lifeboat got closer, I could see the two wire hawsers drooping in a catenary from her stern to disappear into the sea. Compared to the cruiser, the H-3, with all her equipment stripped out, would be worth no more than a tin can. Yet here was seven million dollars worth of ship and equipage with that tin can tied to her tail.
The stage was set.
As the lifeboat came alongside the Milwaukee's accommodation ladder, all the warnings that I had heard from the old-timers ashore were churning in my mind. I was glad that I had come out to pass them on to the Captain.
The medical officer received us at the gangway and told us to go to sick bay for a physical examination. If still suffering from any of our injuries, he would put us on the sick list. The coxswain with the dislocated shoulder was excused from duty immediately.
The others insisted that they were okay and fit for duty. Skip the physical. But the doctor was adamant—it was not only to see what treatment, if any, was needed now, but to protect us in the future by having our injuries entered in service records to show injury in the line of duty.
So off they went to sick bay, while I—with the doctor's permission—went to the bridge to make a report to the Captain. My physical would come later.
The Captain fidgeted as I transmitted the warnings of the people ashore. We studied the chart together. Our position was not reassuring. From our anchorage, the 30-foot curve trended about SSW, so that if the Milwaukee dragged or drifted to the south—and there was reported to be a strong southerly set of current—she would soon touch bottom, for she drew more than 22 feet. Once the anchor was off the ground, she would swing at the end of about 3,000 feet of wire, anchored firmly to the H-3. That is, unless the sub came off quickly—an optimistic expectation.
There was not much likelihood of being set to the south, the Captain argued. The Iroquois would have a line on our starboard bow, pulling northward to hold the Milwaukee's head up and so keep her steaming straight to sea. Besides that, the Cheyenne would take a line from the Milwaukee's stem and pull straight seaward, not only adding her 2,400 h.p. to the pull, but, at the same time, helping the Iroquois counteract any southerly set of current.
As for the fog—it had not moved in as yet, and there was no certainty that it would. If it did, and the sub had not yet been started from her bed of sand, we could buoy and cast off the wires and get clear.
No amount of urging to heed the advice of the people on shore would dissuade him. He was determined to take another pull at high water, which would come at about 0300. It would be the month's highest. If the H-3 did not come off then, he would buoy the wires and shift anchorage to deeper water.
When I checked in at sick bay, the medical officer put me on the sick list, thus relieving me of any responsibility in whatever the night might bring. Now, always a supernumerary without any proper orders attaching me to the Milwaukee, I had become a passenger.
Still feeling the effects of the beating in the surf, I turned in early; but, apprehensive, I turned in "all standing." As a supernumerary, I had been assigned a spare stateroom, well aft near the rudder post, over the propellers. It was the propellers churning that awakened me. We were underway in a fog, repeated blasts of the fog whistle indicated.
Were we pulling, or had he buoyed the wires, because of the fog, and headed away from the land? The answer came when a slight shudder ran through the ship. The rudder had touched bottom. I came out of the bunk running.
The bridge, except for a man at the wheel, was deserted; the engine telegraphs were set at STOP. Everyone had gone aft, the helmsman told me, to get rid of the wire hawsers. The compass showed that we were not heading straight seaward but had swung to port—to the south—the danger area. Fog hid the first line of breakers, but the threatening growl of surf sounded terribly close.
Both bower anchors had been let go when the Milwaukee's predicament became fully realized. But, right under her fore-foot as they were, with no scope of chain to give a horizontal pull, they were of little help. Dragging, they might slow the southward drift somewhat, but swinging on a 3,000-foot arc firmly anchored to the beach, it would take more than two anchors at short stay to hold her off. So what of the Iroquois and the Cheyenne?
From the foremast, a searchlight probed the fog. The beam flitted across a maelstrom of white water, swung back, held. It was the propeller wake of the Iroquois churning desperately to hold the cruiser's head up against the current. On her fantail, a cluster of men were anxiously watching the string-taut Manila. The probing light caught the glint of axe blades.
According to plan, the Cheyenne should have been pulling at full power, helping the Iroquois hold the cruiser's head up against the set of current. But at this critical moment, there was no sign of a straining hawser. The searchlight swung back to the Iroquois. This time the beams caught the flash of swinging axe blades. What else was there to do but cut and run? The tug was nearly in the surf herself. Why add to the disaster toll?
The Milwaukee was now on her own.
She was still afloat, although touching bottom from time to time. Each swell lifted her, then, passing beneath, dropped her into the trough to strike the sandy bottom. Each time she bumped, the shock was harder; each shudder radiating from her backbone out through her ribs, foretold the end. Yet, if the wires could be cast off quickly, she might still get clear. Aft, men worked desperately to get free of the snare.
But the wires could not be cast off quickly. Could they be cast off at all? They had been secured for a full due.
To distribute the strain that would come on them at the peak of a pull, rather than have it concentrated on the quarter bitts, since the cruiser's stern was not specially strengthened for towing, the deck-house was used. A strap of plow steel wires, consisting of two 5-inch, a 4 ½-inch, and a 4-inch—that is, four parts of wire—was run all around the superstructure. Since this house covered about half of the maindeck, there was little chance of pulling it out by the roots.
The seaward ends of the 5- and 6-inch wires that had been hauled out from the H-3 terminated in is—fathom shots of 2 ½-inch chain cable. The ends of chain were run in through the Milwaukee's quarter chocks, port and starboard, and were shackled to the ends of the wire strap that encircled the deckhouse. Pelican hooks to facilitate letting go, thought strong enough to survive the expected strain, were not available.
Now, when casting off had become an immediate necessity, the chains could not be disconnected from the wire strap. The strong current set up such a strain on the towing wires, that even with the heaviest sledges, the shackle pins could not be knocked clear. They could be driven about halfway out, then they would bind.
When it became evident that the cables could not be slipped in this manner, men with hacksaws set to work cutting through the wires. But four parts of 4-to-5-inch plow steel wire took time. And there was no time. Before they could be cleared, the Milwaukee was broadside in the breakers. Each sea that lifted her, set her down again farther inshore. She drew better than 22 feet; soon the water beneath her stood at 12.
Yet there was one consolation. As if content, now that another victim had been trapped, the sea began to moderate. But the fog hung on.
The Captain radioed the other ships to keep clear—the Milwaukee was in the breakers beyond help. The message, intercepted by the nearby Table Bluff Radio Station, was passed to the Samoa Lifesaving Station. Soon the whistle at the lumber mill was blasting out the news for all to hear—the Milwaukee had come ashore. Help was on the way, and help was needed. A 20-degree list, as well as the breakers pounding the ship's side, made lowering boats impossible.
We waited. It was not long before the sharp crack of a Lyle cannon told us that the lifesaving crew was in action. But no line whizzed across our top-hamper. We were still too far offshore for the line to reach, or else they were firing blindly, unable to see us through the fog.
We waited. The cruiser's bottom was bilged, her decks were buckling, her boilers had shifted, and her steam lines had carried away. All fires were extinguished. A helpless hulk, she lay there, rolling in the sand, her people in lifejackets ready to abandon ship. Finally, a Lyle projectile landed with a clatter on the tilting deck. The line was hauled in quickly, and, without delay, the breeches buoy standing line was brought aboard and made fast in the lower mainstop. Then the hauling line brought out the breeches.
The Captain, meanwhile, had sent for me and told me—because of my previous contacts ashore and my knowledge of conditions on the beach—to make the first trip in the breeches and take charge shoreside as his representative to arrange care for the men and other details. Going first, I could also check on whether the breeches buoy was working properly.
It was not. But someone else would be the first to find it out. When I climbed into the top, I found that a man had already settled himself in the breeches, so rather than delay rescue operations by making an exchange, I sent him on in.
The ship was still rolling, the masts whipping toward shore one time, away the next. The standing line would go slack, then jerk taut. When the first passenger was about halfway in, an upward jerk sent him skyward as if snapped from a rubber band. A moment later, as the line went slack, he plunged into the surf. The people ashore hauled him in as fast as they could, but he made most of the distance under water.
It did not look good to me, but when the empty breeches came back, I decided to give it a try. The same thing happened. Having sailed upward when the line jerked taut, and plunged into the surf when it went slack, the crowning discomfort was a crack on the head by the hauling block. But the cold water revived me, and eventually they hauled me out little the worse for wear, although soaked and shivering. Someone stuck a pint bottle of whiskey in my hand. Between gulping whiskey and standing close to a blazing bonfire, I soon got reasonably dry and warm.
Before bringing a third man in, the line aboard the Milwaukee was shifted to the upper top, thus giving a higher point of takeoff. The ship was getting steadier all the time as she drove closer inshore and bedded down in the sand; and the time of passage was shortened by the arrival of a span of horses to do the hauling. Everything would be better now, and faster, and a man would have a good chance of getting ashore without being half drowned.
But when they hauled the third man in on this new set-up, the hauling line parted—perhaps the horses ran away with it too fast—and he was left dangling in midair, halfway from ship to shore. It took a little time to get this foul-up straightened out. They finally hauled him back to the ship and rigged a new, heavier, hauling line. From then on things worked smoothly. We brought in two men at a time, once the system was properly working. And soon, with the Milwaukee only about 300 yards offshore, the time had come, it seemed, to start bringing the men off by boat.
But the Skipper of the lifesaving crew disagreed. There was still too much danger of a boat capsizing during launch, he said. We would continue to use only the breeches. With about 430 men to be brought ashore, even two at a trip would take all day and probably most of that night. Meanwhile, anything might happen. The surf might build up, or the ship might break up or be dismasted. We decided that boats must be used.
Although unwilling to order his men to run the surf, the Skipper of the lifesaving crew had no objection to our using his boat. There was no problem about getting men for the oars. Half the populace of Eureka had flocked to Samoa Beach when the lumber yard whistle sounded off. There was a rush to man the boat when Harry Bogusch called for volunteers. He took the steering oar himself.
Since there were more volunteers than needed, the boat that had capsized in the surf bringing the line ashore—still lying where it had been dragged up on the beach—was equipped and manned. A workman from the Navy Yard, who had come up with a party to rig the heavy towing wires, took the steering oar, and several of the lifesaving crew volunteered to pull on the thwarts. Two boats were then kept ferrying constantly, using relief crews to keep the oarsmen fresh.
As, through the day, load after load came ashore, the beach took on the look of carnival. Bonfires blazed through the fog up and down the sand spit. And, though the fog lifted with the climbing sun, a heavy overcast hung on, and the fires were kept going for warmth and cheer. Hot coffee and sandwiches were in plentiful supply from Eureka. Whiskey, too! And girls! Had there been music, there surely would have been dancing on the silver strand.
Rescue operations went on all d ay, and all day the surf kept moderating. By nightfall, when the Captain came ashore in the last boat, he and those with him were not even splashed with spray.
The survivors—there were no missing—were taken care of that night in the dormitories of the Hammond Lumber Company and in the clubhouse of the Sequoia Boating and Yachting Club. Men, who wished, were permitted to accept invitations to spend the night in nearby homes. But next day, to keep the ship's company together and under control, we made arrangements to quarter them temporarily in a tent city amusement park nearby. Within a few days, drafts of men began the return journey to San Francisco by rail.
We had lost a fine ship, for the Milwaukee's bones would lie on Samoa Beach until obliterated by professional shipbreakers and the elements. But there was still hope for the stranded H-3.
After the Milwaukee disaster, the Fraser Lumber Company of Eureka, having earlier bid $18,000 to refloat the H-3, was awarded the contract. Timber balks were laid in a double track across the half-mile of sand spit, and, on rollers, the H-3 was trundled across to be launched in the smooth water of Humboldt Bay. After cleaning out by the crew, tests were made to determine seaworthiness. Then she resumed her interrupted voyage to San Francisco in tow of the Iroquois, living, after overhaul, to fight in World War I.
So ring down the curtain on a naval tragedy. A seven-million-dollar warship had been risked rather than spend one hundred fifty thousand. A losing gamble. A bid of $18,000 had been rejected, the proposed method considered to be unfeasible. A costly error, for the method had proved to be right and the cost comparatively nothing.
Yet, in subsequent years, the venture may have paid off after all by discouraging other such amateur attempts at salvage, no matter how valorous the men.
Graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy in 1911, Captain Haislip commanded the Northern California, Sector Western Sea Frontier in 1943-1944 and was Assistant Chief of Staff (Operations) of the 12th Naval District in 1945. The author of four historical novels, Sailor Named Jones, The Prize Master, Sea Road to Yorktown, and Escape from Java, his play, The Long Watch, was produced on Broadway. He also wrote the narration of the Byrd Expedition. "The Secret Land," which won an Academy Award for the best full length documentary movie. He has had numerous writing credits for major motion pictures.