The Ramming of U.S. Submarine S4 page 2

Day dawned on the 18th, and those who had journeyed to Provincetown Harbour were dismayed at what they saw. Clouds were gathering over the horizon, and the rescue vessels were already beginning to pitch and toss as they drew near to the scene of the accident. But still the larger ships were many miles away, and would not arrive for a number of hours. By noon, S4 had been on the bottom for more than twenty hours, and, assuming that her crew were living, no matter how carefully they had rationed themselves, a large amount of reserve air must have been used.

"Forty hours in comfort," said the experts. "And then, using their compressed air reserves sparingly, they can exist with increasing distress for a further twelve hours." Those words were poor comfort to those who prayed so anxiously; but on such occasions any hope is a Godsend. Fresh hope was raised, however, when it was announced that S4 was lying in only 102 feet of water - for S4 was no less than 231 feet long herself. All that would be necessary was the raising of one end, and with the other end still on the bottom, the crew could be released. And then, shortly after midday, approximately 21 hours after her disappearance, the first diver went down to S4.

Diver Eadie, summoned by radio, and borne by rail and air to the coast, was the most skilful deep-sea diver in the U.S. Navy, and as the metal dome of his underwater suit vanished over the side of the ship, the hopes of the entire world were focused upon the slender telephone wires which kept him in touch with his captain. Slowly, foot by foot to accustom himself to the increasing pressure, he signalled the paying out of more line. Until he made his laborious way along the sunken hull, no one could know the answer to the awful question that was in every one's mind: "Are they alive?" Waiting anxiously at the telephone on deck, the captain watched in silence as the line slid into the water. And then the movement of the line stopped. Diver Eadie's voice, clear and strong from the depths, announced that he had landed on the submarine. The second stage of the tense and terrible drama had commenced.

"There's life aboard!" came the incredible news from below.

Within a few seconds those few cheering words had been flashed round the globe; they were being dashed into type almost before they reached the forlorn group of anxious people who clustered on the distant shore. Diver Eadie, making his way cautiously through the wreckage and mud, had reached the bows of the sunken boat and rapped on the steel shell. An answering rap followed immediately. There was life aboard! One tap for a dot, two quick taps for a dash, Diver Eadie spelled out his first question in the morse code: Tap tap... tap tap tap.... Tap-tap... tap-tap tap tap.... "Is gas bad?"

Ears pressed against the cold steel of the torpedo-room, the unfortunate men strained to hear those welcome sounds. Help had come. They were saved. After more than twenty hours of silence, loneliness and despair, the long arm of scientific wonder was stretched through the darkness of the ocean to bring rescue. Game a pause, and the diver waited, listening for the reply...." No, but air is. How long will you be now? "

"How many are there?" tapped the diver, unable to answer that last question, so full of confidence.

"There are six," came the reply almost immediately. "Please hurry. Will you be long now?"

"We are doing everything possible," spelt out the diver with his hammer.

A hundred feet above her stricken sister, the Submarine S8 also picked up those vital messages on her sensitive underwater listening apparatus, and hopes which had sunk so low began to rise as messages from the fast approaching salvage fleet came in. There were at least six of S4's crew alive and well; there might well be more good news of the other thirty-four from other sections of the hull. Provided that their air lasted out, and their emergency rations of compressed oxygen, there was every chance of the submarine being raised - one end at a time - and the trapped men released. On shore, as the astounding news spread, some went so far as to say five days was not an unreasonable time-limit to fix for their endurance; and in five days it was more than certain that the salvage fleet, equipped with every modern device, would complete the task of rescue.

"Blowing air from the Falcon to S4's tanks," came a message from the admiral in charge of operations. "Air now being hooked up to torpedo compartment."

To the anxious millions on shore this was both good and bad news. Although the diver, in a later message to the ship, reported possible sounds of life from a compartment aft, this last message meant that the salvage ship Falcon was only linking up air lines to the forward part of the boat, and only six survived, presumably, from a total of forty. But if an air line was to be hooked up, that meant that there was an indefinite lease of life for those who still lived; and the fact that air was being pumped into S4's ballast tanks meant that the salvage men were already seeking to make the ship buoyant once more. Many more messages might have passed between diver and prisoners, but every second was of vital importance, and work, which was necessarily noisy, could not be held up for any reason that was not absolutely essential to the well-being of the crew. There was, so the diver said, an excellent chance of bringing the forward end of the boat to the surface the next day, and so soon as the pontoons and other equipment arrived the first attempt would be made; meanwhile preparations were made for the heavy chains by tunnelling spaces through the mud upon which the hulk rested.

Alas for their hopes, however, Monday, December 19th, dawned with high winds and angry seas. The divers at the end of their hundred-feet links with the world above were jerked about so terribly that work became impossible. Before the arrival of the main salvage fleet, conditions had been excellent: now that everything was in readiness for the great task, the weather put all immediate chances of rescue out of the question. There was nothing for it but to wait, and the divers paced frantically up and down the decks of the Falcon, unable to do a thing - unable even to rap those short messages which meant so much to their entombed comrades below. Hour followed hour, and all the while the precious streams of life-giving oxygen hissed from the flasks in the bowels of S4. Twenty-six vessels were standing by in the morning, and for all the good they could do there might have been none. Late in the afternoon six mighty pontoons arrived from New York. It remained only for the divers to encircle the hulk with chains - to attach the chains by cables to the pontoons, and the salvage ships would do the rest. Once attached to the submarine, the water would be forced from the pontoons by air, fed from the Falcon, and, as they became buoyant, so would the submarine be borne to the surface. But the weather went from bad to worse, and even the preliminary operations had to be postponed.

Still keeping her vigil on the surface, S8 was able to maintain morse conversation with S4 by means of raps and underwater listening gear, and so messages of hope and comfort were exchanged; but the brave men in the sunken boat were by now well aware of the seriousness of their predicament. By three thirty-seven in the afternoon they had been trapped for forty-eight hours, and unless some form of relief were quickly forthcoming they realised that none of them would ever see the light of day again. "Enough oxygen to last until 6 p.m.," was the dread news passed on to a sympathetic world that afternoon, by hammer, and radio broadcast from the shore stations. On the Sunday, some thirty hours after the disaster, Lieutenant Fitch had rapped out his name and those of his companions; he had spelt out the full nature of their pathetic plight, laboriously, letter by letter, in staccato hammer-beats.

Not only was the air in their prison very bad, but to add to their misery they had no light, and it was intensely cold. Upon the diver's signal that the air line was connected, they turned the valves, waiting eagerly in the stygian darkness for the hiss of life. But the salvage line was flooded - ruptured by the collision. A gout of salt water plunged their rising spirits to the depths of despair. Turning off the valves once more, they had nothing to do but inform their would-be rescuers of this newest misfortune, and to wait through more endless hours for the next development.

"Salvage line is flooded. Water is about eighteen inches deep. Air very bad."

Slowly the long night passed, though nights and days were the same in that ghastly hulk. Monday dawned, and those who waited impotently above saw nothing but lowering clouds and the relentless rollers which made any form of diving an impossibility. At nine-thirty-eight a.m. Lieutenant Fitch rapped out the dramatic plea: "Oxygen bottle empty. Can you send down a couple?" Listening with difficulty, on account of the noise of the angry sea, the officers on S8 heard this and shook their heads in despair. A further message asked for food, water and oxygen to be sent down, and passed in via the torpedo tube; but the storm still raged.

"Two floating cranes are on the way now," signalled S8 by way of comfort.

"Where are the cranes coming from?" came back the message from S4.

"New York. Will the air last until to-night?"

"It will last until 6 to-night."

At 10.45 S8 told the entombed men the time, and:

"How is the weather?" asked S4.

"Choppy. Wind force, four," replied S8.

"Is there any hope?" asked S4 pathetically.

"There is hope," said S8. "Everything possible is being done.

As they rapped back their answers into the deep, however, those on S8 knew only too well that unless the raging seas abated in a matter of hours there could be no hope. All that they could do, they did, and that was to maintain contact with the poor wretches a hundred feet below them, hoping to send even the smallest ray of hope into "their brave hearts. And all the while the six survivors grew weaker and weaker for want of food and drink, their systems starved for sixty hours and more from lack of sufficient air. In utter blackness they sat, in a silence more complete than exists anywhere on the earth's surface, and in a temperature barely above freezing point. Scarcely three feet away from them, stored on shelves in the next compartment, was food, water and oxygen sufficient to maintain life for several days - another week, maybe; but that was as far from them as their homes and those near and dear to them - cut off irretrievably by the steel bulkhead when the door was slammed to in the frantic rush for safety. The seal of death already upon them, they could only wait and pray for deliverance.

The next night passed, and still the weather showed no signs of improving; if anything, it was worse. Tuesday, December 20th, and as the hours passed remorselessly on, yet a third complete day was added to the terrible ordeal of the lost men below. And, as though their plight were not already too dreadful to conceive, a new storm warning was received on board the salvage ships, and many of the smaller craft had to run for the safety of the bay. Far away overland, fraught with despair, numbed from continual agony of mind, Lieutenant Fitch's wife and mother knelt in prayer.

"Keep up your courage. We are constantly praying for you." Flashed through the ether by the radio, that simple message arrived on board the Falcon, and was passed on to the submarine's sister ship, S8.

"Your wife and mother constantly praying for you. If you receive this send taps spelling AR," rapped out S8. There was no answer. Fatigued from even the slightest form of exertion, drowsy through continued breathing of bad air, the men of S4 had stretched themselves out on their bunks. Throughout that afternoon and night the message was repeated:

"Your wife and mother constantly praying for you. Answer with three taps if understood; five if not."

And then, with untold relief, at 6.10 a.m. those on S8 heard distinctly tap - tap - tap. Striving desperately to revive those brave but flagging spirits, S8 signalled again at 6.20: "Diver will try to connect air to S.G. (Listening) Tube. Three for yes. Five for no." There was no response. By this time the sea was making a great deal of noise, and although the listeners on S8 never relaxed their vigil for a moment, no coherent messages were sorted out from the indistinct tappings which followed during the rest of the day. At 4.5 p.m., however, in answer to an inquiry from 88, "Are you all right - O.K.?" an answer of three taps was heard very distinctly. And at 4.35 p.m. the same question brought the same answer. After that the sea noises interfered once more, and only unintelligible rappings were received.

During the night the full fury of the storm broke, and in the morning of the fourth day of the men's imprisonment the worst calamity of all occurred. An exceptionally heavy sea tore away both moorings and air-lines, and the exact whereabouts of S4 were lost. But the bad weather had blown itself out in that sudden burst of fury, and by midday that Wednesday the divers were able to go down for the first time in two days. At 1 p.m. the first diver descended - and found nothing. The Falcon was no longer over the wreck. For the entire day the desperate search continued, and it was not until almost nightfall that S4 was located again.

At once began the last frantic efforts to save the lives of those men. One after the other the divers went down. Nerves were at snapping point on board the ships above. There was still a bare possibility of success, but hopes were slender indeed.

"I've landed on the submarine," came the voice of a diver from the telephone.

"Where are you?" called the Commander.

"I'm on the conning tower," replied the hollow-sounding voice, vibrating from the confines of the metal helmet.

"Thank God for that," said the Commander.