ADVENTURES UNDER SEA
Strange Happenings to Submarines and Divers
MAN, not content with fighting Father Neptune for mastery on the seas, has gone farther than that, and has sought to show that he is not afraid of any terrors beneath the seas: he would be master over all. So men have become divers; so ships which can sink and rise again have been made. And the diver and the submarine boat have added to the tale of man’s conquest over Nature; their chapter is as full of vigour and vim and adventure as any chapter in the tale.
We are not concerned with the make-up of the submarine, but with the adventures of the brave and hardy sailors who man them, and the part the boats play in great naval wars. The latter may be dismissed by saying that the submarine’s work is to dash forth from the security of harbours, and make sudden attacks upon the bigger craft of the enemy in the hope of reducing their number. These were the tactics employed by Germany in the great war of 1914-15. Aware that Britain’s navy was vastly superior to her own, and that the only hope for success in a great encounter would be when the British navy had been reduced, Germany kept her Dreadnoughts and other big craft safe in her harbours, contenting herself with sending out submarines to strike sudden blows at the British patrolling vessels guarding the seas. Britain employed her submarines for the purpose of luring the Germans from their harbours (as the account, given in another chapter, of the Battle of the Bight of Heligoland shows).
While British and German submarines were playing the risky game of scouring the seas, French submarines were not idle; and in the latter days of December, 1914, there was told the story of an adventure as thrilling as ever fictionist wove for the delight of his readers.
The number of the submarine was not given; neither was the name of the place where the incident took place. All that was told was that on a certain Saturday morning the submarine left port, and at three o’clock on the following morning had reached its objective—namely, an enemy port. Two miles out the boat dived, and going at the rate of about three miles an hour, made for the entrance of the port where the Frenchmen hoped to find some battleships which would provide good targets for their torpedoes. In due course they reached the entrance; it was guarded by a boom, on the other side of which were several battleships and destroyers.
Chagrined at the fact that the boom prevented them from firing at the warships, the French sailors hung about awhile in the hope that the enemy would perhaps issue forth. Meanwhile, the officer kept his eye upon the mirror, which through the periscope showed him what was going on, and which, incidentally, was a source of danger to the submarine; for the eye of the submarine, sticking up about eighteen inches above the surface, is easily seen in good light by the look-out of a battleship; and in time of war a very sharp watch is kept for these bobbing “eyes,” which betoken the presence of death-dealing boats. The Frenchmen knew their danger, but they had come out to do something, and refused to give up until they found it impossible to carry out their mission.
So they stayed there—waiting for something to happen.
Then it happened.
The man at the mirror saw the battleships and destroyers moving, and, giving the order to stand by, he waited until they passed within a short distance of the submarine. They were anxious moments for every man in her; they knew that at any minute some watcher on the enemy’s decks might detect them and heavy shells come hurtling towards them, perhaps to snap the periscope and turn the cigar-shaped craft into a blind, helpless thing, when, if she kept below, she might run foul of a ship’s bottom, and if she rose to the surface be at the mercy of the waiting foes. Into such moments is crowded the spice of war, and these gallant Frenchmen were quite prepared for it.
Luckily the foes passed by without noticing the lurking boat, and the officer, anxious to get within a distance which would enable him to take a more accurate aim, gave orders for the submarine to draw nearer to them. Stealthily she approached, every man in her at tension and at his post, ready for the time to come when they could launch their death-tube.
Suddenly the boat seemed to shiver, then to strain as a dog strains at the leash, then to shiver again; and there was a grinding noise. Then the boat came to a standstill, though her engines were still going.
Instantly the men sprang into action, seeking the cause of this unfortunate event. What had happened? they asked themselves. They soon knew. Investigation showed them that steel cables had caught the rudder of their boat and held her prisoner. Apparently this was a method adopted by the enemy to trap them, for the cables drew them upwards—ever upwards, till they were close to the surface, and at the same time torpedoes came swishing through the water towards them. Time after time these death-tubes sped at them, to miss them by merest fractions of inches, it seemed. Simultaneously shells fell thick and fast around them, sending the water up in great spouts. It was literally an inferno, from which the Frenchmen realised that there was little chance of escape. But what chance there was they took.
Boxed up in their little citadel they waited for death—waited for the crash that would tell them a shell had found its target; waited for the explosion which would end the suspense and bring the death that was so slow in coming. This waiting in helplessness was far worse than taking the chances of death in an encounter with the foe when they were free to fight manfully against them.
But though they knew that death was so near to them, and though escape seemed impossible, yet they bent their every effort in an attempt to free the boat from the grip of the cables. They filled the water tanks to their utmost capacity, and every man joined in pressing on the steering wheel; the perspiration of energy and anxiety stood upon their brows as they worked; the atmosphere was electric; they knew that the next few minutes must decide their fate. How they worked! What prayers for life they prayed, these men of death!
Suddenly the grim silence of the interior was broken by the cries of the men—cries of joy. With her engines at full speed, the little craft had fought and strained against the impeding leash, had fought victoriously, for with a jerk the cables broke away and the submarine bounded forward; the men at the wheel felt it answer to their pressure, and down the boat went at full speed to a depth of sixteen metres.
They were saved!
Ecstatic in their joy at deliverance the Frenchmen embraced each other, and for a moment forgot that above them rode the giant foes who, unaware yet that they had escaped from the cables, were no doubt still potting away at the spot, and still sending their torpedoes in that direction. But very soon the sailors came back to the world of action, and realised that they were still far from safe; they must hurry away immediately if they would escape. There was little chance of doing any damage to the foe, who were now on the qui vive; and only one course was open to the French, and that was to get away. They dared not rise to the surface, and they had to chance their luck and keep below. For two hours—hours full of anxiety—they went along under water, well aware that they were pursued by the foes, whose guns continually spoke as the periscope was fired at. Knot after knot was eaten up, and still the pursuers kept on after them; but at last they were shaken off, and the men in the submarine knew that they were indeed safe.
But, cautious even now, they still remained beneath the surface till the shades of evening fell; and then, and then only, did they dare to rise, after having been submerged for nothing short of twelve hours! Twelve hours as full of peril and thrill as any hours man ever spent!
They were not even then out of the wood; for shortly afterwards they sighted another of the enemy’s ships, and again they had to dive and go on their way beneath the water; but eventually they reached their port safely, happy to have escaped, but chagrined at not having been able to do any damage to the foe.
BECAUSE we do not reap the benefits in daily life of the work of the diver, few of us give him much thought; but for a hazardous, heroic vocation, that of the man in the diving suit is probably without equal.
A thousand little things may happen, and each one of them be sufficient to cut the slender thread of life for the diver; a man in the boat above, for instance, may make a slight mistake, and—but there is no need to moralise. Take the case of John Edward Pearce, a diver, who one day in 1868 was hard at work in eighty feet of water, where the sunken barque Mindora lay off Dover. You couldn’t have seen the diver, of course, but the cutter riding to the swell, and the man aboard her holding the lifeline, would have told you plainly enough that below the water was a man working amidst the remains of what was once a proud little ship.
That man with the line was in touch with the man below; he held the thread of life and death. Suddenly he received a signal from below, and called out to another man, a diver:
“Slack away the wreck rope!”
“Aye, aye!” cried the man. And it was done. Then the two men waited, expecting to see the diver’s helmet appear above the surface, and ready to haul him aboard.
But there was no sign of Pearce; only something was happening down there, for the man with the lifeline could tell by the pull.
“What’s he up to?” the diver asked, for he knew that it was unusual for a diver to give the signal to come up and then to remain below.
“I don’t know,” was the reply, “but he seems to have gone back into the hold again.”
“Reckon you’re wrong,” said the diver. “The line’s too deep for him to be in the hold. Something’s gone wrong.”
They signalled down to Pearce again and again, but getting no answer began to haul away at the hoisting tackle.
After an anxious time of straining at the ropes, they succeeded in bringing the diver to the surface, hauled him into the cutter, unscrewed his helmet and—thought him dead. Applying artificial respiration immediately in the hope of his being alive, and forcing brandy between the clenched teeth, they were fortunate enough to bring Pearce round; and then the mystery was explained. The signal man had made a mistake; he had called “Slack away!” when he should not have done, with the result that the diver had slipped from the deck of the sunken Mindora, to fall heavily on the floor of the ocean, cutting his air supply and knocking himself unconscious. A few moments more down there, with the air supply cut off, and he would inevitably have died of suffocation.
This was by no means the only adventure that befel Pearce in the course of his work in the depths, and although the following incident took place in a river, and not at sea, it may be included in this record. He was at work on the s.s. London, which had sunk in the Tay, and his task was to attach the bales of cotton with which she was laden to the large drag hooks which men in the vessel above were letting down to him. What made the job a ticklish one was the fact that the water was thick, and, as he himself said, “I had to do all my work by feeling!”
It is easy to imagine that Pearce found it very hard to manipulate the drag hook which, after hauling a bale up, would descend to him again, perhaps narrowly missing knocking him on the helmet, to the danger of the glass front, which, breaking, would mean death. However, this did not happen; instead, after he had fixed the four-pronged hook in a bale it slipped, and in doing so, and before Pearce could jump aside, caught him in the palm of his hand. The winches above, of course, were hauling away at the chain which, going up, carried Pearce with it, and soon he found himself in intense agony on the upper deck of the London. By good luck he managed to wrench the hook out of his palm just then, and the chain went upwards without a load, and the men above believed that the bale had slipped as it was being hoisted. They little knew what kind of a load it had had on it—a human load! Once free of the hook Pearce, suffering severely, and feeling faint from loss of blood, gave the signal to be hauled up, and in a short time was on the surface. The men in the lighter quickly attended to him, and they found that his palm had been torn completely open, and that the hook had penetrated the third finger. That accident cost Pearce three months’ work, and for a long time he despaired of ever being able to use the hand again.
Jim Hartley, diver, had an adventure of another kind under the sea. A vessel had sunk off Honolulu, and Hartley, who was stranded at the island after roving around a bit, undertook to explore the wreck if a diving suit could be found. The island was ransacked and a suit found, whereupon Hartley donned it, and rowed out in a small sloop with one man to help him. The people on the shore had told him to beware of sharks, and Hartley took with him a large knife—and it was a good job he did! The first time he went down he couldn’t do much good, because he landed amongst a lot of sharp rocks which threatened to cut his airpipe; so he went up again, and ventured down on the next good tide. This time he lighted on the sunken ship, which had a big hole in her port bow. Thinking he would inspect the other side Hartley started to go round, when there was a swirl of water, a sudden darkening, and a jerk at the signal line and air pipe.
Instinctively Hartley knew that a big fish had fouled him, and thoughts of sharks entered his mind. Looking up through the now cloudy water, he saw a huge shark. Presence of mind is the great thing for a diver to possess, and Hartley had it. Quick as lightning he dropped on to his back and lay there, waiting for the shark to come, knowing that in that position he had a better chance if it came to a fight than he would have if he stood upright. His great fear was that the shark might cut the air-hose, and that if the man in the sloop caught sight of the shark he might begin to haul up. In that case, the diver knew that he would be at the mercy of the great fish, which would swoop down upon him as he was going up, and while he had no leverage for his feet.
Fortunately the man in the sloop did not see the shark, and Hartley, lying there on his back, with his large knife held in his right hand, waited—anxiously, watchfully—wondering what the shark would do. As though playing with its prey the huge fish swam back a few yards, then forward again, and this time it was lower down, and so nearer to the supine man, who expected that every minute the shark would swoop down upon him. But no; back it went again, only to swim forward once more until it was three feet above him.
This was Hartley’s opportunity; he knew that if the shark hauled off again, the next time it would come right on to him, and then——Hartley took opportunity by the forelock; he rose from his back, and, with a terrific lunge, thrust his knife at the shark. Instantly the water was dyed red, the great tail lashed the water angrily and caught Hartley a terrific thwack, which sent him headlong to the ground again. The water was now so thick that it was impossible to see anything, and life depended on being able to find the signal line. Groping about in the dark, by great good luck the diver caught the rope, gave it a sharp tug that told the man above to haul away, and up went Hartley, nervous until he reached the surface lest the blow he had given the shark had not been sufficient to give it its quietus. However, all was well, and in due course the diver was able to go down again and complete his work.
A more terrifying fight with a shark was that which a diver once had in a diving bell. In this case the diver sat on a small seat suspended in the bell, which slowly descended into the water. To the horror of the diver, when the bell rested on the bottom forty feet down, he discovered that he had a companion—a shark! The great fish darted hither and thither about the bell, and a whisk of its tail knocked the diver off his seat. Quick as lightning the man scrambled to his place again and sat there, a hopeless prisoner, with the tiger of the seas almost brushing against him as it swooped around the bell, seeking to find a way out of the prison. It grew angrier and angrier every moment, and the diver knew that it would soon turn upon him unless he could manage to kill it at once. Round and round the bell went the maddened fish; silent, anxious, the diver waited for his chance; and as the shark drew near to him, he made a sudden grab at its dorsal fin with one hand, and with the other drove a sharp tool into the gleaming side.
It was but the beginning of things. The blow seemed to make the shark more angry than ever; and the blood-red water was lashed to a fury as the fish turned and swept down upon the man, seeking to catch him in its capacious maw. How he held on to his seat the diver never knew, but he did so; and every time the shark dashed near him he stabbed at it viciously with the tool. It was, indeed, a duel to the death, this fight between the stabbing man and the flashing fish. The diver, who had given the signal to be hoisted up, prayed that the men above would not take long, for he was becoming weary of the struggle. His arms were aching, his head was swimming, and, despite all his pluck, there was the haunting dread that the giant fish might be victorious. Luckily for the man the shark was also weakened, though even in its death agonies it made attacks upon the diver, who was presently gladdened at the sight of daylight and the ship. Quickly the crew had the bell aboard, and before their eyes was a strange sight: a dying shark, in death-travail, lashing its tail on the deck, and a man, faint, weary, nauseated, who dropped beside the victim.
Here is another picture of a man’s adventure among sharks. A cattle ship had been wrecked. A diver went below to overhaul it, and found that a school of sharks had got there before him, attracted by the smell of the feast they nosed about after. Laying a charge and blowing off the hatches, the diver saw the carcasses of the cattle rise from the hold, to be attacked immediately by the hungry sharks which swarmed about him. There were two alternatives open to him: either to remain below and risk having his airpipe severed, or to go up and risk being attacked as he went. He chose the latter as being the lesser of two evils. So the signal was given; the men above began to haul him up. As he went he had to pass through the school of voracious fish, some of which turned their attention away from the dead cattle to the living man. Swinging from this side to that as he was attacked, the diver managed to ward off the tigers of the deep, and, by a very miracle, reached the surface with no more hurt than an injured hand.
“Swinging from this side to that as he was attacked, the diver managed to ward off the tigers of the deep”