CHAPTER I

With eyes gazing fixedly ahead, the man, tense and alert, sought to penetrate the blackness. Squalls of rain swept down and lashed his face, the flying spume of spray shot up to intermingle with the rain, leaving a tang of salt on his lips. The liner lurched and rolled through the night, while thousands of souls aboard slumbered without fear, placing implicit trust in this one man to whom the pulse of the engines driving the ship was as familiar as the pulse of his own heart. Rain and spray and wind were part of his life, and he accepted them without demur because he realized that the weather was indifferent alike to praise and blame.

He half turned his head to glance at the ship’s chronometer.

“Should be picking her up now,” he muttered.

Raising the night-glasses to his eyes, he concentrated all his powers of vision on the murky gloom in front of him. His glasses roved slowly from side to side, then a point of light, so dim as to be almost imperceptible, swung in the blackness and vanished. For a minute he waited until the light reappeared, then he breathed freely and rang down for the ship to alter course, knowing that he was safe and that he had justified the faith of the passengers who had trusted him to navigate his vessel through the storm.

That point of light which meant so much to him was the beam of a lighthouse, one of the many encircling our coast. All round our shores they keep sentinel night after night, through summer calm and winter blizzard, waking to life as daylight fades and dying as dawn steals over the seas. These lights, which the city dweller on a brief visit to the sea watches with such interest, are the friends of all who go down to the sea in ships.

Our coasts are profoundly treacherous. Rocks, shoals and quicksands abound everywhere, and are mostly marked with lighthouses, lightships and buoys which in the aggregate have cost millions of pounds. No expense has been spared to indicate these hidden dangers and make our seas safe for shipping. Yet, in spite of all that human foresight can suggest, wrecks still occur. Gales spring up and take their toll; fogs steal on and drive ships blindly to their doom; machinery breaks down and allows the seas to hurl the helpless craft upon the cruel rocks.

Probably no coast in the world is so well lighted as that of Great Britain, but although there are over 1700 lights acting as signposts of the sea, warning mariners of their dangers, our rocky shores exact a grievous toll of shipping year by year. It is estimated that the average value of the ships and cargoes lost in British waters amounts to about £5,000,000 annually, so the wealth spilled out of the ships since the galleys of our first invaders found a watery grave would, could it be recovered, considerably lighten the burden of our national debt. Unfortunately the greater part is lost for ever, for the sea which has swallowed the ships destroys them utterly in the course of time, and unless they can be salved within a certain period they soon become not worth salving. The action of the sea water rots away the cargoes, rust gradually devours the steel and iron carcass of the ship, and only those two indestructible substances, gold and silver, the white and red metals for which men have fought and died throughout the ages, remain of the wealth which was originally lost.

Men, however, have not been content to see fortunes sink in the sea without making some effort to recover them. They have pitted their wits against the strength of the sea, risked their lives to wrest long-lost treasure from the grasp of the ocean, and the story of their thrilling deeds is one of the outstanding pages of human endeavour.

Consider, for a moment, the wonder of a ship. She is a marvellous structure of steel and iron, full of the most intricate machinery, a structure weighing perhaps thousands of tons. Of the manifold parts of which she is composed, the wood fittings alone may be buoyant. Only they may possess the power of floating on the waves; all the other parts, from the smallest screw and rivet to the mighty propeller shafts and hull plates would, if they could, sink like stones to the bottom of the sea. This enormous mass of metal, which in its natural state must sink, is so cunningly fashioned by man that it overcomes its natural inclination to sink and is made to float. The huge weight is supported by water, men toil in the bottom of the ship 20 and 30 feet below the surface of the sea and are oblivious of any danger. The water on the outer side of the steel skin of the ship towers 20 and 30 feet above their heads, yet they sleep and eat and work in perfect safety. So long as the sea is prevented from washing over the sides of the ship or entering through a breach in the hull the vessel floats, would continue to float even were she made of lead. In other words, she is buoyant. Only when her buoyancy is destroyed does she sink. Then, before she can float again, her buoyancy must be restored.

This is the simple problem that is always confronting the sea salvage expert. How can he restore the buoyancy of the ship that meets with misfortune? Simple as is the problem, it is seldom that the answer is easy. To the salvor every wreck is a riddle. Tides and currents make the riddle more complex. The position in which the wreck is lying profoundly affects the case. And, above all, operates the unknown factor of the weather. Whatever the salvage expert hopes to do, he always adds to himself “Weather permitting!” He may be the cleverest man alive, his plans of salvage may be the most brilliant ever conceived, he may have the most expensive plant at his disposal and all the money he seeks at his command, yet he is helpless unless the weather be fair. Plans may be put into operation, work may go smoothly, everything may be within an ace of success--when the tail of a gale may blow the plans to pieces, shatter the work and rob the salvor of the success that seemed within his grasp. It has happened before many times, and it will happen many times again.

The men who get a living by trying to raise wrecks are farseeing, sparing of words, patient where patience is demanded, quick as a rapier thrust where quickness is essential, capable of toiling until they drop if it be necessary. Every contingency that it is possible to think of they consider, but the weather is something beyond their control. They pray for fine weather, and fight against foul to the best of their ability; but when the wind takes hold man and his endeavours are as nothing.

Hard as some of the salvors have worked for their successes, others have worked harder still for their failures. Often and often they have striven strenuously for weeks and months to salve a ship, only to lose her in the end. The luck of the game is indicated by a case which occurred a year or two ago. A vessel went down on the summit of a rock jutting sheer from the seabed. On all sides was water so deep that she had but to slip to be irretrievably lost. The salvors, hurrying to the scene, found her balanced most precariously on a ledge. A glance told them that, before they could make the slightest attempt to salve the ship, they would have to strive their utmost to secure her firmly in position on top of the pinnacle of rock. They routed among their gear for cables and anchors and, making the cables fast to the ship, carried out the anchors in all directions in order to tie her tightly into place.

Then they began to work against time, keeping a keen eye on the sky and praying for fine weather, knowing full well that if the weather held fair they would save the ship and that the coming of bad weather would seal her doom. Day after day they toiled like giants, struggling with huge baulks of timber, shoring up decks, strengthening bulkheads, patching breaches in the hull. The weather favoured them. Day after day it remained fine and enabled them to carry on their operations quite unhampered. They had been hard at it for nearly a month before the breeze began to freshen in rather an ominous manner. They were just beginning to anticipate rough weather when the wind luckily died away and they breathed freely once more.

They redoubled their efforts, and six weeks of intense toil saw their work completed. The last timber was bolted securely in place and the divers came out of the wreck, announcing that all was ready for pumping out on the morrow. The salvors turned in for the night well pleased with their labours, conscious that the next day would see them proceeding to port with their prize.

But the weather, which had been kind to them so long, was destined to cheat them at the very last. That night it began to blow. The seas started to rise and hammer at the ship. She began to stir uneasily and to strain at her cables. The gale increased. Under the continuous chafing, one cable suddenly snapped. The breaking of that cable gave the wreck more freedom to move under the hammer blows of the sea. The waves battered at her incessantly and one cable after another went like threads of cotton until a billow, far mightier than the rest, caught her up and swept her off the pinnacle into the depths.

Imagine the feelings of the salvors when day dawned. All their gear was gone, their labours lost when the prize was within their grasp. They steamed slowly round the spot and proceeded to port, hoping for better luck next time. That was the only thing they could do.

Men who spend their lives on salvage work are rather apt to lead the casual inquirer to imagine that it is the easiest job under the sun, whereas in reality the task is beset with difficulties and bristles with risks. But the sailormen in their matter-of-fact way forget to mention the ever-present danger. They are inured to it, just as people are habituated to living on the slopes of a volcano that may erupt and overwhelm them at any moment of the night or day. None the less the salvors never forget the risk, nor leave it out of their calculations, and for this reason fatal accidents among them are rare. They know the strength of the sea too well to attempt to take liberties with it, for they have seen it pick up great 10,000 ton ships and toss them on the rocks as though they were cockle-shells; they have seen the strength of 70,000 horses in the engines of a ship struggling in vain against the strength of the waves, and they know better than to pit their power against the power of the storm.

Thus they have a wholesome respect for wind and wave. They use the strength of the sea to further their own ends so long as the sea permits. At other times they may stand by a wreck for weeks while the sea seethes and the wind howls about the ship they seek to save. A lull in the bad weather will set them working frantically, and more than one ship now afloat owes her existence to the accumulated labour of a number of short spells of work undertaken between the gales.

The salvage man must thus be infinitely patient and possess a determination that will keep him at work when most other men would give up in despair. Above all must he be strong in hope. Without hope, no man need seek to become a salvage expert, for he would be foredoomed to failure. He must possess not only physical courage that enables him to face the dangers of his calling, but also that rarer mental courage that enables him to snatch victory out of the very jaws of defeat.

It is the men who possess this mental as well as physical courage who perform the wonderful feats of salvage that will never be forgotten, such as the recovery off Gibraltar of the steamer _Hypatia_, which the salvors brought to the surface after an infinity of trouble. No sooner was she raised than she filled and sank like a stone.

There was nothing for it but to do the work over again, which the salvors managed to do. For the second time the _Hypatia_ was brought to the surface, and once again she sank, seeming to mock the efforts of her would-be preservers. Still they were not beaten. With grim determination they made another effort, and after a great fight managed to raise the _Hypatia_ once more. All in vain! For the third time she sank.

Notwithstanding these three reverses, the salvors would not give up the fight. Again the divers went down, and their strenuous exertions ended in the _Hypatia_ seeing the light of day yet again. Not for long were the salvors allowed to rest after their labours. Down she went for the fourth time, while the sea bubbled and boiled around.

Few men would have continued a fight which appeared so hopeless. But the salvors would not admit themselves beaten. Although Fate seemed to be taunting them, they had the courage to take their task in hand for the fifth time, and this time they succeeded. Truly it can be said that no men more fully earned their reward than these salvors who triumphed after four defeats.