CHAPTER XII
The resources of the salvage experts in fighting for the life of a ship are amazing. They will cheerfully run the gravest risks, do the most extraordinary things to get her into port. But that they, whose avowed aim in life is to save ships, should deliberately sink them, savours of something akin to madness. Yet occasions arise when prompt decisions have to be made, when the salvage officer is literally between the devil and the deep sea. An outbreak of fire aboard a ship places him in this quandary. Damage to a ship by water can be remedied, but fire, once it gets a hold, consumes ship and cargo. Of two evils, the salvage man chooses the lesser, and if there is no other way of combating the fire he will calmly sink the ship as a preliminary to saving her.
[Illustration: A GIANT OIL TANKER WHICH BLAZED FOR DAYS, BLOTTING OUT THE HEAVENS WITH DENSE CLOUDS OF SMOKE. THE SALVAGE MEN WERE EVENTUALLY COMPELLED TO SINK HER TO PUT OUT THE FIRE]
More than once during the war British salvage officers had hot times with burning ships, and one of their most thrilling adventures sprang from a collision between two oil tankers called the _War Knight_ and the _O. B. Jennings_. A big convoy of ships was proceeding along the English Channel in the early hours of March 24, 1918. It was pitch dark, and the ships with their attendant destroyers were steaming at full speed without lights in order to dodge the attentions of German submarines. Too late the officers on the _War Knight_ saw a dark shape appear immediately in their course. A moment afterwards came a terrific impact. The bow of the _War Knight_ cut into the side of the _O. B. Jennings_, bursting one of the mighty tanks full of naphtha. It flashed into one gigantic flame which instantly blotted out most of the crew of the _War Knight_, and in a minute or two a Niagara of naphtha from the fractured tank was setting the whole sea ablaze. The one or two men still alive on the flaming _War Knight_ frantically hurled themselves overboard, to meet a terrible end in the fiery sea. It was an awful sight.
The fire leaped to the skies, while the men of the _O. B. Jennings_, in that moment’s respite before the blazing naphtha floated round to the other side of their ship, rushed to their boats and got away. But Captain Nordstrom and his officers stuck to their ship, though she was belching flames and every moment her other tanks threatened to explode and blow her sky high. Then a British destroyer speeded into the full glare of the light, and one by one the little band of heroes jumped to safety. The captain, leaping last, slipped between the two vessels to what seemed certain death, and for a space it seemed that he, too, was to lose his life, but the prompt measures of the British sailors eventually led to his rescue.
By now the two ships were blazing like funeral pyres in a sea of flames. Great billows of smoke rolled from the stricken tankers in the dawn, blotting out the heavens, looking almost solid enough to stand on. With incredible pluck a naval officer, watching his opportunity, plunged into the inferno aboard the _War Knight_ and made fast a mighty steel towing hawser. Jumping back to his ship, he took in tow the flaming tanker which had now drifted right into one of our minefields. It was a gallant piece of work. British mines were all around him, waiting to blow him to pieces, but regardless of danger he kept his course. Once a big explosion shook the stricken vessel as she struck a mine. Luckily, the ship towing her escaped, and the salvage officer, seeing at last that it was not possible to prevent the tanker from burning out, decided to sink her by gunfire on a sandy bottom where there was at least the prospect of salving her later on. Never again, however, did the _War Knight_ sail the seas. She proved a total loss.
[Illustration: A STRIKING PHOTOGRAPH, TAKEN FROM THE AIR, OF THE CAMOUFLAGED TROOPSHIP ONWARD LYING ON HER SIDE BY FOLKESTONE QUAY AFTER SHE HAD BEEN SCUTTLED TO PUT OUT A FIRE. THE SALVAGE SHIP IS ANCHORED JUST OFF THE ENDS OF HER FUNNELS, WHILE THE RAILWAY LINES ON THE QUAY ARE SEEN IN THE FOREGROUND, THE UPRIGHT PILES OF THE QUAY ITSELF HAVING THE APPEARANCE OF THE SLEEPERS OF A RAILWAY TRACK]
The _O. B. Jennings_ was also taken in tow and brought to Sandown Bay in safety. Day after day the fire continued to rage in her, vast clouds of smoke continued to foul the heavens. Nothing could quench the flames, and at the end of ten days the Admiralty salvage officer gave instructions for a torpedo boat to shell the tanker until she sank.
[Illustration: THE ONWARD WITH HER FUNNELS CUT OFF AND DECK HOUSES REMOVED. NOTE ONE OF HER PROPELLERS JUST SHOWING ABOVE THE WATER AND ALSO THE LIFTING CRAFT BETWEEN HER AND THE SALVAGE STEAMER]
It was a desperate remedy, but it proved a brilliant solution of the puzzling problem. As she went down, the sea just overwhelmed the fire and allowed the salvage men to tackle the wreck. Divers tapped the undamaged tanks of the ship, pumps were connected up and 8000 tons of oil taken from the sunken vessel. Then the places where the shells had pierced the hull were repaired and the _O. B. Jennings_ was pumped out and floated into dock.
A patch was put on her wound, and she set out for the United States; but, as ill-luck would have it, she was caught by another German submarine less than 100 miles from New York and sent to the bottom for good, so all the efforts of the British salvage men were wasted in the end. That collision cost Great Britain just £1,000,000.
Another outstanding case where the ship was deliberately scuttled in order to put out a fire was that of the troopship _Onward_, which carried many thousands of troops to France. She was lying about midnight at the quay at Folkestone when flames suddenly burst from her, owing, it is thought, to a thermit bomb secreted by a spy. She blazed up furiously, threatening destruction to the whole quay and endangering our communications with France. The destruction of the quay at that time would have been a disaster compared with which the loss of the steamer was as nothing, so quickly the decision was made to sink the _Onward_ by opening her sea-cocks. This was done, and the fire went out in a venomous hiss as the sea swept in.
Unluckily, in sinking, the ship turned over on her side, and before she could be raised she had to be set upright. As she lay, she was preventing a much-wanted berth of the quay from being used, so the Salvage Section was given a month to get her out of the way.
Masts, funnels and various cabins were cut off the upright deck to clear the vessel of all her top hamper. Then the salvors, toiling night and day, built enormously strong tripods out of huge baulks of timber on the quay. By the time these were finished, lifting vessels were brought on the spot and moored close to the overturned ship. Cables were taken from the lifting vessels down under the keel of the ship and attached to the visible upper side of the hull, so the lifting craft, in straining upward, would tend to pull her over. Other cables were made fast to the deck and carried across the tops of the tripods on the quay.
[Illustration: FIVE RAILWAY ENGINES HAULING THE OVERTURNED TROOPSHIP UPRIGHT. THIS EXTRAORDINARY TUG OF WAR BETWEEN A WRECK AND RAILWAY LOCOMOTIVES IS UNIQUE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD]
Then came the touch of genius on the part of the Director of Salvage which makes the case unique. Five powerful railway locomotives steamed on to the quay and came to a stop by the sunken ship. The ends of the cables were made fast to the locomotives, and there followed one of the strangest tugs of war in the world between railway engines and a sunken ship. The five railway engines began to pull, and they pulled and hauled and strained away until they dragged the _Onward_ upright. Pumping out soon followed, and within a month the scuttled troopship was raised and in dry dock. It was a difficult and novel feat, admirably performed.
[Illustration: PUMPING OUT THE SUNKEN TROOPSHIP IN ORDER TO RAISE HER AFTER SHE HAD BEEN PULLED UPRIGHT BY THE RAILWAY ENGINES]
It was by no means the first overturned ship that Commodore Sir Frederick Young had dealt with, for some years ago he righted and raised H.M.S. _Gladiator_ after the _St. Paul_, of the American Line, had crashed into her during a blinding snowstorm on April 25, 1908, and sunk her in the Solent. The British Admiralty called in the assistance of the Liverpool Salvage Association, who sent Captain F. W. Young, as he was in those days, to deal with the case.
Up to that time it was as gigantic a task as any one had ever undertaken. There the cruiser lay on her side, 6000 tons of dead weight, on the sandy bed of the Solent, a fifty-foot hole ripped in her hull, several of her boiler rooms exposed to the sea, her grey plates just showing above the water.
The salvage expert was not a bit dismayed. He began to lighten the ship in every possible way. Her guns were taken out and salved. Then uncouth divers got busy with pneumatic chisels and cut off the funnels and ventilators and other deck fittings. Every hole in the deck was covered with wood and made watertight. Only the gash in her side, where the thick armour plates had folded down like tinfoil, was left open, and this in turn was dealt with by the divers, who carefully blasted away the ragged plates to prevent them from impeding the righting of the ship.
Seven enormous pontoons, each 50 feet long, were made and lashed to the wreck. Two strong tripods were built up from the side of the hull, so that cables attached to the ends of the masts could be carried over them and hauled on by a couple of tugs when the time came to right the ship. The cables from the masts ran straight up in the air to the tops of the tripods, and when tugs began pulling, the tendency was to drag the ship over into an upright position. Inch by inch the _Gladiator_ was turned after a terrific struggle, helped by 280 tons of iron which the salvors piled on the keel to press it down while the tugs were hauling up. The fight was severe, and even when she was righted her upper deck was still several feet under water, so the salvors determined to cover it with a huge coffer-dam built of strong planks. This coffer-dam looked like a great deck-house built up from the sides of the ship, and as it was made watertight and pumped out, it helped to pull the vessel to the surface.
[Illustration:
_By courtesy of the Merritt & Chapman Wrecking Company_
A VERY STRIKING VIEW OF THE OVERTURNED LINER ST. PAUL, WHICH PROVIDED SOME DIFFICULT PROBLEMS FOR THE AMERICAN SALVAGE EXPERTS]
Five months of strenuous work saw the pumps conquering the sea. The cruiser rose sluggishly, the tugs caught hold of her, and nightfall saw the little procession creeping into Portsmouth harbour. The cost of raising the wrecked cruiser was £50,500, and ultimately the Admiralty sold her to the shipbreakers for £15,125.
[Illustration:
_By courtesy of the Merritt & Chapman Wrecking Company_
TEN YEARS TO THE VERY DAY AFTER THE LINER ST. PAUL SANK H.M.S. GLADIATOR IN THE SOLENT, SHE HERSELF TURNED OVER AND SANK AT HER QUAY IN NEW YORK. SAILORS MAY BE SEEN MAKING A PROMENADE OF HER HULL THE NEXT DAY]
The end of the _Gladiator_ was the beginning of a dramatic sequel, a sequel so remarkable that it borders almost on the uncanny, raising once more the question whether there is anything in those legends of ghostly ships, like the _Flying Dutchman_, flitting about the seas until they are avenged or their long quest is over. For year after year the _St. Paul_ sped along the sea lanes between America and England, thrusting through fog and shine and storm. Then the Great War demanded her conversion into a troopship, and early in the spring of 1918 the work was completed.
On April 25, 1918, ten years to the very day that she sank the _Gladiator_, the tugs were manœuvring her beside her quay in New York when she slowly began to heel over. Men gazed on her with amazement as she heeled more and more. Her masts touched the quay and crumpled like twigs, and as they smashed she went down on her side, even as the _Gladiator_ had gone down in the Solent. In a short time 2000 tons of liquid mud gushed through her open portholes, which had now taken the place of her keel, and the salvage experts of the Merritt and Chapman Wrecking Company found her settled comfortably in a dozen feet of mud between the two quays. Why she sank is still a mystery.
Mr. R. E. Chapman, the salvage engineer, had a most difficult problem to tackle. He had to grapple with a dead weight of 13,000 tons in a space so circumscribed that there was hardly room for the salvage craft to move. He did not worry. He set his squads of divers to work cutting away funnels and all the tackle from the top deck, as was done to the _Gladiator_, and when they had finished he sent them into the bowels of the ship in pairs in order to close all the open portholes that were buried many feet in the mud and over 50 feet below the surface of the harbour. It was inky black down below; they had no lights, because lights would not have penetrated the gloom, so they relied on their fingers instead of their eyes, and by using powerful hose to wash away the mud they managed to close over 500 openings in the ship.
One particularly clever piece of work was the making of a steel plate to fit over an opening around which were seventeen bolt holes. To get the bolt holes in the plate directly opposite the bolt holes in the ship seems almost an impossibility, but the diver solved the problem by taking down a sheet of lead which he hammered all round the opening until he had made a pattern with every bolt hole exactly in its place. From this pattern the steel plate was made, and it fitted perfectly!
Bulkheads to a ship afloat are an undisguised blessing, but the salvors found them a decided drawback on the sunken _St. Paul_. The bulkheads effectually stopped the flow of water from one end of the ship to the other, and before pumping could start it was imperative that the water should flow freely to the pumps throughout the whole length of the ship. It meant breaking through the bulkheads. The divers blasted through one or two with explosives, but the damage was such that the salvors decided to cut holes through the remainder with the electric torch.
Among the modern miracles that are little understood may be ranked that of creating a flame hot enough to melt metal immersed deep in the sea. Plunge a lighted match into water and the flame goes out; sink a blazing ship in the sea and the fire is conquered; yet the divers working on the _St. Paul_ not only made a flame burn under the sea, but they also melted and cut holes through strong steel plates.
This marvel was worked by combining electricity and gas. The end of the torch was shaped like a cup, and the gas, driven at a high pressure through the pipe from the surface, reduced all the water within this cup to steam. Set in the centre of the cup was the electric terminal, and by holding it close to the metal plate to be cut an electric arc was formed with the terrific temperature of 6700 degrees! Under it the metal flowed like wax, and the divers were able to cut a dozen round drainage holes through the bulkheads. So blinding was the glare from the torch that even the muddy water was insufficient to stop it, and the divers were compelled to fit masks over their helmets in order to protect their eyes.
Meantime the men had been busy outside the ship, and there arose a long line of twenty-one legs, built of steel girders, all along the overturned hull. Shaped like the letter “A,” 30 feet high, they presented a remarkable spectacle, and to gaze under their whole length was like staring at the under-framing of some mighty bridge.
Dredging a deep trench at the bottom of the next quay, the salvors sank twenty-one giant blocks of concrete, burying them with 15 feet of clay to make them immovable, and from these blocks they carried strong steel cables over the tops of the legs, and back to twenty-one steam winches set on the quay. When the time was ripe all the winches started to haul on the great legs, which began to lever the liner over. Powerful pontoons and wonderful floating derricks lent their aid, and after a ding-dong struggle lasting a week the liner came over sufficiently for the salvors to put in hand the final phase of the operations. Just as the _Gladiator_ was floated at last by building a large coffer-dam over the deck, so the _St. Paul_ was encased in a coffer-dam from end to end. Came a day when the pumps were set going, and the liner floated once more.
[Illustration:
_By courtesy of the Merritt & Chapman Wrecking Company_
THE WONDERFUL MAZE OF STEEL LEVERS OR LEGS, SHAPED LIKE THE LETTER “A,” 30 FEET HIGH, ERECTED ON THE OVERTURNED HULL OF THE LINER. BY HAULING ON THESE LEGS WITH STEEL CABLES THE SALVORS MANAGED TO DRAG THE ST. PAUL UPRIGHT]
[Illustration:
_By courtesy of the Merritt & Chapman Wrecking Company_
AN EXCELLENT VIEW OF THE ST. PAUL AFTER SHE WAS RAISED, SURROUNDED BY THE MAMMOTH FLOATING DERRICKS WHICH PLAYED SO IMPORTANT A PART IN THE SALVAGE OPERATIONS]
Salvage men are used to so much that they will tackle almost anything; but even salvage men would not tackle the 200 tons of decayed meat in one of the refrigerators of the liner. So horrible was the stench that they positively refused to go anywhere near. Money would not tempt them to the task. Eventually the trouble was overcome by a diver, who went into the refrigerating chamber fully equipped and was thus able to remove the carcasses without suffering from the offensive smell. It was a happy way out of the difficulty.
While the experts will dwell upon the brilliant feat performed by the salvors in righting and raising the _St. Paul_, the average person will think of the strangeness of the case. That the liner should sink without cause on the tenth anniversary of the day that she sank the warship, that she should overturn like the warship, that pontoons, coffer-dams and legs erected on the hull should play so important a part in both cases, are all links in a chain of remarkable coincidences, the final link of which is provided by the fact that the salvage operations on liner and warship each took five months to complete. These are the incidents which make the case of the _St. Paul_ so noteworthy.
The blizzard which caused the collision between the _St. Paul_ and the _Gladiator_ cost Great Britain a considerable sum, but not so much as the fog which led to the wreck of H.M.S. _Montagu_ on the Shutter Rock at Lundy Island. The British Admiralty spared no effort or expense to get the battleship off, but after spending £85,000 in salvage work the navy had to confess itself beaten. So the proud battleship which cost over £1,000,000 was sold for the trifling sum of £4250 and was broken up for the sake of the metal she contained.
But for the genius of Commodore Young, the dreadnought _Britannia_ might have met with a similar fate. Returning from a sweep of the North Sea during the war to her anchorage in the Firth of Forth, she was thrown by a heavy squall hard on the rocky island of Inchkeith. Tugs and torpedo boats failed to move her, and when Commodore Young came on the spot he found the rocks had not only pierced her bottom, but had also fractured her double bottom. Hopeless though her position seemed to others, the Director of Salvage considered it possible to refloat her.
All her stores, ammunition and coals were hauled out to lighten her. Still she sat tight, held firmly in the grip of the rocks. So a poultice of cement was fixed over the fractured plates in the second bottom to enable the engine-room to be pumped out, after which were made many connections leading into the flooded bottom. The air-pumps were linked up and set going, and as the air was driven into the flooded bottom it formed a belt which increased in depth until it expelled all the water through the holes made by the rocks.
Directly the salvors felt the battleship stir, they towed her off the rocks into dry dock, where the damage was quickly repaired. Duty called her later to the Mediterranean, where she was caught by a German torpedo and this time sent to the bottom for good.