Part 41

“This was in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and by that time the unhappy men imprisoned within the submarine were approaching the limits of human endurance. Though no chlorine gas actually had been given off by the electric batteries, the air in the control room was so foul as to be almost unbreathable. Fresh air from the bottles, without means to expel the poisonous atmosphere of the ship, would only have increased a density which was already unbearable. Many in drugged sleep forgot their troubles, and even those few upon whose alertness hung the lives of all, had become drowsy and sluggish. Vitality was ebbing; the love of life, and with it the expectation of rescue, had passed from all. The company of _K-13_ may be divided during this period of imprisonment into sleepers and somnambulists, and it was only because trained minds retained some small part of their habitual control over exhausted bodies that the somnambulists were able to understand and to coöperate sufficiently with the salvors to bring this story to its happy conclusion.

“The long flexible tube, seven inches in diameter, which was to open up a clear passage between _K-13_ and the upper air, arrived at 4. a.m. on Wednesday morning, but it was not until four hours later that it was in place and in effective operation. To the eager salvers the delays were exasperating; there were many more delays, even more exasperating, to be suffered, before their job was finished. They had to explain to the enfeebled folk within precisely where the tube was to be fixed up and how they were themselves to complete the open passage. The tube was designed to screw, by means of an adaptor, into an ammunition hoist, and, when this was done, it needed but the removal of the retaining plate inside to put the device to immediate use.

FRESH AIR AT LAST!

“When the salvors had done their part it was for the prisoners to do the rest—to remove the inner plate as quickly as they pleased. But when it came to explaining this not very complicated operation by tapping out messages in Morse on the deck it was by no means easy to get _K-13’s_ survivors to take it in. By patient repetition that was done at last, and then the divers busied themselves with fixing up the tube. They had to measure the screw threads, so that the adaptor might be made to fit accurately and to prepare a packing of tow soaked in tallow to exclude the water. A salvage steamer is a traveling workshop and divers are skilled mechanics, so that this part of the job, though it might consume time, presented no difficulties. By eight o’clock on the Wednesday morning the tube had been screwed firmly into place, the inner plate of the hoist had been removed, and the men, who had for forty and a half hours lain buried in a steel coffin, were at length enabled to draw into their impoverished lungs air which was free from pollution. It was scarcely the fresh air of heaven, for it came out of an E-boat’s bottles, but though tinned it was a draught of infinite refreshment. The pumps of _K-13_ were at once set working and the two days’ accumulations of foul smells and gases were thankfully expelled. A pipe run down the now open tube brought blasts of high-pressure air which were allowed to expand and to blow away all festering impurities; this pipe also brought replenishment to _K-13’s_ bottles. With the power of her charged batteries and her refilled air-bottles, she was now ready to play her part in the work of salvage.

“The salvors had got through in time to save, but the margin was small. At 6 a.m., two hours before the tube was opened into the sunken submarine, the water leaking through the after-bulkhead had short-circuited the lighting cables, and _K-13_ was utter darkness. To the men imprisoned it must have seemed the darkness of the tomb. Even the strongest among them could not have borne up very much longer. They were so little capable of excitement that not a man cheered when the air-tube was opened.

LEAKS IN THE BULKHEAD

For the salvors the worst had passed, but for the prisoners the worst had yet to come. Fourteen more hours of suffering had to be endured before the rescue was completed, and they were hours more full of perils than those which had passed. The devils of the sea were not willing to yield their prey to the efforts of man. One of these perils was the old haunting threat of chlorine gas intensified. Of the others I will tell in their place. When the control room was opened up to the outer air by the tube which had been fitted the pressure within fell to the normal. It had been raised when the submarine sank by the intrusion of hundreds of tons of water into the enclosed space of the hull. But the pressure in the flooded compartments and upon the bulkhead, which alone stood between the survivors and death by drowning, remained at thirty-one pounds to the square inch. The leaks in this bulkhead at once increased and the water gushed through in greater volume. It looked as if the means which had saved the men from a slow death from suffocation would hand them over to a quick death from poison gas.

“If the salt water had reached the powerful batteries it must have been decomposed into its constituents and given off gas in deadly volumes. The expedient was adopted of pumping the incoming water into the bilge, but this could not continue indefinitely. Time was now an even more urgent factor in the rescue than it had been during the previous two days. This was fully understood by the salvors, who furiously yet with orderly precision redoubled their efforts. It was decided not to attempt the removal of the men one by one through Fairfields’s big steel tube which had been made to fit over the torpedo hatch. The method was too uncertain and, even if feasible, too slow. Instead of risking all upon this doubtful means of egress, Barttelot determined to throw all the energies of his plant and staff into raising the bows of _K-13_ above the water and cutting a hole through her double skin. The _Ranger_ was on the way and would soon arrive; what he could not do without her would become comparatively easy with her powerful assistance.

TILTING UP THE BOW

“In the afternoon she came, and Barttelot, though he remained responsible, gladly handed over the entire direction of the critical operations to Captain Young. They could not have passed into better hands. No experience in salvage in any part of the world counts beside that of Young and his _Ranger_. Sunset was approaching, and night would soon overshadow the Gareloch. But this mattered little. The _Ranger_, accustomed to work at all hours of the night and day, was equipped with arc lights which could shatter any darkness. It was easy now to communicate with _K-13_ through the tube and to make clear how she was to help herself. She was over three hundred feet long—three hundred and forty feet, to be precise—and did not need to be tilted very steeply to bring her nose and upper bow plates clear of the surface. But to be got up into a working position she must be lightened forward. This was done by blowing all the forward oil tanks. The heavily loaded stern held tight in the Gareloch mud, but the bows were free and, as the tanks were blown, they lifted rapidly. They heaved up through ten degrees, and the salvors who were watching for the movement instantly whipped steel hawsers under the fore-part of the submarine and secured the ends to bollards on tugs alongside. _K-13_ was up, but would she remain up? It seemed most unlikely, and remained most unlikely until the end.

[Illustration:

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

Captain Maurice W. Howe

_42nd Division, 167th Infantry_

In the early hours of September 22, 1918, Captain Howe with his company successfully raided the village of Haumont; causing decimating losses among the enemy and taking seventeen prisoners. Then alone he went to Haumont a second time to make sure that none of his men were left there wounded.]

“The hawsers—six-inch—were too light for the job, but none stronger were at hand. No sooner were the bows of _K-13_ up and secured than her stern began to slip backwards into the mud. Before she brought up against hard ground she had gone back thirty feet. More hawsers were whipped under her and held, but there was no security that they would continue to hold. There was no security for anything. It was a fight for life against the ruthless chances and devilries of the sea.

CUTTING A HOLE IN THE SIDE

“The supreme risk had to be taken of cutting a big hole through the outer and inner skins. If when it was cut the hawsers parted, or _K-13_ by burying her stern still more deeply escaped from their embrace, all would be over. The men remaining in the vessel, forty-nine of them, would follow into the shades their dead messmates whose bodies lay in the boiler and engine rooms. But whatever the risk the hole had to be cut, and that quickly.

“Inside the submarine, hope, which may have flickered a little when the air-tube was first opened, had given place to the old dull apathy. Food and drink had been passed down the tube, but appetite for them had vanished. They struggled mechanically, as trained British seamen always will so long as life is in them; they struggled mechanically like automata against the incoming water. It was difficult to move about upon the most urgent duties. The wet and slippery floor of the control room lay now on a long upward slant upon which the half-dazed seamen stumbled and fell. There was no lack of courage; no one grumbled or lamented; but frail human bodies have their limits of endurance, and those limits had been reached.

“Yet the men worked on and did their utmost to carry out the directions of those who led them. The place where the hole was about to be cut lay far towards the bows, and to reach it from within the fore bulkhead must be opened. But when it was sought to unclose the bulkhead which divided the control room from the foc’sle, it was found that the door had jammed and would not slide back. For hours this miserable shut door stood between these men and freedom. Somehow at last it was got open, but no one has clearly told me how. It was not until the survivors of _K-13_ had for a long time been above water that they became voluble—and untrustworthy. At the moment of rescue, or shortly afterwards, they remembered as little as one on awakening in the morning remembers the details of a dream. Yet they remembered that door, how it stood there obdurate for hours and at last yielded. Though how it had stuck or why it yielded they could not say.

“A DEVIL OF A LOT OF WATER”

“Meanwhile the hole in the bows was being cut, and the cutting of this holes supplies me with one pleasing bit of comedy with which to round off this rather grim story. Any acetylene plant makes butter of steel plates, and it was very rapid work to draw the spouting white flame, fed from the _Ranger’s_ plant, round a rough circle marked out on _K-13’s_ bows. The outer skin was quickly cut through. Within lay water filling up the space honeycombed with cross ties between the inner and outer skins. Before the inner hole could be cut, this water must be pumped out. The place selected for the hole could not be reached by the steam salvage pumps, so the men working upon the submarine’s hull were compelled to fit gear for pumping the water out by hand. They knew that it was no more than five feet deep, so they bent their backs to it cheerfully. But they were less cheerful when they found that their efforts produced no appreciable result. ‘There must be a devil of a lot of water between these skins,’ said they, and bent to the task once more. Shift followed shift, and the pumping went on. It was a tiresome, backwearying business, but precious lives were at stake, and they would get that water down and the inner hole cut if they died of disgust in the doing of it. But the water showed no sign of going down. How long this pumping went on I cannot say with precision. Admittedly it was hours, probably as many hours as it took to pry open that obtrusive bulkhead door, for some of the survivors of _K-13_ had got through their job and arrived under the pumpers’ feet while they were still pumping.

“It then occurred to the slaves of the hand-pump to seek after enlightenment from those whom they were pumping to save. ‘How long is it going to take,’ asked they, ‘to get rid of this damned water between the skins?’ They were asked by one of Fairfields’s experts how long they had been pumping. The reply was ‘Hours.’ ‘Have you closed the flap valves?’ dryly asked the man of Fairfields. They hadn’t; the water was coming in just as fast as they pumped it out; they had been trying with hand-gear to pump out the ocean!

SAVED AFTER 54½ HOURS

“After this little discovery progress became rapid. The valves, which admitted water between the skins, were closed and it did not take long then to get through. A hole was cut by acetylene flame in the inner skin and the way out was opened at last. It was ten o’clock on Wednesday evening, January 31, fifty-four and a half hours after _K-13_ had sunk, that her forty-nine survivors emerged into the blazing arc lights which shone from the _Ranger’s_ masts. They could not speak; many of them could scarcely walk. One by one they were helped by kindly hands along a gangway to a tug and thence to the shore. They stumbled ashore, unconscious of the cheers which greeted them, gazing without recognition upon the friends who welcomed them. And so to Shandon, where they were put straight into hot baths and lifted thence into bed. For they were dumb and perished with cold. It is always cold in a deep-diving submarine even in high summer; in the bowels of _K-13_, lying seventy feet deep in the Northern mid-winter, the cold, though little noticed at the time, had been paralyzing. Forty hours of bad and poisonous air, fifty-four hours of bitter cold, had brought the bright flame of these men’s life down to a poor flicker. But recovery was rapid, and not one of the survivors disappointed by dying those who had saved him.

“Twenty hours after the last man had been plucked out of _K-13_ the hawsers which held her up parted, and she sank to the bottom of the Gareloch.

“The world did not ring with news of the story which I have told, for the censor forbade. But His Majesty, who was a sailor before he was a King and remains first and always a sailor, sent to Barttelot a telegram of which the purport, rendered in the language of the naval signal book, ran ‘Maneuver Well Executed.’”

I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH

_By_

Alan Seeger

I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air— I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath— It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ’twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear.... But I’ve a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.

From _Poems_. Copyrighted 1916 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. By permission of the Publishers.

[Illustration: A Poster Used for the Marine Recruiting Campaign]

TRICKING THE TURK

Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook’s Perilous Adventure to Surprise and Blow Up a Warship at the Dardanelles

It hardly need surprise any one that each of a multiplicity of deeds and feats of daring and heroic adventure should, by different writers, correspondents, or official observers, be described as the most notable, the most brilliant, or the most courageous undertaking or achievement of the war. The simple fact is that the unparalleled war called for the souls and spirit and mental qualities of men as never did war before, and so many things were done that amounted to triumphs over the impossible, each one of which taken by itself seemed to overtop all others, that it would require a concourse of Solomons to determine which was the supreme excellence. They were all striking enough to command the superlatives of description. And some of these great accomplishments need but a few lines for their recital. It is not the volume of words that determines the value.

One of these briefly recorded deeds was that of Lieutenant-Commander Norman D. Holbrook, of the British submarine _B-11_, which “all his brother officers concur in regarding as one of the finest individual feats performed during the war.”

In the Dardanelles the old Turkish battleship _Messudiyeh_ lay in guard of the mine fields, and, acting on his own initiative, Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook set out to sink the old ship by torpedoing her at her anchorage where she idled under the protecting guns of the land forts. It was, from the viewpoint of the conservative minded, a mad enterprise. Even under the most favorable conditions the underwater navigation of the Dardanelles is most perilous, beset with forbidding difficulties, so swift are the currents that never cease racing through the straits, producing swift whirlpools and strong eddies as they strike projections. But when to these natural obstructions and dangers are added five distinct rows of mines it would seem that running the Dardanelles in a submarine would prove a feat quite impossible of accomplishment. That is what many said dissuasively; but Lieutenant Holbrook is apparently one of those who hold the opinion that nothing conceivable is impossible. He set out with Lieutenant Sydney Thornton Winn, his second in command, and his regular crew. Cautiously, slowly the _B-11_ stole along toward its objective, fairly crawling to avoid the rows of mines and beat the swirling currents. Arrived clear of the mines, but uncertain of the exact location of the _Messudiyeh_, Lieutenant Holbrook deliberately came to the surface in the bay, took an informing survey, submerged again and a little while later rose in perfect position for a shot and sent a torpedo crashing into the side of the astonished old warship that immediately proceeded about the business of sinking to the bottom of the sea.

A COMPASSLESS RETURN

But the shot that settled the _Messudiyeh_ aroused the forts and started the torpedo boats, and the _B-11_ became the target of the guns. She promptly sought refuge by a dive and had to lie submerged for several hours to elude her hunters. The object of the hazardous excursion accomplished, there was the problem of getting back, which was now gravely complicated by the fact that the compass of _B-11_ went wrong in the commotion and was not dependable. The Lieutenant had to find his way out without it. But he did it; passing again the five rows of mines, escaping the swirl of the currents that seemed rushing to slam the submarine against the rocks, returning to station safely and without casualty or mishap.

That was Dec. 14 and Dec. 26 the London _Gazette_ published the announcement that the King had approved the grant of the Victoria Cross to Lieutenant Holbrook, and that Lieutenant Winn had been made a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order. A writer at that time said:

“That the torpedoed battleship was guarding the mine field adds a touch of comedy to the proceedings that must have been singularly gratifying to Lieutenant Holbrook and his gallant companions who crept along the sea floor with him that eventful day.”

CANADIANS

_By_

W. H. Ogilvie

With arrows on their quarters and with numbers on their hoofs, With the trampling sound of twenty that re-echoes in the roofs, Low of crest and dull of coat, wan and wild of eye, Through our English village the Canadians go by.

Shying at a passing cart, swerving from a car, Tossing up an anxious head to flaunt a snowy star, Racking at a Yankee gait, reaching at the rein, Twenty raw Canadians are tasting life again!

Hollow-necked and hollow-flanked, lean of rib and hip, Strained and sick and weary with the wallow of the ship, Glad to smell the turf again, hear the robin’s call, Tread again the country road they lost at Montreal!

Fate may bring them dule and woe; better steeds than they Sleep beside the English guns a hundred leagues away; But till war hath ned of them, lightly lie their reins, Softly fall the feet of them along the English lanes.

Author and _Country Life_.

FIRST OF ITS KIND

Eye-witness Account of a Duel at Sea between Great Steamers Built for Passenger Traffic

Early in the war the Cunard trans-Atlantic steamer _Carmania_ was converted into an auxiliary cruiser. Painted black from stem to stern (that was before the art of “camouflage” was introduced), and mounted with eight 4.7 guns, she left Liverpool for a reconnoitering cruise in the South Atlantic. Between 600 and 700 miles east of the coast of Brazil there is a small island of rock known as Trinidad (not to be confused with the West Indian Island of that name). The _Carmania_ came in sight of this island one morning toward the end of September and discovered three steamers in the vicinity. As soon as these steamers caught sight of the piratical looking _Carmania_ they moved about uncertainly for a time and then made off. But when it was apparent that the black intruder was alone, the largest of the three steamers turned back. This ship proved to be the _Cap Trafalgar_, a magnificent steamer, the chief of the Hamburg-South American Line, built for the special purpose of successful competition with the British Royal Mail in securing the South American passenger traffic and shipping trade. She too was equipped as an auxiliary cruiser, with eight 4.1 guns, up to date, their newness offsetting the extra caliber of the _Carmania’s_ older guns.

The tonnage of the _Carmania_ was 19,524, that of the _Cap Trafalgar_, 18,710. Splendid targets, both “so colossal,” said a writer, “as to be beyond the possibility of a failure to hit with any gun-layer.” A well-matched pair—ocean-going palaces, taken from their peaceful pursuits, transformed into war machines, neither having any appreciable advantage over the other as a belligerent, and now ranged against each other for a decisive duel. There was a fair field, too, for the two steamers seen with the _Cap Trafalgar_ continued their retreat and disappeared across the horizon, though one returned later.