RESCUED FROM SUBMARINE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18019, 18 February 1922, Page 2 (Supplement)

RESCUED FROM SUBMARINE.

BOY SAVES CREW OF 40,

CRAWLS OUT OF TORPEDO TUBE.

To so common-place a thing as a sailor's mallrcss, to the bravery and spryncss of a boy of 19, and to the decent respect on the part of the crew of a tugboat for a primary rule of tho sea. the 41 men of the submarine S4B owe tho fact that they sleep in warm beds under roofs instead of on the floor of Long Island Sound, off Connecticut, poisoned by chlorine gas. And decidedly they also owo it to their own conduct.

The submarine, on a trial trip from tho yards cf the Lake Torpedo-boat Corporation af Bridgeport, dived for tho first tint? and could not get up. Somothing went wrong. Water poured in and flooded the after compartments. It filled ihe motor-room and stopped the engines, lis salts mingled with the sulphuric acid of the storage batteries, and through the hull sifted chlorine gas, that, greenishyellow devil's compound with 'ivhich tho Germans sprung tho first gas attack on the Canadians in 1914.

The men of the submarine, holding their breath while, they worked, and then retreating to breathe, sopped up tho water around tho batteries with blankets and then bailed with coffee cups, but it came in too fast. Tho stein of the submarine rested in the mud, 40ft. and later 60ft. beneath the surface of the Sound, four miles east of Penfiold Reef, about nine miles from Bridgeport.

With their little coffee cups these men bailed eight, tons—l6,ooolb.—of water by hand and threw it into the bilge, whence it was pumped out into the Sound. Still the salt water poured into the battery room. Electrician's Mate Fritz cot a piece of rubbor tubing into short lengths, risked his life in the gas-tilled chamber, and stuck one end of these rubber pipes beneath the battery tanks. And then ho and his pals got down to their knees and sucked acid from under the tanks until the water followed it, and thus the water was siphoned out and the generation of gas stopped. Torpedoes Call Help. Further, to lighten the bow, the men blew ont. what water ballast they could from the chambers of the double hull. An electric pump, the one live piece of machinery aboard, worked steadily at its hopeless task of trying to combat the whole ocean. Lights went out, and to the other trials was added darkness. Fritz fingered his way into the battery room, and in some way which he has not the words to explain rigged one of the batteries so that the bulbs in the forward compartments, to which the men were being driven, glowed again. That battery room reeked with chlorine gas. The one hope of the men lay in the position of the submarine., slanting upward from stern to stem. The boat was 240 ft. long. Now, if they could only raise the nose out of water.

They had two dummy torpedoes, and by shooting them out through the iorward tube they got rid of several thousand pounds. To make this act count for the maximum, they painted on tho sides of the torpedoes, " S4B sunk. Send Lelp." The men knew the torpedoes would float; there was just a chance someone might see them. Then they lightened ship more by dropping nearly ZOOOIk of pig lead ballast through tho air-locked sounding tube. All this corsmned about eight hours, fine S4B had submerged at 10.30 a.m.; it ,wafc now 6.30 p.m. Compartment doors bad been shut against the gas, but it was seeping through and gradually permeating aIL It is the kind of gas that sears the throat, bronchial tubes and lungs, often producing pneumonia, if EOtning worse. The men were still keeping away from it pretty well, but some pure coughing and holding their throats. From ihe inclination of the submarine

fts commander, Captain Joseph Eliot Austin of Bridgeport, who works for the Lake Corporation, and two naval officers— Lientenant-Commander Walter Stanley Haas, of Bridgeport, and Lieutenant (Francis Adams Smith, U.S. .V.—who were witnessing the seat for the Government, knew after this eight hours of toil that the prow had risen above the water. Boy Crawls Through Tube. Peter Frank Dunne, civilian employee l»f the Lake Company, 19 years old, lithe smd nervy, with a body just fitted for .wriggling through a torpedo tube, volunteered to crawl through the. formed tube, Elin. in diameter, and see what the world ontside looked like. He did so. As he stuck his inquisitive head through the month of the tube he found that a high (wind was kicking up white-caps over the |>lack sound, that the nose of the submarine was lashed with icy spray, but that it wa3 well ont of the water and his own head was about 2ft. above it. He had dragged a line with him up through the tube. He could no* crawl up the steep, slick side of the submarine fo the npreared prow, so he unhesitatingly jumped into the forbidding water and, with an end of the line in his teeth, E.wam around the vessel until he could ascend on the gentler slope of the backbone. A wave carried him Siway and another (brought him back. He thus fought the seas until he gained the submarine. Fighting upward, he found a cleat and fastened his line around it with a good sailor's hitch. Through the torpedo tube and up the line thut Peter Dunne had affixed every man of the submarine eventually climbed. At first there were only six of them lying on the " deck "; there was danger of everything being lost by (.be sinking of the bow if more got there. They had % small searchlight, and this they flashed to all points of the comtt pass, signalling the distress call, "5.0.5." In the distance they saw the lights of several ships. At least one of them—the men of the submarine could have murdered the skipper of that ship if they could have got at him —answered the call with his own lights, and then moved serenely on out of sight, toward New York.

But tho searchlight was a tiny thing on such an expanse. A bigger flare was needed. Mattresses were crowded through .the torpedo tube and hauled up to the signallers. There were only six of them. Ono by one they were set on fire. They rnade light and they warned chilled bodies. Every Man Rescued. One, two, three, four, five mattresses. No response. The sixth was lighted. It too haa almost gone the way of the rest when off to the eastward the half-frozen men saw a light, and then a searchlight turned toward them, and beard a friendly j whistle. / " Never let me hear anybody (alkirnr. about the ' screeching ' of tugs again,' pays Peter Dunne. " Say, that sound was regular music to us boys." The tug was the Socony 28, Capfain Eugene Olsen, towing a barge from New Haven to New York. It rescued every cne of the 41 men of the submarine. CapJain Olspii brought all of them to the United States Naval Hospital in Brooklyn, where three of them remained— Lieutenant Smith, the naval observer; Michael Augustus Fritz, the cliief electritrian's mate; and Peter Dunne. All three •were so painfully passed that it was thought best to keep them in the hospital a few days. Their 38 comrades, the majority of whom are employees of the' Lake Torpedo boat Corporation, returned to Bridgeport. The S4B, which is to be one of the American fleet of submersibles with a cruisang radms of 10,000 mile s and embodies many improvements developed in the war was launched at Bridgeport in February hist and christened in style bv Mrs. James T/!! nt 'i, W , 110 is the l>rinc «« Toccoomy/astof the Mohican tribe of Indians. It 8™ l< i T thsi&n * '? submergence of EOOft and ha ? a double hull for half the length amidships. Two oil-burning Diesel engines furnish propulsion on the surface and two electric motors when the m is running submerged. Captain Austin, the commander, wag in the navv durmg the war. J The cause of th« accident which nearly pgt 41 lives haa not been discovered.