Around the World Submerged (10 page)

I was for a time very pleased with the eventual solution:
Triton,
the world’s most modern and marvelous ship, would also be the only undersea craft in our Navy to be fitted with the traditional oldtime sailorman’s joy and comfort, the hammock! We installed two of them; one in the forward torpedo room, the other in the after torpedo room. There were some difficulties, however. No one aboard except myself, apparently, had ever slept in a hammock. No one had ever rigged one—no one knew, for instance, that for sleeping it must be stretched just as tightly as possible, or that a short wooden batten is generally desirable near the sleeper’s head to keep the heavy canvas from curling over his face. No one, in fact, had ever seen a hammock of the kind I was describing. Or at least, so they would have had me believe. I delved deep into my own hammock-sleeping experience during midshipman cruise days in the old battleship
Arkansas,
designed the hammocks myself, supervised their installation, and personally checked out the men when they used them the first time.

I was sure that once it was known how comfortable a hammock could be, the lucky occupants would everlastingly
bless my thoughtful kindness—and our berthing problems would be over.

It was not until later that I realized the hammocks were not getting the use I had expected. For a while, someone, anyone, climbed into them when the grapevine announced my approach, but even that custom gradually fell into disuse, and the swaying nests hung empty. Horatio Nelson and Horatio Hornblower both slept in hammocks, and so did John Paul Jones. But times have changed.

One of our more perplexing tasks was to prepare a suitable memorial to be delivered at Cadiz, the point from which Magellan departed on his successful but, for him, ill-fated circumnavigation. Having optimistically stated that
Triton
would herself design and procure a suitable plaque, I now found myself in the foundry business, all highly classified, of course, wishing mightily that I had been more reserved. Fortunately, in Tom Thamm
Triton
had an excellent and imaginative artist, and at the Submarine Base there was a superb woodcarver who, we hoped, could be prevailed upon to make the necessary wooden mold.

The second design Tom turned out was a beauty. Twenty-three inches in diameter, it depicted a globe in relief, upon which a wreath of olive branches was superimposed. Forming the bottom of the wreath was the US Submarine Force twin-dolphin insignia, and in its center a representation of Magellan’s flagship, the 120-ton
Trinidad.
Beneath the ship we placed the dates 1519-1960, representing the dates of Magellan’s trip and our own, and inside the circumference of the globe the Latin motto,
“Ave Nobilis Dux Iterum Sactum Est.”
Freely translated, this means “Hail, Noble Captain, It Is Done Again.”

I questioned Tom closely about his Latin. He had gathered it by stratagem from an acquaintance, a Latin instructor at neighboring “Conn College”—Connecticut College for Women. Tom had told the teacher he needed the correct
wording and spelling of a number of Latin phrases to settle an argument in the wardroom, and she suspected nothing. Still, in looking at the inscription, I could not shake off a feeling that something was wrong. A mental warning bell tinkled, but I ignored it.

Carving of the wooden form was entrusted to Chief Electrician’s Mate Ernest L. Benson of the Submarine Base. He had a fine reputation in New London for his carefully executed woodcarvings and already had far more orders for them than he could comfortably fill. Benson finally agreed to give our order priority without asking questions, though we could see he was burning with curiosity.

Our foray into the business of casting plaques taught us, however, that artisans cannot be hurried. Thamm, working in his spare time, took several days, the woodcarver required several more, and casting the metal was practically a trial-and-error operation. Twelve days were simply not enough, and the job was not finished when it came time for us to depart. This, therefore, became one of the items we had to leave to others for execution. The tiny Mystic Foundry was entrusted with the mold of our plaque and Captain Tom Henry, the much admired “Commodore” of Squadron 10, agreed to supervise its completion. He also promised to send it to meet us off Cadiz.

Every man and officer naturally had his own difficulties to resolve, in addition to his duties on board
Triton.
Having listed each individual’s chores, I had also prepared a private check-off sheet for myself—but being deeply involved in preparations for the cruise, the daily work which could not be neglected, and a tremendous amount of official correspondence, it usually was not until midnight that I was free to deal with my personal problems. At least twice I saw the first light of morning; and I will long remember how I cursed the income tax and Form 1040, which I was rushing to complete.

On the fifteenth of February everything had been done, and
it seemed as though our last day could be spent in relaxation. But caution, compounded by years of service and the concern that our carefully laid plans might run afoul of some unpredicted problem, dictated a sea trial. It was not a popular decision on board or in the Admiral’s office; and it must be admitted that Ingrid, just returned from California, was less than enthusiastic when she learned that I had asked to go to sea for a single day and night to test equipment, just before shoving off for so long a time.

After some argument, Admiral Daspit granted permission, and on Monday morning, the fifteenth of February,
Triton
bade a regretful farewell to Clyde Eidson, our efficient Chief Yeoman, who was scheduled for OCS and commissioned rank in the near future, and headed to sea. This trial run was a good thing, even though it did us out of a holiday. A number of small malfunctions turned up in some of the hastily installed gear, and on Tuesday morning, preceded by radioed emergency repair requests, we were back alongside the dock at Electric Boat. A swarm of specialists descended upon us to set things right.

Not everything could be put back in order, unfortunately; one piece of equipment out of commission was a special wave-motion sensor which had not been made properly watertight and had flooded as soon as we dived. When external electric equipment in a submarine floods with submergence pressure, it means a long repair. Invariably, the cable connected to it also floods, like a garden hose, all the way to its terminal inside the ship, necessitating
its
replacement as well. We could not delay for repairs to the wave-motion sensor, important though it was. All else was back in commission by 2:00
P.M
.

I went ashore for a couple of last-minute errands, grabbed a phone, luckily caught Ingrid just as the course she was auditing in Shakespeare at Connecticut College ended for the day.

“Come down and wish us bon voyage,” I told her.

Unfortunately, Captain Henry, whose steady support had
been invaluable, was ill in the naval base hospital and had to send apologies for not being able to bid us good-bye in person. Thus Commander James M. Calvert, recently skipper of the famous submarine
Skate,
Carl Shugg, General Manager of Electric Boat, and my wife were the only people to see us off.

Commander Joseph Baylor Roberts, assigned to us by the Chief of Naval Information, a Naval Reserve officer and a friend of many years, was on the dock with his camera, and insisted on photographing Ingrid’s good-bye kiss. Though we both felt that we were entitled to some privacy on the occasion, we dutifully posed for him.

Partings are sad when one is young and in love, and they are no less sad when one is older and still in love. But Ingrid is a courageous Navy wife. “Good-bye, sweetheart,” she said, as she kissed me. “Take good care of the
Triton!
”

It was sixteen minutes after 2:00
P.M
., EST when
Triton
’s last line was taken in and we backed her gently away from the dock.

She was on her way at last!

Tracing its origin to the glacial period during which our country’s outlines were formed, the Thames River in New London flows southward through a cleft between massive piles of time-worn New England granite. For tens of thousands of years the river has worn its way through the channel left by the receding ice, smoothing the rough edges of the stone and carving its channel deep amid the silt and debris which has ineffectually tried to choke it. Sometimes the river between the rocky headlands is roiled by a storm sweeping to the south, and at these times it takes on the gray colorless hue of a lowering overcast; at more quiet moments the river is blue with the reflection of the sky, as it courses past the massive stone-and-brick lighthouse at the entrance to the buoyed ship-channel.

On the sixteenth of February,
Triton
stood out in a channel whipped by a cold north wind. Low in the water, extraordinarily slender in proportions, sinisterly beautiful as only a submarine can be, her huge size dwarfed the bald domes of granite on either side. On deck, a few men busied themselves housing the capstans, stowing away mooring lines and other equipment. Upon the forward part of the long, clean silhouette jutted the angular outline of the ship’s “sail”—some twenty feet high by seventy-five feet long—which provided the support structure for periscopes, radar masts, radio antenna, and other retractable submarine gear. A number of men clustered on the forward part of the sail, which served as
Triton
’s bridge.

We were beginning the voyage submariners had been dreaming of ever since nuclear energy had made it possible. Gently, the ship clove the sea-blue water, as though loath to leave yet eager to be on her way. My pulse, had I permitted anyone to take it, might have belied the calm demeanor with which I outwardly surveyed the conning of the ship.

From my exposed position on our “flying bridge”—on the very top of the sail and unprotected by bulwarks—I had a clear view in all directions. In the wrong kind of weather this could be an unpleasant watch-keeping station, but today, with the north wind at our backs, I was not uncomfortable by the standards to which seamen are accustomed. Little, if any thought, however, was being wasted by anyone on personal comfort or discomfort. Taking a ship to sea, even through a familiar and uncomplicated channel, requires unremitting attention. I was the only person on the bridge who could be said to have any free time at all, and between checks on our navigation in the channel, I focused my binoculars on a prominent boulder at the eastern mouth of the river.

There she stood as she had said she would, alone on a granite ledge where the Thames River meets Long Island Sound. The chill February wind whipped the red scarf about her head. Feet thrust into wool-lined galoshes, one hand holding
her coat tightly around her, she waved a mittened hand at me. Well I knew that the distance was too great for Ingrid to distinguish me with the naked eye. But I waved my white uniform cap in answer.

This was the same blue-eyed girl who had married me during the flaming years of World War II, when both of us feared so desperately that life would pass us by. Many times during the war, and many more times since, she had watched my ship dip below the horizon. For sixteen years she had minded the home and the children when I was at sea, and whenever there was a mail bag from home, a letter from her was always there.

As I waved at that rapidly receding figure—she had now taken off the scarf and was holding it as a banner, the better to be seen—it suddenly came to me: “She knows! She
must
know!” After nearly sixteen years facing the unpredictable vicissitudes of Navy life together, sixteen years during which our mutual dependence had steadily deepened, the more I thought the more certain I became. I had also learned to appreciate the strength of character and depth of loyalty my Ingrid had inherited from her Swedish forebears, and I knew that if she had indeed guessed, the Navy need have no fear of her speaking out of turn.

I couldn’t wave my cap continuously, for there were many demanding duties. Every time I turned my binoculars back toward the point of land, however, the red scarf was still streaming. Several more times I waved my cap through a wide arc, in hopes she could still see it. Finally a point of land came between us, the spot of red drew out of sight, and my last tie with land was broken. In a few hours, as soon as the water was deep enough to dive
Triton
’s huge bulk, we would submerge for almost three long months.

Despite all the arguments in favor of doing it earlier, there were sound technical reasons why a submerged circumnavigation of the world was not attempted until
Triton
was built,
and the most important of these, stated simply, was the factor of dependability. Our two main power plants were completely separate and independent. No conceivable casualty in one could affect the other. Thus, while the dependability record of
Triton
’s single-reactor predecessors was unsurpassed in our Navy, a ship with two reactors would be able to complete the voyage safely even if one of them were to break down.