Around the World Submerged (5 page)

Every man in the ship was anxious to be free of the building yard when the construction work and test program were finally
finished.
Triton
’s hatches were then shut, the gangways connecting our ship to the docks were removed, and we warped her bodily out into the slip between our dock and the next. In this position we spent the next four days, secured tightly by seven heavy cables to the docks on either side, yet to all intents and purposes at sea.

We called this long drill period a “fast cruise,” and it deserved its name in more ways than one. We were fast to the dock, but the series of drills that were performed during those ninety-six hours were also fast—and very serious. Our day started at about 6:00
A.M
. and ended roughly at 0200 the following morning. We stood watches around the clock as though actually under way—and an inherent submarine advantage immediately became apparent. The only time we consciously realized that we were still alongside the dock was when we held periscope drill.

I planned one of these drills to coincide with the moment the
Patrick Henry,
second of our Polaris-type submarines, slid down the ways into the Thames River. Her skipper, Commander (now Captain) H. E. Shear, USN, had been executive officer in
Trigger
II years ago, and this moment, when his great new ship was launched, was one I wanted to share with him.
Patrick Henry
hit the water two hundred yards forward of our bow, and I watched it all through the periscope.

The “fast cruise” over, a day to catch our breath and to load a few provisions aboard, and then the day of
Triton
’s first under-way test, scheduled for Sunday, the twenty-sixth of September, 1959, was at hand.

Both Electric Boat Division and the Office of the Chief of Information, Navy Department, were anxious to get photographs. Someone, somewhere, had apparently decided that a blimp might be a better platform for photographs than the helicopters and airplanes usually used. I paid no attention; this was someone else’s affair. My job was to run the ship, and if proper authority wanted a blimp to join
Triton
at sea and photograph
us as we put our ship through her paces, that was all right with me. But it was at this point and over this issue, at about eleven o’clock the night before we were to get under way, that it seemed for a time the trials would be delayed.

It had been a long, hard day, starting about 0500 when I had been called from my bunk in
Triton.
We had attempted to cover so much territory with our drills during the “fast cruise” that no one had had adequate sleep. Completing the “cruise” and making preparation for the next day’s excursion, we had been fighting our way through detail on detail. Hundreds of problems, apparently, still remained to be taken care of. I finally got home about 10:00
P.M
., and was slowly unwinding before getting a restful sleep in anticipation of the morrow’s crucial trials. We were scheduled to get under way at 0630, which meant no more than six hours sleep; so my reaction to the telephone call that night was not a happy one.

On the other end of the wire an instantly recognized, irate voice demanded to know why I was having a blimp join Sunday’s operation. Vainly I protested that I knew nothing about the blimp, that my only interest was in carrying out the tests successfully. Admiral Rickover held that the blimp might crash at sea and that in this case we would waste valuable time fishing half-drowned sailors out of the water instead of carrying out the necessary trials. My arguments, that the safety record of the Navy’s lighter-than-air arm was better than that of aircraft, got nowhere. Although I wasn’t even sure who had ordered it, the discussion, if such it might be called, ended with my promise to cancel operations for the blimp—somehow.

Several phone calls later, this was successfully accomplished; no one seemed upset at the sudden change, except me—and possibly the people who had already journeyed to Lakehurst to board the airship. But the tension of the days and weeks just past suddenly gripped me. The last-minute “flap” over, I tossed and turned in my bed for hours, unable to sleep, unable to quiet my whirling brain, thinking out every detail,
previewing every move I was to make with
Triton
in the morning.

A few months later, the very blimp that had been assigned to photograph us crashed at sea while searching for a lost sailboat, losing seventeen out of a crew of twenty.

Sunday morning, shortly before six, I arrived at the dock where
Triton
lay moored, bow pointing to sea. Dawn was showing to the east and a dull haze hung over the Electric Boat docks.

The special observers going to sea with us on this first day were already coming aboard. All was in readiness; I directed that lines to the dock be singled up and that a crane be hooked on to the remaining gangway to lift it off as soon as the last passengers were aboard. Finally, only Admiral Rickover, due to arrive at 6:30
A.M
., was missing.

At precisely 6:30
A.M
., accompanied by Carl Shugg, General Manager of Electric Boat Division, and Captain A. C. Smith, USN, Supervisor of Shipbuilding, the Admiral appeared at the head of the dock and marched rapidly toward us. Rickover, per his usual custom, was in civilian clothes and hatless.

Saluting, I said, “We are ready to get under way, sir!” I followed him up the gangway, gave the signal to the crane, and mounted to the bridge.

The Officer of the Deck was Lieutenant Robert Brodie, a tall, slender carbon copy of the Admiral Brodie I had met a few weeks earlier. He saluted me and formally reported, “Captain, the ship is ready to get under way in all respects.”

“Very well,” I responded, “I’ll take her. Stand by to relay orders for me.”

I stood on the bridge step alongside the rail. From this vantage point, I could see the entire forecastle and part of our afterdeck. Two more steps up brought me to the upper level of the bridge, the so-called “flying bridge” from which the entire length of the ship could be seen. There was no protection on this upper level, and the morning fog clung to my heavy woolens
as I took a long look forward and aft. All was in readiness.

“Stand by to answer bells,” I called to Brodie on the bridge below me. He relayed the order via the bridge announcing system to the maneuvering room spaces. In a moment the bridge speaker squawked: “Bridge—maneuvering. Ready to answer all bells!”

I leaned forward. “Take in lines two, three, and four!” Then, “Slack one and five port, heave in one and five starboard.”

Triton
slowly and steadily moved away from her dock. Moored stern-to in the slip for torpedo-tube tests, she had only to go ahead and angle right to clear some pilings which were dead ahead.

The moment of decisive test was at hand. Rudder, engines, and propellers had been thoroughly tested. We knew the turbines would work; we knew that everything would work. Yet this was the first time we were to try it. I felt a thrill of anticipation as I gave the next few commands.

“Rudder amidships!” I ordered. “All ahead one-third!”

I turned aft. In a moment, I could see the disturbed water turned up by the two propellers as they rotated slowly in response to my order. Both were moving in the right direction. Water was being pushed aft.

“Take in all lines!”

This was the climactic command, intentionally given late in order to retain our hold on the dock until the last possible moment. I heaved an involuntary sigh as our willing deck hands heaved the nylon cables swiftly aboard.
Triton
gathered way, moving slowly out of the slip where she had lain for so many months.

“Right ten degrees rudder!” I ordered. When you use rudder on a ship, you swing your stern away from the direction you wish to head. Too much rudder would send our port propeller crashing into the dock, but we had to come right because dead ahead were pilings indicating shallow water.

My initial estimate had been approximately right, I saw with pleasure, and the ship was answering her helm like the lady we hoped she was. As a matter of fact, she was coming around somewhat more rapidly than necessary.

“Ease the rudder to five right,” I ordered.

Conning her carefully, we eased
Triton
out into the stream and pointed her fair down the Thames River. Once clear, I gave the order “all ahead two-thirds,” and our great ship increased speed as she progressed down the river into Long Island Sound.

It was just after daybreak as we passed New London Light at the mouth of the river, and I beckoned to Floyd W. Honeysette, who had the quartermaster watch on the bridge. “Keep a sharp lookout to starboard on the first white house on the point,” I told him. “Let me know if they flash a light or make a signal.”

In a few moments, Honeysette reported that there was no light, but that someone leaning out of a second-story window was waving a red cloth. I directed him to return the compliment by flashing the ship’s searchlight, and this is how Dr. and Mrs. Tage M. Nielsen of New London, friends of many years, became the first persons with whom
Triton
exchanged signals. Later, I learned the red fabric was a new nylon petticoat belonging to Claudia Nielsen, and that she had made a special reveille in our honor.

There is something about going to sea for the first time in a ship on which you have labored long and hard that is like no other experience.
Triton
was already quick with life, but when we got her past Race Rock and rang for flank speed for the first time, our spirits soared with her tremendous response.

Trigger
had been a good ship, outstandingly effective in her business, and
Tirante
a ruthlessly efficient one, with spirit and stamina besides.
Piper’s
qualities had remained largely unknown because she had had no chance to win her spurs in combat, but
Amberjack
had originality and dash.
Trigger
II,
the first of an entirely new class of submarines to enter service, had been a failure because of bad engines. Only recently, approximately eight years after construction and at last fitted with brand new engines, she was showing her mettle as one of the finest diesel submarines in the force.
Salamonie,
my previous ship, oldest of them all except the never-forgotten
Lea,
though still a “producer” was nearly worn out from years of strenuous operation.

But none of these, I knew instantly, had the heart and drive of
Triton.
The way she leaped ahead when the power was applied made my heart leap, too; we could actually feel the acceleration as we gave her the gun. Water streamed by us on both sides; spray pelted our faces on the bridge and more splashed against its forward edge into thousands of flying, multicolored droplets in the early morning sunshine.

We headed her southeast into Block Island Sound and toward Montauk Point, aiming her foaming bow directly toward the morning sun.

In an unbelievably short time we had roared past Cerberus Shoals. Shortly afterward, as we changed course to due south, Montauk Point came up to starboard, and soon we were free on the ocean where two years ago I had steamed with
Salamonie
and where fifteen years ago German submarines were on the prowl. I kept calling down below for reports of our speed, must have grinned like a small boy each time I heard the figures.

Once clear of the shoal water, I turned the deck over to Brodie and went below to see for myself how things were going. Everywhere about me was an air of relaxed, delighted intensity.
Triton
was handling almost unbelievably well. There were nothing but smiles in the control room, torpedo rooms, and galley. In the machinery spaces, men were doing their routine tasks with a light in their eyes and a lilt in their voices I had never seen before. One might have imagined we were an orchestra, playing on a new and greater instrument.
This air of confident optimism pervaded the ship, and as I listened to the reports coming and going, the watch reliefs turning over, the reports of log entries and the various other minutiae that go into operating a ship, I knew that we had a crew and a ship equal to the best anyone had ever had the good fortune to command. Except for a handful of “boot seamen,” we were all veterans; our first hours under way had been going so smoothly one might have surmised our crew had been working together for years.

Even taciturn Admiral Rickover, who rarely expressed pleasure with anything (holding, I suspect that to do so might cause his underlings to relax when they should be working harder than ever), was forced to admit that he had never witnessed a more successful beginning to a set of trials. I caught a hint of a smile on his face as I sought him out in the forward engine room.

“Admiral, the water will be deep enough to dive very shortly, and with your permission we’ll go ahead and take her down as originally scheduled.”

Admiral Rickover nodded. While not exactly deafening, the roar of machinery was a high-pitched symphony composed of many different sounds from hundreds of pieces of machinery, all operating in a well-ordered cacophony of rhythm. To me, it was sheer music. Music it must have been to him, too, even though I could detect no visible sign.

I left the engine room and proceeded aft through the remaining engineering spaces, finally reaching the after torpedo room. There, all was calm except for the noise of two huge propellers whirling away just outside. I listened to them carefully. It was hard to realize that they were only a few feet from me, spinning with violent energy, driving water aft at an unprecedented speed and putting more horsepower into the ocean than any submarine had ever done. I could feel the induced vibration shaking the entire after structure of the ship. The noise of the propellers and the roar of the water as it raced
past our hull were almost as loud as the machinery a few compartments forward.

“Do you think you could sleep through this, Rowlands?” I asked the husky First Class Torpedoman’s Mate in charge of the after torpedo room.