Journey to Atlantis (4 page)

WE LEFT SHEBA’S ISLAND on the 1st of July, Canada Day, just after midnight. The sea spread out like an endless field. You’d never know it was the same sea that sank three fishing boats and drowned their fishermen. Sheba and Ziegfried came down and saw us off with hugs, tears and final words of advice, all said many times before. “If you run into any trouble, just turn around and sail back home.”

Hollie, Seaweed, and I crowded into the sub. All of the food that could be packed away was fitted tightly into the corners, but the fresh food — bread and cookies, oranges, bananas, tomatoes, grapes, and bags of popcorn — dangled from the ceiling and swung in our way. Most of it would be
gone in a week or two but it was nice to begin a journey with lots of fresh food.

We turned the corner of the island and were engulfed by the sea. We had sailed on the open Atlantic before but never across it. Somehow it seemed a lot bigger. Two hundred miles out we would pass over the edge of the continental shelf, where the sea floor suddenly dropped from four hundred feet to two miles. If the sub ever fell to four hundred feet we would be fine, but if we went down a mile or so we’d get flattened like a pancake. Leaving the shelf was a little like going into space in a rocket.

Hollie quickly settled on his spot by the observation window but Seaweed took a sudden fancy to the bicycle seat. It must have been a bird thing — seeking higher ground or something. I didn’t mind except that if I wanted to pedal I had to kick him off, and he made a fuss about it.

“Get off, Seaweed, unless you’re going to pedal. Then you can stay on as long as you want.”

I climbed onto the bike. Ten hours of pedalling would generate about two hours of battery power, which was helpful, although we didn’t need it yet; I wanted to pedal for exercise. Seaweed hopped down and took his spot across from Hollie, and stared at him like a vulture. Hollie buried his face in his paws.

“Better get comfortable, Seaweed, we’ve got a long way to go.”

Our first stop would be the Azores, a small group of
islands in the middle of the Atlantic and a possible site of Atlantis. Legend has it Atlantis was either really close to Crete, in the Mediterranean Sea, or somewhere out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It all depends upon how you translate the ancient writings of Plato. It’s like a math problem where you have to multiply the answer by either 10 or 1000, depending upon how you understand the question. My gut feeling told me it was closer to Crete. If Atlantis was lying two miles at the bottom of the ocean, nobody was going to find it anyway.

The Azores belong to Portugal and are about twelve hundred nautical miles east of Newfoundland, as the crow flies. In a tossing sea, with wind and current, it might be more like two thousand. Portugal is another seven hundred nautical miles beyond that. Weather permitting, counting time for sleep and unexpected stops, we might expect to reach the Azores in little over a week, assuming we could find them.

Sheba suggested we listen to Portuguese and Spanish radio stations on our way over, so that our spirits would be in the right mood for visiting those countries. I tried that but couldn’t tell the difference between Portuguese, Spanish, Italian or Greek. Ziegfried said I’d know it was Spanish if they played a lot of guitar. So I tried that. It was okay for a while, but after a few hours of nothing but guitar music and Spanish voices, Seaweed seemed kind of restless, so I switched back. Hollie didn’t seem to care, but Seaweed was happier listening to the sounds of Newfoundland.

Fifteen hours from shore we were approaching the edge of the continental shelf. The sea floor had slipped to five hundred feet and I could feel a deeper drop coming. In our first fifteen hours at sea we hadn’t heard a single beep on the radar, which was kind of strange. It gave the impression we were the only vessel out there, and I knew
that
wasn’t true. Now, before sailing over waters of extreme depth, where the sub would become like a flea on the surface of a swimming pool, I thought I’d catch some sleep. Hollie and Seaweed could sleep whenever they wanted but I had to stop when I wanted to sleep. I would submerge to two hundred feet, below any passing ships or surface current, turn off all power except the sonar, and climb into my cozy hanging cot. I trusted myself to wake if the sonar beeped, which would only happen if another submarine were passing close by, which was pretty unlikely. What were the chances of two fleas meeting in a swimming pool? Besides, by the Law of the Sea, and for the very first time since we put the sub in the water, we were legal. More than twelve miles from shore, by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, we had just as much right to be here as anyone else.

My hand was on the switch, ready to dive, when the radar beeped. There was a vessel in the water ten miles away. I waited for a moment. Two beeps appeared on the next sweep. Two vessels. I climbed the portal and scanned the horizon with the binoculars. A line of fog was blowing up from the south; the horizon was too hazy to see clearly. And
then it disappeared altogether. Shoot! Now I couldn’t see what the vessels were. I didn’t want to dive and sleep without knowing what was in the neighbourhood.

Back inside, the two beeps on the radar became three, and then … four! Wow! They couldn’t have been fishing boats; we were too far from shore. I stared at the radar screen. They were coming slowly towards us. What to do? This was the first time I couldn’t race for a cove or settle on the bottom and hide. Five hundred feet was too deep; we might spring a leak. We had two choices: change course and try to get out of the way, or wait and see what was coming. Considering we were legal, I decided to wait.

I cut the engine. We coasted to a drift. I carried Hollie out for a breath of fresh air. Clouds of fog were rolling in faster than the vessels were approaching. They weren’t sailing side by side but were about half a mile apart. Maybe they were naval ships. If they were, I would signal a friendly greeting. I could invoke the Law of the Sea Treaty if they questioned our presence.

As the fog thickened to pea soup I couldn’t see past the bow. The ships were going to pass unseen. When they were five miles away there were two more beeps on the radar. I climbed inside. Two more vessels were coming from the opposite direction, and they were coming fast! Unbelievably, I watched as the strangest chase scene took place on the radar screen.

The four approaching vessels had obviously become
aware of the two speedy ships because they stopped, turned around one hundred and eighty degrees and cranked up their speed, all four of them together. They were running away! Their pursuers simply ignored us and altered their course to follow the four. And they were
fast
! What was going on? Were the pursuers pirates? That seemed unlikely. In the first place, nobody could see anybody else. Everyone was relying on radar. And yet the pursuing ships must have known about the four ships even before they were within radar range because they had known where to look for them in the first place. They must have had other information, which made me think that maybe the pursuers were the navy or the coastguard.

As much as I was dying to know what was really going on I knew the smartest thing to do was to change course and leave their radar range while we had the chance. And so I did. I turned completely around, headed back the way we had come and made a wide, sweeping arc. I planned to continue our course ten miles south. As we were leaving their radar range, I climbed the portal with the binoculars for one last look. Between pockets of fog on the horizon I thought I caught a glimpse of a red and white ship. The coastguard! Now I probably knew who the pursuers were. But who were they chasing?

That answer came about an hour later when I was again preparing to dive and catch some sleep. The chase jumped back onto the radar screen like a handful of green bugs. First
came the four fleeing vessels, travelling much closer together now, and then their pursuers, who had narrowed the gap to less than four miles. Unless I cranked up the engine and took off, both parties would roughly cross our path. I decided to stay, but made ready to dive if necessary.

I cut the engine, climbed the portal with the binoculars and strained to see through the fog. The wind was picking up. It blew holes in the fog here and there. I caught a glimpse of a couple of small ships once or twice, then nothing. The real story was unfolding on the radar screen, but I was hoping to identify the approaching vessels before submerging and letting them pass over us.

It was a strange game of cat and mouse. I kept running inside to check the radar, then climbing the portal and scanning the fog with the binoculars, ready at any moment to dive out of the way.

The fleeing vessels came close, about a mile east of the sub, but not close enough to spot the portal of a small submarine in the fog. They could detect us by radar, of course, but as we weren’t even moving, they wouldn’t likely consider us a threat. They had bigger things to worry about.

The coastguard entered the screen two and a half miles to the west. We were, in a sense, surrounded. But I was not concerned. The coastguard already knew we were in the area and had shown no interest in us. Whoever they were chasing was obviously a priority. Besides, if any vessel did come too close, we could simply dive, switch to battery power and slip away.

The ships of the coastguard passed within half a mile of us and I never saw them. The fog was too dense. The radar revealed that the fleeing ships had come together in a cluster, close enough to exchange something — crew members perhaps? — and then split up in all directions. They were obviously trying to confuse the coastguard and escape. I wondered what the coastguard would do. Would they split up and chase down two of the four ships, or stay together and chase down one?

The coastguard split up and went after two. It took a while for the radar to reveal what the fog was hiding so well. Two of the fleeing ships turned sharply north and sailed apart. One of the coastguard ships went after one of them; the other stayed behind and continued to follow one of the ships closer to us, which was headed due east. The fourth ship veered south. In a sudden burst of impulsiveness, I decided to chase it.

I DIDN’T KNOW WHY I was chasing them except that, if the coastguard wanted them so badly, they must have done something wrong. Besides, I was really curious. But we were all outside the twelve-mile zone. The only rights Canada had in the two hundred mile zone were commercial, and the only commercial interest in the Grand Banks, as far as I knew, was fishing. Was that it? Was the coastguard chasing foreign ships fishing in Canadian waters? But if we were right on the edge of the two hundred mile zone, why would they bother? Couldn’t foreign ships simply slip across to the other side of the zone and snub their noses at the coastguard?

I guess not.

She wasn’t very fast. With all the changes to the sub, we had no trouble catching her. The coastguard must have caught at least one of her sister ships by now. I could also tell they were not very big, nothing like freighters, because they could turn so easily. And yet, in the heavy fog I couldn’t get close enough to see exactly what kind of ship she was, unless … I did what submarines were designed to do.

Just when she must have expected us to catch her, I cut the engine, shut the hatch and dove to one hundred feet. I engaged full battery power and continued to track her on sonar. We would have disappeared from her radar instantly, which must have made them wonder what the heck was going on. Perhaps they had some sort of fishing sonar on board, perhaps not, but I doubted they had any idea they were being chased by a submarine.

On battery it took almost an hour to catch and pass her. We went under her like a whale. In the meantime, I watched the sea floor drop from five hundred feet to an unfathomable depth. We had crossed the continental shelf! Cool! But our renegade ship showed no signs of stopping. She was going to get away! Assuming the coastguard had good reason to chase her, I decided to cut her off.

That wasn’t hard to do. We sailed about a quarter of a mile in front of her and surfaced. As soon as we broke the surface I turned on our floodlights and coasted to a drift. In the fog she would see our lights before she would be able to make out what sort of vessel we were. Most importantly, we
would appear on her radar instantly, directly in front of her! That ought to be enough to convince her to stop. If it wasn’t, I was prepared to dive out of the way in a hurry.

Closer and closer she came. I was beginning to feel nervous. I didn’t want to get rammed by a ship. Through the periscope I could barely make out her lights. It seemed as though she was slowing down but I couldn’t be sure. I kept my hand on the switch, ready to dive. Suddenly, there she was, shrouded in streaks of fog, but lit up like a Christmas tree — a fishing trawler, carrying Spanish colours!

She drifted to a stop. Then I heard the radar beep. Another vessel was coming in fast! In fact, it was already upon us. I raced up the portal and opened the hatch to look. The next thing I knew, I heard machine-gun fire! I jumped back down and got ready to dive, but my curiosity got the better of me and I climbed back up the ladder and peeked over the edge of the hatch. Behind the trawler appeared the red and white hull of a Canadian coastguard ship. Through the binoculars I saw coastguard officers firing machine guns across the bow of the trawler! I couldn’t believe it! I watched in amazement as coastguard officers boarded the Spanish ship, arrested the crew and attached a cable from the stern of the coastguard to the bow of the trawler. Were they actually intending to tow the ship all the way back to St. John’s?

Yes indeed.

As I stood in the portal and leaned against the hatch, watching the lights of the two ships vanish in the fog, the
coastguard blasted her horn. Was that a farewell to us, a salute for our part in the chase? I liked to think so. I waved back. I didn’t really understand the significance of what had just happened. That would come later. It had been an exciting chase. Now I needed to sleep.

At two hundred feet we did not have radio. The underwater cable that floated to the surface as an antenna only reached one hundred feet. I didn’t mind; we had had enough excitement for one day. Seaweed and Hollie were really good whenever I wanted to sleep. When the sub’s interior lights were turned low they went into hibernation mode. I figured that was an animal/bird instinct thing.

There was no surface current at two hundred feet, but there
was
current. It flowed in the opposite direction of the current above, but very slowly. I wasn’t really concerned about that. I wasn’t worried about sinking either because the sub had an automatic surfacing gauge that we had set at 237.5 feet. If the sub reached that depth unintentionally, the ballast tanks would automatically fill with air and we would surface. There were also two safety ballast balloons attached to the outside of the hull. They contained pressurized cartridges that were designed to explode at four hundred feet, filling two nylon balloons with enough air to raise the sub. It never crossed my mind that the sub might surface for any other reason. I brushed my teeth, stretched, wished the crew a goodnight and climbed into my hanging cot, suspended
by bungee cords to compensate for the pitch and toss of the sub. Within minutes I was dead to the world.

I woke eight hours later … on the surface! I knew we were on the surface because of the movement of the sub, and there was a faint hue coming up through the observation window — light from the sea. I climbed the portal and opened the hatch. It was a clear, sunny day. I looked all around and wondered if I was dreaming. How had we surfaced? Had we drifted down to 237.5 feet and then risen? But why? I would have to make a close inspection of everything and call Ziegfried on the short wave. But first I turned on the radio and listened to the news from St. John’s. I wondered if the fishing trawler incident had made the news. It had! And how!

“… Spanish authorities are calling for immediate retaliation. No retaliatory action has been ruled out …,” said the radio.

Holy smokes! It had become an international story already. As usual, the news-people made it sound like more than it had really been.

“Spain considers Canada’s high-seas chase and violent assault on its fishing fleet an act of war,” one announcer said.

An act of war! It was just an old beat-up trawler. I was surprised it had crossed the Atlantic without sinking. I sure hoped Canada and Spain wouldn’t go to war over it. I tried to reach Ziegfried on the short wave.

“Al!
Como estas?
”

“What?”

“That’s Spanish. It means ‘how are you?’”

“Oh. Good. Did you hear the news?”

“You bet we did! Did
you
see any Spanish trawlers on your way across the Grand Banks?”

“Uhhh … yup.”

“Really? Up close?”

“Uhhh … sort of.”

“Interesting. And everything’s working all right?”

“Ummm … sort of.”

“Sort of? What do you mean, ‘sort of?’ What’s wrong, Al?”

“Nothing really, but the sub rose by itself. I went to sleep at two hundred feet and woke on the surface.”

“It surfaced by itself? Ohhhhh … that’s not good. Listen, Al. You’ve got to make a thorough inspection of everything right away, okay?”

“I know. I was just about to.”

“Good. And then, when you’ve finished, you’ve got to run tests. Practise diving, sit in one spot for several hours and watch your depth. See if you sink or rise, okay? This is very important, Al. You must inspect and test everything thoroughly. You know that, right?”

“Yes, I know. Don’t worry, I will.”

“Maybe you should come back here and we can test it together.”

“No. No, it’s okay. Maybe I just made a mistake and didn’t shut off the air valve properly when I went to sleep.”

“Well, check that first, and keep me posted, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You promise to keep me posted, right?”

“I promise. I’ll start an inspection right away.”

“And tests, right?”

“Right.”

Yikes! The last thing I wanted to do was return. Ziegfried would run tests all summer long and I wouldn’t get back to sea until the fall. After we hung up I began my inspection. Hollie saw me examining things and he immediately joined me, sniffing at every corner with his sharp little nose. Seaweed was up in the sky somewhere. After two hours of close examination I hadn’t found anything suspicious at all. When Seaweed returned, I decided to make a test. I shut the hatch, dove to a hundred feet, opened a bag of popcorn and sat in front of the depth gauge.

Seaweed loved popcorn. Hollie didn’t care for it much, but if Seaweed was eating, he had to eat too. What they both really liked was catching it. We made a game of it while I stared at the gauge. No change. The sub sat perfectly still for a whole hour.

“Okay, that’s it, guys. Let’s go.”

I decided to continue our journey. I’d call Ziegfried later. He wouldn’t be satisfied with my testing, I knew. He was a perfectionist when it came to testing. But I didn’t want to hang around in the middle of the ocean doing nothing. And I sure as heck didn’t want to return to Newfoundland.

I surfaced, flicked the engine switch and got ready to leave, except … there was one little problem: I didn’t know where we were. I mean, I didn’t know where we were
exactly.
I knew where we were approximately, and I knew that all we had to do was sail east and we’d reach Portugal. But I didn’t want to miss the Azores. For that, I had to know with greater certainty where we were. We had obviously drifted with the current after we had surfaced. How far, I didn’t know. I had sea charts, of course, but once I lost track of where we were, it was kind of hard to find our exact location. Sea navigation is a lot trickier when you are far from land because of currents and a few other things, such as the fact that
magnetic
north is about eight hundred miles away from
true
north. Basically, you have to take compass readings. Normally that would be impossible on a submarine because of all the metal that interferes with the magnetic pull of the North Pole. But it is possible to compensate for that by placing magnets around the compass in just such a way as to correct for true north. And that’s what Ziegfried had done. That was the theory anyway; practise is something else. Even experienced sailors get lost at sea.

After half an hour of taking compass readings, checking the charts carefully and measuring the current, I made my best guess on our position, turned east, cranked up the engine, climbed up on the bike and started to pedal.

I pedalled on and off during the night and listened to the radio. I heated up a frozen pizza, peeled a couple of oranges,
made tea and played tug-of-war with a piece of rope. Seaweed and I teamed up against Hollie, and lost. Hollie was really possessive with his rope. But Seaweed didn’t try very hard. He wasn’t really interested in closing his beak around anything he couldn’t swallow. After a quiet night at sea, during which we did not encounter a single vessel, we settled at two hundred feet, at a spot I carefully marked on the chart, and went to sleep. In the late afternoon I woke … on the surface! And we had drifted.