Action at Salano Bay

by EDWARD K. MORRIS

WE rolled heavily all night. A big sea would catch us and toss the bow toward the stars, leaving half the boat hanging in mid-air. In a half-dream I felt the bow fall back into the trough of the sea — fall and fall. I awoke at that moment.

Something had gone wrong, I thought; we must be diving out of control. In terror I lifted my head from the pillow. The boat was practically standing on end now, and I clutched the bunk rail to keep from sliding into the bulkhead. Dishes broke loose somewhere in the galley. They crashed to the deck and rolled and scattered down the passageway.

I laughed nervously at the confusion, and then I felt the whole boat shudder as it buried its nose in the next sea. I dropped my head back on the pillow and lay there with my heart pounding. I could hear the muffled crash of water tearing at the superstructure. In my mind I could see the men on the bridge turning their backs to that blast of cold spray, grasping a rail to hold against the tug of solid water round their feet, grinning crazily at one another in the darkness and cursing.

I relaxed my grip on the bunk rail and rolled over on my side. The nightmare gone, I could once more hear the pounding of the engines aft and smell the battery gas that made the air thick and nauseating.

In the passageway a red light glowed dimly. I closed my eyes, spread my arms and legs to brace against the sea, and fell asleep again.

Half an hour later I woke with a start, the rasp of the diving klaxon burning in my ears.

“DIVE!” screamed a voice from the Control Room.

“Dive! . . . Dive! . . . Dive! . . The order echoed back through each compartment.

The deck tilted forward. Air screeched from the vents, deafening. I could feel the motors throb as they pushed the ship down into the sea. From above came the sound of water swishing across the deserted deck.

I sat up on the edge of the bunk and ran my fingers through my hair. It felt greasy and damp. I dug a fingernail into a spot that itched.

Our down angle increased, and I leaned to one side, away from the tilt of the boat. We were going under now, and I could visualize the ship, a long black cylinder trailing bubbles as it sank weirdly into the cold sea. The slosh of water above grew indistinct, and the boat rolled more sluggishly. In a moment the conning tower would disappear beneath the waves. A sea swept over us, and the propellers broke water. They raced and bit in again, leaving a foaming patch on the ocean surface.

In the half-light I reached out and groped about the top of the desk for a cigarette. Just diving for daylight, I supposed, but it was odd that they hadn’t shifted from red to white lighting below decks.

We were under now, scarcely rolling at all. They stopped the motors to shift the battery combination, and with this load off the electrical system, the dim red light in the passageway shone more brightly.

A hush fell over the boat. I felt as though I were sealed in an underwater coffin with dead men all around me as we rocked to the motion of the sea. Only one sound broke the stillness — a divingplane shaft overhead. It revolved with a creaking noise, then clicked to a stop, then started up again, aimlessly, like the helm of a derelict.

A ringing bell interrupted the silence. I heard someone running in the after compartment and then a heavy crash as he threw in the main circuit breakers. The motors began to throb again, the ship to vibrate.

I blew out a lungful of smoke and coughed. My head felt thick and hot. My mouth tasted of battery gas and Diesel oil. I longed to be up on the surface where a cold wind could blow through my sticky, sweaty clothes.

“BATTLE STATIONS SUBMERGED!”

The cry broke my reverie. I pulled my belt tight. My sandals — where the hell? I found them and jammed my feet in.

I dove for the passageway and collided with a man running aft.

“Maybe something this time — by God . . .”

His words trailed off as he recovered balance and lurched on.

I ducked through the forward door into the Control Room. They were just shifting to white light now, and it blinded me. I stumbled over to the chart desk and leaned against it, trying to see. It was quiet in the Control Room. The men sat there tight-lipped, watching dials and gauges, pushing control levers, turning valves.

I could see better now. The periscope was up, but no light came from its eyepiece. We must have gone too deep. I glanced at a depth gauge — seventy feet.

The Captain stood resting his elbows on the periscope handles, head in his hands. Then he looked up at the Diving Officer, his face a picture of exasperation. “Well, Roscoe,” he said deliberately, “the one time I really want to see something, you duck me.”

“Sorry, Captain. We’re heavy as hell this morning.”

“Oh, get me up, damn it!” roared the Captain. “Come on, Roscoe, get me up where I can see something,”

2

I STEPPED through the forward door and into the Wardroom, a plywood-paneled compartment the size of a Pullman section.

Walker was already there, sitting bent over the table. He was a leathery-faced man, tall and thin. With his stubble beard he looked weather-beaten. “All set,” he said, looking up.

I slid into the seat opposite him and glanced down at the table. Everything was ready: plotting board, pencils, dividers, rulers. Walker and I worked there in the Wardroom during attacks, trying to plot enemy course and speed from the jumble of data that came out of the loud-speaker on the bulkhead.

I reached over and flicked on the Silex heater switch.

“Plot?” came a voice from the speaker. “Plot?”

“Tell them we’re ready, Walk.”

Walker put his mouth to the speaker and pressed the talk-back switch. “Plot manned and ready,” he said.

“Aye,” came the voice.

Walker pulled off a ragged blue sweater.

“Just come off watch?”

“Yeah,” said Walker. “What a watch. We’d get down in those troughs — my God! You’d look up at a black mass coming at you and couldn’t believe it was a wave.”

“Big, eh?”

“Big?” He grunted. “My God! You could look up at it forty feet above you. And then we’d heel over on our side, and you were looking right out sideways at the stars.”

I shook my head. “Where are we, Walk?”

“Near Salano Bay. Captain said we were going in there today to get a rest from this sea.”

I looked at my watch. Six-thirty — just getting light. “Why the battle stations?” I asked.

“Lookout thought he saw something in the bay.”

“Ship?”

“Maybe.”

I rolled back my shirt sleeves. Walker tossed a package of cigarettes on the table, and we each took one.

“How’s to get two coffee cups from that rack?” I said.

Walker set the cups on a corner of the plotting board, and I filled them from the Silex. I took a swallow of coffee and glanced up at the Wardroom depth gauge. Fifty feet — periscope depth.

“Turn up the speaker, Walk.”

He turned the volume control. We would be able to hear every word the Captain said, for the Control Room speaker was on the overhead just above the periscopes. The other compartments could be heard only when they called the Control Room.

“ . . . try it again,” came the voice. “Up periscope.”

The periscope head would be breaking the surface now, tossing out a little feather of water on either side.

I picked up a pencil and centered the movablearm ruler on the plotting board.

“Jesus!” squawked the voice.

A pause. Then, “One destroyer patrolling outside the entrance. Another fueling from a tanker in the bay.”

Walker and I stared at each other.

“ Down periscope,” came the voice again. “Make ready the bow tubes.”

With my pencil I began to sketch meaningless little designs along the edge of the plotting sheet.

“We’re going in for a shot at the two in the bay,” the Captain said.

I could hear air rushing through a pipeline overhead, air going forward to the torpedo tubes.

We took a down angle, and I watched the depth gauge. Sixty feet . . . ninety feet (the ship began to vibrate) . . . one hundred and twenty feet.

“Level off at a hundred and fifty,” said the Captain.

The angle eased. The depth needle quivered at one hundred and fifty feet.

We ran on for ten minutes . . . twenty minutes. I shaded in the designs I had drawn. Walker poured another cup of coffee.

“Seventy feet,” ordered the voice.

The ship began to climb again, and I wondered how we looked from the outside. Ghostly perhaps. A black mass rising up through the water — a huge sea animal, silent and blind.

“Fifty feet. Up periscope.”

I put down my pencil.

“Okay, Roscoe, take her down to seventy feet again. We’ll sneak in while that other destroyer’s headed out on her patrol run.”

The depth needle came to seventy feet once more.

“All ahead one third,” said the speaker.

The ship ceased to vibrate; we crept through the water.

“Shut the watertight doors,” came the order.

A door outside the Wardroom crashed shut. The ventilation blower stopped. Silence. Just the hum of the speaker.

“I wonder if he’s thought about getting out again,” said Walker.

I picked up the pencil and sketched new designs on the plotting sheet. “You know about the charts for this bay?” I asked.

Walker nodded. “Unreliable,” he said.

I tried to picture the mouth of the bay. Sheer cliffs and a gray sea pounding at their base. Morning fog hanging a hundred feet overhead.

Our rolling stopped completely: we were going in now. But how far off the bottom? Two hundred feet? One hundred feet? Fifty feet? Or were we running along in an underwater valley — black rock masses on either side and a sub-sea cliff dead ahead. Even at one-third speed we would crush the Torpedo Room back into itself. Then lights out and a rush of icy water.

“Up periscope.”

I swept the ruler onto the middle of the plotting board and waited for information.

“Nothing for you, Plot. They’re anchored. We’ll be firing in a second. Stand by forward.”

I looked at Walker.

“Oh, Christ!” swore the Captain. “That destroyer’s getting under way. They must have heard us.”

Ten seconds silence. What was he thinking?

“We’ll fire anyway. Stand by . . . stand by.” The voice grew tense. “Stand by. . . . Fire One!”

The ship bucked back.

“Fire Two!”

The whole boat shook.

“Fire Three! Fire Four!”

We took an up angle.

“Don’t broach now, Roscoe. Right full rudder!”

I sat rigidly, hands clasped to the edge of the table.

“All ahead full!”

The boat heeled over. And then the sea hit us several stunning blows. Three explosions close together, as all but one torpedo detonated. The table chattered on its legs, and dust filled the air. Up above, water tore noisily through the superstructure.

“My God,” said Walker. “My God!”

The tanker’s fuel oil must have exploded at that moment. I felt as though someone had hit me over the head. The water outside rumbled and hissed.

Then, suddenly, the boat jarred against something. Two or three jolts, and we settled on an up angle. The collision siren screamed out, screamed like the voices of hell in that hollow compartment.

“We’re aground!” I yelled at Walker. “Aground!”

“What?” He couldn’t hear me.

I heard the Captain shout, “Stop that damned siren!”

The scream died into silence, and we sat there, the Wardroom tilted up like a crazy-house.

3

Up periscope.” The words were quick and terse.

Methodically, Walker reached out and righted a cup that had spilled coffee across the plotting board.

“Damn!” said the speaker. “We’ve run up on a ledge. The bow’s half out of water!”

The captain would be walking the periscope around now, looking for the destroyer . . . looking for . . .

“Oh, God! We didn’t get the destroyer!”

The voice rose, excited. “He sees us! He’s coming in to ram! Blow, Roscoe! Blow!”

Confusion poured from the speaker. Petrified,

I listened. I could hear Roscoe shouting above the din.

“Blow Number Three Main Ballast!”

“Blow Two!”

“Blow After Trim Tank!”

And then a voice of quiet resignation. “I’ve never seen a ship that close. He’s going to hit us . . he’s going to . . .”

With a lurch the boat upended.

“Look out!”

“Look out!” Walker was yelling in my face.

The Wardroom took a horrible angle. Walker was somewhere above me, hanging over the table.

The plotting board slid off and pinned me back against the seat. The Silex broke loose and crashed into the bulkhead, splattering coffee everywhere.

“Flood!” urged the voice. “Flood, Roscoe!”

I looked for the depth gauge. There it was — up by Walker. One hundred feet!

“Walker! Walker, the depth gauge!”

I pointed with one hand, trying to push the plotting board away with the other. “Walker! They didn’t ram us! We’re off the ledge!”

The angle increased. One hundred and fifty feet. We were sinking fast.

Roscoe had lost control — the thought flashed across my mind.

“Roscoe,” coached the Captain’s voice, “Roscoe, you’d better take the angle off the boat if you want to go home.”

The propellers were going full ahead. The deck heaved and shuddered. Still we slid down — stern first. I stopped struggling with the plotting board and watched the depth gauge.

The two-hundred-foot numbers were painted red — maximum safe depth. The moving pointer passed the two-hundred-foot mark.

Emptiness clawed at my stomach.

Two hundred and fifty feet.

“Why doesn’t he blow?”

Then we hit bottom. The rest of the coffee cups crashed about me. A grinding noise aft, and we settled on our side.

Silence.

The voice laughed oddly.

“Let’s stay here and rest up, Roscoe. Flood her down.”

I pushed the plotting board back on the table.

Walker was doing something strange. He was trying to light a cigarette, but his hands shook so violently that he couldn’t get it started. Little beads of sweat stood out on his upper lip.

4

ELBOWS on the table, I buried my face in my hands. My heart pounded. I felt, somehow, as though I were outside of myself, watching all this in a dream.

Off in the distance the first string of depth charges let go.

The next string was closer.

Then I heard a ship pass overhead, rumbling like a subway train.

“This is going to be close,” Walker said slowly, and he gripped the side of the plotting board.

I sat staring. I was thinking of those charges slipping quietly down through the water, and of the sudden explosion and the pressure that would cave in our hull. The air in the boat would make a fantastic great bubble that would balloon to the surface, and then smaller bubbles would trail up behind, pretty and sparkling and silent.

A metallic click, and the charges detonated.

I was stunned; struck in the face.

Paint chips floated down onto the table.

Click — another charge. The boat jarred. A piece of cork fell from the overhead.

I tried to stand up. “The Control Room!” I shouted.

The next explosion knocked me back on the seat.

I struggled up again. “I’m going into the Control Room!”

Click —

The overhead light shattered. Glass showered over my head. I slumped down on the seat exhausted. I sat there in the darkness, my pulse pounding. My brow felt wet. “The emergency light,” I choked out. “Walk, the light!”

A fresh string of charges let go close by. The boat rocked slightly. Something crashed to the deck beside me.

Walker found the battle lantern switch and turned it on. The pale beam pushed through the darkness to the opposite bulkhead. Dust floated through the sickly ray of light.

“Motor Room?” the speaker voice questioned. “Motor Room?”

Another string of charges — farther off.

“Maybe they’ve lost us,” said Walker.

“Motor Room? Damn it, can you hear me?”

I put my head on my arms. I couldn’t think. The air was beginning to burn my eyes. I shut them — the sting was worse. I opened them again.

A series of explosions — fainter now.

“Anybody alive in the Motor Room?”

A distant rumble. They had lost contact on us. Sure, they’d lost contact.

Quiet then. Quiet in a madhouse on the ocean bottom.

I looked up. Shambles. On the table — paint chips, cork, coffee spilled, bits of broken cups.

Walker was doing something with his hands. He had the dividers. He speared a piece of cork with one point and held up the prize, staring vacantly at it.

I looked away. I pictured the boat lying there on the bottom, bubbles trailing up from the Motor Room. One compartment flooded, and the rest of us sitting there, half-delirious and trapped.

The Captain sent a working party aft to try to establish contact with the Motor Room, and we waited.

Fifteen minutes . . . not a sound.

Twenty minutes.

The air was getting thicker. I could hear Walker breathing heavily.

Half an hour — my mind was a blank.

And then, suddenly, someone was singing. Words broke through to my consciousness.

“I got those fur-reight tu-rain blu-ews . . .”

Something was wrong with my head.

“. . . those fur-reight tu-rain blu-ews . . .”

What was the matter with my head?

I looked at Walker. Strangely, he was laughing — and crying at the same time.

“. . . freight t-rain blues . . .”

The song was coming from the speaker.

I laughed back at Walker. Someone had put a record on the Torpedo Room phonograph. We laughed louder. We sobbed and howled at each other.

“Turn — turn that damned thing off,” the Captain’s voice broke through.

The song stopped abruptly. I couldn’t laugh any more. I wiped a shirt sleeve across my face.

And then a new voice sounded from the speaker.

“Control Room? Control?”

“Control,” said the Captain in a hollow tone.

“Control, this is the Motor Room. What the hell’s the matter with your speaker up there? We’ve been trying to report a minor leak for thirty minutes.”

The table jumped under the impact of Walker’s fist.

“Motor Room!” he shouted. “You hear ‘em? My God, it’s the Motor Room! They’re not flooded. My God, they’re not flooded!”

He pounded the table again.

I looked blankly at the maniac.

“Let’s see if we can get out of here and fix that leak, Roscoe,” said the Captain. “Those destroyers are gone.”

The words made no sense.

“Take us up, Roscoe. Hit the surface!”

The man was mad.

Then I heard air shoot through the pipelines overhead. Air blasted into the ballast tanks, forcing out the water.

The boat rolled back to an even keel. I could feel the lift of the air, the rise of the ship.

He wasn’t mad. My God, we were going up!

Two hundred feet.

Up.

One hundred and fifty feet.

Up — I repeated the word over to myself.

Up — like the lilt of a song.

Up into the air— into a rush of rich, heady air.

“Stand by to surface!”

“ Walker! Man! We’re going up! ”

The diving klaxon blasted out the “surface” signal.

“Up!” I yelled against the noise.

Walker grinned; he couldn’t hear me.

“Up!” I shouted.