Around the World Submerged (39 page)

2030 This is far from a pleasant casualty to think about. It should never happen. Our preliminary investigation disclosed that the stern plane control valve, located just underneath the floor plates in the after torpedo room, had broken right through its body at one of the flanged joints. There had been no warning of any kind. The cause may possibly stem from excessive flexing and metal fatigue or from a faulty forging. It will undoubtedly be carefully investigated by qualified metallurgists and design personnel. In
Triton,
this control valve handles hydraulic oil at 3000 1bs pressure in lines 2½ inches in diameter. Steele’s swift and decisive action is living proof that if you train for every possible type of
casualty, there is a good chance that you can also control the few impossible ones that happen anyway.

Steele has been recommended to receive the Secretary of the Navy Letter of Commendation with Commendation Ribbon for meritorious service. We are preparing the papers now.

2130 Everything is pretty much back to normal so far as the after torpedo room and the hydraulic system is concerned, except that we are still in “emergency” on the planes and shall have to remain so until a replacement is found for the fractured control valve. It turns out there are no spares in stock, and it will be necessary to steal a valve from another system. After due consideration, even this presents no choice; the only hydraulic system in the ship which has an adequately large control valve is the steering system. Steering from now on will have to be in emergency; but after the exchange has been made, we shall have normal stern plane control.

Monday, 25 April 1960 0432 Normal power is restored to the stern planes. The main hydraulic system is back in full commission with a control valve stolen from the steering system. Steering is permanently in “emergency.”

0754 Crossed equator for the fourth and final time this cruise at longitude 28°—03´ West.

1200 Position 00°—53’ North, 29°—01´ West. We are within a few miles of St. Peter and St. Paul’s Rocks, at which point we will have completed the first submerged circumnavigation of the world.

1330 St. Peter and St. Paul’s Rocks in sight, bearing due west.

1500 First submerged circumnavigation of the world is now complete.

We are circling and photographing the islet again, as we did just two months ago. The weather is nice and the sun is shining brightly. Our mileage [Rock to Rock] is 26,723 nautical miles and it has taken us 60 days and 21 hours [days calculated as twenty-four hours each]. Dividing gives an average overall speed of just over 18 knots. No other ship___and no other crew—could have
done better. We are proud to have been selected to accomplish this undertaking for our nation.

Our total milage for the trip will be a little more than 36,000 nautical miles [including the two thousand-mile mercy mission for Poole], and it now looks as though our overall time since departure from New London will be 85 days [New London computation]. We have been instructed to proceed to a rendezvous point off Cadiz, Spain, where the destroyer
Weeks
is to meet us.
Weeks
will send aboard the completed bronze plaque we designed in tribute to Magellan, but it is our understanding it is to be presented at a later date, possibly by the US ambassador. For the time being we are to avoid detection, making our rendezvous off Cadiz beyond sight of curious onlookers.

We earnestly hope
Weeks
will bring mail for us, in addition to the plaque. Even though we can depend upon our Squadron organization in New London to do everything in its power to assist our families, there’s nothing [except seeing them] which can substitute for a letter from your loved ones. More than this we neither need nor want. Our provisions are still adequate, though non-scrambled eggs would certainly taste good, and our personal tobacco stocks have lasted surprisingly well, despite demands placed upon them by people like Curtis Beacham, who brought a dozen-and-a-half boxes of cigars with him, then early in the cruise gave most of them away in an effort to break the habit clean; for weeks now he has been abjectly relying on the occasional generosity of the friends to whom he gave them.

We still do not know when—or whether—knowledge of our submerged voyage will be made public. We therefore shall not surface, will only bring our high conning tower hatch clear of the sea to pass the plaque and its custodian through, as we did our sick shipmate nearly two months before.

1645 A congratulatory message has arrived from our Force Commander. It is read to the crew as soon as decoded and everyone aboard very much appreciates his kind and encouraging words.

1700 Prepared a suitable message on our part recommending
Steele for official recognition and thanking Admiral Daspit for his thoughtful message.

1700 Set course for Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The city of Santa Cruz was the last city of the Old World seen by Magellan. Provisions and supplies were cheaper there than in Spain, and it was therefore customary for voyagers from Castile to top-off there before making their final departure. We shall be coming at it from a direction opposite to Magellan’s, but it nevertheless will make a good final port of call. If we have time, we shall make our final photographic reconnaissance there.

2125 William Roy Welch, Machinist’s Mate First Class, is re-enlisted in the service of the United States Navy for a period of six years. Since the
Manual of the Bureau of Naval Personnel
specifically prohibits re-enlistments at sea, to re-enlist Welch it was necessary to obtain permission in advance from the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Personnel and Reserve Affairs. Welch’s re-enlistment is a milestone of sorts, inasmuch as it is done at deep depths, at high speed and at the culmination of history’s first submerged circumnavigation of the world. All these things we carefully record in Welch’s service record and in the ship’s Log.

2145 We are not yet home, but we may be considered to have taken a long lead off third base. So tonight, to celebrate completion of the first submerged circumnavigation and our looked-for homecoming, we hold a “third base party” for the crew and officers. There are even several acts of pretty good entertainment. The first is by Fireman Raymond Kuhn, who has been practicing on a homemade French horn. To everyone’s amazement it works, and he plays us several fairly recognizable bugle calls on it. Kuhn will never win any Nobel prizes for music, but the fact that he can play that thing at all is astonishing. He gets cheers of appreciation from his shipmates, many of whom throng around asking to try it themselves, and we may use him on the bridge for rendering passing honors to other naval vessels.

Another act is a barbershop quartet consisting of Herb Zeller, EM1; Chief Steward William “Joe” Green; Richard Brown, EM1;
and Wilmot Adair (Mrs. Neptune) Jones, TM2. The quartet are taken aback by their audience’s wild insistence upon an encore, for it turns out they know only one song. They needn’t have worried; it gets as many cheers the second time.

The hit of the evening, from my point of view, is a skit put on by Jim Flaherty, RM1, and Jones. Flaherty plays a TV announcer and Jones acts the part of “Mother Fletcher,” the cooking instructor, who continually samples her sherri-herri [sic] while baking a cake, and slowly drinks herself into a stupor in front of the anguished announcer. Mother Fletcher’s delighted audience was particularly convulsed because someone had doctored up the “sherri-herri” bottle with chili sauce; Jones’ agonized expression throughout the skit was very real indeed.

We also held a “beard contest,” with myself as chief judge. I had already decided who was going to win: he was our ship’s barber, Pete Kollar, whose luxurious facial foliage could have competed with any Hollywood actor’s, but he fell asleep and no one remembered to call him for the contest. Forced, therefore, to judge honestly from among the other candidates, I finally awarded the prize for the “most glorious beard” to James Bennett, RM1.

0230 Finally wrote finis to the World’s First Submerged Circumnavigation Celebration. All hands turned in with the feeling of satisfaction that comes from having finished a big job.

A special Well Done should go to LCDR Bob Fisher, our supply officer, whose cooks kept the party-goers well supplied with a steady flow of pizza, popcorn and punch. Bob also serves as the officer representative on the ship’s recreation council, whose members did the planning for the party.

Thursday and Friday, 28-29 April 1960 With a comfortable speed of advance and our circumnavigation complete, these two days were devoted to engineering drills. Like all nuclear ships, we have rigid qualification requirements for officers and men before they may stand certain main propulsion plant watches.

Saturday, 30 April 1960 This is Will Adams’ birthday. He has announced everybody else’s birthday in his daily “Plan of the Day,” but had hoped to avoid mentioning his own. I out-foxed him, however, and wrote it in just before the Plan of the Day went to press.

As an added birthday present, this morning a message arrived with notification that Will Adams is a Commander, US Navy, with a date of rank from 1 February [that is, he will be as soon as he finishes some correspondence courses which are still dogging him]. The same message states that Don Fears is a Lieutenant Commander, also with a 1 February date. We knew both promotions were due, and it is certainly fine to get the news at last; Will and Don have been congratulated all day long.

0430 Periscope depth for approach on Tenerife, Canary Islands. The spectacle on raising the periscope is remarkable. Although we are still quite distant from land, the lights of the city of Santa Cruz are so high above the horizon as to give the appearance of stars. Tenerife, according to the
Sailing Directions,
is an extremely high and mountainous island. The highest peak, Pico de Teyde, is more than 12,000 feet. The chart shows that modern Santa Cruz has a large and efficient-looking artificial harbor formed by a long breakwater. Try as we may, we are unable to locate where Magellan’s precipitous cliff-walled harbor could have been.

A historical episode in which Santa Cruz figured was the 1798 attack on the city by an English squadron under Horatio Nelson. Nelson was then 39 years old and had held the rank of Rear Admiral in the British Navy for a year. The attack on Tenerife miscarried in the initial stages, mainly because of indecision among the commanders of the assault troops, and Nelson determined to lead the second attack in person. As he landed, a grape-shot shattered his right elbow, and with their leader out of action, this attack also failed. Nelson’s arm was amputated and he was invalided home for several months.

A sketch of the defenses of Santa Cruz and the shore configuration, drawn by Nelson for this campaign, is easily recognized on
our chart. The changes wrought by the recent century and a half are not so great, evidently, as those of the previous three.

Apropos of Nelson’s arm, shortly before landfall this morning, Chiefs Bennett and Jordan ganged up on our two most junior Electrician’s Mates, Franklin D. Caldwell and Ronald D. Kettle-hake, with a story to the effect that all ships approaching the Island of Tenerife were required to set a watch for Horatio Nelson’s arm, and that they, being junior, had been designated for the first watch. Having been forewarned by the two perpetrators of the joke, I sent separately for Caldwell and Kettlehake in order to brief them on their duties.

Caldwell appeared first, somewhat nonplused at this unusual summons. I carefully explained to him that Nelson’s arm had become petrified and greatly enlarged after being tossed over the side from his flagship
Theseus,
and that now, standing vertically in the mud of the channel off Tenerife, it had become a danger to navigation.

Caldwell slowly produced a sheepish grin as I went on with the gag, finally departed to fetch Kettlehake. This engaging young character completely swallowed my long yarn about the huge petrified arm, seemed perfectly willing to believe that it could have become an object able to menace navigation in water many hundreds of fathoms deep. He was, in fact, very interested in all the details of my dissertation of how it came about, and finally blurted out, “It sounds like a grand tradition, sir. How long has it been going on?”

“About an hour,” I told him.

But Kettlehake continued with questions about Nelson, and when he departed, he carried off volume one of my precious set of Mahan’s
The Life of Nelson.
Now that the fun is over, I am wondering just who was hazing whom, and whether there was a bet in the background involving getting that book away from me.

0830 We are now near enough to begin our “photo-recon” of the outskirts of the city of Santa Cruz on Tenerife island. It is indeed an imposing skyline, though search as we may, we still
find no evidence of the harbor supposedly used by Magellan. The scenery is most spectacular, however, far and away the most breathtaking of this cruise.

Behind Santa Cruz towering peaks stretch in both directions. Though vegetation is visible in many places, generally speaking the brown hillsides are similar to the Cape of Good Hope.

The city of Santa Cruz extends back against the hillside in such a way that the whole is laid out before us and presents an extremely imposing view. Many roads can be seen stretching along the hillsides, with automobiles moving back and forth on them. Many new modern buildings, evidently apartments, line the roads and, as at Cebu, march steadily up the hillside and back from the sea. Nearly 300,000 people supposedly live on this island. From the size of Santa Cruz it can be readily believed that about 200,000 of them must live here.

The breakwater is visible. Construction work is going forward to lengthen it and extend the harbor even farther. Sheltered behind are a number of large ships, including some cruise ships. Indeed, Santa Cruz looks like an ideal spot for a vacation.

0933 Departed Tenerife for rendezvous off Cadiz the early morning of Monday, 2 May.

Sunday, 1 May 1960 1330 Our next-to-last church services. Chief Electrician’s Mate Hugh Bennett leads. His talk is titled “Success,” and it has much food for thought.