Around the World Submerged: The Voyage of the Triton

Jessie L. Vail, EM1

James O. Ward, SD3

William R. Welch, MM1

Henry H. Weygant, EN1

Robert W. Whitehouse, EN1

Lamar “C” Williams, EN2

William Williams, EN1

Audley R. Wilson, RD1

Donald R. Wilson, SD3

John W. Wouldridge, RM1

Gordon W. Yetter, EN1

Raymond F. Young, YNSN

Robert C. Zane, YN2

Herbert J. Zeller, EM1

Ernest O. Zimmerman, RD2

TECHNICAL AND SCIENTIFIC PERSONNEL

CDR Joseph B. Roberts, USNR, Office of Information, Navy Department

Earnest R. Meadows, PH1

Dr. Benjamin B. Weybrew, Psychologist, Naval Medical Research Laboratory, Submarine Base, New London

Mr. Michael Smalet, Geophysicist, USN Hydrographic Office

Mr. Gordon E. Wilkes, Civil Engineer, USN Hydrographic Office

Mr. Nicholas R. Mabry, Oceanographer, USN Hydrographic Office

Mr. Frank E. McConnell, Engineer, General Dynamics

Mr. Eldon E. Good, Inertial Guidance Division, Sperry

In the account of Triton’s voyage which follows, I have drawn freely upon the narrative section of the official report of our trip. When assembled, this report formed a tome about three inches thick. It contained many detailed tabulations and much succinctly presented raw information, and all the officers of the ship participated in its preparation. My contribution was the narrative section, which was made public when we arrived back in the United States.

Here, interspersed between the sections of the “Log” and forming the major portion of this book, are my own personal thoughts and observations as later reconstituted at my typewriter at home after all the excitement had died down.

All portions of this manuscript have been submitted to the Navy Department for clearance, and each chapter bears the stamp “no objection to publication on grounds of military security.” Over and above this, the entire responsibility for everything which appears in these pages obviously must be my own.

—Edward L. Beach

Captain, United States Navy

Mystic, Connecticut

PROLOGUE

As a small boy, I had the good fortune of being a Navy Junior while living a settled life in a small community, without the frenetic shifts of locale inherent in a Service life. My father, as a Captain, after a long and rewarding career in the Navy, retired when I was four years old to accept the post of Professor of Military and Naval History at Stanford University. He had served the Navy thirty-seven-and-a-half years, and his sea duty had culminated with command of the American flagship in the European war zone during World War I.

During the course of his career, Dad had written thirteen books about naval life, most of them for teen-aged youths, plus several others aimed at a more mature audience. He had made a lifetime avocation of the study of history, with a natural inclination, of course, toward naval history; he had fought in three minor and two major wars (and was fond of saying that the minor ones were far more dangerous, so far as he personally was concerned, than the major). He had commanded one repair ship, two armored cruisers, and two battleships; I was born while he skippered the new “superdreadnaught” New York, in 1918.

My formative youth was spent in Palo Alto, California, where, after his years as a professor at Stanford, Father held the combined posts of City Clerk and Assessor. Among my childhood recollections were the stories Father used to tell about his experiences in the Philippines during and after the Spanish-American War, at the Naval Academy as a midshipman and later as an instructor, and particularly about that dreadful day in 1916 when his ship, the armored cruiser Memphis, was engulfed and destroyed by a tidal wave. The latter was my favorite yarn, and I never wearied of forcing my poor father to repeat all the details of the catastrophe which had blighted his career.

Father said that I would do well to study medicine, but I felt his heart wasn’t in it. My only thoughts were of going to the Naval Academy and becoming, like him, an officer in the US Navy.

The long-sought fulfillment of my ambitions came in 1935. So great was my anticipation I couldn’t understand why Mother was crying when my parents took me to the train station, nor the meaning behind Father’s faraway look. I was then just seventeen years old.

Four years at the Naval Academy had more ups than downs and were most satisfying, but when I graduated on the first of June, 1939, it was with the sad knowledge that Father was slipping away from me. His long and interesting letters had become increasingly difficult to read. The thoughts in them of late had begun to wander, and I noticed that more and more he relived the past, particularly the loss of his old Memphis and the crew members he had had to watch drown.