Around the World Submerged: The Voyage of the Triton

Elsewhere in the ship, wherever there was a critical station, I knew that the men on watch were standing by to take whatever action might be necessary, and because this was a scheduled drill, at every station there also stood, as observers, the off-watch personnel, the senior petty officer in charge, and the officer responsible.

We had been making just under twenty knots. As the ship slowed, I knew that both Dick and Tom were watching the depth gauges and the plane-angle indications for the first sign that we were, as everyone suspected, considerably heavier than the water we displaced. We waited a long minute, as Triton slowed and her bow and stern planes gradually lost effect. Suddenly, Harris reached his hand out behind him, motioned toward Rauch. “Pump auxiliaries to sea!” he snapped.

I had not seen yet any indications of the ship’s being heavy. “How do you figure we’re heavy, Dick?” I asked.

“Mostly intuition I guess, Captain,” he replied. “There’s really no sign here yet, but I know darned well she’s heavy.”

Another minute passed. We had slowed perceptibly and now it became evident that to hold the ordered depth, the planesmen were required to maintain up angle on both bow and stern planes.

“We are heavy, all right,” I said.

From Harris my response was a tight-lipped smile, but it was Third Class Quartermaster Roger A. Miller, standing watch on the bow planes, who put it into words with a deep-toned whisper which caromed off the deck and bulkheads and brought amused smiles to everyone within earshot.

“This old hog sure has lead in her ass!” said he, as he lifted the bow planes another five degrees.

As speed dropped off rapidly, bow and stern planes soon were at the maximum angles of elevation and then, inexorably, Triton began to sink. In the meantime, Rauch, checking the rate-of-flow meter, was monotonously calling out the amount of water we pumped overboard: “5,000 out—7,000 out—10,000 out, sir—12,000 out—15,000 out.”

Dick made no motion to stop him. Triton’s speed through water had by now dropped to only three or four knots; she was still on an even keel, but the depth gauges were showing a gradually increasing speed of descent.

It was apparent soon that we should not be able to get enough water out of the ship before she had exceeded the maximum depth to which we were allowed to submerge her. Deliberately I waited as long as possible, then finally nodded to Dick, “I guess we won’t be able to catch her, Dick. Blow tanks.”

“Blow forward group! Blow after group!” Dick had the orders ready.

So did Rauch, whose fingers were already on the main ballast blow valve switches. With two quick motions, high-pressure air was roaring into Triton’s main ballast tanks. Dick waited until he saw our downward motion perceptibly reduced, then gave the clenched fist signal to Rauch at the same time as the order, “Secure the air!”

The noise of air blowing stopped. We had lightened the ship by several hundred tons, and Triton’s involuntary dive stopped well above the allowed limit. But this was not the end of the episode.

The depth gauges now started going in the other direction. Triton was rising to the surface, slowly at first and then with increasing speed. We had placed a large air bubble in our main ballast tanks which, like uncorked bottles inverted in the water, were open at the bottom and closed at the top. It was impossible to gauge the amount of air that had to be blown into the tanks so as to put the ship precisely and exactly in equilibrium at a given depth.

Having put enough air into the tanks to stop the descent, it was apparent that the ship would now rise. As she rose, however, the size of the air bubble increased as the sea pressure reduced; and as the air bubble increased in size, it pushed even more water out through the bottom of the ballast tanks, thus making Triton still lighter. In this condition, we would continue to lighten and rise faster until we reached the surface.

Once, during the war, with the old Trigger leaking badly and surrounded by Japanese destroyers listening for us to start our pumps, we had survived just such a situation by putting an air bubble in one of our tanks and then either venting it slowly into the ship (we dared not use the main vents, which would have loosed a betraying bubble of air to the surface) or blowing it carefully. With the desperate skill of emergency, for fifteen hours Johnny Shepherd maintained precise control of our depth, as the accumulated leakage of water gradually made us heavier and heavier, until finally we outlasted the enemy. We had not dared to relieve Johnny.

The situation here was far less tense. There was no enemy; we could afford to let air bubbles come to the surface. Our only problem was to control the size of the bubble in our tanks to keep from broaching surface on the one hand or going too deep on the other.