Around the World Submerged: The Voyage of the Triton

In the meantime we have been carefully searching the shore and slopes of Easter Island to detect any movement of people or any possibility of our periscope being spotted. The possibilities are remote; not many island people spend much time gazing at the unchanging landscape of the South Pacific ocean. Nevertheless it is a possibility—but search as we may, not a single moving creature is seen on the island. A number of habitations are seen, one, not far from the statue, consisting of a small but attractive pink stucco house surrounded by well-tended foliage and an apparently nicely graded dirt road.

1116 Took departure from Easter Island enroute Guam, 6734 miles distant.

This was Sunday, and it was my turn to be the leader at the Protestant church services. I had never led any type of religious meeting before this, and put in a considerable amount of preparation. I called my “lesson” “Shipmate means sharing,” and tried to describe in simple terms the duty I felt was owing from one shipmate to another.

My little talk appeared to be well received; under the circumstances it could hardly have been otherwise, but I could not help feeling that the events of the last few days had proved not all things could be shared.

11

From Easter Island to Guam would take us about two weeks. Aside from the necessity of threading rather neatly between the outlying reefs of one or two archipelagos, we foresaw no need to slow down, except for such maneuvers as we might ourselves decide on. But I remember having a feeling of concern which I could not shake, as we began this longest leg of our trip.

The passage from Cape Horn to Easter Island had turned out to be full of very real difficulties. Fortunately, all had been successfully remedied, with the exception of the fathometer, but the experience boded ill for the future.

We could use a fathometer in the Pacific, for it had at least as many peaks as the Atlantic, but there was one difference. Most of these were coral formations instead of volcanic in origin. They should, therefore, be less precipitous, more gradual in slope in both directions, inherently less dangerous. As we moved along our course, we gained assurance in the various methods we had devised to get substitute depth readings, now that the fathometer was no longer working. Every day we became more certain of our ability to detect shoaling water under any circumstances. More and more, I knew that my decision to press on had been the right one.

As for our equipment, however, the trans-Pacific leg of our voyage began in a manner by then uncomfortably all too familiar. On the seventeenth of March, in the early morning, George Troffer, Triton’s Electrical Officer, stood solemnly outside my door. One of the air compressors which supplied the air pressure needed for certain automatic control systems had gone out of commission. As George explained it, the electric motor had apparently been slowly failing in its resistance to ground and, overworked as it was, had finally given up the ghost. Inspection of the motor had disclosed that the armature windings were entirely burned out.

This was disquieting news. Although we had stand-by controls for all essential systems, this would necessitate increasing the watch squad in certain areas. It might also, at the same time, result in some sluggishness in the automatic controls. I listened gravely as the technical tale of woe was unfolded.

“What about a jury rig, George?” I asked.

George nodded. “I was going to suggest one, Captain,” he said, “but I don’t know how you’ll like it …”

“Shoot,” I said, motioning him to the tiny built-in stool under my folding wash basin.

Troffer carefully perched on the stool, which had now been dubbed, so I had discovered, “the one-cheek hot seat.”

“We can get air from the ship’s main air system, though not at the right pressure,” Troffer explained. “But we do have some pressure-reducing valves among our spares, and I think we can rig them up. We’ll have to use two reducers in tandem and the pressure won’t be quite the same, but I think it’ll work.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Where will you get the air from?”

“Well, maybe we can take it from the ship’s hundred pound service air main,” he said. “That would be the simplest, provided we can get the right reducing valve arrangement. Otherwise, we might have to take it from the four hundred pound air-pressure header.”

“You’ll need a pretty good length of hose or copper tubing to run it over to the control air system,” I said. “Do we have enough?”

“We may have to rob something else, but I think it’ll be OK,” George said. “If we have to take it straight off the four hundred pound header, it will be a pretty long run, though.”

“Well,” I said, “it looks as if we don’t have much choice. See what you can do.”