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A submarine is a demanding command in peace or war, probably more so than any other ship. The submarine skipper personally fights his ship, giving all the commands and making all the decisions. During war his is the responsibility for success or failure; his the praise for sinking the enemy, the blame for being sunk himself. In peacetime there are still the hazards of the malevolent sea—ever-ready, with its sequence of inevitable consequences, to pounce mercilessly upon momentary disregard for its laws.
Appearance before a Qualification Board, a serious matter for the candidate, is thus equally serious for the members of the board themselves. On the one hand, they hold the career of a brother officer in their hands, but on the other, and much more important, they must consider the lives and well-being of his future ship’s company as well. And it is serious, also, for the person or persons recommending him, whose own judgment in so doing is under inspection.
On Monday we were—somehow—ready. The disassembled pieces of machinery had been put back together, mostly unrepaired, and great patches of red preservative on our decks and sides betrayed the areas we had been scraping free of rust and loose paint. Prior to the arrival of the Qualification Board, Jim, at their dictum, had made all preparations for getting under way; this was something he normally did every third day anyway, when he had the duty—though not, of course, under quite the same degree of pressure. The engines were warmed up and primed, the batteries fully charged, the crew at stations. All lines to the dock had been “singled up,” which means that the usual three strands of mooring line to each of our four cleats had been reduced to one, ready for immediate release. I waited on the forecastle, swathed in muffler, foul-weather jacket, and sea boots, turning my back to the freezing wind sweeping the river. Jim, of course, was on the bridge.
Three figures suddenly appeared from behind the parked cars at the head of the dock, marched toward us. I recognized them immediately: Carl Miller, skipper of the R-4, Roy Savage of the S-48, and Stocker Kane of the R-12. Savage was the senior in rank, a Lieutenant Commander of several years, and had been designated “Senior Member” of the Qualification Board. He was a stocky, taciturn individual, whose usual imperturbability seemed only intensified by this assignment. Bluff Carl Miller, also a Lieutenant Commander, had gone through submarine school with me several years before. Stocker Kane, junior member of the board, and my closest friend of the three, was another hard-to-know person, though one soon learned to like and respect his careful thinking.
Jim hurriedly climbed down on deck and stood with me to welcome the three other skippers aboard. Gravely we acknowledged their salutes. “Good morning, sir,” I said to Savage. “Morning, Carl. Morning, Stocker.”
Roy Savage didn’t believe in wasting time. “Take her on out as soon as you’re ready,” he said to Jim. “Rich”—turning to me—“Bledsoe is skipper of this ship today. You and I are just passengers. You’re only to take her over to avoid danger of casualty, and you know the consequences, of course, if you do.”
This was customary for the under-way qualification, and Roy Savage knew I knew it. His care to spell it out for me, therefore, somehow tinkled a warning note in my mind. Savage, I had heard, had been indignant at Blunt’s sudden directive to head the board on Jim. He was the senior skipper in our squadron, and had already received his official orders of detachment from the S-48, though there was as yet no sign of his relief. Perhaps he felt that his pending detachment should have absolved him from the duty. Perhaps this was an inkling of the attitude we might expect from him throughout the day.
Stocker Kane now spoke, handing me a typewritten sheet of official stationery. “This will save your Yeoman a little trouble. I’ve got a copy for the Quartermaster, too.” He smiled faintly as I reached for it.
S-16’s Yeoman, Quin, a young, eager-faced lad, stepped forward and took the piece of paper from me, attaching it to another sheet he carried in his hand. The papers constituted our “sailing list”—a list, corrected as of the last possible moment, containing the names, addresses, next-of-kin, and other pertinent information on all persons embarked, which is sent ashore whenever a submarine gets under way. This was an outgrowth of one of the early accidents wherein difficulty was encountered in determining exactly who had been aboard the ill-fated craft and how to reach their relatives.
Rubinoffski, our Quartermaster, who had been loitering near the conning tower, also received a list of our passengers and forthwith disappeared to enter their names in the log. Noticing the unobtrusive efficiency of these two, I felt a glow of pride at the fact that they so obviously knew exactly what they were doing.
Jim had returned to the bridge and was waiting. I could well appreciate how he must have felt, remembering how I had sweated under the eyes of my Qualification Board on Octopus’ bridge. But I had never really given thought until this moment to the feeling my skipper must have experienced.
Despite the qualification gimmick, nothing relieved me of responsibility for S-16. And yet I had to stand idly on her red-lead-spotted deck, too far from the bridge to take corrective action should anything go wrong, while one of my own officers, as a result of my recommendation, held my career as well as his own in his nervous hands.
There was reason for Jim to sweat. There was a strong ebb tide, aided by a north wind, in the Thames River that morning. The signs in the river were obvious—heavy current making around the buoys and a slight chop in the channel. One of the ways to handle this situation is to back out rapidly, getting the whole ship in the body of the current as quickly as possible, thus allowing the vessel to drift bodily downstream while maneuvering to turn. Backing slowly would result in our stern being caught by the current first, thus getting the ship awkwardly backward in the river.
Jim surveyed the situation, then cupped his hands and bellowed to the dock: “Take in the brow!” Quin bounded over the gangway, handed an envelope to the petty officer who had appeared to superintend casting off our lines, sprang light-footedly back. Kohler, our Chief of the Boat who was in charge topside, waved to the same man, and two dungareed sailors on the dock pulled the gangway up and pushed it out of the way. Jim leaned over the hatch on the bridge—“Stand by to answer bells on the battery,” he ordered. Then to the men on deck—“take in Two and Three.” Our two middle lines to the dock were lifted off their cleats by the line handlers on the docks and tossed to us. Our men quickly snaked them aboard and passed them into the stowage bins under the deck.
“Take in Four,” Jim called to the stern.
As Number Four, our stern line, came in, S-16 remained moored only by Number One line from our bow to a corresponding cleat on the dock. We were on the downstream side of the dock, the current tending to push us away. This was a favorable effect, in a light current; one to watch in a heavy ebb on the Thames. Jim, correctly anxious to back away smartly, did not wait for the current to be felt.
“Slack One!” he shouted to the bow detail; then nearly as loudly to the helmsman on the bridge, “All back full!” and a moment later, again to the bow, “Take in One!”
He might have given some additional order to the helmsman standing on the bridge as he turned around to face our direction of motion, but of this I could not be sure. In a moment S-16 commenced to gather sternway and to my horror her stern commenced to move to port, toward the dock. Jim, standing facing the stern beside the periscope standards, saw it, too.
“Left full rudder,” he yelled, with urgency in his voice. If the shear to port did not stop, our port propeller would hit the pilings of the dock, probably necessitating a dry-docking to repair it or replace it. This time I heard the helmsman’s reply as he raised his voice in response to Jim’s, and I thought I detected an unusual note of apprehension.
“Rudder is left full, sir!”
That was enough for me.
I took the first running step toward the bridge, cursing Jim’s confusion with the rudder—facing aft, he must have confused port and starboard—and the traditional requirement which had put me on deck instead of on the bridge at this moment as well. But Jim had realized the error, too. He turned around.
“All stop!” he bellowed.