大象传媒

Hitting the bottom

That first trip, short though it was, exhilarated me. At last I had really begun the essential part of the training - on the chariots. I had liked the feel of the torpedo under me. The controls were primitive, but they worked in a rough and ready sort of way; presumably that was all that was needed to carry out the job. The speed was disappointingly slow, but the pressure of the water against my breathing bag at half speed was strong enough to squash it quite a bit; higher speeds would deflate it dangerously, making it hard for me to breathe.

So I was looking forward to the next trip, when we would practise cruising underwater at ten to fifteen feet below the surface, and maintaining depth; also diving with way on, and surfacing likewise. I think it was the following day Pearcy and I went out; at any rate the weather was just as springlike, with clear skies and only a light breeze gently rippling the waters of Loch Corrie. Once in our suits and on oxygen, we swung our legs over the jeep, and proceeded away from Tites, round the stern and over to the area of the loch where we had practised submerging and surfacing the previous time. Before we had got quite so close to the shore, however, the skiff told us to stop (I think it was Jimmy this time in charge), and gave on-the-spot instructions.

I trimmed down till we had just got slightly positive buoyancy, and checked the fore-and-aft angle by feel, pumping forward or aft till I judged we were even. Then, trailing the safety buoy astern, we moved forward with the vent at the top of out headpieces just cutting the surface of the water. Slight adjustments of the angle on the dive-and-rise places aft were required, like on the joystick of a plane, and once or twice we dipped a foot or so below. Once I over-corrected, and we breasted the surface, then dipped again. I had to do this exercise several times before Jimmy was satisfied I had enough fore-and-aft control. It felt good to move along just under the sunlit surface; I had to watch it carefully however to keep a steady depth, and avoided looking down at the sandy bottom, which appeared at one end of the run.

Then we had to practise dipping under, holding the jeep at five feet below, and then after twenty or thirty yards breaking surface again rather like a dolphin swimming, but so very much slower. Surfacing from below was fine, but getting under wasn't always a smooth operation, for the screw at the rear end of the chariot tended to rise out of the water and thrash the air alarmingly, as happens with merchant ships in a storm. When their propeller clears the water, the revolutions increase at once, and send reverberations through the hull of the ship, via the shaft bearings. In a minor way, that is what we felt when the jeep鈥檚 screw came out. The way I found to stop it, was to take way off the jeep by shutting off the motor, and so let the whole craft subside gently into the water again; then the motor could be started and the blades would bite.

Our next task was to dip the chariot under and hold her steady for some distance at about five feet below, without bucking up to the surface every now and again. This was a much calmer exercise, and gave me time now and then to look about me, and pick out the rocks and the starfish on the bottom as we came to the shallow end of the run. I was aware of not keeping closely to the five feet; our heads came near the surface once or twice, and sometimes I over-corrected and we went deeper than instructed - but only by four or five feet.

The final exercise of the trip was to do the same kind of steady run, but at between ten and fifteen feet under. The run inward went fine, and I surfaced near the shore. But the run outward proved different. I found I had some trouble getting under, and heard the screw thrashing the air a little; but finally it bit. The jeep had more of a nose down angle after five feet than I had wanted, so I twisted back on the controls, but nothing happened. I twisted harder. No result. By now we were at fifteen feet, and pointing down. I increased speed, to get greater effect on the planes; absolutely no effect. The water was getting darker, a much deeper green than I had yet seen that morning. My breathing bag was compressed, and I had to give myself bursts of oxygen and clear my ears by snorting hard against the nose-clip.

I could hear Pearcy struggling with his breathing too. Suddenly I felt him thump me twice on one shoulder. In my confusion I forgot that this meant turn in that direction. Instead I turned the rudder the opposite way, towards the shore. For if we were going to hit bottom, the shallower the better. In desperation I switched to reverse, to try to take us up backwards, or at least to slow down the descent - which went on and on. I felt Pearcy suddenly swing off the craft, and wondered if he were abandoning it. Just then I failed to clear my right ear entirely, the pain increased sharply, and all at once I felt the eardrum give with a sharp hiss. A moment later the nose hit bottom, at an angle of twenty-five degrees. I was jolted up from my seat, and hung on to the shield as I lifted. I knew I must not leave the jeep, even if Pearcy had done so.

I turned to see him still there; the light at fifty-five feet was still enough to show what was wrong. The rope from the jeep to the safety buoy had taken a turn around the propeller shield. On diving, the buoy had pulled the rear end of the jeep up, and forced the nose down. The planes were simply not strong enough to correct this bow-down angle, and so we had gone on down. Pearcy had understood what had happened shortly before we reached bottom, and had clambered aft to try to free the rope. Now he was busy doing so, yanking it down to get enough slack to take the loop off. I looked up and saw that the buoy was only about half way up the surface. The people in the skiff would be more than worried; perhaps they were already sending out emergency signals.

As Pearcy pulled himself back towards me, the jeep settled on the bottom, and he gave me the thumbs up. I replied the same way; but my ear was feeling very strange, as if it had sprung a leak; I noticed that I had trouble keeping my balance and knew that it wasn't merely because we were underwater. I signalled to him to remount, did so myself, and we kicked ourselves clear of the bottom. The motor responded to the controls, and we moved forward, but I had to guff some air into the main tank, as the trim had gone decidedly negative as a result of the depth we had reached. So we rose faster than I had intended, and I was too slow to correct the buoyancy again as we came to shallower depths.

We broke surface with a rush, the shield rising clear, then splashing back in. In seconds the skiff was alongside. Jimmy was leaning over:
'What happened, jeep?'
I could only signal with a circular motion of my hand.
'The motor, eh? Prop not working?'
I shook one hand vigorously to say no. But Jimmy mistook my meaning.
'Try it now.'
I used the controls to satisfy him about the motor, then gave another circular motion of my hand. Perhaps Pearcy was pointing et the rope as well.
'Well whatever it is, you've had enough for this morning,' Jimmy concluded. 'Guff up your main tank, and proceed back on the surface to Tites.'
I would have liked to insist on doing a successful second run at ten to fifteen feet, but found this too difficult to negotiate from behind the visor. Also I felt my ear was getting more and more painful. Once we were back on Tites, and I had got my visor up and taken the tits out of my mouth, I was able to say it all.

I was angry about the rope, and felt that it was the safety buoy that, paradoxically, had taken us into danger. But it appeared that this looping hadn't occurred to anyone else before. It must have happened when I was turning at the shoreward end of the first run: a bight must have gathered in the towrope, and gathered round the after end of the jeep.
Jimmy took a look at my ear when I mentioned what had happened. There was some blood; also, strangely, the deck below my feet seemed to be tilting.
'Go and see the medic, right away,' he advised.

Accidents accrue

The surgeon Lieutenant-Commander took out his instrument and peered this way and that, carefully while I was explaining what had happened, and what I'd felt.
'Yes, the eardrum has been pierced, and is bleeding and already a little inflamed,' he stated gently, laying down the torch. 'We'll have to wash that out. I'll give you a salve to put in to ease the laceration. You'll put that in every four hours, and wear cotton wool in the ear to prevent infection, and I'll see you again tomorrow. Meanwhile no diving for you for at least four weeks.'
Four whole weeks! I was appalled! All that training lost, while the others forged on ahead ... I was going to fall right behind even the second batch of charioteers. Was I fated not to succeed with my training? When Commander Fell heard, he sympathised, and asked whether I wanted to go on leave, or stay on Tites. I made it very clear that the last thing I wanted was to be sent away sick yet again.

So I remained on Tites, and spent my time helping other divers into and out of their suits, filling and checking protosorb canisters for the breathing bags, giving orders to the winch-drivers for hoisting chariots out of the water and setting them on chocks inboard for servicing - the batteries always had to be re-charged - and then lifting them outboard again, lowering them on a strop down into the water by the pontoon, where one of us would lean out to take the strop off the hook. When a chariot had to be brought up on deck from the water, the practice arose of riding down on the hook, just for a change from the companionway or movable stairs from the welldeck down the ship's side. You took hold of the hook as it lay on deck, stood by as the big pulley bearing the wire got lifted up, grasped the hook tightly with both hands, and let yourself swing up into the air, over the guardrail, and then be gradually lowered down to the pontoon. It helped the winch driver, because the pulley block was not heavy enough by itself to weight the wire straight, but a man on tend ensured a smooth run down to the pontoon. I enjoyed doing this, as a piece of acrobatics. But one day oil deposit had made the hook slippery, and as I was lowered out over the water, I felt my gloved hands slipping. I called out to warn the officer in charge, but slipped off into the water before a skiff could be set going to come and rescue me: the weight of my sodden clothing was threatening to pull me under by the time the skiff reached me!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.