Her underwater body showed a dull olive green when the scaffolding was cleared and she stood in solitaire on two ribbons of shiny tan-colored wax. Around her towered the black skeletonlike framework of the overhead cranes, and crowning her entire length was a double-strength steel superstructure, painted a brilliant orange. Perched on top of this was the bulky lower section of the sail, truncated by removal of the upper half but still seeming high enough to strike the cranes above.
Launching a ship is an important point in her construction program. Contrary to the impression some people may have, a ship is far from fully constructed when she is launched. With the exception of small pleasure craft, no ship can be completed before she is floating in the water, for even the most careful calculations cannot foretell the precise manner in which the hull will take up the stresses of being waterborne. Certain extremely precise technical work, such as final boring of the propeller-shaft tubes and lining up turbines and reduction gears on their foundations, cannot be accomplished until after the ship is afloat. Otherwise, a tiny deflection of a sixteenth or a thirty-second of an inch—easily possible in a hull the length of ours—might throw the reduction gears or propeller shafting out of line.
On the nineteenth of August, 1958, a warm New England summer day, thirty-five thousand guests had come to the Electric Boat Division to see Triton launched—the biggest crowd ever assembled at EB, so the papers said, for the biggest submarine ever built. It was a great day for Triton, for Electric Boat, for Triton’s crew, and for me.
About half our crew were aboard for the ceremony, in close formation on the forecastle, resplendent in their dress-white uniforms. Also in whites, I waited above them on a makeshift platform provided at the half-level of the decapitated bridge. A few planks had been nailed together to make a platform near the forward end, and this was where I stood. Unfortunately, it was so low I could barely see over the side, but I found that by standing on top of the ship’s whistle, built into the forward section of the sail, and holding onto a girder at its edge, I was able to get a pretty good view of the ceremonies. I could not, however, see the launching platform or the festivities going on there beneath the Triton’s bow.
The gaily dressed crowd on the ground below spread out in all directions, spilled over the temporary barriers erected by Electric Boat, crowded on top of the stacked lumber and building materials on both sides. Some of them even stood on the roofs of nearby buildings. As I watched, I was amused to see an Electric Boat officer climb to the top of one of the buildings and chase away a number of teen-agers. Most of the uniforms were whites, the prescribed attire for the occasion. There were sailors from other ships acting as ushers; a sprinkling of blue and gray-green-uniformed police officers scattered about, preserving order. Nearly half the crowd were women; and there were a number of children about, too, most of them clutching the hands of their parents. One or two of the smaller tots perched on the shoulders of a uniformed father, and a few raced around in games of tag or follow-the-leader.
My own children were somewhere in the crowd, I knew, but I searched for them without success. They were supposed to be up near the launching platform in the care of a secretary of Electric Boat, for Ingrid, my wife, could not be here. She was in Boston with her father, whose postoperative condition had suddenly become critical.
Excited, high-pitched chatter wafted up to me, but soon the crowd grew silent, and I heard the loudspeakers rumble with the voice of one of the presiding dignitaries. Not a word of what was being said could be distinguished, but from the timetable I had studied that morning, I knew that Admiral Jerauld Wright, Commander in Chief of the United States Atlantic Fleet and Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, was about to deliver the principal address. After Admiral Wright finished, there would be an invocation, and then Triton would be christened by Louise Will, wife of Vice-Admiral John Will, USN (ret.), with the traditional shattering of a bottle of champagne. Then, at long last, the trigger holding the launching cradle would be released, and we would slide backward into the water.
There was a scattering of applause from below, then silence again. The drone of the loudspeakers went on and off several times. Some people near the invisible launching platform bowed their heads. Still not an intelligible word came through the loudspeakers, and I could only assume that the launching was drawing closer. Instinctively, I took a firmer grip on the handrail.
There is always a little apprehension when a ship is launched. Will she start when the trigger is released? Will the motion be accompanied by a jolt which might knock personnel off their feet or over the side? Poised only on two slender slides for her entry into water, our ship was in its most vulnerable condition. Any miscalculation, any error in fixing the location of the stresses, could easily result in damage. Unthinkable, but conceivable—she might even topple over. Surface ships, usually broader than they are tall and essentially flat-bottomed, are not prone to such mishaps, but submarines are taller than they are wide and their bottoms are round. The catastrophe of rolling over on the crowds below would be appalling. A fine time for me to come up with this, I thought; surely the Electric Boat people ought to know how to launch a submarine, even one as big as Triton.
Being idle, I also had time to concern myself over how the new ship would behave when she entered the water. Were the many hull openings all closed? Submarines are designed to lie low in the water. Might Triton not partially submerge as she entered her element? It had happened before.
The speakers went off again. There was a moment’s interruption, then the blare of a steam whistle and a siren, joined immediately by several others. I felt nothing: no tremor, no shift of weight, no indication of motion—nothing. And then the steel General Dynamics sign on the structure of one of the crane tracks began to glide away. For a long moment I watched it, wondering whether it was really moving or whether it was simply that I wanted it to move. But the sign was actually receding, and within seconds, the vertical stanchions that lined the building ways were flying by.
I turned around just in time to see our stern enter the water with a great froth of white spray, as the propellers dug in. An insignificant amount of water came up over the turtle back and part of the main deck aft—not far. On either side of us, long streamers of white wake marked our dash. And now we were in the river; small boats and pleasure craft of all sorts, heretofore maintaining a cautious distance, raced toward us for a closer look. Up ahead was water, and the naked ways. Triton was fully waterborne.
In reporting the ceremony and the launching, the New London Day commented that as she slid down the ways, Triton attained a speed higher than she would ever see again. Having spent the past seven months studying the power-packed ship, I had some reservations about the accuracy of that statement.
After launching, there is a long period of further construction, called “fitting out”—a holdover from traditions of the days of sail when “fitting out” amounted to installing masts and guns in a completed hull. It is not the launching, but the commissioning of a ship which signifies her acceptance for service. And, although launched on the nineteenth of August, 1958, Triton did not go to sea on trials until September, 1959. She was commissioned into the Naval Service on the tenth of November, 1959.
This period between launching and commissioning is critically important, for this is when the bulk of the crew is assembled and organized into a cohesive ship’s company. In forming a crew, nuclear ships have a special advantage, thanks to Admiral Rickover’s foresight. All our engineering personnel came directly from the Triton’s prototype at West Milton, New York, where they had been put through a rigorous training schedule on the dry-land reactor and engine room the Atomic Energy Commission had built there at the Admiral’s behest. These men were already thoroughly trained and qualified in their primary functions. Nuclear ships are unique—and among the special aspects was that our engineering department, in effect, was handed to us ready-made. Its personnel could not have been better prepared for their duties. Proper preparation to take the ship to sea would have been impossible otherwise.