“Stand by to answer bells,” I called to Brodie on the bridge below me. He relayed the order via the bridge announcing system to the maneuvering room spaces. In a moment the bridge speaker squawked: “Bridge—maneuvering. Ready to answer all bells!”
I leaned forward. “Take in lines two, three, and four!” Then, “Slack one and five port, heave in one and five starboard.”
Triton slowly and steadily moved away from her dock. Moored stern-to in the slip for torpedo-tube tests, she had only to go ahead and angle right to clear some pilings which were dead ahead.
The moment of decisive test was at hand. Rudder, engines, and propellers had been thoroughly tested. We knew the turbines would work; we knew that everything would work. Yet this was the first time we were to try it. I felt a thrill of anticipation as I gave the next few commands.
“Rudder amidships!” I ordered. “All ahead one-third!”
I turned aft. In a moment, I could see the disturbed water turned up by the two propellers as they rotated slowly in response to my order. Both were moving in the right direction. Water was being pushed aft.
“Take in all lines!”
This was the climactic command, intentionally given late in order to retain our hold on the dock until the last possible moment. I heaved an involuntary sigh as our willing deck hands heaved the nylon cables swiftly aboard. Triton gathered way, moving slowly out of the slip where she had lain for so many months.
“Right ten degrees rudder!” I ordered. When you use rudder on a ship, you swing your stern away from the direction you wish to head. Too much rudder would send our port propeller crashing into the dock, but we had to come right because dead ahead were pilings indicating shallow water.
My initial estimate had been approximately right, I saw with pleasure, and the ship was answering her helm like the lady we hoped she was. As a matter of fact, she was coming around somewhat more rapidly than necessary.
“Ease the rudder to five right,” I ordered.
Conning her carefully, we eased Triton out into the stream and pointed her fair down the Thames River. Once clear, I gave the order “all ahead two-thirds,” and our great ship increased speed as she progressed down the river into Long Island Sound.
It was just after daybreak as we passed New London Light at the mouth of the river, and I beckoned to Floyd W. Honeysette, who had the quartermaster watch on the bridge. “Keep a sharp lookout to starboard on the first white house on the point,” I told him. “Let me know if they flash a light or make a signal.”
In a few moments, Honeysette reported that there was no light, but that someone leaning out of a second-story window was waving a red cloth. I directed him to return the compliment by flashing the ship’s searchlight, and this is how Dr. and Mrs. Tage M. Nielsen of New London, friends of many years, became the first persons with whom Triton exchanged signals. Later, I learned the red fabric was a new nylon petticoat belonging to Claudia Nielsen, and that she had made a special reveille in our honor.
There is something about going to sea for the first time in a ship on which you have labored long and hard that is like no other experience. Triton was already quick with life, but when we got her past Race Rock and rang for flank speed for the first time, our spirits soared with her tremendous response.
Trigger had been a good ship, outstandingly effective in her business, and Tirante a ruthlessly efficient one, with spirit and stamina besides. Piper’s qualities had remained largely unknown because she had had no chance to win her spurs in combat, but Amberjack had originality and dash. Trigger II, the first of an entirely new class of submarines to enter service, had been a failure because of bad engines. Only recently, approximately eight years after construction and at last fitted with brand new engines, she was showing her mettle as one of the finest diesel submarines in the force. Salamonie, my previous ship, oldest of them all except the never-forgotten Lea, though still a “producer” was nearly worn out from years of strenuous operation.
But none of these, I knew instantly, had the heart and drive of Triton. The way she leaped ahead when the power was applied made my heart leap, too; we could actually feel the acceleration as we gave her the gun. Water streamed by us on both sides; spray pelted our faces on the bridge and more splashed against its forward edge into thousands of flying, multicolored droplets in the early morning sunshine.
We headed her southeast into Block Island Sound and toward Montauk Point, aiming her foaming bow directly toward the morning sun.
In an unbelievably short time we had roared past Cerberus Shoals. Shortly afterward, as we changed course to due south, Montauk Point came up to starboard, and soon we were free on the ocean where two years ago I had steamed with Salamonie and where fifteen years ago German submarines were on the prowl. I kept calling down below for reports of our speed, must have grinned like a small boy each time I heard the figures.
Once clear of the shoal water, I turned the deck over to Brodie and went below to see for myself how things were going. Everywhere about me was an air of relaxed, delighted intensity. Triton was handling almost unbelievably well. There were nothing but smiles in the control room, torpedo rooms, and galley. In the machinery spaces, men were doing their routine tasks with a light in their eyes and a lilt in their voices I had never seen before. One might have imagined we were an orchestra, playing on a new and greater instrument. This air of confident optimism pervaded the ship, and as I listened to the reports coming and going, the watch reliefs turning over, the reports of log entries and the various other minutiae that go into operating a ship, I knew that we had a crew and a ship equal to the best anyone had ever had the good fortune to command. Except for a handful of “boot seamen,” we were all veterans; our first hours under way had been going so smoothly one might have surmised our crew had been working together for years.
Even taciturn Admiral Rickover, who rarely expressed pleasure with anything (holding, I suspect that to do so might cause his underlings to relax when they should be working harder than ever), was forced to admit that he had never witnessed a more successful beginning to a set of trials. I caught a hint of a smile on his face as I sought him out in the forward engine room.
“Admiral, the water will be deep enough to dive very shortly, and with your permission we’ll go ahead and take her down as originally scheduled.”
Admiral Rickover nodded. While not exactly deafening, the roar of machinery was a high-pitched symphony composed of many different sounds from hundreds of pieces of machinery, all operating in a well-ordered cacophony of rhythm. To me, it was sheer music. Music it must have been to him, too, even though I could detect no visible sign.
I left the engine room and proceeded aft through the remaining engineering spaces, finally reaching the after torpedo room. There, all was calm except for the noise of two huge propellers whirling away just outside. I listened to them carefully. It was hard to realize that they were only a few feet from me, spinning with violent energy, driving water aft at an unprecedented speed and putting more horsepower into the ocean than any submarine had ever done. I could feel the induced vibration shaking the entire after structure of the ship. The noise of the propellers and the roar of the water as it raced past our hull were almost as loud as the machinery a few compartments forward.