Wright and the torpedo men around him heard the torpedoes from the forward room hit home. They had just finished celebrating when word came that depth charges were on the way down.
Each man grabbed on to the nearest handhold and began to pray. Wright positioned himself near the depth gauge by the torpedo tubes. He could see that they were already below test depth.
He felt chills as he heard the eerie metallic clicks of the depth-charge-arming sensors outside the hull. Then the sea outside erupted in a series of concussions that rocked the room. In rapid succession, one exploded on the starboard side, then on the port side, then another to starboard, then Wright lost count as he careened across the room and into a sailor near the opposite bulkhead. The hull creaked and whined some more as the shock waves stressed it in both directions.
The room went pitch black as the deck steeped downward and the hull creaked as the sea pressure increased. Wright heard several hissing sounds and knew that the control room was attempting to stop their descent by blowing all of the water they could out of the ballast tanks.
The hull creaked again. Then Wright felt a tremendous jolt. It flung him and some of the men into the forward bulkhead. Then the deck began to level. Wright thought it a good thing at first but then realized what was happening when the stern slammed hard into the ocean floor.
The ship was on the bottom of the channel.
After it was all over, Wright found that beyond a few bruises, he was not injured and grabbed for the nearest battle lantern. All of the light bulbs in the room had been shattered and many of the other men clicked on battle lanterns too. The room was filled with the dank smell of oil and water.
“Who’s hurt?” Wright called.
“Rucker’s hurt,” a voice said. “He’s over here.”
Wright moved toward the voice to find two men huddled over a prostrate figure on the deck.
“He’s hit his head on something sharp,” Petty Officer Guthrie said.
Wright could see blood and a messy wound near the man’s left ear. The man’s body was limp and lifeless and Wright could not see how he could still be alive.
Another man stumbled over to the light, cradling his right thigh with both hands, his dungaree trousers torn open to expose several bright red oozing blisters on his skin. Guthrie immediately instructed the man to sit on the deck and began squeezing the grotesque blisters, causing the man considerable pain. Wright was almost sickened by the sight.
“What happened to him?” Wright asked.
“We must have a hydraulic rupture,” Guthrie said as he kept pressing on the man’s leg. “The oil has shot up under his skin. Best thing to do is get it all out of his leg.”
“We’ve got leaks over here!” a man yelled.
Wright felt some spray across his face and noticed a valve flange squirting water in all directions. He heard other leaks in the darkness on the other side of the room.
Wright grabbed Guthrie’s shoulder. “Leave him, for now. We have to get these leaks under control. Get someone to work on that flange. I’ll go check the rest of the room.” Guthrie looked sympathetically at the two injured men, then nodded. “Aye, sir.”
Wright crawled around the piping and racks on the room’s port side and found three more leaks from pipe welds and valves. Another man noticed that the hatch in the overhead was leaking, too. Eventually, Guthrie and the nine non-injured men broke out wrenches and banding equipment and got to work on the leaks.
Wright manned the sound-powered phone set and established communications with the control room and the crew’s mess. As he plugged in the phone set, he noticed the reading on the depth gauge.
It read six hundred forty five feet, well below Mackerel’s four-hundred-foot test depth. The fact that the hull was still intact was a miracle, and Wright silently thanked God for the men who built her back in Portsmouth. He was certain that those men never anticipated that she could go this deep.
Wright could hear several reports coming over the phone circuit, as each compartment reported the damage. He waited his turn. He was last in line, since his room was the aftermost room in the ship. As he listened to the reports, he realized just how serious Mackerel's situation was. Each compartment reported leaks or minor flooding, and damaged equipment of some kind. When it was his turn, he reported what he knew.
“Control, aft torpedo room,” he identified himself. “Minor leaks from seawater piping. Hydraulic rupture in external hydraulic system. Two men injured.”
The report was acknowledged and the circuit was immediately taken up by another damage report. Wright heard something about flooding in the forward battery, then something about chlorine gas, the toxic gas created when salt water underwent electrolysis.
Then the latch on the compartment door spun around and the door opened. Tee stepped inside and glanced around at the damage before approaching Wright. He was making his rounds as the damage control officer. He shone his lantern on Wright’s face.
“How’re your people doing back here?” he asked, slightly out of breath, and with no indication that they had been at each other’s throats only minutes before.
“All right,” Wright replied. “I think we can get these leaks under control. Our injured men need attention.”
“Any more damage to report?”
Wright was about to answer when he heard someone shouting over the communications circuit. “Fire! Fire! Fire in the maneuvering room!” the voice yelled.
“Someone’s reporting a fire in maneuvering,” Wright exclaimed to Tee.
Tee raced for the door. The maneuvering room was the next compartment forward. He opened the door and was met by a billowing cloud of smoke and lapping flames. It was impossible to see beyond the doorframe. Tee leaped back and hurriedly shut the door, before any more smoke could enter the torpedo room.
The men in the room briefly stopped their repairs and exchanged glances. That door was the only way out of the room and now a fire blocked it. Wright, Tee, and the other men in the aft torpedo room were cut off from the rest of the ship now, trapped by a fire in a leaking compartment.
Chapter 27
“You all right, Captain?” Cazanavette asked.
Tremain walked through the water stream dripping from the periscopes and over to the chart desk where Cazanavette conferred with Stillsen. His head still throbbed, but at least he felt sturdy enough to be on his feet. The cold water felt surprisingly good on his face and it helped to revive him, but he winced as the stream of salt water touched the wound on his head.
Men desperately worked everywhere around him. Some turned wrenches to tighten seeping valves. Others hammered long planks of wooden shoring into place to help support the hull against the massive sea pressure. They all worked by inconsistent and unsteady light from battle lanterns.
As Tremain drew near the desk, Cazanavette extended a hand in an attempt to assist him, but Tremain did not take it. Instead, he managed a polite smile of appreciation and leaned against the bulkhead for support. Cazanavette and
Stillsen both looked like hell, Tremain thought. But then he wondered what he must look like. The room was dank and humid and he could already tell that the oxygen was getting thin. Carbon dioxide levels would be increasing soon.
“Damage report,” he muttered. “Bring me up to date, XO.”
Cazanavette and Stillsen looked at each other, as if to question whether he was well enough to be on his feet, let alone in command. But one look into his eyes did away with any such thoughts. Tremain was not in the mood for doubting, and finally Cazanavette answered.