A Submariner’s Story (Sinking to Crush Depth)
By
Frederick Rodgers CD
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Frederick Rodgers on Smashwords
A Submariner’s Story (Sinking to Crush Depth)
Copyright © 2010 by Frederick Rodgers
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Preface
Halifax, Nova Scotia. Winter 1964
HMS Alcide is outboard of HMS Auriga, part of the 6th Canadian Submarine Squadron.
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HMS Alcide was an Amphion-class submarine of the Royal Navy, built by Vickers Armstrong and launched 12th April 1945.
Her displacement was approximately 1400 tons, its length 293feet, and its beam 22 feet 4in. It had a complement of five officers and fifty-five ratings. Test depth to 350 feet, maximum depth 500 feet.
It was sold for scrap on 18th June 1974
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A Submariner’s Story (Sinking to Crush depth)
0400hrs on a Thursday morning in early April 1964 and I’ve been roughly aroused from the tranquillity of sleep by the crewmember I was about to relieve. It was my turn to go on watch. Reluctantly, I climbed out of my nice warm bunk and lowered my feet on to the cold hard deck.
At sea in a submarine, we were never expected to undress so I was ready to go straight on watch, making a quick visit to the head on the way. The boat was running quietly and normally as I took up my station in the control room. The watch change continued around me with mumbling, bleary-eyed submariners dragging themselves to their various posts.
HMS Alcide, a Royal Navy ‘A’ class submarine, was cruising along at four knots about one hundred feet below the surface of the North Atlantic. Our mission was to patrol a designated zone listening for ‘intruders’, the Ministry of Defence’s polite name for the Russian fleet. The cold war was in full swing at the time.
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, I joined the Royal Navy in 1955 and now I was a Leading Seaman, having served for a little over five years in the Submarine Service. Which is why I was sitting at the forward plane’s control, dreading the four long hours of watch duty that stretched ahead of me. The stale, damp air in the boat was a familiar mixture of body odour and diesel fumes, and the harsh white overhead lights irritated my still sleepy eyes.
The boat was in the capable hands of George, the autopilot. George was designed to control our course, speed and depth. Nevertheless, we still kept a wary eye on him, as George could be a bit unpredictable at times.
At approximately 0430hrs the watch was relaxed and we were issued with a mug of kye, which was effectively hot chocolate, and the officer of the watch gave the signal for ‘one all round’. ‘One all round’ was the official permission to light up a cigarette - or a pipe, which was popular. Smoking, out of sheer necessity, was still a restricted privilege on board a submarine.
Though my name is Fred Rodgers, for some strange reason I got nicknamed Ben by the crew of HMS Alcide. Don’t ask me why. Just about everyone in the Navy is given a nickname. For example, if your surname was Reynolds you’d be known as Debbie, if it was White you’d be called Chalky, and usually the connection was obvious. But I have absolutely no idea how I came by the name Ben!
Anyway, whilst keeping a keen eye on our depth, my fellow watch-keepers and I got involved in some serious debates that ranged from the world-wide problem of fuel shortages to the threat of nuclear wipe-out to the best car produced that year. We flitted from religion to politics and touched on everything in between, anything to take our minds off the tedium.
Then at last, around 0730hrs, the wonderful aroma of frying bacon wafted in from the galley to invade my nostrils. Everyone was naturally hungry by then and I looked around anxiously in the hope that my relief might have had a sudden rush of compassion and decided to come on watch early.
He didn’t! So at a few minutes after 0800hrs I eventually headed aft to collect my breakfast. The tiny galley on an ‘A’ class boat is squeezed into a space in the after section of the control room, next to the engine room door.
Weary from four hours on watch, I leaned casually against the bulkhead and watched the eggs sizzle on the grill. Then, just as the chef piled two eggs and several rashers of bacon on my plate, I sensed the slant of the decks suddenly change into a sharp downward angle.
“Wake up, lad! Watch your depth!”
I smiled as the officer of the watch berated the poor crewman who had just relieved me. I knew he couldn’t blame George. It had been shut down at the watch change.
But almost instantly it became obvious that the unplanned downward movement was not the fault of the planesman. We appeared to be in a steep dive!
In a matter of seconds we had dropped to 200 feet. The First Lieutenant rushed into the control room, immediately taking charge of what was rapidly becoming a very serious situation. The alarm to ‘shut off for going deep’ sounded throughout the submarine.
‘Going deep’ meant the lower conning tower hatch, along with every other hatch inside the boat, was shut immediately, and we were all horribly aware that the Captain’s cabin was located above the control room, outside the main pressure hull. Our Skipper was asleep in the cabin, which effectively left him isolated and alone outside the main pressure hull.
I assisted in securing the engine room door and all the valves passing through the bulkhead, and then I returned to the control room to report that this part of ship was sealed.
Events now seemed to be happening in slow motion as the crew went about their duties with calm efficiency, totally sealing the boat ready for the ‘deep dive’. But every eye in the control room was glued to the depth gauge and the rapidly descending readings on it.
As the reading passed 400 feet, the First Lieutenant ordered the one thing that we believed would surely correct the uncontrolled descent and allow us to regain buoyancy.
“Blow main ballast,” he commanded.
The sound of air screeching into the ballast tanks was strangely reassuring, and we held our breath as we waited for the boat to level off and start rising again. I stood silently and motionless, unable to drag my eyes away from the depth gauge.
I wasn’t alone. It seemed every man in the control room was frozen in time, his eyes firmly fixed on the same gauge. When the ‘blow’ was completed an eerie and absolute despairing silence enveloped the boat.
We were still sinking!
Blowing the tanks had not even slowed us down. The seabed was perhaps two miles below us. We could never go down that far in one piece.
As we passed through 600 feet the First Lieutenant threw his shirt over the depth gauge. It effectively pulled us out of our trance.
Now, echoing through the eerie silence, we heard the first distinct groans and creaks as the hull began to compress under the enormous pressure of the sea. And I would be lying if I said the feeling of being trapped in a steel tube, as it was about to be crushed like a grape wasn’t absolutely terrifying!
Powerless to do anything, I just stood there, fearfully awaiting the end. I wondered if people would ever know what happened to us, or if they’d believe we died bravely in a skirmish with some unknown enemy. I regretted never seeing a blue sky again, or green grass. I ask myself silly question, like what possessed me to volunteer for the submarine service in the first place. And I clearly remembered something that we’d been taught during basic submarine training – an ‘A’ boat had a maximum depth of 500 feet!
The hull was actually designed to withstand sea pressure to 1000 feet, but it was only a theory, and that theory wasn’t very reassuring right at that moment. Where were the designers now that we were about to test this theory? And besides, the Alcide was more than twenty years old already, so the pressure hull would certainly have deteriorated a bit during that time.
I was gripped by a dreadful fear that I’d never experienced before in my whole life, but outwardly I struggled to maintain a calm appearance. No one wanted to be responsible for starting a wholesale panic!
Then a totally unexpected sense of calm crept over me. As we continued our rapid descent I realized I was not in control of these events, I could do nothing to influence what was unfolding around me, so my whole body began to relax. Only then, through the fog of jumbled thoughts and theories, did I become aware that my right hand was hurting. I looked down to see that I had a death grip on a stanchion. But couldn’t let go! It was as if I believed I was adding strength to the hull just by holding onto it.
“Bubble rising, Sir!”
The voice that pierced my silent stupor was like a shot, but I wasn’t sure I’d heard it correctly. I looked over at the First Lieutenant. Maybe I was so anxious it was what I wanted to hear.
But with a huge surge of relief I actually felt a definite upward sweep of the deck, making me shift my weight to compensate. We were rising! The boat had actually changed direction and was now racing up toward the surface at about the same speed we had been descending at only moments before.
Clearly sonar could not safely detect any surface contacts at this speed and we could have been racing headlong towards a different kind of danger, but no one was concerned enough to risk slowing our ascent.
When we eventually broke through the surface and came to a comfortable cruising speed, a relieved skipper was the first man on the bridge. We all had great sympathy for him. Trapped alone in his tiny cabin, not knowing what was happening, must have been a terrifying ordeal for him
Yet the entire episode had lasted only a matter of minutes. Of course, for those of us in the control room it seemed like an eternity, and a wave of question poured from us. What exactly happened? What caused such an unexpected dive? Right then, though, I wasn’t too concerned about the actual cause, I was just so happy to be alive and back on the surface. I realised that I was still ravenous, too, so I went off again in search of my breakfast.
When I got back to the Seaman’s mess it was alive with the buzz of excited chatter, all of which concerned the amazing episode of the morning’s mysterious dive. I know it was mostly bravado masking their real fear, but almost everyone was jockeying for the opportunity to tell their story of similar experiences (supposedly) on other boats.
“Once, out in the Indian Ocean, we actually hit the sea bed at 800 feet!”
“Oh yeah! Well, on my last boat we sank stern first and were stuck on the sea bed for hours!”
“That’s nothing! We were off the coast of China when …”
And so the stories went on and on, and like the Pinocchio fairy tale, some noses should have grown out of all proportion. But for me, this was truly the most terrifying experience of my life. I really believe I’d walked through the valley of the shadow of death that morning, and it was only by the grace of God had I survived.
But what did happen? What caused such a steep, unexpected dive? And how deep did we actually go? These are questions I can’t answer with any certainty, but possibly the most logical explanation offered at the time was that we had drifted into a huge pocket of fresh water left by a melting iceberg.
Icebergs are generally made up of fresh water and as they move into the Gulf Stream they melt. That morning it’s possible our submarine entered at the top of one of these pools of fresh water. Then, because of the difference in the density between the salt water and the fresh water, we immediately became very heavy and dropped like a stone. Only when we reached the bottom of the pool and hit salt water again did we manage to regain our buoyancy.
How deep we actually went that morning is open to speculation. Perhaps somewhere near 800 feet.
And if the pool had been a few feet deeper maybe I wouldn’t be telling this story now anyway - who really knows?
The End
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I survived my time in submarines and went on to served a total of twelve years in the Royal Navy, and then twelve more in the Canadian Navy Reserve. I’m now retired and living with my wife Linda on our fifteen acre hobby farm located in Ebenezer, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
My hobby is restoring and driving antique cars, mostly British models. My present car is a 1961 Rover P4-100.
I began my first book in 2000, and four years later I published it, a four hundred-page memoir titled ‘Lily & Me’ (ISBN 1-55430-019-3).
In 2009 I published the sequel: ‘The Royal Navy & Me’ (ISBN 1-4392-5452-4)
Both books are available at www.amazon.com. And as e-books at www.smashwords.com
Please visit my web page and blog at www.irishroversbooks.com