Collapse Depth

Two men jumped down the ladder. The looked around briefly, wide eyed, stunned as Jabo had been by the violence of the noise. The XO grabbed each by the shoulder to get their attention. “Set up a hand pump!” he shouted, pointing to the flood control station. “See what that can do.”

They nodded and started back up the ladder to go the Crew’s Mess to get the necessary equipment. “While you’re up there, get an officer down here to be phone talker.”

They nodded again.

“Who’s that?” said the XO, noticing for the first time the lone enlisted man in the space who had set down the submersible pump and was attempting to rig it by himself. He was soaking wet, but his head was down, completely focused on the task.

“Not sure,” said Jabo. “I think it might be that new kid.”

“Help him out.”

Jabo waded toward him.

• • •

“Sir, ship is at 900 feet,” said the diving officer.

“Aye,” said the captain. Reports were steadily coming into control, all the spaces reporting their rigs, and from the EOOW, who reported he was ready to answer any bell that they ordered. All over the control room, alarms sounded from virtually every system on the boat. But their focus had gone entirely to the number that was most fundamental measure of a submarine’s peril: depth.

“Nine-fifty,” said the Dive.

“Aye,” said the captain again. He was running a dozen calculations in his head. To completely emergency blow now, he was certain, to expend all their high pressure air, would be a catastrophic error. With all the water they’d taken aboard, it might not even get them to the top. And even if it did, the ass end of the ship would be sticking out, the screw turning hopelessly in the air. The flooding would continue, and without propulsion to aid them, they would certainly sink again. If they were lucky they’d have enough time to transmit an SOS so a salvage ship could find their wreckage. He computed the ship’s reserve buoyancy in his head, the capacity of the emergency high pressure air banks, a rough estimate of the rate of flooding based on the rate at which it competed with the trim pump.

“Ship is at test depth, sir,” said the dive. No one reacted, but everyone stared at the depth indicator to watch something they’d never seen before. They drifted down another foot, and the ship had exceeded its test depth.

“Captain…” said Kincaid.

“Blow the forward tanks for three seconds,” interrupted the captain. “That’s it…not another second.”

“Emergency blow the forward tanks, three seconds.”

“Emergency blow the forward tanks three seconds, aye sir,” said the chief of the watch. He stood and put his hands on forward switch only. It was an unusual posture; they were trained to completely blow the tanks dry if they ever needed too. To blow only one tank for a limited time was like trying to use half your parachute. The COW hesitated, then threw the single valve forward.

High pressure air flowed roared through the valve, rushing into the forward main ballast tanks and the valves that sat atop them. Those valves turned, and for three seconds they admitted the ship’s highest pressure air, the air that had nearly ruptured Hallorann’s ear drums on his first day in the engine room. Released into the forward tanks, the air expanded. While the tanks were destroyed at the bottom, enough of the tank remained intact at the top that the air expanded and pooled there, forcing seawater out through the bottom. After three seconds at that sea pressure, a bubble of air roughly the size of a car developed in each of the front three main ballast tanks. It expelled from the ship an equivalent volume of water, and they almost instantly became buoyant again. The action also shifted the center of buoyancy aft, which pushed the front of the ship up.

After three seconds, the COW pulled back the valve. The indicator lights for all three tanks turned amber again.

“Angle is coming up!” said the Dive, confirming what the captain felt in his feet.

Beneath them, thousands of gallons of seawater that had flooded into the torpedo room rolled aft. One positive effect of this was that it further shifted the ship’s center of buoyancy, accentuating the angle that the captain wanted to generate. But it also covered everything in its path in a rolling wall of cold, salty seawater. A great many of the things it touched had electricity coursing through them. Some of them, like the battery well, were designed to be watertight. Many of the machines, however, were designed only to be “splash proof,” and could not be submerged long without consequences.

“We’re still going down,” said the Kincaid, quietly, straining to mask the worry in his voice. The angle was coming up but the ship was still sinking.