As the sun pushed its way through the lumpy, gray overcast sky, it brought with it a sense of change and optimism. Standing on the deck of a brand new research submarine that was being towed out to sea, I finally had the opportunity for a brief rest. At long last, we were underway. As I coiled and stowed the mooring lines in the cool damp air, I took a moment to get into a “sailor’s space”—to shed my land-bound schedules and attitudes and reflect on where I was and where I was headed. The promise of adventure and history began to awaken favorite parts of me that had been missing from my life for the past few years.
Seven months earlier I had closed my business to come to Vancouver, British Columbia, and finish construction of a privately-owned research submarine, the “August Piccard.” I was hired to be an engineer on board and would eventually train an American crew when the boat was delivered to its new homeport in the southern U.S. Our submarine, new and untested, was on a tight delivery schedule to meet the qualifications for a grant, so when we got underway (moving at our max speed of 4.7 knots) and discovered that were unable to overcome the morning tide (incoming at 7 knots) we hooked up to the ocean-going tug that was our escort. As the tug pulled the submarine out of the harbor, I sensed the irony—in addition to the tide, the tug also seemed to be overcoming the crews‘ reservations about leaving their homes, their friends, and their families.
Thinking about the crew below, I smiled. They were mostly pros but some of the technicians had never been to sea before and I was sure those novices were in for a treat. Our submarine was round-hulled and held fourteen tons of lead and batteries on her bottom. This gave her a peculiar roll when she traveled on the surface. She would slowly go way over to one side and then snap back to center quickly, dropping down as she centered. The strange motion, the fact that there were no windows, the two diesel engines that constantly screamed, plus the host of pungent smells—diesel fuel, battery gasses, microwaved hamburgers—that filled the air, meant that she would take some getting used to.
After we cleared Vancouver harbor, I cast off the tug, which then took up her position alongside and about 200 feet off to port. As we settled into the voyage, the crew readied for sea, stowing lines and grub and tying down anything that could move. The electronic technician was deep in a last-minute soldering job and the computer engineer was feverishly trying to get all the pieces that were attached to the mainframe to work together.
Our first leg was a 90-mile stretch from Vancouver to Bellingham, Washington. Everyone aboard was intensely aware of the pressure—we had to reach the U.S. border by midnight to fulfill our contract and earn the million-dollar grant from the Canadian government. We were supposed to place a short-wave radio call to our government contact when we crossed the border, which was some fifty miles away. The sub could cover that distance in eleven hours if all went well. We had fourteen hours, just in case.
After waving at the tug, I crossed the wet fore deck and climbed up the conning tower to go below, disturbing Fred Wagner, the navigator and one of our senior mariners. But he methodically made himself comfortable again in his seat in the top of the conning tower. An ex-US navy commander, he had a deliberate presence as he checked and rechecked the intercom and remote control that would allow him to pilot the submarine from the surface.
“I’m OK here ‘til noon, then send someone up to spell me,” he said as I climbed past him, descending down through the hatch. I asked if he needed some suntan lotion and he smiled, “Coffee might be nice when you find out where it’s stowed.”
Down below the engines roared—a constant noise filled the machinery space that was my kingdom. A quick survey told me that all was well there, so I went forward to the control room to organize watches and see about that coffee. Brent Anderson, our electronic technician, was huddled over a circuit board with a soldering iron in his left hand and a very focused look on his face. Beside him, the science officer, Mark Issaics, was listening intently on his headphones for instructions from Fred up topsides and standing by to control speed if necessary.
“Topsides and engine room secure for sea,” I reported to the skipper. “Give a yell if I’m needed. I’m going to scare up some coffee.”
“Make that two!” Mark yelled behind me.
Twenty minutes later I returned with the coffee to find Mark frantic. He was getting instructions over his headphones and trying to keep the boat on course.
“Do you want to try again?” he yelled into his headset.
Shaking his head at me, Mark reported that, “Fred’s remote control just died. We’ll have to steer from down here.”
Brent (who had built the remote) looked up from his circuit board and shrugged. “That warranty expired hours ago.”
No one laughed. Since he was looking a little ashen, I offered to fetch the offending control for him to repair.
I passed Fred his coffee up through the hatch and he handed down the broken box. Yelling over the screaming engines, I told him, “I’ll spell you at noon.”
He yelled back, but all I heard was, “storm…lumpy…..” I waved and went forward to find out from Mark what he‘d said.
As I handed the remote control box to Brent, Mark grabbed my arm.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said. “There’s a storm moving in and Fred says the waves are getting higher and entering the base of the conning tower through the drain valves. He thinks the water level is getting so high it might enter the engine room hatch.”
As he spoke, I looked aft only to see water pouring into the engine room. I turned and ran to stop the flood. It took me fifty strokes on the hydraulic ram to shut the three-inch-thick hatch. As I pumped furiously, water pouring over my head, I caught a glimpse of Fred outside. His eyes showed mixed emotions. He seemed relieved that I was stopping the submarine from sinking, but we both knew he would probably be locked outside in the conning tower for the rest of the voyage. Sixty long seconds later, I was soaked but the flooding was stopped.
As I looked up, I could see through the window that the hatch was now covered by two inches of water. There would be no way to open it until we found calm seas.
I pumped the bilges, hoping to raise the boat, but the water continued to rise in the conning tower. Fred was now completely trapped outside the boat. He was in no particular danger—he had some protection from the elements in the conning tower—but I knew that the coffee I’d just delivered was the last he was going to see for a while.
When I reached the control room Mark let me know that it had started raining and Fred was not a happy camper.
This situation did not improve all through the afternoon because the storm only continued to intensify. The many cold wet hours inspired Fred to contact the escort vessel for some food. By way of a hand-held radio, Fred instructed the tug to pull close alongside and heave a line over to him. In the blackness and pelting rain, they managed to synchronize the moving ships and shuttle a lunchbox and thermos of steaming coffee into Fred‘s appreciative hands.
But just as Fred was waving his thanks, the submarine’s autopilot failed. The rudder swerved hard over to port causing the sub to suddenly turn and take aim at the tugboat. Somehow, Fred threw off the supply line and the tug skipper slammed the throttles full ahead, narrowly avoiding a collision. Fred, clutching his precious lunch, scrambled back to his seat in the conning tower and heated the intercom wires with his upset.
Moments later, both Fred and the sub were back under control. Without the autopilot, Mark had to steer manually from down below. It wasn’t much “work” and steering by hand did provide some diversion from hours of sitting and waiting for orders from topsides. So all was well until a second component of the steering failed. Once again, the rudder swung hard to port, and once again the sub—out of control—chased after the tug in the night.
The August Piccard had a five-hundred percent back up on many systems essential to safety. If one system failed we had another to get us home—and another, and another, and another. But in the ensuing forty-five minutes, we experienced five steering system failures.
Anderson, who had never been to sea, was learning how to troubleshoot moving electronic devices. His glassy eyes and seasick stomach made the task that much more difficult. We were forced to heave to in the building sea as I worked feverishly in the engine room inventing system six—a manual/hydraulic system that was not susceptible to the uncertainties of electrons at sea. Turn the crank forward, the boat turns to port. Turn the crank aft, the boat turns to starboard. Simple as it was, it wasn’t simple to use because of the lack of feedback. We had no immediate idea if we were on course until the instructions were relayed down from Fred minutes later. However, it was dependable and we were soon back underway in a slowly-straightening zigzag course.
By the time night arrived, Fred was yelling directions over the rain and wind into the intercom to the person at the throttle station, who would then run aft to the back of the engine room and yell—over the engine noise—those directions to the crank turner. The stress was taking its toll on everyone, and the noise, which had a physical impact like any constant pounding does, contributed to the exhaustion we were all experiencing. Pushed by necessity, we soon had hand signals down so that one person could avoid the noise.
I rigged up a gyro compass repeater and rudder angle indicator back by the new steering station, greatly improving the straightness of our course. (We maintained a course within forty degrees with this system.) The difficulty of matching the compass repeater needle and the rudder indicator while turning a fore and aft steering crank would have been comical had it not been such a strain on our persons and our progress. Shortly after, I invented a seventh system using an electric pump and manual valve. This new system got us to within ten degrees of our target course. I mounted a chair next to the crank and with headphones (with hearing protectors) clamped on, the intercom could even be used directly.
The race was back on.
Or it was for a while—until the intercom failed. Fred was our eyes and without the intercom, we were blind. We slowed to a near stop to attempt a fix. Meanwhile, the clock ticked on.
We desperately traced circuits as Fred waited helplessly above. But Fred is an enterprising fellow and doesn’t do “helpless“ well. He had a hand-held VHF radio with him even though we didn’t have one down below to receive. Instead, we had a long range, short-wave “single sideband” radio set up to send the message when we crossed the border. But the tug had a VHF and they also had our underwater telephone stored as cargo on their deck. Fred instructed them how to set up and operate it by dragging a transducer over the side and talking into it like a radio. This done, Fred started relaying instructions to our helmsman by way of the tug with radios and sonar.
Down below we all looked up at each other when we heard it. It sounded like a melodic buzz. We could almost hear the words, and then, when we turned the underwater telephone on, lo and behold, there was Fred!
In moments, as he relayed directions, we were once again racing toward our goal. We managed to get the intercom operational ten minutes later and a surge of optimism flooded through the ship. It was eleven o’clock. We were an hour away from the border and the focus of the crew was palpable.
Sitting in the engine room amongst the screaming engines, focused on the gyro-compass we had mounted back there, I prayed for speed. Up top, alone and cold, staring into the darkness and rain, Fred prayed for speed. The skipper at the instrument panel with beads of sweat on his brow, commanding the satellite navigator with his look, prayed for speed. And Brent, deep inside a circuit board repair, green of skin and glassy-eyed, prayed for the workbench to stop moving.
We radioed our success via the shortwave telephone with minutes to spare.
As the deadline passed so did the pressure. And as the pressure subsided so did the storm.
Though we couldn’t correct it at sea we discovered that the cause of the steering problems was a tiny bit of moisture. The submarine used the same type of electronic/hydraulic control valves as the space shuttle did. It also used the same type of hydraulic oil. That type of system worked well in outer space but not so well in the ocean. The oil was hygroscopic and absorbed enough moisture to short out the electronic parts of the valves. We replace the oil when we got into port and we had no more problems with our steering system.
The next half of the voyage took on a different character. When we crossed over the border, the change was surreal. The “individuals” on the boat had transformed into a crew, a team that knew it could perform under pressure. We had merged into something that was an integral part of the boat, or something even bigger. The bugs were resolved one at a time with no more delays and a sense of calm permeated the craft. We had somehow become brothers in destiny, and sensed that we were at the beginning of a great adventure.
Our moment of passage had also shown us that new futures can open up in moments and problems can pass away, purposeless, off into the night.
It is an idea to sustain us when the future looks bleak; an idea to sustain us whenever we aren’t yet a crew.
Future Insights 