IN A SUNKEN SUBMARINE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2961, 27 December 1916, Page 5

IN A SUNKEN SUBMARINE

' :—S-t-WONDERFUL ESCAPE ' A FACT (By Jackstaff, in the "Daily Mail.") This is no fanciful narrative, some-' thing imagined in order to give scope for Healism to paint a thrilling picture with broad sweeps of a lurid brush. Quite the contrary, it is the story of one of those rare, very" rare, victories which a man obtains over an apparently inevitable fate, of courage put to thor supreme test and winning triumphantly; through. The facts of it arc of such compelling interest that they would lose by being! over-embroidered with words, wherefore the tale shall be told ' in a simple, straightforward way, as all really great stories should be.' : Something had gone wrong with, the submarine, and, losing her stability, she sank swiftly to the bottom, a broken and helpless thing- .Her steel-nerved crew had quickly been aware of disaster. With them thought and action were simultaneous. Only seconds'were left them for escape, and they wasted none of these precious jewels of time in aimless flurry. The conning-tower hatch was forced open, the' command-' ing_ officer stationed himself at the foot; of it, one by one the crew sprang up the ladder and shot safely to the sur J face. .They were driven through tils' water like bolts from a catapult liy the force of air in the boat.

Once disaster almost supervened. A ! man's clothing caught some projecting machinery, and a block in the tower seemed imminent. In a twinkling the clothes were torn free and th'eir wearer floated off into safety. Last of all the commanding officer leaped up the ladder and followed his men. All this occurred in a few seconds, and the situation of the crew struggling for sweet life through the down-pouring water may be' more easily' pictured by the imagination than described in words. Of the crew all escaped save one. Ho'was shut up in the engine-room astern and _ could • not get out of it in time to join his messmates in their thrilling dash up the conning-to wer. Immured within steel walls, nothing apparently remained for. him but to stay where ho was and die a slow and awful death. But he was not of the kind who givo in easily, ami he refused to accept as hopeless a position which looked desperately so. He tried to open the hateli overhead. It would not move.*

Then he tried again, exerting every ounce of strength he possessed, and still the hatch did not yield. There was ; sixty feet of water above it, and against the pressure of this dead' weight the puny strength of one man was as naught. As well might he have tried! to push out a section of the side-plat-ing of the boat. What was to be done? It seemed as thoush the steel-willed compartment were destined to be hia coffin, and such a thing as escape from it hopeless. But, terrible though hisi plight was, the- man did not lose heart. With a coolness and self-possession that was marvellous considering the circumstances, lie sat down and calmly thought the situation over. "Hera am I," he reasoned, "shut up in this compartment with only enough air to last me a certain time. If I cannot get out of it before the air becomes exhausted I shall die from suffocation, andji'm not going to do that if I can. help it-. How can. I get out?." After turning the question over in his mind for a few minutes he hit upon an answer to it. "If I let water into the compartment, that should equalise the pressure and enable md to open the hatch," he argued. "J may be drowned. Better be' drowned doing something than suffocated doing nothing. Anyway, I'll try it." And he did.

Opening the valves lie Jet the sea> pour into the compartment. Then, standing upright beneath the hatch, ha quietly awaited the' result of his intelligently bold -action.; and that period of waiting ; was a tearful _ ordeal for him,' The inleaping water circled! about his feet, then climbed to his knee, and bo higher and higher about his body. As the water rose it lifted the air with it until the man began to suffer acutely from the heavy air -pressure'- around him. Breathing became difficult, noises sang in his bead', he grew dizzy .and had to struggle for breath,- experiencing the same Kind of sensation that a. diver does when bis air supply goes wrong. . Desperately he fought against n> creeping drowsiness which lie knew, would be fatal if it overcame him; sturdily he wrestled, with the .vertigo and symptoms of "diver's head" whioh were slowly, though effectually, mastering even his iron wi11... All this, time the water continued creeping higher, and higher up his body; it-encircled his waist, it flowed over his shoulders and rose to his chin. . What - made matters all the more difficult fcr him was* that only'a few inches of clear space were left jiow between the surface of the water and the roof of the compartment, and into this momentarily decreasing area all the air within the place was heing compressed. Picture yourself standing in a, room with water up to your chin and the ceiling just above your head, with the water continually lifting until it seem 3 about to touch tho ceiling, and you will understand this man's situation. Into the narrowing space between the water and tho ceiling lie resolutely kept his liead thrust, dsspifcs tha stifling air pressure, until at last it seemed that the disastrous end so gallantly fought against had come. The man reeled, and insensibility camo upon him. but in the last -moment of fading consciousness |he - made one . superhuman effort and won the life for which ho had struggled so heroically. Raising .both arms ho gave a desperate push to the hatch overhead; tEea the black mantle of unconsciousness enveloped him, and lio knew not whether death or he had conquered. But Stout Heart had won the victory lie so abundantly deserved.. Helped by the air pressure beneath it, the hatch had swung up when he pushed against it and the outrusli of air carried the man through the opening. A few seconds later tho crew of a patrol vessel saw what their at first thought to be a dead body rise alongside their boat. This was our hero (and lie was a hero, was he living but unconscious. Ho is living still and has gone back to submarining. Of such stuff is the British bluejacket made! ,