SUBMARINE K 13

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 161, 2 April 1919, Page 8

SUBMARINE K 13

A MARVELLOUS STORY

Ml the writers of tales of adventure at" sea will- have to bow their diminished heads before the amazing story ot tue iaet-3 concerning the salving of the men in the British submarine Kl3. It is told with high skill by Mr. Bennett Copplestone, in the Janu-, ary "Cornhill." ' , t This story has been, left untold for two years! The Censor sat on it! "Kl3 was a fleet submarine of a new type, more like a submersible destroyer than an ordinary under-water boat, lair-' fields, of Govan, built her, and even now it were unwise to be too explicit in description. But some few details are necessary for an understanding of my story. She'was over three hundred feet lone and displaced 2000 tons when submerged. "She was accepted for the Royal Navy by the Admiralty officials. . "Then it was that the unexpected happened, as it always does at sea. Herbert decided to take one more dive, perhaps just for luck, perhaps.to satisfy himself upon some nicetv of trim. He gave t w order to close down and dive, and the Kl3 dived. Though the order had been given to close down, ami the reply received that tho order had, been carried out. the ventilators had been left open. Instantly the water poured into the engine and boiler rooms, drowning those within, and Kl3 sank by the stern. Hie water flowing' towards the control-room bulkhead compressed the air in the room, and indicated immediately what had happened to the alert senses of Commander Herbert. 'Our ears began to sing, say those who were within the belly of tho S ' P ' 54J Hours Under Water.

"It was ten o'clock on Wednesday evening, January 31, fifty-four and a half hours after Kl3 had sunk, that her fortynine survWors emerged into the blazing arc lights which shone.from the Hanger* masts. They could not speak; many or them could scarcely walk. One by ouo they were helped by kindly hands along a gangway to a tug and thence to tho shore. They stumbled ashore, unconscious of the cheers which greeted them, gazing without recognition upon the friends who welcomed them. And so to Shandon, where they were put straight into hot baths and lifted thence _ into • bed. Po rthey were dumb and perished with cold. ~ . , "It is always cold in a deep-diving Bullmarine, even in high summer; in tun bowels of Kl3, lying seventy feet deep in the Northern mid-winter, tho cold, though little noticed at the time had been paralysing. Forty hours of bad and poisonous air, fifty-four hours ot bitter cold, had brought the bright flame of theso men's life down to a poor flicker. But recovery was rapid, and not one of the survivors disappointed by dyinj those who had saved him. "Twenty hours after the Inst man had been plucked out of Kl3 the hawsers which held her up parted, and she sank to the bottom of the Gareloch. "The world did not ring with news ot the story which I have told, for tho censor forbade. But His Majesty, who was a sailor before he was a king, and remains first and always a sailor, sent to Barttelot a telegram of which the purport, rendered in the langnago of the naval signal book, ran 'Manoeuvre Well Executed.'" Salvage Extraordinary. It is an amazing story which Mr. Copplestono tells of how tne salvage ship Hanger threw hawsers round the WU and then set to work to cut the nose oil the submarine, as if it were the end ot a, cigar-and thus provide an exit tor the imprisoned men. Before this was done tho co-operation of men within the submarine had to he secured. And first of all they had to- , be supplied with fresh air and communicated with by Morse messages hammered on the skin ot the submarine. "Tho long flexible lube, so.-en inches in diameter, which was to open up a clear passage between Kl3 and the upper air, arrived lit 4 o'clock on Wednesday morning,' but it was not, until four hours later that it was in place and in effective operation," says Mr. Copplc.stone;.-. "To. the ea-er-salvors the delays were exasperating; there' were many more delays,'oven more exasperating, lo be suffered,- before, their job was finish-* ed. • Thej had to explain lo the enfeebled- folk with'in precisely where tlio tube' was to be' fixed up and how limy were themselves to complete tho open passage. .The tube, was designed tu .screw,.by-means of an adaptor, into an 'ammunition hoist, and, when this was done, it needed but the removal of tho retaining plate inside to put the device to immediate use. By Morse Signal. "When tho salvors had (lone (heir part it was for the prisoners tTi do the rest—to remove the inner plate as quickly as they pleased. But when it came to explaining this not very compiicavcd operation by tapping out messages in Morse on the deck it was by no means easy to get ~Kl3'« .survivors tolake it in. B.V patient repetition that was 'done at last, and then the divers busied themselves with fixing up I'm tube. "Thfv had to measure the screw threads', so that tho adaptor might bo made to. tit acouratelv and to prepare a packing of tow soaked in tallow to exclude the water. A salvage steamer is a travelling workshop and divens are skilled mechanics, so that this part of tho job, though it might consume time, nre.setiiwl no difficulties. ■By eight O'clock on the Wednesday morning tho lube had been sciowod firmly mft nhieo, the inner plate of the hoist had been removed, and the men, who had lor lolly hours and a half lain buried in a sled coffin, were at length vimWcd .'« draw into I heir impoverished lungs air which was free from pollutions.'