TRAPPED UNDER THE SEA

Hokitika Guardian, 5 August 1931, Page 2

TRAPPED UNDER THE SEA

'SURMARINE DISASTER

SURVIVOR S’ TERRIBLE experience.

LONDON, June 13

Not many men have lived through the hell of being trapped in a siuiktn submarine—the fate that has overtaken the men of the Poseidon in the China Sea; but one after fourteen years is still haunted by such an experience. .’Harry Riley keeps a stall on Brighton front. He is still a young man of thirty-five, but is deaf as the effect of what he went through. Just now he is hoping and praying for the men imprisoned in the Poseidon. Riley was a victim of the Kl 3 disaster off the Clyde in 1917, when fortyeight men lost their lives. His country pays him a pension of 18s 3d a week, and to help keep his wife and children he tattoos people on the Brighton front at a shilling a time. On a Monday afternoon of January, 1917, a crew of nearly 100 men took out the Kl 3 for diving trials. She had previously made one test, which had proved satisfactory. She carried one pilot, who was seventy years of age. WATER COMING IN. “The captain gave the signal for a rapid dive," said Riley, “and at once all hands wont to their stations. I went to the telephone and voice pipes, fen as signalman that was my job. As soon as we were under the water a signal came through to me : ’Surface water is coming into the engine-room.'

“The captain gave a calm order for the water-tight doors to be closed, ’t meant the trapping of forty-eight men in the aft part of the ship, and a horrible death for them. At the same time, it gave the rest a chance to fight for their lives. Then the boat grounded sixty feet below the surface, lying at a terrible angle.

‘Vphe captain at once ordered me to begin tapp'ng signals on the hull of the sh’p, as our under-sea wireless signalling apparatus had been flooded. It was a chance, because we knew that Esl and tugs were close by. Commander Goodlieart, the captain of the Kit. who was with us, and our chief, did all they could to get the boat up. “It was getting hell now. The boat 'was full of smoke and bad air ; every man jack was fighting for h's life. There was nothing to eat and noth’ng to drink, for the slip had not been provisioned, so we just resigned ourselves to death. Men knelt in corners and said their prayers.

’MORSE CODE. “I kept on signalling—tapping the Morse code bn the side oL the sh:p with a three-foot spanner. Twenty-four hours later the sound of divers tramping over the ship was heard, and every man raised himself from the floor and sent up a ('The two officers in charge then announced that they were going to blow themselves out of the conning-tower and try to reach the salvage, workers and give them instructions. AVe said good-bye to them in our minds, for they were two of the bravest men. “Commander Goodheart broke his neck in the attempt, but Commander Herbert shot sixty feet through the water and six feet out from the surface, we heard afterwards. It was a shock for the salvage workers, but it eventually saved our lives. “Breathing at this time was painful, but after forty-eight hours a message came through for us to open up a fourinch valve forward, as the divers had fixed a long pipe to connect with the boat. Bottles of liquid food were sent down the pipe to us, and then w& asked for a pack or two of cards, while we sat and waited for the boat to be lifted. “Gradually the bow was lifted, and we had to hang on as the boat crept to the surface at an alarming angle. Then the divers cut through the steel plates and we' crept out.” g