ALIVE TO
TELL THE TALE
TRAPPED!
When E41 of the 8th Sub- marine Flotilla Bank off Har- wich during the war, William Brown, a stoker, found himself the sole survivor of the dlcas- ter, trapped in the engine-room forty fathoms below the North Sea.
Two houra inter a search party in a small boat endeav- ouring to locate the spot where she sank were astonished to see a man's head bobbing up and down in the water.
In a desperate effort to escape the submarine, Brown had suc- ceeded by flooding the engine- room and opening a hatch used for loading torpedoes into the ship.
He was pensioned from the Navy in 1926 and now lives at Worcester. Gardening is his hobby.
IF you push an inverted tumbler into a deep basin filled with water you will find that only a small quantity of water will rise in the glass.
If it were possible to put in a small air pressure no water at all would.
rise.
It was by employing this principle that I tried to save the lives of twenty-two of my comrades in a sinking submarine in the North Sea.
HOLED BY -
A PERISCOPE
One August morning in 1916, E41 was practising diving off Harwich when she was holed by the periscope of another submarine which had been submerged and had come up under her while she was on the sur- face.
When it happened I was on watch in the engine-room of E41. Immedi- ately the vessel began to sink. There was a stampede for the open conning tower before that went under and the
Inevitable rush of water that would follow and drown us all. ·
My first thought was to save not only my comrades but also the ship. I left the engine-room and went to the midship compartment immedi- ately below the conning tower.
The conning tower itself is reach- ed by a perpendicular iron ladder and there is a hatch that shuts down und the separates if from the rest of ship.
A further ladder gives access to the top of the conning tower, where another hatch gives on to the deck of the submarine.
The lower ladder was already filled with
all. scrambling men
conning tower, making for the from
escape which they could through the second "hatch.
Water was spurting into the com- partment where I stood. The shell of, the submarine, I could see, had been holed low down on the starboard side.
My idea to save the ship was to close down the lower hatch as soon as the crew had escaped up the first ladder and then to release all the air available in the vessel from bottles and that in torpedoes. Thus, on the principle of the simple home experiment referred to above, the inflow of water could at once checked and the ship kept on
be the
surface. But it was essential that the hatch should be closed, and this was not possible until the men had pass- ed through.
MAN AT TOP OF THE LADDER
One of my comrades, Sewell by for the task of name, volunteered running the torpedoes, and he sug ges ed running them "hot." In this way an additional expansion of air would occur and increase the chance of keeping the ship afloat.
While he prepared to carry this
THE CHINA MAIL, SEI
T
(
Wh
ES
A
AS HE IS TO-DAY—A recent photograph of Chief Petty Officer Brown.
stored
out, and also to release air in bottles, I was to return to the engine-room and make preparations for escape that way in case our ef- forts to prevent the ship from be- coming submerged failed.
In the darkness, wondering whether any of my comrades in the flooded compartment next door had survived.
Nothing but the gurgle of water greeted my cry. There was little By now the water spurting through doubt that all of them had perished the jagged hole in the submarine was when that engulfing torrent poured washing round our knees. And still from above into the conning tower. the scramble up the ladder into the conning tower was going on. Some ONE WAY OUT OF one shouted: "For heaven's sake get ENGINE ROOM
a move on."
The man at the top of the lad- der had got his coat caught on a projection and was causing an agonising hold-up.
I. had
making last seen Sewell frantic efforts to shut the forward watertight door.
I lost no time setting about for a "Close the conning-tower hatch means of escape from this steel coffin or it'll be too late," I shouted. But which held me forty fathoms down the next
moment a great swirl of in the North Sea.
·By
Stoker Chief Petty Officer WILLIAM BROWN
of salt water
អ
electric storage bị ship
chlorine
compartm
as, wh
ing into the engi ing an unpleasan in my throat.
But I was dete desperate struggle a dreadful though to endure a slow, ly death.
The thought go gan to work feve that held that ha
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water rushed in and swept back the men in a struggling heap.
The conning tower had become submerged before my experiment could be put into practice.
Just in time I sprang back into the engine room and slammed the water- tight door that divided it from the midship compartment. alone, and the ship was sinking. I could feel it steadily plunging,
DOWN BY
THE BOWS
I
WIE, now
floor was at a dangerous angle, going down by the bows. I had to hold on to prevent myself from be- ing shot forward. And then the lights
failed. Excepting for the red glow of the pilot lamp on the port en- gine the compartment was plunged into darkness.
Stil I could feel the vessel sliding downward. It was now at an angle of forty-five degrees, and as I hung 'on every now and then the silence was broken by a deafening clatter as parts of the boat's machinery and loose tools were scattered. .
At last there was a gentle grat- ing and I knew that the ship had reached the ocean bad, Bho was on an even keel, A deep and awful silence enveloped me. I called loud-
AS HE W Officer Brown w Navy.
similar to the b porthole.
READY TO THE HATO
There was only one way out of the engine-room, and that was through a hatch above me used for loading torpedoes into the vessel when on the surface. But how was I to push upwards and outwards the hatch with some thousands of tons of water overhead pressing down on it?
Now, I had often turned over in
one could hope to Next I remov my mind how escape in circumstances such as short steel gir those in which I now found myself across the hatch and I had come to the conclusion nected a system that there was only one method, and ordinary circum that was to equalise the pressure of hatch by means submarine with wheel, rather. II water inside the
wheel. that outside.
It would not
The way to do that in this case was completely to flood the engine- made use of th room from which the hatch gave out the time I was into the sea. Then this task of at- hatch would ha tempting to lift upwards, after the of the engine- manner of a trap-door in a loft, a steel hatch several feet square, with many thousands of tons of water. above it, would not be so impossible as it may sound.
BECAME UNBEARABLY HOT
Hatches in submarines are no dif- doors in houses, and ferent from
as easy to open if the pressure each side is the same. And it is: common knowledge that steel, or any other metal for that matter, is lighter when submerged in water than in the or- dinary atmosphere;
Already the interior of the engine room was becoming unbearably hot. To make matters worse, the rush.
have had to di
Having prope opening I proce of flooding the
I knew it wa easy matter to vessel in a mor stream so that open the hatch i when the com pletely full and equal to that d
As it was, I