# St. Nicholas/Volume 40/Number 11/With Men Who Do Things

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WITH MEN WHO DO THINGS
BY A. RUSSELL BOND
Author of “The Scientific American Boy” and “Handyman’s Workshop and Laboratory”
Chapter XII
TWENTY MILES UNDER THE SEA
We had gone over to the Brooklyn navy-yard, and there, at the bottom of a great big dry-dock, was a saucy little submarine.
We walked around to the gang-plank that ran across to the boat from about half-way down the stepped side of the dry-dock.
“Now, if that is n’t tough!” I exclaimed. “The most interesting thing in the whole navy-yard, and they have hang a ‘No Visitors’ sign on it.”
A happy thought struck me. “Suppose I ask Cousin Jack to try to get us a pass to go aboard one, He is a lientenant-commander in the Navy, you know.”
My request to Cousin Jack went off by the very next mail. Two weeks later, when we had almost forgotten the event, I received a letter with an official seal in the corner.
“Hurray!” I shouted, slapping Will on the back. “It ’s from the Bureau of Navigation of the United States Navy, and signed by the chief of the bureau himself. He says that we may go aboard a submarine, and, what ’s more, we can take a trip in one during manœuvers now being carried on off Provincetown.”
That very night, we took a Fall River boat, and the next afternoon arrived at Provincetown, Armed with our permit, we took a steam-launch to the old monitor that was acting as “mother” for the fleet of submarines. The officer of the deck introduced us to the ensign who commanded one of the submarines, and he, in turn, sent for Mr. McDermott, the chief gunner’s mate, and put us in his charge. The submarine was moored alongside the monitor, so he led us over the gang-plank to the narrow deck that emerged from the water. It was only five feet wide, and about sixty feet long. A steel rope ran around it and served as a hand-rail. An elliptical tower rose from the deck amidships, and from the top of this projected a hood, or conning-tower, protected with heavy plate-glass windows, for observation when the craft was running awash. There was a miniature navigator’s bridge for use when sailing on the surface, and in front of this were two tubes that reached to a height of over twenty feet from the deck.
“Those are the eyes of the submarine,” said our pilot. “A submarine does not wear its eyes in sockets, as we do, but on the ends of a pair of stalks, like snails or crabs,”
Of course that excited our curiosity, and we fired a broadside of questions at him. “Come down below,” was his response, “and you can see for yourselves how the eyes work,”
We crawled through a manhole in the deck and down a ladder, while I wondered if there were fire exits anywhere. That hole in the roof would make an awfully tight jam in case of trouble.
I had always imagined that the submarine was divided into separate cabins by compartments or bulkheads, and that it had an upper and lower deck; but there were no bulkheads in this boat. Mr. McDermott explained that some of the larger boats had bulkheads, but the idea of two decks was manifestly absurd in a vessel whose extreme diameter was only about twelve feet. After taking out the space occupied by the water-ballast tanks and compressed-air reservoirs, there remained a very cramped interior. I had no idea the boat was so small. We could not walk erect without hitting our heads against valve wheels, brackets, rods, and other projections depending from the roof. The crew habitually walked with heads ducked to avoid obstructions. We could see from end to end of the boat, as there were no partitions of any sort. It was marvelous how every nook and cranny was utilized to the fullest advantage. Although there were no partitions, the boat was evidently divided off by imaginary lines into different quarters. Just forward of the main hatchway was plainly the galley, for the walls were hung with brightly polished cooking utensils. Forward of the galley was a table in what proved to be the captain’s quarters, while at the extreme forward end of the boat, where the torpedoes were launched, there was a complicated assemblage of wheels, dials, levers, instruments, etc., that fairly dazzled one with their high polish. Aft were the gasolene engines and dynamos, and under the floor were the storage batteries. Projecting from the ceiling just forward of the hatchway were the periscopes, or, as our guide called them, the “eyes” of the boat. A system of lenses and prisms made it possible, by looking into the eyepieces here, to see out of the top of the tubes twenty-five feet above. The periscope could be turned around to bring any point of the com-​pass into view, while a scale in the field of vision showed in what direction the periscope was turned.
“You see,” explained our guide, “we can run along twenty feet under water with only this tube sticking above the surface. It is such a small object that no one would notice it, and yet we can see perfectly all around us, and manœuver the boat in absolute safety.”
“But don't you ever go deeper than that? I thought you went down to the bottom of the sea.”
Longitudinal Section of a torpedo on a submarine boat.
“Where the sea is no more than two hundred feet deep, we can go to the bottom; but below that the pressure grows too heavy, and eventually it would be enough to crush the boat. After all, it is n't necessary to go very deep. If we run along at a depth of sixty feet, we are sure to clear all shipping, and no one could possibly find us.”
“Can you see under water?” I asked.
“No, not more than one hundred feet or so, and then very dimly, as if in a fog. When completely under water, we have to go by dead reckoning.”
Just then the captain came aboard. At the word of command the gang-plank was raised, the hawsers were cast off, and the crew took up their positions. The engines were started, and we were off, Those engines certainly were interesting. Powerful little fellows they were, too. Between them they developed over 500-horse-power. Each engine drove its own propeller, We squeezed down the narrow passageway between them, and saw that the propeller-shafts passed through the electric motors which drive the vessel when completely under water. The armatures of the motors were mounted directly on the shafts, and so they revolved with the shafts when driven by the engines. But the circuit of the field windings was open, and no electric current was generated, so the armatures made no load on the shafts, but merely took the place of fly-wheels.
We climbed up through the hatchway to see what was going on without. As I stuck my head out of the manhole, I was astonished at the speed we seemed to be making. With my eye so close to the water, the waves seemed to be racing by with the speed of an express-train.
We had no sooner taken a good look at our surroundings than orders were given to strip the upper works. The masts at each end of the boat were on hinges, and they were swung down upon the deck. The bridge was dismantled and passed in sections down the hatchway. The hand rope and the stanchions that supported it were taken down, and presently the smooth, rounded back of the submarine was bare of every obstruction except the conning-tower and the periscopes. We all crept inside, and the hatch was closed behind us. There were eighteen men besides ourselves within the hold of that tiny vessel. The gasolene engines had already been stopped, and we were now running with our electric motors, It was astonishing how quiet everything was. There was only the slight hum of the motors and the sound of the spray at our bow, The quartermaster continued navigating the craft from within the conning-tower.
“Fill the main ballast tank!” called the captain. “Fill the forward trimming tank!" A moment later, “Fill the after trimming tank!”
We could hear the water rushing into the big U-shaped tank that lay under our feet and extended part way up the walls at either side of us. The pointer of a large depth-gage told us just how fast we were sinking. When we were awash, the motors, which had been stopped while the tanks were being filled, were started again.
“Why don’t you run the boat with gasolene engines?” I asked the chief gunner’s mate.
“Why, man alive, we have n’t air enough. Those little beasts would gobble up all our air in five minutes, and then they would stop working. As a matter of fact, the engines would suffocate long before the crew. We tried that once, Everything was closed air-tight and the engines were started. They had n’t run five minutes before they stopped. But we could still breathe easily, although the sensation was not very pleasant,”
“Where do you get fresh air from, anyway?” asked Will.
“Fresh air? We don’t get any.”
“But you have compressed air to live on while you ‘re under water—have n’t you?”
​“Oh, we have lots of compressed air, but we use it for other things. We don't have any other air to breathe, except what is shut up in here with us, There is enough air in this hold to last us comfortably for twelve “My, how angry the Captain was!” hours, and, on a pinch, we could get along for twenty-four hours.”
“Never!” we both exclaimed,
“Does n't it ever make you sick?” asked Will.
“Oh, no, this idea of having to have fresh air is all rubbish. It is n't the lack of oxygen that bothers us down here in the submarine, but the fumes of gasolene and oil, and particularly the gases from the battery.”
‘There was a sharp command from our captain, in response to which the man in charge of the diving rudders turned a hand-wheel. The boat dipped and lurched forward. We watched the indicator hand travel slowly over the dial of the depth-gage. Five feet, ten feet, fifteen, eighteen, twenty—there we halted. We procceded for a time at that depth below the surface, I climbed up into the conning-tower, but could see nothing but the dense green which completely covered us. However, the ends of the periscopes were well above the surface, and navigation was a simple matter, I was allowed to look through one of the submarine’s eyes, and, while I was looking, the captain gave the command to dive. Presently, the water surged up over the top of the periscope, and instinctively I rose on tiptoes and drew in my breath, as if I were actually being submerged in the water. As we continued to sink, it was fascinating to watch the gage telling off the depth. At sixty-five feet below the surface, we came to an even keel.
“No danger of running into any boats now,” said the chief gunner’s mate as he looked at the gage. “I should n't be surprised if we were near the enemy. Very likely we are going to run under them, and fire our torpedoes from the other side.
We hurried forward to witness the operation of launching the torpedoes. They were unusually interesting-looking objects, shaped like cigars, with blunt forward ends, aud fins at the rear crossing each other at right angles. They weighed sixteen hundred pounds each. The explosive was packed in the “war-head,” or “cap,” at the forward end. We were relieved to find that dummy war-heads were used for target practice, and that there were no explosives aboard. The main body ​of the torpedo was filled with air under high pressure, which drove the motor that ran the propeller of the torpedo. The rudders of the torpedo were kept pointed constantly in a given direction by a gyroscope.
“It is just like a top,” explained our guide, “You pick up a spinning top on the palm of your hand, and watch it stand upright even though you slant your hand this way and that. That ’s how it is with the gyroscope: its axis keeps pointing in one direction, regardless of what goes on about it. To keep the torpedo at a constant depth under water, there is a rudder that is moved in one direction by a spring, and in the other by a plunger upon which the water presses. If the torpedo runs below the set depth, the water pressure will be sufficient to move the plunger up, compressing the spring and elevating the rudder. On the other hand, if it rises above a predetermined level, the water pressure is less, and the spring forces the plunger down, depressing the rudder.
“Our boat is coming to the surface now; we shall be ready to fire soon.”
“Suppose we hit something,” said Will, “before the periscope is out of water?"
“There ts some danger of that, but this craft has ‘ears’ as well as ‘eyes.’”
“Ears?”
“Yes, ears. It's all but human. On each side, there is a diaphragm like that of a telephone. These are connected by wires to a receiver. If any sound is heard, there is a way of telling whether it is louder in one instrument than in the other, and so the captain can determine where the sound is coming from. He always listens for the noise of the propellers of a vessel or the chugging of its engines before rising to the surface.”
At the forward end of the baat, there were four torpedo-tubes, twa of which could be manipulated at a time, Our guide explained that the torpedoes would he placed in the tubes, the breech-blocks closed, and then the cap at the outside opened. The nose of the boat formed the cap. Dy turning a hand-wheel, the cap would be moved out a trifle, letting the water run into the tubes around the torpedoes, and then the cap would he turned on its axis so as to bring two holes in it into register with two of the torpedo-tubes, There was a plate inside which would indicate when the proper registry had been obtained.
The motors had been stopped for an instant, when the order came to unseat the cap and flood the tubes. Instantly, our bow tipped downward, and we lunged forward. Will and I knew there was some danger, by the look on the faces around us. We followed their gaze, and saw the indicator hand racing around to 100, 110, 120, 135 feet. By that time the engine had been started, and the man at the diving rudder-wheel brought us up so smartly that the boat leaped almost clear of the water, betraying us to the “enemy,” of course.
My, how angry the captain was! He kicked up an awful row. Some one had blundered. There were no torpedoes in the tubes when the order The crowded quarters of a submarine. to flood them was carried out. The nose of our submarine was suddenly loaded with several tons of water. Naturally we had gone down like a shot.
We dived again, but this time under control, and we manœuvered about under water for half an hour or more, so that the enemy would lose all track of us. Finally, we ventured to come up to the surface, and located the dummy vessel we were after, about three miles away. Again we dived, and headed toward the spot. When we had arrived within striking distance, the captain manœuvercd the submarine so that it would point in the proper direction, not at where the enemy then was, but at the point to which he would have traveled by the time the torpedoes reached him. The torpedo-tubes had been blown clear of water after ​the blunder, and had been charged with four torpedoes. The cap was turned so as to open two of the torpedo-tubes, When all was ready, the captain pulled a cord that admitted compressed air into the tubes just behind the torpedoes, and started them on their way. At the same time, a lever in the tube sprang a trip on each torpedo that set the propeller motor running. The instant the torpedoes left us, our bow, relieved of their weight, which amounted to nearly two tons, sprang up, but was brought down very cleverly by the steersman, who manipulated the horizontal rudders. The other two torpedoes were then uncovered by turning the cap, and they were fired one at a time at the enemy. Then, having shot our bolts, we turned about, and bear a retreat to port.
Chapter XIII
BOATS THAT DEVOUR MUD
We met one of the engineers who was in charge of that work at that memorable luncheon with Mr. Price, and it was at his invitation that we went down to the dredges one morning on the tug that carried their mail and supplies.
We had proceeded well past the Narrows, when the captain of the tugboat painted ahead. “There is one of the dredges,” he said.
“You don't mean that steamship?” asked Will,
“Why, yes; don't you know what a dredge looks like?”
“I have seen lots of dredges,” I said, “but none of them looks like that,”
“Oh, you 're thinking of bucket dredges!” said the captain. “We could n't possibly use bucket dredges here. Every time a little storm came up, we would have to tow the dredge in, or else it would pound itself to pieces against the mud-scows. These are suction dredges. There 's the same difference as between taking a glass of soda-water in spoonfuls and drawing it up with a straw.”
“But what do they do with the mud? Don’t they have to have scows alongside?”
“In the first place, it is n’t mud, at least not much of it. It is mostly sand and gravel, What a suction dredge devours goes into bins in her own hold, then it is taken out to sea and dumped. Do you see how low she is in the water? I guess they have just been waiting for us before putting out to sea to dump their load. I see the other dredge is over at Rockaway Inlet. I ’ll put you aboard this dredge, and by the time I get back from Rockaway, your boat will have dumped its load and returned.”
In a few minutes, we had come alongside the dredge and climbed over the rail to her deck. The tug captain called out to a Mr. Porter, who was the engineer on board, and consigned us to his care.
The dinner-bell rang as we came aboard, but we had had dinner aboard the tug, so, while Mr. Porter was gone, we walked about the deck, trying to understand this curious vessel. Just forward of the pilot-house, there was an enormous bin filled with sand. Some water was swishing back and forth aver it as we rolled gently in the ocean swell. Aft there was another bin of the same size, The bins appeared to be divided into compartments by means of partition walls, but we found later, when the bins were emptied, that this was merely the framing at the top. Running lengthwise across each bin were two shafts connected by worm-gearing to a set of screw-shafts that ran vertically. There was also a large hand-wheel on each of the vertical screw-shafts.
Presently, a couple of men came along, One had a stick with which he measured the average height of the sand in each compartment, while the other man jotted down the figures in a notebook, so as to determine the amount of sand in the bins. hen, much to our astonishment, the first man reached down into the water, pulled out a good-sized fish, and laid it flapping on the deck.
“Good to eat?” we asked him.
“Pretty good,” he said; “it ’s a ling, We get lots of them, In fact, we get all the fish we care to eat. We get plenty of lobsters, too,”
We noticed a number of large starfish clinging to the walls of the bin, and as the man moved off I reached over to get one as a souvenir.
“Oh, look there!” exclaimed Will suddenly, pointing to an object sticking out of the sand. “Does n't that look like a revolver?”
“It surely does,” I replied; “I wonder if the sand is firm enough to hold us.”
I tested it with my foot, and found it was as solid as a floor, so we both jumped over the side of the bin to pick up the curious object. A revolver it really was, an ugly-looking weapon, too, and pretty badly rusted.
“Now, where in the world do you suppose that came from?” asked Will, as he sat down on the edge of the bin to examine it.
​ “Pirates!” I exclaimed, in mock-heroic style. “It could n’t be pirates,” returned Will, taking me seriously; “the gun is too modern for that.”
“Well then, smugglers maybe. Their boat has probably been wrecked here. I ‘ll bet there 's lots of treasure in this load of sand. Let ‘s see what else we can find.”
We began poking into the coarse sand with sticks. Presently I struck something hard and black. In another moment I had uncovered an Italian stiletto with curiously carved handle.
“There!" I said triumphant! “that looks like pirates now, does n't it? There sure to be gold where you find pistols and knives.
How the mud and sand are pumped up.
A loud laugh interrupted me. “Ha, ha, ha! So you ‘ve got the gold fever, have you?” laughed Mr. Porter. “You ’ve got your logic backward, young man; guns and knives are not an infallible sign of gold, but find your gold first, and then the firearms are sure to appear. We have found lots of firearms and daggers of every conceivable form of ugliness, but as for treasure, it's mighty scarce, though I must admit that we have found some gold, too, It is too bad to spoil your romance, but there is no blood-curdling tale of piracy connected with those weapons, although, no doubt, they were once wielded by desperados. Sometime ago, the police in New York got very busy, and started an active campaign against the carrying of concealed weapons, They rounded up the criminals and collected an enormous amount of junk. The only way of disposing of it was to throw it into the sea, but instead of taking it out to deep water, they dumped it in the Lower Bay, right in the path of this channel we are now excavating.”
“But how about the gold?" I asked.
One of the boats that devour mud.
“Now that is not so easily accounted for, but probably it happened in this way; a number of years ago, the garbage of the city used to be hauled out to sea in scows and dumped. The work was done by contractors who were not overcareful to go as far as they were required to by the city authorities, and, when the patrol was not very vigilant, they would dump right into the bay. Now every one knows that valuable things sometimes find their way by accident into the garbage pail, This being the case, some of them are sure to find their way into our bins. One of the men who has been working here ever since the excavating began, has made a wonderful collection of coins. He has money from every part of the world—Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Chinese, and what not.
“I should think you would have some way of straining out the stuff,” remarked Will; “there must be a mint of money in it.”
“It would n't be worth while. It would cost far more money than would ever he recovered. By the way, you had better get out of that bin ​now; we are pretty close to our dumping-grounds.”
Presently, there was a rattle of machinery. The two worm-shafts began to turn, making the large hand-wheels rotate slowly, “‘That looks like pirates now, does n’t it?’” I said triumphantly. and feeding the screw-shafts downward.
“They are just ‘cracking’ the load,” explained Mr. Porter, “to see that everything is all right before dumping.”
“Cracking!” we exclaimed.
“Yes, they have just slightly opened the gates in the bottom of the bins to see that they are not stuck, so that, when we dump the load, all the gates will operate together.”
“But you don’t mean to tell us that you dump that stuff out through the bottom of the boat?”
“Certainly I do.”
“But why does n't the boat sink when you let the water in?”
“That ’s a foolish question.” said Mr. Porter, “Stop and think about it a moment. Which is heavier, sand or water? Why should this boat sink if we swap a load of sand for a load of water? As the water comes in, the sand falls out, and the boat, relieved of the weight of the sand, actually rises ten feet higher out of the water,”
When they were “cracking” the bins, the sand sank a trifle, but presently the worm-shafts began to turn again, and, out of troughs at each side, there was a rush of water. The sand sank rapidly, and melted away under the stream.
“They ’re running the pumps now to wash dawn the sand,” Mr. Porter explained. “It gets pretty well packed, and does not fall through the gates fast enough unless we help it along with some water.”
As the sand fell away, we saw how enormous the bins were. “Each bin holds fourteen hundred cubic yards,” said Mr. Porter, “and in the two bins there is something like forty-five hundred tons! But, pshaw, I don't believe that conveys any idea to you. If you had to transport this sand overland, yon would have to load it on a train a mile long, made up of one hundred and seventy-five cars, to carry off what this one vessel transports so easily. And what 's more, it took us only two hours and fifty minutes to take on the load. We have been working here steadily for ten years, so you can just imagine we have sucked up quite a bit of mud and sand out of this old hay. The total excavation amounts to nearly seventy million cubic yards!”
Mr. Porter paused, evidently expecting us t0 ​express astonishment at the figure, but it would not have impressed me as anything very extraordinary had he said billions instead of millions, because the figures were far beyond my comprehension. So I said nothing, and Will only said “U-m,” in a very matter-of-fact way.
“U-m,” mimicked Mr. Porter; “it does n’t seem to impress you very much, let ’s put it another way. Suppose you should dump all this material in Broadway. You would choke the street from Bowling Green to Spuyten Duyvil to a depth of over two hundred feet. There, I thought I would astonish you!” laughed Mr. Porter, as he saw our mouths open with surprise; “but it ’s true.
“See what a bullaballoo they are making over the Panama Canal, and yet all their excavation will not amount to much more than two hundred million cubic yards in a canal forty-five miles long, while we, with our seven-mile-under-water canal, have just about one third of that amount to haul out, Why, boys, if this channel was being excavated on land where you could see its depth and width, the papers would be full of it, and we would be having crowds of sight-seers out to watch the work, But we go on quietly, making no fuss and bluster, digging a channel nearly as wide as Central Park, and as long as from City Hall to One-Hundred-and-Twenty-fifth Street.”
“And has all this work been done with only one dredge-boat?” Will asked,
“Oh, not we have had four here up to a short time ago. Now the work is nearly done, so there are only two of us here in the bay. The other dredge has just left us to help out with the work on the Rockaway Inlet. Yes, the work has gone on steadily night and day, year in and year out. We come in to our dock on Saturday afternoons and have Sunday ashore, but you will find us here at any other time, plodding along and sticking to it, rain or shine. Nothing but a howling gale drives us to shelter.”
All this time, the boat was steaming back rapidly up the channel. Just before we reached the spot that was to be dredged, Mr. Porter bade us look over the side of the vessel and see the enormous suction-pipes. There were two pipes, one at each side of the boat, and while we were going along, they were raised out of the water. We had not seen them before because the vessel was loaded so heavily that they were submerged. The pipes were twenty inches in diameter, and, where they entered the hull, they were fitted with swivel-joints. At the opposite end of each pipe, there was a “drag,” or a sort of mouthpiece, about five feet broad, and partitioned off so that the openings in it measured about eight by nine inches.
“Anything that can go through those openings,” explained Mr. Porter, “will go through all the rest of the system, No matter how heavy it is, the water will carry it right up into the bins,”
“Suppose you should strike a rock bigger than eight by nine inches,” I asked; “what would you do?”
"We would just dig a hole in the sand and bury it.”
“Bury it!” I ejaculated.
Mr. Porter's eyes twinkled, “I astonished you again, did n't 1? There are lots of stone piles along this channel. Nobody ever thought that the channel would be dug through here, and there used to be no regulation against dumping rock in the bay. We can't suck up that rock because there is too much of it, and the pieces are too large, so, as I say, we bury it, All we do is to dredge a deep hole around the stone pile fifteen or twenty feet deep, and then the survey-boat comes along with a water-jet that loosens up the pile, and topples it over into the hole.”
We looked puzzled. “Yes,” explained Mr. Porter, “they play a stream of water on the pile just as you might play the garden hose on a sand-hill. You can use the water-jet under water as well as anywhere else.”
Presently we saw the drag lowered into the water. The pumps were started, and enormous streams of water poured, boiling and churning, out of the square conduits at each side into the bins. Soon the water turned muddy, but the river of sand we expected to see failed to appear.
“Is that what you pump up through the dredges?” Will asked.
“Yes, it is mostly water, but soon the bins will fill up, and then the water will flow over the top into an overflow channel, while the sand and mud settle to the bottom.”
Mr. Porter took us below and let us sec the big pumps at work. There were two centrifugal pumps about ten feet in diameter, driven by 450-horse-power engines, very now and then, we heard a bang and a crash as a large stone was carried through by the torrent of water, while there was an almost incessant rattle of small stones through the pipes. It was extremely interesting, and quite marvelous to think of those two drags groping blindly along the bottom, devouring everything that came within their reach. Mr. Porter explained that the boat had to keep moving lest the tide or some current carry it backward, jamming the suction-pipes, and breaking them.
When we got back on deck, we found, much to our regret, that the tugboat had returned, and we had to cut our visit short.
(To be continued.)