1
00:00:01,040 --> 00:00:04,000
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

2
00:00:04,080 --> 00:00:12,440
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

3
00:00:12,520 --> 00:00:15,720
Speaker 1: I'm try C V. Wilson, Holly Frying and you know, uh,

4
00:00:15,920 --> 00:00:19,239
Speaker 1: people sunny it seemed to love the stories about shipwrecks. Yeah,

5
00:00:19,280 --> 00:00:21,520
Speaker 1: we have a lot of maritime history fans. Yes, that

6
00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:24,239
Speaker 1: lots of people who love the shipwrecks stories and who

7
00:00:24,840 --> 00:00:28,400
Speaker 1: want to hear more shipwrecks stories. And we haven't really

8
00:00:28,440 --> 00:00:32,640
Speaker 1: talked a lot of about submarine disasters. After looking through

9
00:00:32,640 --> 00:00:36,640
Speaker 1: our archive and also polling on Facebook and Twitter, I

10
00:00:36,640 --> 00:00:39,800
Speaker 1: think the only submarine disaster that has been on the

11
00:00:39,840 --> 00:00:43,320
Speaker 1: podcast ever in its history is a brief part about

12
00:00:43,400 --> 00:00:47,239
Speaker 1: the Huntley, which was a Civil War submarine from an

13
00:00:47,240 --> 00:00:51,839
Speaker 1: episode on five Battleship Shipwrecks. So, uh, we're gonna talk

14
00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:56,560
Speaker 1: about a submarine disaster today. And there been bigger submarine

15
00:00:56,600 --> 00:01:00,080
Speaker 1: disasters in history than this one. Also maybe even in

16
00:01:00,840 --> 00:01:03,440
Speaker 1: Actually I've put this in my notes before I got

17
00:01:03,440 --> 00:01:05,360
Speaker 1: to the end of doing my research. It says, maybe

18
00:01:05,400 --> 00:01:10,440
Speaker 1: some more dramatic submarine rescues, but this one's actually pretty dramatic. Uh.

19
00:01:10,800 --> 00:01:13,200
Speaker 1: The reason that I wanted to start with this one.

20
00:01:13,560 --> 00:01:16,800
Speaker 1: Number one it's a listener request from listener Stephen. Number two.

21
00:01:17,640 --> 00:01:20,319
Speaker 1: I personally find the idea of being trapped in a

22
00:01:20,360 --> 00:01:23,800
Speaker 1: submarine at the bottom of the ocean the second most

23
00:01:23,920 --> 00:01:28,160
Speaker 1: terrifying thing in the world. Drowning is my big death fear.

24
00:01:28,840 --> 00:01:32,319
Speaker 1: The first most terrifying thing is floating into outer space

25
00:01:32,400 --> 00:01:35,759
Speaker 1: with no hope of rescue. The second most terrifying thing

26
00:01:35,840 --> 00:01:37,480
Speaker 1: is being trapped in a submarine on the bottom of

27
00:01:37,520 --> 00:01:41,040
Speaker 1: the ocean. Um. So the reason we're doing this one

28
00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:44,880
Speaker 1: is spoiler alert, everyone gets out okay, which is I

29
00:01:44,880 --> 00:01:46,600
Speaker 1: think the only way that I would be able to

30
00:01:46,600 --> 00:01:52,360
Speaker 1: tolerate recording this episode of being trapped in a submarine. Uh.

31
00:01:52,400 --> 00:01:56,200
Speaker 1: This is the submarine S five And as we said earlier,

32
00:01:56,200 --> 00:02:00,560
Speaker 1: it is a listener request from Stephen. So today, something

33
00:02:00,560 --> 00:02:03,960
Speaker 1: goes wrong aboard a submarine. Most developed countries navies have

34
00:02:04,040 --> 00:02:06,240
Speaker 1: these tools on hand to try to rescue the crew

35
00:02:07,120 --> 00:02:09,760
Speaker 1: and relatively shallow water, it could be a matter of

36
00:02:09,760 --> 00:02:12,120
Speaker 1: the crew just putting on a suit that will let

37
00:02:12,120 --> 00:02:14,880
Speaker 1: them breathe and keep warm while they ascend and in

38
00:02:14,960 --> 00:02:17,600
Speaker 1: deeper water, a rescue vessel can descend down to the

39
00:02:17,639 --> 00:02:21,399
Speaker 1: submarine and then carry the survivors back up to the surface,

40
00:02:21,840 --> 00:02:25,440
Speaker 1: and during peacetime, rescuing a sunken submarines crew is usually

41
00:02:25,440 --> 00:02:29,000
Speaker 1: an international effort, so whoever's closest and has the technology

42
00:02:29,040 --> 00:02:31,880
Speaker 1: to handle the situation is who goes. This is not

43
00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:36,320
Speaker 1: a case in at that point the United States Submarine

44
00:02:36,520 --> 00:02:41,040
Speaker 1: Force had only been officially established for about twenty years,

45
00:02:41,160 --> 00:02:44,880
Speaker 1: and even the submarines themselves had really limited means of

46
00:02:45,040 --> 00:02:47,720
Speaker 1: escape if they were in any depth of water because

47
00:02:47,720 --> 00:02:50,680
Speaker 1: the pressure of the water would hold all of the

48
00:02:50,720 --> 00:02:55,600
Speaker 1: hatches closed. So if your submarine sank, really the only

49
00:02:55,639 --> 00:02:58,840
Speaker 1: way to get out was through the torpedo tubes, and

50
00:02:58,880 --> 00:03:02,440
Speaker 1: that was a maybe maybe the torpedo tubes could be

51
00:03:02,520 --> 00:03:06,840
Speaker 1: used as an emergency exhibit, maybe not. But even if

52
00:03:06,919 --> 00:03:10,480
Speaker 1: you could get out the torpedo tubes and most depths,

53
00:03:12,200 --> 00:03:14,760
Speaker 1: it would be impossible to swim to the service before

54
00:03:14,760 --> 00:03:18,160
Speaker 1: you either succumbed to the bends or drowned. Your odds

55
00:03:18,160 --> 00:03:22,560
Speaker 1: survival were they were extremely low, almost zero. But even so,

56
00:03:22,720 --> 00:03:24,800
Speaker 1: by the time this story takes place, the U. S

57
00:03:24,800 --> 00:03:27,600
Speaker 1: Submarine Force had a relatively good track record as far

58
00:03:27,639 --> 00:03:30,400
Speaker 1: as crew safety, and prior to that year, the United

59
00:03:30,440 --> 00:03:33,120
Speaker 1: States had only seen two major accidents one of them

60
00:03:33,160 --> 00:03:35,000
Speaker 1: was in nineteen fifteen and the other one was in

61
00:03:35,120 --> 00:03:38,080
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. To be clear, this is that was those

62
00:03:38,160 --> 00:03:42,640
Speaker 1: numbers for once the submarine Force was officially established, because

63
00:03:42,640 --> 00:03:45,840
Speaker 1: there were some other submarine issues before that, and the

64
00:03:45,920 --> 00:03:49,160
Speaker 1: extremely limited limited tinkering with submarines that went on before

65
00:03:49,200 --> 00:03:52,520
Speaker 1: that point. So the ship from today's episode was part

66
00:03:52,600 --> 00:03:54,880
Speaker 1: of the S class, and these were U. S. Navy

67
00:03:54,920 --> 00:03:58,440
Speaker 1: submarines from World War One. The S five was, just

68
00:03:58,560 --> 00:04:01,280
Speaker 1: like its name suggests, the fifth in its class, and

69
00:04:01,320 --> 00:04:05,280
Speaker 1: it was launched in November nineteen and commissioned the following March.

70
00:04:06,160 --> 00:04:10,560
Speaker 1: On Monday, August, the S five left the Boston Navy

71
00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:13,160
Speaker 1: Yard on its first mission with a crew of thirty

72
00:04:13,160 --> 00:04:16,600
Speaker 1: six officers and enlisted men. The vessel was expected to

73
00:04:16,640 --> 00:04:20,400
Speaker 1: reach Baltimore, Maryland, on September three. The ship and crew

74
00:04:20,480 --> 00:04:23,440
Speaker 1: had by then spent six months in testing and training.

75
00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:27,479
Speaker 1: This mission was part of a longer voyage to the

76
00:04:27,560 --> 00:04:29,880
Speaker 1: southeastern United States, and they were going to be making

77
00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:32,720
Speaker 1: stops at all these Navy ports along the way with

78
00:04:32,760 --> 00:04:35,800
Speaker 1: the hope of recruiting ex servicemen to be part of

79
00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:39,120
Speaker 1: the submarine fleet. This was really a pretty posh assignment

80
00:04:39,279 --> 00:04:43,720
Speaker 1: and Lieutenant Commander Charles M. Cook Jr. Also known as Savvy,

81
00:04:43,760 --> 00:04:46,800
Speaker 1: who was in command of the S five, was extremely

82
00:04:46,880 --> 00:04:49,640
Speaker 1: pleased with both the skill and the demeanor of his crew.

83
00:04:49,839 --> 00:04:52,159
Speaker 1: They all worked really hard, they could learn to do

84
00:04:52,200 --> 00:04:54,280
Speaker 1: their jobs really well, and for the most part, they

85
00:04:54,320 --> 00:04:56,920
Speaker 1: all got along and we're nice skies to be around.

86
00:04:57,480 --> 00:05:00,000
Speaker 1: And in addition to these recruitment stops, the S five

87
00:05:00,040 --> 00:05:02,359
Speaker 1: I was also to undergo a number of speed and

88
00:05:02,480 --> 00:05:06,320
Speaker 1: endurance trials as part of a performance evaluation. After all

89
00:05:06,400 --> 00:05:09,599
Speaker 1: these months of training and tests, the performance evaluation was

90
00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:12,240
Speaker 1: for the most part kind of a cake walk. As

91
00:05:12,400 --> 00:05:15,120
Speaker 1: Tracy just said, this crew was they worked well together,

92
00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:17,080
Speaker 1: they all worked hard, they knew their stuff, they had

93
00:05:17,160 --> 00:05:19,640
Speaker 1: just been through six months of intensive training. It was

94
00:05:19,720 --> 00:05:22,760
Speaker 1: just sort of a happy coincidence that their performance evaluation

95
00:05:22,800 --> 00:05:26,640
Speaker 1: immediately followed all that. But the big exception was the

96
00:05:26,720 --> 00:05:31,360
Speaker 1: crash dive. So other than during trainings and this evaluation,

97
00:05:31,520 --> 00:05:35,440
Speaker 1: crash dives normally took place only during wartime and when

98
00:05:35,480 --> 00:05:38,120
Speaker 1: done perfectly, they took a submarine from the surface of

99
00:05:38,120 --> 00:05:41,120
Speaker 1: the ocean to periscope depth, which is about forty feet

100
00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:44,560
Speaker 1: in under a minute, and the first time the crew

101
00:05:44,600 --> 00:05:46,280
Speaker 1: of the S five tried it, so this is when

102
00:05:46,320 --> 00:05:48,680
Speaker 1: they were learning how to all do it. It had

103
00:05:48,720 --> 00:05:51,840
Speaker 1: taken them more than four minutes, and they had steadily

104
00:05:51,920 --> 00:05:55,560
Speaker 1: reduced that time during training. And the reason that this

105
00:05:55,640 --> 00:05:59,400
Speaker 1: particular maneuver was the outlier and their performance evaluation wasn't

106
00:05:59,520 --> 00:06:03,560
Speaker 1: just the level of difficulty involved. These evaluations were scored

107
00:06:03,680 --> 00:06:06,880
Speaker 1: and used as a competition among the submarines in the fleet.

108
00:06:07,400 --> 00:06:11,440
Speaker 1: Every extra second would incur a penalty in the overall scores,

109
00:06:11,880 --> 00:06:13,920
Speaker 1: and they all wanted to break that one minute record,

110
00:06:14,080 --> 00:06:16,880
Speaker 1: during which time they had a highly orchestrated series of

111
00:06:16,960 --> 00:06:19,880
Speaker 1: jobs to do in order to make the vessel watertight

112
00:06:19,960 --> 00:06:23,200
Speaker 1: and then dive very rapidly. So before we get to

113
00:06:23,279 --> 00:06:26,520
Speaker 1: the crash dive and how it went wrong, a brief

114
00:06:26,560 --> 00:06:29,800
Speaker 1: bit about submarines for those who may not know. A

115
00:06:29,880 --> 00:06:33,240
Speaker 1: submarine rises and falls through the water depending in part

116
00:06:33,320 --> 00:06:36,080
Speaker 1: on how much ballast it has and its tanks, and

117
00:06:36,200 --> 00:06:39,240
Speaker 1: the ballast mostly comes in the form of seawater, and

118
00:06:39,360 --> 00:06:43,400
Speaker 1: as class submarine, the ballast level, so how much water

119
00:06:43,560 --> 00:06:46,480
Speaker 1: was in the ballast tanks was regulated by valves called

120
00:06:46,600 --> 00:06:50,440
Speaker 1: Kingston valves. Uh. These valves were controlled using waste high

121
00:06:50,560 --> 00:06:53,920
Speaker 1: levels which connected directly to the valves through a system

122
00:06:53,960 --> 00:06:57,080
Speaker 1: of rods which opened and closed the ballast tanks, and

123
00:06:57,160 --> 00:07:00,320
Speaker 1: they were incredibly difficult to move. It took more staple

124
00:07:00,320 --> 00:07:03,279
Speaker 1: men to open and close each of them. Because the

125
00:07:03,360 --> 00:07:07,239
Speaker 1: Kingston valves were so temperamental, when preparing for a crash dive,

126
00:07:07,320 --> 00:07:09,760
Speaker 1: what the crew would do would be to seal off

127
00:07:09,880 --> 00:07:12,360
Speaker 1: all the vents that let air in and out of

128
00:07:12,400 --> 00:07:16,120
Speaker 1: the compartments, and then they would open the Kingston valves.

129
00:07:16,280 --> 00:07:19,720
Speaker 1: So because the air couldn't get out, the water couldn't

130
00:07:19,760 --> 00:07:23,240
Speaker 1: get in, and that meant that the level of ballast

131
00:07:23,280 --> 00:07:25,400
Speaker 1: and the tanks to stay the same. So the air

132
00:07:25,480 --> 00:07:27,880
Speaker 1: vents were just a lot easier to deal with, and

133
00:07:27,920 --> 00:07:30,520
Speaker 1: that meant that they could deal with the easier job

134
00:07:30,560 --> 00:07:33,440
Speaker 1: when it was time to dive. Opening the vents was

135
00:07:33,520 --> 00:07:35,880
Speaker 1: faster than opening the valves, so they were basically getting

136
00:07:35,880 --> 00:07:37,680
Speaker 1: a little ahead of the game, and when it was

137
00:07:37,720 --> 00:07:40,240
Speaker 1: time to dive, they'd open those vents and the air

138
00:07:40,280 --> 00:07:43,120
Speaker 1: would flow out and the water would flow in from

139
00:07:43,160 --> 00:07:46,600
Speaker 1: the already opened Kingston valves. So when it came time

140
00:07:46,720 --> 00:07:49,760
Speaker 1: to do their crash dive test on September one, this

141
00:07:49,840 --> 00:07:53,040
Speaker 1: didn't go as planned, the crew closed all of the

142
00:07:53,040 --> 00:07:55,920
Speaker 1: air vents and they opened the Kingston valves, and it

143
00:07:55,960 --> 00:07:59,880
Speaker 1: turned out that one of the air valves hadn't sealed properly,

144
00:08:00,080 --> 00:08:03,920
Speaker 1: so water started seeping into one of the ballast tanks,

145
00:08:03,960 --> 00:08:07,240
Speaker 1: and that meant that the submarine almost immediately started to

146
00:08:07,360 --> 00:08:10,440
Speaker 1: list to the starboard, which means to the right for

147
00:08:10,640 --> 00:08:14,800
Speaker 1: non maritime people. Uh. This was something that could cause

148
00:08:14,840 --> 00:08:17,480
Speaker 1: some pretty serious problems if it wasn't corrected, so the

149
00:08:17,520 --> 00:08:21,000
Speaker 1: crew immediately got to work opening and closing other Kingston

150
00:08:21,080 --> 00:08:24,000
Speaker 1: valves to get things back on an even keel. One

151
00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:26,280
Speaker 1: of the people who helped out was Percy Fox, the

152
00:08:26,320 --> 00:08:28,840
Speaker 1: gunner's mate and the senior most man on the ship

153
00:08:28,880 --> 00:08:32,720
Speaker 1: except for the lieutenant commander. They probably could not have

154
00:08:32,880 --> 00:08:36,240
Speaker 1: gotten the Kingston valves taken care of without Fox's help.

155
00:08:36,320 --> 00:08:39,080
Speaker 1: It was. There was a lot of opening and closing

156
00:08:39,080 --> 00:08:42,040
Speaker 1: that had to be done to level things out, but

157
00:08:42,200 --> 00:08:44,040
Speaker 1: Fox had his own job to do when it was

158
00:08:44,120 --> 00:08:49,200
Speaker 1: really critical. Both he and Lieutenant Commander Cook had major

159
00:08:49,440 --> 00:08:52,360
Speaker 1: sources of ventilation to the submarine that they personally had

160
00:08:52,400 --> 00:08:55,680
Speaker 1: to close before diving. Cook had to close the hatch

161
00:08:55,760 --> 00:08:58,240
Speaker 1: at the top of the conning tower and Fox had

162
00:08:58,280 --> 00:09:01,199
Speaker 1: to close the main induction valve, which was the valve

163
00:09:01,200 --> 00:09:03,040
Speaker 1: that diverted air to all the parts of the ship

164
00:09:03,080 --> 00:09:06,000
Speaker 1: from the outside. So these two men had these two

165
00:09:06,080 --> 00:09:09,040
Speaker 1: jobs because they were the two most senior men on

166
00:09:09,120 --> 00:09:12,400
Speaker 1: the ship, and these jobs were the two most important

167
00:09:12,400 --> 00:09:15,560
Speaker 1: when it came to making the ship uh watertight so

168
00:09:15,600 --> 00:09:18,120
Speaker 1: that it could dive. Plus when it came to the

169
00:09:18,160 --> 00:09:20,400
Speaker 1: induction valve itself. It had proved to be a little

170
00:09:20,400 --> 00:09:23,199
Speaker 1: temperamental on the S five as well as on her

171
00:09:23,200 --> 00:09:27,000
Speaker 1: sister ships. Cook had some trouble getting the conning tower

172
00:09:27,320 --> 00:09:30,920
Speaker 1: hatch to close. It was caught on something, but Fox

173
00:09:31,080 --> 00:09:34,120
Speaker 1: overlooked his task entirely because he was trying to handle

174
00:09:34,120 --> 00:09:36,880
Speaker 1: this other stuff that was going awry. Right, So when

175
00:09:36,920 --> 00:09:40,120
Speaker 1: it was time to dive, Cook sounded the diving clackson

176
00:09:40,880 --> 00:09:42,800
Speaker 1: and the crew did all their tasks to get the

177
00:09:42,800 --> 00:09:46,600
Speaker 1: ship to dive. And because Fox had overlooked his part

178
00:09:46,760 --> 00:09:55,360
Speaker 1: while wrangling with another crisis, water started pouring into the submarine. Ah,

179
00:09:55,640 --> 00:09:57,360
Speaker 1: I know how this ends, and I'm even kind of

180
00:09:57,400 --> 00:09:59,680
Speaker 1: scared already. So let's take a brief moment for a

181
00:09:59,720 --> 00:10:03,760
Speaker 1: word from a sponsors sir to get back to the

182
00:10:03,920 --> 00:10:08,120
Speaker 1: S five with water pouring into the submarine from outside.

183
00:10:08,240 --> 00:10:11,200
Speaker 1: Fox immediately realized his mistake and started trying to close

184
00:10:11,240 --> 00:10:14,079
Speaker 1: the main induction valve, while Cook gave the order to

185
00:10:14,120 --> 00:10:16,120
Speaker 1: blow the ballast tanks to try to clear them of

186
00:10:16,120 --> 00:10:18,839
Speaker 1: the water that they were taking in. But Fox couldn't

187
00:10:18,880 --> 00:10:21,880
Speaker 1: get the main induction valve to move, so the rest

188
00:10:21,880 --> 00:10:24,720
Speaker 1: of the crew started manually closing all of the smaller

189
00:10:24,720 --> 00:10:28,080
Speaker 1: events that led to the outside, while sea water was

190
00:10:28,200 --> 00:10:31,720
Speaker 1: literally pummeling them in the face as they did. The

191
00:10:31,760 --> 00:10:34,440
Speaker 1: torpedo room, which had been the first compartment of the

192
00:10:34,480 --> 00:10:37,319
Speaker 1: ship to part to start taking on water, was really

193
00:10:37,320 --> 00:10:39,160
Speaker 1: too far gone for them to try to save, so

194
00:10:39,200 --> 00:10:42,640
Speaker 1: they evacuated it and then sealed it behind a watertight door.

195
00:10:43,120 --> 00:10:45,120
Speaker 1: I can't imagine trying to I mean, I can't change

196
00:10:45,120 --> 00:10:46,880
Speaker 1: the temperature in the shower if it's hitting me in

197
00:10:46,920 --> 00:10:50,360
Speaker 1: the face, like I can't imagine a much higher pressure situation,

198
00:10:50,800 --> 00:10:54,800
Speaker 1: of a much higher stress situation. Yes, it would be intense.

199
00:10:55,280 --> 00:10:58,360
Speaker 1: So with the torpedo room essentially open to the sea

200
00:10:58,520 --> 00:11:00,959
Speaker 1: at that point, it filled with water and the S

201
00:11:01,040 --> 00:11:04,520
Speaker 1: five sank to the seafloor. Knows first when it came

202
00:11:04,559 --> 00:11:06,640
Speaker 1: to rest four minutes later it was under about a

203
00:11:06,720 --> 00:11:09,840
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty feet of water more or less upright.

204
00:11:10,400 --> 00:11:14,160
Speaker 1: So a running theme and then this whole story is

205
00:11:14,200 --> 00:11:16,280
Speaker 1: that they keep having some good news and some bad news.

206
00:11:16,960 --> 00:11:20,280
Speaker 1: But the good news was everyone had survived this initial

207
00:11:20,440 --> 00:11:23,400
Speaker 1: sinking of the ship. The only inner injuries at this

208
00:11:23,440 --> 00:11:27,280
Speaker 1: point were pretty minor. The hull was still intact, they

209
00:11:27,320 --> 00:11:30,720
Speaker 1: still had emergency power provided by batteries, and they still

210
00:11:30,840 --> 00:11:34,600
Speaker 1: had about half of their supply of compressed air. The

211
00:11:34,640 --> 00:11:38,360
Speaker 1: bad news was the torpedo room was about two thirds

212
00:11:38,360 --> 00:11:41,800
Speaker 1: full of water, and the billages also had water in them.

213
00:11:41,840 --> 00:11:44,839
Speaker 1: All in all, the submarine had about seventy five tons

214
00:11:44,920 --> 00:11:47,880
Speaker 1: of extra ballast thanks to all the water, which meant

215
00:11:47,960 --> 00:11:50,880
Speaker 1: that unless they figured out a solution, they were basically

216
00:11:50,920 --> 00:11:53,360
Speaker 1: completely stuck. There was no way for them to get

217
00:11:53,360 --> 00:11:55,000
Speaker 1: out of the sub and even if they could, it

218
00:11:55,000 --> 00:11:57,280
Speaker 1: would have been virtually impossible for any of them to

219
00:11:57,280 --> 00:12:00,640
Speaker 1: survive a swim to the surface from that depth. So

220
00:12:01,120 --> 00:12:04,080
Speaker 1: Cook blew the resid the residual ballast out of the tanks,

221
00:12:04,120 --> 00:12:06,199
Speaker 1: hoping that he would be able to bring the ship

222
00:12:06,240 --> 00:12:09,120
Speaker 1: back up to the surface, but it didn't work, and

223
00:12:09,200 --> 00:12:12,520
Speaker 1: his efforts were also hampered because one of the drive

224
00:12:12,600 --> 00:12:15,600
Speaker 1: motors had been damaged when all the water started pouring in.

225
00:12:16,240 --> 00:12:18,880
Speaker 1: The other drive motor also burned out while they were

226
00:12:18,920 --> 00:12:21,320
Speaker 1: trying to maneuver out of the mud at the bottom

227
00:12:21,360 --> 00:12:23,560
Speaker 1: of the ocean, which left them with no way to

228
00:12:23,600 --> 00:12:26,840
Speaker 1: maneuver the ship, and because of where they had sunk,

229
00:12:26,920 --> 00:12:31,360
Speaker 1: they weren't really in the like path of any ships

230
00:12:31,400 --> 00:12:35,240
Speaker 1: that might be passing um. It was really unlikely that

231
00:12:35,280 --> 00:12:37,160
Speaker 1: they were going to be able to get the attention

232
00:12:37,280 --> 00:12:40,560
Speaker 1: of another ship, and their presence in Baltimore was not

233
00:12:40,720 --> 00:12:44,120
Speaker 1: going to be missed for several days. So for the

234
00:12:44,160 --> 00:12:47,040
Speaker 1: next couple of hours, Cook tried to force water out

235
00:12:47,040 --> 00:12:50,200
Speaker 1: of the torpedo room using a number of pumps, and

236
00:12:50,200 --> 00:12:52,400
Speaker 1: he was not making a lot of headway, so he

237
00:12:52,480 --> 00:12:54,800
Speaker 1: decided to try to use some of their compressed air

238
00:12:54,920 --> 00:12:58,160
Speaker 1: to try to pressurize the room, and while this did help,

239
00:12:58,720 --> 00:13:01,040
Speaker 1: it quickly became obvious that there was not enough air

240
00:13:01,120 --> 00:13:03,520
Speaker 1: to do this job. The idea was that if they

241
00:13:03,559 --> 00:13:05,480
Speaker 1: were able to pressurize the room, it would force the

242
00:13:05,520 --> 00:13:07,959
Speaker 1: water out and they would rise back to the service.

243
00:13:09,040 --> 00:13:12,360
Speaker 1: Different accounts kind of vary in their explanations of why

244
00:13:12,480 --> 00:13:14,760
Speaker 1: Cook tried the next thing that he tried, which was

245
00:13:14,840 --> 00:13:17,360
Speaker 1: to use what was left of the compressed air to

246
00:13:17,520 --> 00:13:20,640
Speaker 1: clear out the aft ballast tanks, and this actually worked.

247
00:13:21,520 --> 00:13:23,640
Speaker 1: It meant that the stern of the sub now was

248
00:13:23,679 --> 00:13:26,640
Speaker 1: a lot more buoyant than the bow, so it rose up,

249
00:13:26,840 --> 00:13:31,079
Speaker 1: lifting the submarine off of the sea floor. Uh, but

250
00:13:31,360 --> 00:13:34,840
Speaker 1: also reorienting it so that it was more or less vertical.

251
00:13:35,520 --> 00:13:38,599
Speaker 1: So just imagine for a moment a submarine which is

252
00:13:38,640 --> 00:13:40,800
Speaker 1: a confined, cramped space on a good day. If you

253
00:13:40,800 --> 00:13:44,280
Speaker 1: have ever done like a tour of a military submarine,

254
00:13:44,360 --> 00:13:46,880
Speaker 1: you probably have that moment of holy smokes, this is

255
00:13:46,920 --> 00:13:50,040
Speaker 1: really tight space. We live down here. So then to

256
00:13:50,120 --> 00:13:53,360
Speaker 1: think about all of these people in this tiny space, Uh,

257
00:13:53,400 --> 00:13:56,520
Speaker 1: it's it will give you a moment of pause. At

258
00:13:56,600 --> 00:14:00,040
Speaker 1: least it does me. So everything is wet aboard at

259
00:14:00,040 --> 00:14:02,920
Speaker 1: this point, there is a lot of broken stuff, and

260
00:14:02,960 --> 00:14:06,079
Speaker 1: now it's about sixty degrees from horizontal, so not quite

261
00:14:06,120 --> 00:14:09,560
Speaker 1: straight up and down, but really close to vertical. So

262
00:14:10,240 --> 00:14:12,400
Speaker 1: I just imagine people stacking on top of each other

263
00:14:12,400 --> 00:14:15,840
Speaker 1: as they try to get footing. Yeah, for another round

264
00:14:15,840 --> 00:14:17,640
Speaker 1: of good news bad news. The good news was they

265
00:14:17,679 --> 00:14:20,080
Speaker 1: weren't stuck on the floor of the ocean anymore. They

266
00:14:20,080 --> 00:14:24,200
Speaker 1: were tracking their depth and the vessel was very slowly

267
00:14:24,360 --> 00:14:28,320
Speaker 1: inching upward towards the surface. But there was bad news,

268
00:14:28,960 --> 00:14:30,840
Speaker 1: which is that now the lowest point of the ship

269
00:14:30,960 --> 00:14:33,800
Speaker 1: was the battery room, which had filled with water. The

270
00:14:33,840 --> 00:14:37,080
Speaker 1: water started interacting with the sulfuric acid in the batteries,

271
00:14:37,080 --> 00:14:42,680
Speaker 1: producing chlorine gas. In such a confined space no ventilation. Remember,

272
00:14:42,920 --> 00:14:46,080
Speaker 1: the chlorine gas had the potential to become deadly. So

273
00:14:46,320 --> 00:14:48,640
Speaker 1: the crew started evacuating the parts of the ship that

274
00:14:48,680 --> 00:14:52,240
Speaker 1: we're filling up with chlorine gas by basically hauling themselves

275
00:14:52,400 --> 00:14:56,880
Speaker 1: over one another, climbing the previously horizontal surfaces of the

276
00:14:56,880 --> 00:14:59,960
Speaker 1: ship which were now vertical, until they were all out

277
00:15:00,040 --> 00:15:02,280
Speaker 1: of the battery room, and then they sealed that off

278
00:15:02,320 --> 00:15:05,640
Speaker 1: behind them. They also started trying to funnel some of

279
00:15:05,680 --> 00:15:08,280
Speaker 1: their air into the torpedo room to try to keep

280
00:15:08,360 --> 00:15:13,040
Speaker 1: it from refilling back with water. And at this point, uh,

281
00:15:13,160 --> 00:15:15,360
Speaker 1: this had all been going on for about five hours.

282
00:15:16,840 --> 00:15:20,840
Speaker 1: We're gonna take another brief break before we resumed their

283
00:15:20,840 --> 00:15:23,760
Speaker 1: efforts to rescue themselves. And now let's get back to

284
00:15:23,760 --> 00:15:28,680
Speaker 1: those poor gents on the sub. So five hours after

285
00:15:28,880 --> 00:15:31,360
Speaker 1: sinking to the sea, floor. The men aboard that S

286
00:15:31,440 --> 00:15:34,000
Speaker 1: five were not in good shape. Everything. As we said before,

287
00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:37,840
Speaker 1: it was wet and slippery. There was debris everywhere thanks

288
00:15:37,880 --> 00:15:40,880
Speaker 1: to the combination of stirred up bilge, water and fuel

289
00:15:40,960 --> 00:15:43,600
Speaker 1: and exhaust, and the lack of a functioning toilet. It

290
00:15:43,720 --> 00:15:47,760
Speaker 1: smelled awful, and Cook had come to the conclusion that

291
00:15:47,920 --> 00:15:52,040
Speaker 1: his effort to use compressed air to clear water out

292
00:15:52,120 --> 00:15:56,120
Speaker 1: so that they could rise faster was not working. He

293
00:15:56,240 --> 00:15:58,960
Speaker 1: was preparing to tell the men that hope was lost

294
00:15:59,120 --> 00:16:02,800
Speaker 1: and that they were going to die. Not long after that,

295
00:16:03,160 --> 00:16:05,720
Speaker 1: some men who were sheltering in the submarine's motor room,

296
00:16:05,760 --> 00:16:08,520
Speaker 1: which at that point was the highest point in the submarine,

297
00:16:08,680 --> 00:16:11,400
Speaker 1: reported that they could hear waves breaking against the side

298
00:16:11,400 --> 00:16:14,560
Speaker 1: of the vessel. So that sounds awesome, like we have

299
00:16:14,640 --> 00:16:17,600
Speaker 1: cleared the water. Uh. Since they weren't oriented in the

300
00:16:17,640 --> 00:16:21,800
Speaker 1: correct direction, they used math plus the ship's inclinometer to

301
00:16:21,840 --> 00:16:24,240
Speaker 1: figure out just how far up they were when the

302
00:16:24,240 --> 00:16:27,040
Speaker 1: good news was now about twenty feet of the ship

303
00:16:27,120 --> 00:16:31,280
Speaker 1: were above the water line. That's all, But there's also

304
00:16:31,400 --> 00:16:35,600
Speaker 1: bad news. The actual escape hatch, though, was still submerged

305
00:16:35,640 --> 00:16:38,160
Speaker 1: by a good thirty feet, and even if they'd been

306
00:16:38,200 --> 00:16:41,000
Speaker 1: able to shift their angle from sixty degrees to ninety

307
00:16:41,040 --> 00:16:44,560
Speaker 1: degrees from horizontal, the hatch still would have been under water,

308
00:16:44,800 --> 00:16:47,400
Speaker 1: and that ship would not have been enough to clear

309
00:16:47,440 --> 00:16:52,320
Speaker 1: it of the water line. But now having part of

310
00:16:52,360 --> 00:16:55,360
Speaker 1: the vessel above the water line gave everyone a tiny

311
00:16:55,440 --> 00:16:57,640
Speaker 1: glimmer of hope, and they came up with a plan

312
00:16:57,760 --> 00:17:02,880
Speaker 1: to cut their way out of the ship. So it's

313
00:17:02,920 --> 00:17:06,200
Speaker 1: a tiny glimmer of hope because they're planning to cut

314
00:17:06,240 --> 00:17:09,679
Speaker 1: their way through three quarter inch thick steel that was

315
00:17:10,440 --> 00:17:14,480
Speaker 1: made specifically to keep the ocean out of the submarine

316
00:17:14,640 --> 00:17:19,639
Speaker 1: to not be easy to break. Correct. Uh, that sounds

317
00:17:19,680 --> 00:17:22,760
Speaker 1: like just a desperate plan, but it is what they

318
00:17:22,800 --> 00:17:25,800
Speaker 1: decided to do, and they did it. Cook climbed up

319
00:17:25,800 --> 00:17:28,080
Speaker 1: to the tiller room, which was a small compartment off

320
00:17:28,119 --> 00:17:30,720
Speaker 1: the motor room, and he and several men took turns,

321
00:17:30,760 --> 00:17:33,400
Speaker 1: starting with an electric drill until it's motor burned out,

322
00:17:33,920 --> 00:17:36,280
Speaker 1: and then they turned to a manual drill. And that's

323
00:17:36,320 --> 00:17:40,639
Speaker 1: what blows my mind, like, but I guess if you

324
00:17:40,680 --> 00:17:42,959
Speaker 1: feel like life of both yourself and a lot of

325
00:17:42,960 --> 00:17:47,000
Speaker 1: men that you are, you know, close with, at that

326
00:17:47,040 --> 00:17:51,040
Speaker 1: point they've worked together really closely I'll do it. You

327
00:17:51,080 --> 00:17:53,520
Speaker 1: have the choice of we can try to drill through

328
00:17:53,640 --> 00:17:55,639
Speaker 1: three quarter inch still with a manual drill, or we

329
00:17:55,680 --> 00:17:58,920
Speaker 1: can die. Yeah, uh so slowly, but surely. They drilled

330
00:17:58,920 --> 00:18:01,239
Speaker 1: a quarter inch holes the side of the sub and

331
00:18:01,240 --> 00:18:05,000
Speaker 1: that took twenty minutes. So a quarter inch hole. So

332
00:18:05,040 --> 00:18:07,199
Speaker 1: it's not like any anybody's getting out of that. No,

333
00:18:08,359 --> 00:18:10,920
Speaker 1: and unfortunately that also doesn't mean that fresh air is

334
00:18:10,960 --> 00:18:15,199
Speaker 1: coming in. Um. So they were finding you know, they

335
00:18:15,200 --> 00:18:17,280
Speaker 1: were successful. Yeah, they had managed to make a hole.

336
00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:20,120
Speaker 1: They decided that what they would do was to drill

337
00:18:20,200 --> 00:18:23,120
Speaker 1: holes close enough together that they could then knock out

338
00:18:23,160 --> 00:18:25,720
Speaker 1: the spaces between them with a hammer and a chisel,

339
00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:28,680
Speaker 1: hoping to create a hole large enough for the men

340
00:18:28,720 --> 00:18:31,480
Speaker 1: to escape through. But based on the fact that it

341
00:18:31,480 --> 00:18:33,800
Speaker 1: took them twenty minutes to make the first hole, they

342
00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:36,280
Speaker 1: all expected that this effort was just going to take

343
00:18:36,359 --> 00:18:41,920
Speaker 1: more time than they have, but they persisted anyway. By morning,

344
00:18:42,000 --> 00:18:45,080
Speaker 1: they had a space large enough to scan the horizon

345
00:18:45,119 --> 00:18:48,640
Speaker 1: for ships, and they were actually seeing some, but those

346
00:18:48,640 --> 00:18:51,000
Speaker 1: ships were too far away for them to get their attention.

347
00:18:51,359 --> 00:18:53,080
Speaker 1: And since they had opened a hole in the ship,

348
00:18:53,440 --> 00:18:55,840
Speaker 1: it was no longer as pressurized as it had been,

349
00:18:55,920 --> 00:18:58,800
Speaker 1: so there was more water seeping in as air was

350
00:18:58,920 --> 00:19:01,880
Speaker 1: escaping out of this hole they had punched. And even

351
00:19:01,880 --> 00:19:03,920
Speaker 1: though in theory they had a source of fresh air,

352
00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:05,879
Speaker 1: now it was not enough to keep the air in

353
00:19:05,880 --> 00:19:09,840
Speaker 1: the ship clean. The air was in fact increasingly disgusting,

354
00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:12,720
Speaker 1: and the oxygen levels were low enough that the men

355
00:19:12,800 --> 00:19:15,919
Speaker 1: couldn't keep it their drilling task for long having this

356
00:19:16,560 --> 00:19:20,560
Speaker 1: source of of you know, air from the outside, like

357
00:19:20,720 --> 00:19:25,000
Speaker 1: fresh air from outside wasn't coming in. Gross air from

358
00:19:25,040 --> 00:19:28,320
Speaker 1: in the ship was going out and being replaced from

359
00:19:28,400 --> 00:19:32,000
Speaker 1: up underneath by water, right, that is what was happening.

360
00:19:32,880 --> 00:19:36,200
Speaker 1: So basically, now they were in this process of trying

361
00:19:36,200 --> 00:19:39,360
Speaker 1: to make the whole big enough to escape from before

362
00:19:39,440 --> 00:19:41,960
Speaker 1: the size of the hole let enough air out the

363
00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:47,360
Speaker 1: submarine sank back below the waves. I'm just gonna let

364
00:19:47,640 --> 00:19:52,160
Speaker 1: that set for a minute, like it's a race against

365
00:19:52,200 --> 00:19:55,280
Speaker 1: time to try to make the whole bigger before the

366
00:19:55,320 --> 00:19:58,280
Speaker 1: ship sinks again. I keep saying ship, and I think

367
00:19:58,320 --> 00:20:00,000
Speaker 1: somebody might write in and say, we should have said

368
00:20:00,040 --> 00:20:03,239
Speaker 1: sub the whole time. So if that's a nautical faux pa,

369
00:20:03,359 --> 00:20:07,920
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry. Twenty four hours after the initial incident,

370
00:20:08,080 --> 00:20:13,520
Speaker 1: so a full day they have been in peril. They

371
00:20:13,560 --> 00:20:15,200
Speaker 1: had a hole in the side of the ship that

372
00:20:15,320 --> 00:20:19,440
Speaker 1: was about six inches by eight inches, but basically everyone

373
00:20:19,640 --> 00:20:21,639
Speaker 1: was unable to work at that point to make it

374
00:20:21,680 --> 00:20:25,040
Speaker 1: any bigger because there was just a lack of oxygen. Uh,

375
00:20:25,080 --> 00:20:27,280
Speaker 1: and many of the men had lost consciousness, so it

376
00:20:27,320 --> 00:20:30,200
Speaker 1: wasn't And when you're doing something like drilling a hole,

377
00:20:30,560 --> 00:20:33,320
Speaker 1: and with the manual drill, it's really hard, it's really difficult,

378
00:20:33,359 --> 00:20:35,480
Speaker 1: and you consume a lot of oxygen. So when there's

379
00:20:35,640 --> 00:20:39,120
Speaker 1: not much there, well, and all of the oxygen, not all,

380
00:20:39,160 --> 00:20:40,760
Speaker 1: but a lot of the oxygen at this point had

381
00:20:40,760 --> 00:20:44,240
Speaker 1: been replaced by carbon dioxide and breathing that is not

382
00:20:44,320 --> 00:20:47,040
Speaker 1: good for you and can lead you to all kinds

383
00:20:47,040 --> 00:20:49,880
Speaker 1: of other health effects by your body not being able

384
00:20:49,880 --> 00:20:53,399
Speaker 1: to clear that out as waste um. Plus, some of

385
00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:56,320
Speaker 1: the guys who had already as the whole situation with

386
00:20:56,400 --> 00:20:58,959
Speaker 1: chlorine gas started, some of them had started to have

387
00:20:59,040 --> 00:21:01,760
Speaker 1: other breathing problem ones because of the toxic gases that

388
00:21:01,800 --> 00:21:05,480
Speaker 1: were inside the ship. It was a really bad situation.

389
00:21:05,960 --> 00:21:09,760
Speaker 1: But just then a ship came by and Cook, who

390
00:21:09,840 --> 00:21:12,600
Speaker 1: was still conscious, roused some men to try to find

391
00:21:12,600 --> 00:21:14,280
Speaker 1: a way to signal it, and what they wind up

392
00:21:14,320 --> 00:21:18,200
Speaker 1: doing was tying a sailor's shirts to a ten ft

393
00:21:18,280 --> 00:21:21,479
Speaker 1: long length of copper pipe and then sticking out, sticking

394
00:21:21,480 --> 00:21:23,480
Speaker 1: that out the hole that they had made, and waving

395
00:21:23,480 --> 00:21:27,080
Speaker 1: it around. So the ship in question was a merchant ship,

396
00:21:27,119 --> 00:21:30,480
Speaker 1: the s S Atlantis, which was actually headed away from them,

397
00:21:30,960 --> 00:21:34,479
Speaker 1: but good fortune, someone on deck turned back and actually

398
00:21:34,520 --> 00:21:37,160
Speaker 1: saw their signal, and so they came about to see

399
00:21:37,160 --> 00:21:39,600
Speaker 1: what was going on. I'm just trying to imagine the

400
00:21:39,640 --> 00:21:41,960
Speaker 1: mind of the man who sees like a piece of

401
00:21:41,960 --> 00:21:45,600
Speaker 1: pipe sticking out of a hole of something sticking out

402
00:21:45,600 --> 00:21:49,399
Speaker 1: of the ocean. Yeah, what the heck is that? Yeah?

403
00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:52,879
Speaker 1: The Atlantis is. Captain Ernest A. Johnson maneuvered close to

404
00:21:52,920 --> 00:21:54,800
Speaker 1: the S five and then he rode the rest of

405
00:21:54,840 --> 00:21:58,080
Speaker 1: the way himself in a dinghy or a little skiff

406
00:21:58,160 --> 00:22:01,120
Speaker 1: or something, and he had the following conversation with Cook

407
00:22:01,240 --> 00:22:03,400
Speaker 1: through the hole in the sub which is just fantastic.

408
00:22:03,440 --> 00:22:05,280
Speaker 1: And I will do one part in Holly can do

409
00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:08,600
Speaker 1: the other part. What ship are you? Submarine? S? Five?

410
00:22:08,880 --> 00:22:12,200
Speaker 1: What nationality? United States? Where are you bound to Hell

411
00:22:12,280 --> 00:22:18,560
Speaker 1: by compass? I love? Why is this not a film?

412
00:22:18,600 --> 00:22:20,040
Speaker 1: I feel like it has to be and I should

413
00:22:20,040 --> 00:22:23,040
Speaker 1: have looked on IMDb before we came in here. Um.

414
00:22:23,080 --> 00:22:25,639
Speaker 1: And then just like we laughed, the men who are

415
00:22:25,680 --> 00:22:31,080
Speaker 1: still conscious on the submarine laughed. Um. And after you know,

416
00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:34,920
Speaker 1: his confusion kind of cleared up, Johnson realized that this

417
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:38,480
Speaker 1: was a crisis, like, this was an emergency that he

418
00:22:38,560 --> 00:22:41,080
Speaker 1: needed to help with right now, and so he tied

419
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:43,920
Speaker 1: the S five to his ship with chains and cables

420
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:46,600
Speaker 1: to keep it from sinking. And then he ordered his

421
00:22:46,640 --> 00:22:49,280
Speaker 1: men to build an improvised wooden platform so that they

422
00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:51,359
Speaker 1: could have better access to try to work on the ship.

423
00:22:51,760 --> 00:22:54,760
Speaker 1: And then they also made an improvised air pump to

424
00:22:54,800 --> 00:22:57,199
Speaker 1: try to get some fresh air into the ship or

425
00:22:57,240 --> 00:22:59,720
Speaker 1: into the submarine for the mint. I also just loved

426
00:22:59,720 --> 00:23:02,359
Speaker 1: the book. In the most dire circumstances is finding a

427
00:23:02,359 --> 00:23:04,880
Speaker 1: way to correct chill like he gets my unending respect

428
00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:08,960
Speaker 1: and admiration for Yeah, well, and the one of the

429
00:23:09,040 --> 00:23:11,520
Speaker 1: are There are two primary sources for for this episode,

430
00:23:11,520 --> 00:23:13,320
Speaker 1: and one of them is a book called Under Pressure

431
00:23:13,359 --> 00:23:16,000
Speaker 1: The Final Voyage of Submarine S five, And one of

432
00:23:16,040 --> 00:23:20,120
Speaker 1: the remarks that comes up was that the situation like

433
00:23:20,359 --> 00:23:22,960
Speaker 1: it's really difficult to live on a submarine and people

434
00:23:23,040 --> 00:23:25,919
Speaker 1: tend to have really dark senses of humor and to

435
00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:28,920
Speaker 1: be able to make a joke about anything. Um, but

436
00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:32,480
Speaker 1: the jokes had ceased for quite some time before, he

437
00:23:32,560 --> 00:23:36,119
Speaker 1: said to hell by compass, and like that was one

438
00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:38,919
Speaker 1: of the things where he realized, like how di are

439
00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:41,440
Speaker 1: the men's mental situation was that no one was laughing

440
00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:45,800
Speaker 1: about anything anymore. Uh So the Atlantis is radio operator

441
00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:48,919
Speaker 1: unfortunately was not on board. Also not on board or

442
00:23:48,920 --> 00:23:51,360
Speaker 1: any sorts of tools or equipment that would have made

443
00:23:51,359 --> 00:23:53,680
Speaker 1: it easier to drill through the side of the submarine.

444
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:57,800
Speaker 1: So the exhausted and at this point delirious crew of

445
00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:00,440
Speaker 1: the S five passed the gear that they had been

446
00:24:00,520 --> 00:24:03,159
Speaker 1: using out of the hole to the crew of the Atlantis,

447
00:24:03,200 --> 00:24:06,919
Speaker 1: who then could resume drilling from the outside. And then

448
00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: quite fortunately another ship appeared. This one was the S

449
00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:14,879
Speaker 1: S General George W. Girtles and Johnson ran up an

450
00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:18,000
Speaker 1: emergency flag on the Atlantis to get the other ship's attention,

451
00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:22,640
Speaker 1: and that ship's master, Captain E. O. Swinson uh moved

452
00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:25,560
Speaker 1: his ship over and anchored nearby. Being a much bigger

453
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:28,760
Speaker 1: and more equipped ship and having a radio operator on board,

454
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 1: the George W. Gettles was able to radio the Navy

455
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:34,439
Speaker 1: and let them know what was up with the submarine,

456
00:24:35,040 --> 00:24:36,720
Speaker 1: but it was going to take at least until the

457
00:24:36,760 --> 00:24:40,040
Speaker 1: next morning for a Navy vessel to arrive, so Captain

458
00:24:40,119 --> 00:24:42,800
Speaker 1: Swinson and Johnson decided that they would keep on working

459
00:24:42,800 --> 00:24:45,200
Speaker 1: to try to free the crew of the S five.

460
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:50,680
Speaker 1: Swinson's chief engineer, William Grace, and his first assistant, Richard McWilliams,

461
00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:54,199
Speaker 1: headed up the task, working with another manual drill, and

462
00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:55,960
Speaker 1: this one was kind of a ratcheting one that seemed

463
00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:58,679
Speaker 1: to work a little better, as well as chisels and

464
00:24:58,720 --> 00:25:01,920
Speaker 1: a sledgehammer. They finally managed to make a hole big

465
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:06,400
Speaker 1: enough for the crew to crawl through thirty six hours

466
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:10,880
Speaker 1: after the original incident. That's uh. They were taken aboard

467
00:25:10,960 --> 00:25:13,640
Speaker 1: the Atlantis, where a makeshift sick bay had been put

468
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:16,359
Speaker 1: together so that they could receive them. And at this point,

469
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:19,359
Speaker 1: as you would imagine, the men were in really bad shape.

470
00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:22,440
Speaker 1: Two doctors from the George W. Gettles were on hand

471
00:25:22,440 --> 00:25:24,320
Speaker 1: to look after the men, and they agreed that the

472
00:25:24,359 --> 00:25:26,719
Speaker 1: rescue had really been in the nick of time. It

473
00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:29,560
Speaker 1: took so long to evacuate everyone just because they were

474
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:32,320
Speaker 1: so exhausted, and they were basically having to climb up

475
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:36,080
Speaker 1: the interior of a vertical submarine. That they weren't done

476
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:38,560
Speaker 1: getting all the men off of the S five until

477
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: about the same time as the Navy ships arrived. And

478
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:43,680
Speaker 1: Cook was the last man to leave the S five,

479
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:46,040
Speaker 1: and at that point he had been awake for two days.

480
00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:51,600
Speaker 1: He he gets the captain goes down with his ship. Award. Yeah,

481
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:55,520
Speaker 1: for sure. The Navy tried to salvage the submarine, but

482
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:58,080
Speaker 1: eventually gave up. Two different ships were not up to

483
00:25:58,119 --> 00:26:00,400
Speaker 1: the task of trying to haul it back to this surface,

484
00:26:00,480 --> 00:26:03,240
Speaker 1: and just they decided it was just gonna it was

485
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:05,880
Speaker 1: more trouble than it was worth. Basically, as of two

486
00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 1: thousand two, which is when the book that I referenced

487
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:10,679
Speaker 1: earlier was published, it was still on the bottom of

488
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 1: the ocean. The Navy investigated, and they found that Fox's

489
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 1: failure to close the intake valves was probably the cause

490
00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:20,560
Speaker 1: of the sinking, But they also chalked up all those

491
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:25,880
Speaker 1: extenuating circumstances, including that the valves themselves were apparently defective, uh,

492
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:28,680
Speaker 1: and that you know, those valves that were extremely hard

493
00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:31,320
Speaker 1: to wrangle were really what had caused Fox to leave

494
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:33,880
Speaker 1: his post in the first place, and Fox had also

495
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: gone way above and beyond during the whole survival effort.

496
00:26:36,920 --> 00:26:39,399
Speaker 1: Pretty much any time they needed a volunteer, he was it.

497
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:41,719
Speaker 1: I have to wonder personally if that was motivated by

498
00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:44,440
Speaker 1: guilt over it was the whole thing going on. Uh.

499
00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:46,600
Speaker 1: Cook also took some of the blame for having not

500
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:49,360
Speaker 1: ensured that the ship was clear before giving the order

501
00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:54,320
Speaker 1: to submerge. So there's a there. There's a lot that

502
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:57,680
Speaker 1: went on, Like specific things that went on and all

503
00:26:57,680 --> 00:26:59,600
Speaker 1: of their efforts to save themselves that we didn't go

504
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:03,240
Speaker 1: into of them is that before the motor burned out

505
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:07,360
Speaker 1: in their drill um, they needed to go get more batteries,

506
00:27:07,520 --> 00:27:09,080
Speaker 1: and so somebody was going to try to go into

507
00:27:09,119 --> 00:27:11,520
Speaker 1: the battery compartment which was filled with chlorine gas, and

508
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:16,720
Speaker 1: foxes like, I'll go like he was the volunteer at um.

509
00:27:16,760 --> 00:27:20,000
Speaker 1: There's also a note in the book that that Cook

510
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:23,919
Speaker 1: uh at one of these points when Fox volunteered to

511
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:27,960
Speaker 1: go do something dangerous to try to help them, realized

512
00:27:28,080 --> 00:27:30,720
Speaker 1: that at no point had he heard any of the

513
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:34,120
Speaker 1: men criticize him for having messed up in the first place,

514
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:36,600
Speaker 1: which is kind of incredible to me, Like like, I

515
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:39,840
Speaker 1: can see how a person's impulse might be, like Fox,

516
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:43,159
Speaker 1: you've had one job, like what is the matter with you?

517
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:47,040
Speaker 1: But instead, like all the men are really focused hard

518
00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:50,840
Speaker 1: on not laying blame on anybody and not arguing about it.

519
00:27:50,840 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 1: But I'm doing whatever they needed to do to keep

520
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 1: themselves alive. Uh. The Navy also recognized Captain's Swinson and

521
00:27:57,560 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 1: Johnson and their cruise for how their lengths they had

522
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:05,040
Speaker 1: gone to to try to rescue the crew once they

523
00:28:05,080 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 1: found the submarine sticking partly out of the water, and

524
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:12,000
Speaker 1: they also put more safety measures into place so that

525
00:28:12,119 --> 00:28:14,920
Speaker 1: the same thing would not happen again. Cook was also

526
00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:18,159
Speaker 1: a career Navy man, and he eventually retired as a

527
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:23,760
Speaker 1: full admiral in after more than thirty years of service. Apparently,

528
00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:27,320
Speaker 1: after the S five was sunk, most of the crew

529
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:32,000
Speaker 1: really petitioned to be placed under him again, which is

530
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: not surprising to me at all. I feel like this

531
00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 1: story could be used in corporate leadership manuals. Yeah, his

532
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: nickname was savvy. He had been nicknamed that long before

533
00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 1: and to this just because that was his demeanor. He

534
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: was a savvy guy. He knew how to how to

535
00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 1: handle things, so yes, so happy end, happy ending, harrowing story,

536
00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:54,320
Speaker 1: but a happy end name it is harrowing. I I

537
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:57,720
Speaker 1: do wish that I had made sure that there's not

538
00:28:57,800 --> 00:29:00,360
Speaker 1: a movie of this at IMDb, because they're so Louie

539
00:29:00,400 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 1: should be if there's not. Anyway, do you have a

540
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:09,760
Speaker 1: spot of listener mail? Unfortunately it's going to temper that

541
00:29:09,960 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: the positivity of ruin it Uh. I said that I

542
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:17,240
Speaker 1: was going to read um at least one more email

543
00:29:17,280 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: about our mini series on China under a chairman Mao

544
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 1: zedong uh And this I think is probably, you know,

545
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: unless we get another really amazing one. We've We've read

546
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:28,600
Speaker 1: quite a few, but I did want to make sure

547
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: that I read as many personal accounts of people as possible.

548
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 1: And this is from Helen heal And says you're Tracy

549
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:37,240
Speaker 1: and Holly. I wanted to thank you for your recent

550
00:29:37,280 --> 00:29:40,120
Speaker 1: mini series on Chinese history. Both of my parents were

551
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:43,280
Speaker 1: born in ninety three, right where your mini series starts.

552
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 1: Their lives were very much affected by the events you covered.

553
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: I grew up hearing stories about their childhoods spent working

554
00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:53,120
Speaker 1: in the countryside raising pigs or making bricks, and about

555
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:56,680
Speaker 1: how they studied secretly using textbooks they found in the trash.

556
00:29:56,960 --> 00:29:59,160
Speaker 1: They were able to teach themselves the equivalent of a

557
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 1: high school education Asian, so that when the universities finally reopened,

558
00:30:02,800 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 1: they were able to pass the entrance exams. One of

559
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 1: my art When I was younger, my parents told these

560
00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: stories with a humorous tone, like anyone simply recounting childhood

561
00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:15,560
Speaker 1: antics or sometimes usually these stories to motivate me to

562
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:18,360
Speaker 1: do my homework. As I grew older, I started to

563
00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: learn more about the dark side of this history, such

564
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 1: as how my grandparents were jailed during the Cultural Revolution

565
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 1: and my mom and her siblings suddenly had to take

566
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:29,400
Speaker 1: care of themselves, or how my father became very ill

567
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 1: during the Great Famine and almost died because of the

568
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: impact of this period of history. How do my family

569
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: I've always been very hungry to learn about it, but

570
00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:40,400
Speaker 1: have often felt frustrated by how different sources are usually

571
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 1: biased in one way or the other. I found your

572
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 1: series of wonderfully balanced view of the topic, even though

573
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:46,760
Speaker 1: it was a subject that I've been familiar with. I've

574
00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:49,760
Speaker 1: definitely learned a thing or two, and the big picture,

575
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 1: I think my family was lucky and that they survived

576
00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:54,680
Speaker 1: and were able to move on successfully after all of

577
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:57,720
Speaker 1: the chaos has stopped. Your series helped shed more light

578
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:00,200
Speaker 1: onto the experiences that my parents had growing up and

579
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 1: helped shed more light onto my own origins. Sincerely, Helen,

580
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Helen. That is the kind of

581
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 1: email that makes our day. Really, I'm that Tracy read

582
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:12,480
Speaker 1: it because I've all choked up just hearing her. Are

583
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 1: I looked over that I was when I read it.

584
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 1: When she first sent it, I looked over the table

585
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh no, Holly looks tears. That's

586
00:31:19,360 --> 00:31:21,640
Speaker 1: like a short walk often. I mean, I definitely will

587
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 1: tear up and a lot of things both that we

588
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 1: find a research and that people write us. But yes,

589
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: thank you so much, Helen. If you would like to

590
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:33,840
Speaker 1: write to us about this or any other podcast, or

591
00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:37,320
Speaker 1: send us some ideas of other uh I don't know,

592
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:41,720
Speaker 1: other Submarine to the Actors in which everyone were aculously survived,

593
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 1: where there are random jokes, random jokes that are pretty hilarious.

594
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 1: We are in History podcasts at work dot com. We're

595
00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 1: also on Facebook at facebook dot com slash miss in

596
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:53,640
Speaker 1: History and on Twitter at miss in History. Are tumbler

597
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:55,400
Speaker 1: is missed in History dot double dot com or on

598
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:59,040
Speaker 1: Pinterest at pinterest dot com, slash missed in History. We

599
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:02,280
Speaker 1: have a spreadshirt store which is miss Industry dot spreadshirt

600
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 1: dot com where you can get T shirts and sweatshirts

601
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 1: and UH phone cases and all sorts of things like that.

602
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 1: If you would like to learn a little more about

603
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:12,400
Speaker 1: what we talked about today, you can come to our

604
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:15,080
Speaker 1: parent company's website, which is how stuff Works dot com

605
00:32:15,120 --> 00:32:18,320
Speaker 1: and put the word submarines in search bar. You will

606
00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:21,680
Speaker 1: find the article on how submarines work. You can also

607
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:24,040
Speaker 1: come to our website where we have show notes and

608
00:32:24,280 --> 00:32:29,000
Speaker 1: an archive of every single episode and occasionally other blog posts,

609
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:31,880
Speaker 1: and that is at missed in history dot com. So

610
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 1: come and find us how stuff Works dot com or

611
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: miss industry dot com for more on this and thousands

612
00:32:41,160 --> 00:32:55,760
Speaker 1: of other topics. Because it has to works dot com