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Supersedes all to 92786
Originally Published in "Nor'Westing" Magazine
Second Publishing in National Fisherman Magazine
Subsequent Publishings in Various Regional Magazines
2,691 Words Precisely
Copyright 1985 TrixiePixGraphics
Non-Fiction
SUDS
I opened my eyes to discover it was still dark, and wondered why I was awake. It was four a.m., or some similarly obnoxious hour, as near as I could tell by the blurry face of the clock on the stand. I couldn't remember any scheduled activity for the day; I lay still in the dark and silent house, contemplating my apparent insomnia. Suddenly I was startled by the crackle of an electronically transmitted voice. I thought for a moment the police had surrounded our home and were demanding I give myself up. "You'll never take me alive, coppers.." I mused in my dreams. But at once I was overcome with the urgency of the voice. I was alert. The mind had come to reserve a small piece of consciousness for the sounds of distress received through a bank of transceivers mounted in the den. All transmissions were piped quietly to my bedroom at night and my sleeping self was attuned to the change of voice that signaled distress at sea. It was this unidentifiable tone which summoned me from oblivion.
"Group Seattle, Coast Guard Cutter Point Bennett, over," came sharply through the speaker next to the clock. "ETA to the scene sixteen minutes. Cutter Point Bennett, out."
Something was definitely afoot, and I stumbled to the office and played back the tape of the preceding few minutes of transmissions, listening intently to the tape and current radio conversations, simultaneously: There was a man overboard ten miles out. Several ships were in the area and the coast Guard was responding. There seemed little point in offering our services. But it would make good P.R., and valuable practice. It was to be only a mission of mercy, with no real work to be done. I drafted only my most faithful of mates, Master Diver Ron.
As we scrambled through our preflight checks, the salvage tug Alliance leapt from the dock. We caught bleeps and fragments of the progress at sea. The Coast Guard Cutter Point Bennett was nearly on station and was organizing the search grid.
We slogged wearily through the remaining seaway, staring vacantly into the gray lumps that lunged at us out of the morning mist. Our thoughts were divided between a simple prayer for the poor soul adrift, and the distant anticipation of a sublime satisfaction that would be ours if we were successful in our efforts to save a life. But we'd been on many such hunts, and we knew too well the agony of returning emptyhanded to a grim and distraught family ashore. Man must find credit in his efforts alone.
"Alliance, Point Bennett, do you read?"
"Point Bennett, Alliance, Roger, go ahead."
"Alliance, Point Bennett, your position please?"
"Alliance back, Roger, current position is abeam "Marrowstone Point", about a quarter mile northeast, over."
"Alliance, Bennett here, Roger. We're alongside the Suds at this time. The vessel is maybe fifty feet in length she's capsized and we're unable to tow. I'm sure your are familiar with the boat. Are you available to take it off our hands, over?"
Wait a minute, we thought. The Suds. Let's see... Yeah! That's right! That's Phil, uh, Sutherland's' boat. What the hell happened out here last night?
"Point Bennett, Alliance, roger. What's your present position?"
"Point Bennett back, ah, position as follows : "(and a series of Lat. and Long. was rambled off...)"
God Bless!! Why can't they just say two miles south of Marrowstone Island?!
"Point Bennett, Alliance, Roger, ah, you must be drifting south with this flood, ah.. ETA your position five zero minutes, over.... by the way, any sign of Phil?" And just as the Point Bennett keyed up her mike to reply, the Coast Guard rescue helo five niner four three screamed overhead on a reciprocal course for town.
"Alliance, Point Bennett, Roger, the last we saw, the Coast Guard copter had him aboard and was en route the hospital to check him out, over."
"Point Bennett, Alliance, Roger, thanks...."
At least that was something. Tough old Phil had beat the odds, anyway. But this was no longer just a routine search, no longer just another job Someone we knew was involved, and I opened the throttle of the tug a few more rpm.
We beat into a snotty sea; spray streamed down the pilot house of the tug and glistened in the dim, depressing light of morning. There were a few minutes to digest the impact of the situation, and we thought of Phil's misfortune as we resisted the uneasy lurches of our ship.
Neither Ron nor myself knew Phil well, myself least of all. I'd shared a casual conversation with the man on only a few occasions in the coffee shop, but he was more concerned with the abstract realities of his beliefs, and was more involved in political contemplations than in the physical affairs that interested me, and so there was no basis for a friendship in the common sense. I was impressed with Phil, nevertheless. It was easy to sense his honesty, his unwavering straightforwardness, his unshakable morality. He looked you in the eye when he spoke, and I wholeheartedly granted him the respect he deserved. It was sad that his qualities of truth and rightness would be put to the ultimate test and probably eroded against his will, were he to pursue his present course into the snake pit of politics, but his motives were never in question. He knew what he must do, his purpose in this life, and he pursued it wholeheartedly. I was sorry that such a calamity as losing a ship should befall such a man. He'd seemed so invincible. I advanced the throttle yet one hundred revolutions more, until the tug's stacks were glowing dull red.
"Alliance, Point Bennett."
"Alliance, go ahead."
"Alliance, Point Bennett, ah we've got a problem here. This boat's upside down, but it seems to be losing air from inside and is starting to sink, ah, over."
"Point Bennett, Alliance, Roger that. We're about three miles from your position, have radar contact. Estimate time of arrival twelve minutes, over, Ah, how fast is she sinking, over?"
"Point Bennett, back. Roger, have you in sight. We can't tell how fast she's going down, but, ah, well, the Suds has gone down about two or three feet in the last ten minutes. She's changing position and we can see bubbles coming out from underneath her. If she decides to go down, ah, there's nothing we can do, over." The young Coast Guardsman's voice trailed off as he pondered the statement.
"Alliance back, O.K., Roger that. If you can, try and tie a long piece of heavy line to her bow cleat or her anchor winch. If she goes down there we might be able to raise her that way. Ah, we'll assume replacement of your line if you lose it. We show you in about three hundred fifty feet of water, is that correct, over?"
"Alliance, Point Bennett, that's a roger, 'bout sixty fathoms here. She's really starting to go! You guys'd better hurry up!!"
I shoved the throttle to the stop and Alliance buried her bow, shuddered, and bludgeoned her way through the seas, shaking her head like a playful pup attacking a rag.
"Point Bennett, Alliance, Roger. Here we come..."
There was urgency in the voice of the young radio operator. There was little time left. If Suds went down at that depth, she wouldn't be worth the expense of salvage. A line placed aboard her bow by the Coast Guard was a tenuous hope, likely serving only to mark the wreckage, laying unattainable due to the expense of diving to such depths. There were seconds in which to reach her, or she was lost forever, and Phil's livelihood along with her..
As we thrummed across the tumbling expanse, I zipped closed the dry suit of my diver. Ron had logged nearly three years cumulative time underwater or pressure of chamber in his life, yet all men die. It was my job to watch his back that day.
We rigged a floatation bag on the work deck of the tug; twenty thousand pounds of buoyancy. There would be one chance to secure the bag around her hull before she drifted lazily to her grave sixty fathoms below, and no time for mistakes. We hadn't come rigged for a salvage operation, only to search for a man overboard, and none of our gear was prepared.
I strapped Ron into his lead harness, locked the latches of his helmet with a pop from my open hand, and left him precariously perched on the taff rail as I ran to the wheel to correct our course.
Only two hundred yards........and I could see only the tip of Suds' protruding bow. She was gone for a moment as a swell gently engulfed her, and then, there it was! then not so visible again... She was in her final throes. She strained bravely to hold up her head, but to no avail. Another sea washed over her bowstem, and she was gone from view longer Thirty fathoms of nearly invisible gillnet swirled about the surface of the water around her, then disappeared below to wrap itself about the wreck.
"Alliance, Point Bennett, I don't think you'll make it! I think she's going now! over!"
There was no time to reply. We closed the gap. Fifty feet.
I glanced aft and Ron had his thick umbilical hose in one hand, attaching clevis of the salvage bag poised in the other, his eyes fixed on the submerging wreck.
"Stay out of that net!" I ordered through the diver's com inside the wheelhouse.
Ron's huge helmet moved slightly, and a hand went up to signal "O.K."
I held the mike in my hand, ready, just a few more feet. Alliance slowed to five knots close aboard the casualty, and I keyed the mike and gave the word: "GO! GO! GO!" And Ron fell backward off the rail of the moving tug and was swallowed by the sea.
The cumbersome umbilical uncoiled off the towing deck and streamed out astern. I abused the reverse gear and slowed to a stop, careful not to sever the air hose with the screw a maneuver we had practiced many times and I stepped lively to the work deck to hear Ron's labored breathing through the com speaker on deck. He was out of sight beneath the surface, clamoring to save the sinking Suds.
I tended his hose and kept the mike in one hand so as to be instantly attentive to his every need, and I watched with sickening nausea as the Suds rolled and writhed like a dying shark, let out a mournful wheeze, and merged with the shadows as she began her final voyage to the ocean floor. This was our worst nightmlare come true.
"Ron, she just went down!" I shouted. "Get out of there now!"
His retort was cool and calm, irritatingly so. "Ah, sorry, I can't. Uh, I've got a problem."
"Are you tangled in the web, Ron?"
"Ah, that's a Roger," and he chuckled softly. "I don't think I can Shi! uh, wait a minute", he grunted. The roar of his breath was deafening through the deck speaker, like the rasping bellow of a steam locomotive getting underweigh.
I glanced at his depth gauge as displayed on my valve console topsides. It read twenty feet, and the needle moved slowly downward. Ron's deep sea helmet was attached only to our short line, a piece of life giving air hose not more than one hundred and twenty feet in length, and the tug's sonar showed a depth of three hundred sixty feet below us. Even if his hose had been long, the very oxygen he needed to survive would become toxic at three hundred feet and kill him.
I heard Ron's struggling through my speaker. I felt his apprehension. I succumbed to his fear. This is how men die! We'd seen it a hundred times... We'd deplored it. And yet, there we were: Ron's life was about to end as the weight of the Suds snapped the lifeline like a piece of flimsy yarn. He would descend, squirming and kicking and sucking for air to his fate at the bottom of the sea, still wrapped in the net. I'd have heard his last word, his final moan of despair before the hose was parted and communication was lost.
Dear God, what have I done.
I entertained a fleeting notion that I should grab the hose and hold it tightly, as though I could somehow support the weight of the sinking ship and cheat that moment of its victory over such fragile creatures as us.
I was tempted to succumb to the situation, and fall sobbing to the deck in despair for this faithful man who would momentarily be dead. But I forced the intelligence to calculation: the life below was not extinguished yet! Perhaps there was a way... An equation...
"Ah, I've got the bag hooked in here... ah"
I heard from the depths between Ron's gasps and the roaring of his breaths..
"Shoot me all the air you've got!"
And before his sentence was complete, I had spun the valve that would inflate the bag. I emptied the tank of compressed air to the huge lift-bag below, and I fed in the last of the reserve as well. I snatched a glimpse of the diver's depth: thirty feet, and still going down. There was only ninety feet of lifeline left, and then reality would rear its ugly head as the hose was snapped.
I overrode the governor on the ship's auxiliary compressor but the small amount of additional volume would not be enough to inflate the bag and bring the Suds back up in time. Another uncontrollable wave of panic swept me, and I accepted, finally, my failure.
The Coast Guard Cutter "Point Bennett" lay limply alongside, her crew silent and horror stricken, having heard the course of events thus far.
A Coast Guard helicopter hovered lazily overhead, and I noticed the flying machines of the media circling, vulturelike, above. All were powerless to cheat the sea. We could only wait those few remaining seconds together, and endure as best we might the sounds of death.
But air! All you need is air!
I was startled by a shout reverberating through my head. I turned and looked to see how many had heard it, but it was only me. Before there was time to understand the meaning of the message, I was across the deck and frantically clutching a valve. I spun it smartly and heard the reassuring hiss of air Lots of air, life giving atmosphere, trapped and trained to do man's bidding. Ron would have to hold his breath, for a time, for I had emptied his breathing air into the bag.
I heard muffled choking sounds through the com, and a bit of "What the he," before his exclamation was cut short Ron probably thought his hose had parted, and that he was dying even then. I didn't answer or explain, for his helmet would be full of sea water. Instead, I watched only the depth gauge.
Nearly ten fathoms below lay diver and ship. But the needle was slowing, and my heart ceased to thump. I could not think. I simply stared, mesmerized by that gauge. How long could this man hold his breath? What if the bag were to burst, or rip loose from its grasp of the Suds? The considerations were meaningless, a waste of time. There was one hope. Either it worked or it would not. And I watched the gauge.
Forty feet.
Thirty seven...
Twenty two feet now!
Twelve
By God, she was coming up! The diving compressor was catching up then, beginning to force a trickle of air down to the starving diver. I heard short gasps and coughs. I could envision the water level slowly falling inside Ron's hard-hat- And in an instant, in a boiling forth of foam and turbulence, the Suds made her appearance, crashing to the surface like the birth of an island. She lived after all...
The spectators cheered. We secured additional floatation bags and, amid the expected explanations, radioed congratulations, and long and thoughtful sighs, we towed Phil's lifeless ship towards home.
As we approached the dock we were met by the usual excited and boisterous crowds that always inhabit such events. As the "Suds" was secured to the pier, I met the steady gaze of a two dozen searching faces peering down to me. I looked up and asked the question smugly:
"Say, where's that old codger Phil? We've got a present for him!"
But Phil never went to sea again.....
