Eye on Millig: Part 2 of new K-13 tragedy account

* * * * * * * * * *

THE CENTENARY of the K-13 submarine disaster in the Gareloch on January 29, 1917 was marked last Sunday with a memorial wreath-laying ceremony at Faslane Cemetery — where the 32 victims are buried.

The steam-propelled submarine sank in the loch during sea trials. There were 80 men on board, mostly navymen but with some civilians.

Last week I published the first part of a new account written by Alastair Borthwick and illustrated with sketches, found by Rhu man Alan Dundas in the Lithgow Group Winter 1952 magazine. Here is the second and final part...

* * * * * * * * * *

The two men — Lieutenant Commander Godfrey Herbert of the K-13, and Commander Francis H.H. Goodhart DSO, of a sister vessel under construction — found themselves crouched in the tower with the water rising.

Goodhart was clutching a small tin cylinder containing written instructions in case he should fail. It was hoped that even if he drowned, the cylinder would still float upwards. It gave full details of the situation in the submarine, a list of those still alive, and farewell messages.

There was a little dome in the tower which allowed the men to stand with their chests and heads above the rising water.

When the tower had filled, leaving them facing each other in this trapped bubble of air, they opened the outer hatch and turned on the high pressure air. Goodhart said: “Well, I’m off,” dipped under water, and disappeared up through the hatch.

Herbert stepped forward to fasten the hatch behind him, but the rush of air was so fierce that he found himself too being forced through the hatch. He was totally unprepared for this, which was perhaps just as well.

The air continued in command and carried him miraculously through the wheelhouse hatch and up to the surface.

He was inside a bubble most of the way, and for part of the time could actually breathe. He surfaced so close to the divers’ boat that a diver standing on a ladder with his helmet off was able to grab him as he broke water.

Herbert’s first words were: “Where’s Goodhart?” But neither Goodhart nor his tin container had appeared. He was found long afterwards, trapped inside the wheelhouse.

For over an hour Herbert refused even to dress while he answered the spate of questions put to him by the rescue party: how many were still alive, in which part of the ship they were, what had gone wrong, whether salt water had reached the batteries or not, what parts were flooded, at what angle she lay — all the things they needed to know, if full use was to be made of the rescue facilities by this time converging on Shandon from as far south as Wales.

Two salvage ships were on the way; and many vessels, including two Clyde hoppers, were standing by. Wire ropes were passed under the K.13’s bows and attached to the hoppers; but it seemed that she would be too heavy for a straight lift.

Someone suggested that a rescue tube might be fixed, and although orders for its construction did not reach Fairfield until after stopping-time on the Tuesday, the job was done by 11am on Wednesday — a steel tube 60 feet long and 27 inches in diameter which to be fixed to the hull, pumped dry, and used to lower a man with an oxy-acetylene cutter who would liberate the crew.

The Fairfield’s foreman caulker approached the man he hoped would do this extremely risky job and said to him: “Someone will be wanted to go down that tube and cut a hole in the hatch. Who do you think would be the likeliest man for the job?”

“Whit’s that ye say?”

“I’m saying, do you know any man game enough to go down the tube and cut a hole in the torpedo hatch?”

The answer was purest Govan: “Ah’ll dae it; but ye’ve an awfu’ funny way o’ askin’.”

As events turned out, the tube was never used. Mr John Lipton of the Fairfield drawing office staff had been in charge of the piping arrangements of the K-13, and the more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that in the piping he would find the solution to the problem. After all, the ship’s compressors were working — all they were short of was something to compress.

If they could get air to her it would not only keep the crew alive, but might allow them to blow the water-filled tanks forward and so lighten the ship. In a matter of hours hose fittings and adaptors were made by the Fairfield engine department.

So it was that at 6pm on Tuesday, 27 hours after the accident, signals reached the imprisoned men which told them that high pressure connections were being made to their air system.

They opened one of the valves, hoping for air. All they got was sea water. Bucket after bucket was filled in the hope that air would get through eventually, but in the end they had to stop.

Another attempt was made from the surface, and ten hours later — 37 hours after the accident — the valve was cautiously opened again. This time there came a rush of pure dry air.

A little, but only a little, was allowed to escape into the hull, there to be sniffed up eagerly by the crew. Then the joint was made tight, and the exhausted air bottles were re-charged for an hour.

This air was too precious to breathe. As soon as enough bottles were charged, it was used to blow out the forward tanks.

Mr Percy Hillhouse, naval architect on the Fairfield staff, wrote: “Anxiously we watched the bubbles of our fore and aft spirit levels for some sign that the bow was lifting, but for a long time nothing happened.

“Tank after tank was given its quantum of air, but the bubble remained motionless at 4 degrees up by the bow. We had almost given up hope when we began to blow into the last remaining tank. And then the bubble moved!”

The critical moment had passed. Although her stern was still fast in the mud, the bows were slowly rising, and it was not long before they broke surface.

The wire cables were hastily tightened. Barring accidents, the crew were as good as rescued.

Yet it was the final phase of the operation which made the greatest demand on the nerves of the imprisoned men.

Nothing but the double skin of the vessel lay between them and freedom, yet 17 hours were still to pass before the last man escaped.

At any moment during that time a number of things could have happened.

The after bulkheads could have given way — they were resisting a pressure far in excess of the one they had been designed to withstand — and drowned everyone in the ship; or the leakage from them could have increased to an extent which would have flooded the batteries and killed everyone with chlorine gas.

The cables might slip, the weather might worsen. Nothing was certain; and with the clearing of the spent air — it was so black and foul that those on the surface marvelled that anyone was left alive — the old apathy had passed and men were beginning to hope again.

Those last 17 hours were the slowest in the lifetimes of those still in her.

The plan on the surface was to pump away the water lying in the double skin of the submarine, and then cut through both skins; but this took time.

Bigger and better air supplies were arranged first, and there was an unexpected hitch when the pumping began.

The point was reached when the prisoners were assured that cutting would begin in twenty minutes, but after an hour the pumps were still draining the space between the outer and inner hulls.

They shouted up the voice-tube, and were told that cutting would begin in a quarter of an hour. When the quarter of an hour had gone, it was “a few minutes more.”

There was only a little water left, and they had sent for a bigger pump.

Mr Hillhouse was relaying most of the messages up and down the pipe, and he says that he cannot remember how many times he was told “just another quarter of an hour.”

The tension below at this stage was almost unbearable. How long it would have gone on it is hard to say, but at last one of the crew had an idea. He said: “I wonder if we’ve closed the flap valves?”

They had not closed the flap valves. As fast as the rescuers were pumping water out, more was flowing in. When this had been put right, matters moved quickly.

Within a few minutes the inner skin was pumped bare, and cutting at last began. The crew had stripped away all the wood lining aft of the tank bulkhead and were clustered on top of the torpedo tubes anxiously watching the roof.

There was a long, silent pause, and then the blue flame cut through into the darkness. A hole 18 inches square was cut, and one by one the men climbed out to freedom.

Said Mr Hillhouse: “It was a weird scene which met my eyes as I emerged from the superstructure.

“It was about 10pm on Wednesday — 55 hours after our dive — the moon was full and amid a bunch of vessels of all kinds illuminated by cluster lamps and crowded with staring faces, rose the snout of the K-13 set at an absurd angle, with a black square hole on its surface from which the last survivor was being helped to freedom and life.

“We were carefully assisted on board attendant motor boats, raced ashore and escorted through a double line of watchers to Shandon Hydropathic.”

And it was there that the housemaid first found an attentive audience — Mr Cleghorn and Mr Hillhouse — for her story about the two swimmers.

By then the diver had reported the cause of the disaster, the carelessness which had left the boiler-room air-inlets open; but he also reported something which seemed barely possible. The engine hatch was also unfastened.

Could it be that the maid was right, that two isolated survivors had managed to open the hatch and swim to freedom, only to be overcome on the surface by the sudden reduction of pressure?

Knowing John Steele, the Fairfield foreman engineer and a brave man, they thought it very likely.

The K-13 was ultimately raised. Two bodies were missing from the engine room...those of the submarine’s engineer and John Steele.

Email: milligeye@btinternet.com