James Calvert - Surface at the Pole: The Extraordinary Voyages of the USS Skate

Surface at the Pole: The Extraordinary Voyages of the USS Skate by James Calvert. First published in 1960.

Annotated edition Copyright 2018 by Bowsprit Books.

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-359-15322-0.

To Nancy

Part I

I T WAS TEN OCLOCK on a Sunday morning in August 1958. Around a small table in the center of a long, low, steel-walled room stood a group of four men, gazing intently at a moving pinpoint of light which shone like a glowworm through the glass table-top and the sheet of chart paper that covered it. One of the men followed the path of the light with a black pencil, adding to a web of similar markings already on the paper.

In one corner of this room, some 15 feet away from the group around the table, stood a second knot of men, their eyes fixed on a gray metal box suspended at eye level. Through a glass window on its face was visible the rapid oscillation of a metal stylus, inscribing two compact but irregular patterns of parallel lines across a slowly rolling paper tape. The stylus made a low whish, whish, whisk, like the sound of a whisk broom on felt, forming a background of noise in the otherwise quiet room.

The pattern on the tape looked like a range of mountains upside down. One of the men watching it broke the silence. Heavy ice, ten feet, he said laconically. At the plotting table, the black pencil line continued to follow the path of the moving light. Then the stylus pattern suddenly converged to a single narrow bar. Clear water, he called out. This time there was a poorly concealed trace of elation in his voice. At the plotting table, a small red cross was made over the pinpoint of light, completing a roughly rectangular pattern of similar crosses on the paper. And so the United States nuclear submarine Skate,* cruising slowly in the depths of the Arctic Ocean, completed preparations in an attempt to find her way to the surface deep within the permanent polar ice pack.

*Launched 16 May 1957, the Electric Boat-built USS Skate (SSN-578) was the third nuclear submarine commissioned by the US Navy.

Following image: USS Skate in Rotterdam, March 1958.

A S COMMANDER OF THE submarine, the next move was up to me. I studied the plotting paper closely, the looping black lines that marked the path of the submarine as she reconnoitered beneath the ice, the irregular rectangle of red crosses indicating the spots where the ice ended and open water began. The moving light, showing the position of the submarine on this underwater map, was just entering this rectangle.

Speed? I asked tensely.

One-half knot, came back the answer.

Depth?

One eighty.

All back one-third, I said, glancing toward the forward end of the room. There two men on heavy leather bucket seats sat before airplanelike control sticks with indented steering wheels mounted on hinged posts. One of these men now reached over and turned two knobs on the high bank of instruments in front of him, conveying my order to the engine room.

A slight quiver ran through the ship as her two 8-foot bronze propellers gently bit the water to bring us to a stop. I glanced nervously at the plotting paper again. The pinpoint of light was no longer moving. Speed zero, said the plotter.

All stop, I called out. The vibration of the propellers ceased. I stepped up on a low steel platform next to die plotting table. Two bright steel cylinders, 8 inches in diameter and about 4 feet apart, ran from wells cut in this platform up through watertight fittings in the overhead. Up periscope. Ill have a look.

A slim, crew-cut crewman standing next to me reached up and pushed a lever. Hydraulic oil under heavy pressure hissed into the hoisting pistons. One of the steel cylinders began to rise out of its well, moving sluggishly against the pressure of the sea. Small drops of water ran down its shiny barrel from the overhead fitting. Finally the bottom of the cylinder, containing a pair of handles and an eyepiece, appeared from the well, rose to eye level, and sighed to a stop. I folded down the hinged metal handles and put my eye up to the rubber eyepiece of the periscope.

The clarity of the water and the amount of light were startling. At this same depth in the Atlantic the water looks black or at best a dark green, but here the sea was a pale and transparent blue like the lovely tropical waters off the Bahamas. I hooked my arm over the right handle of the periscope and tugged on it. At this depthwhere a periscope is normally not usedit pressed heavily against its supporting bearing and could be turned only with great difficulty.

A blob of color came into the field of sight. I turned a knob on the periscope barrel to bring it into focus and found we had company. The ethereal, translucent shape of a jellyfish was swimming near the periscope, gracefully waving its rainbow-colored tentacles in the quiet water of a sea whose surface is forever protected from waves by its cover of ice.

I twisted the left handle of the periscope to shift the line of sight upward, in the hope that I could see the edge of the ice. The intensity of the light increased, but I could see nothing but a blurred aquamarine expanse. There was no ice in sight.

Down periscope, I said, folding the handles up. The crewman handled the hydraulic control carefully to prevent the sea pressure from slamming the periscope into the bottom of the well. I looked around the crowded control center of the submarine. Every face was turned questioningly toward mine.

Nothing in sight but a jellyfish, I said.

There was a nervous ripple of laughter which quickly disappeared.

Theres a good bit of light herewe must be under some sort of an opening, I went on. I glanced again at the plotting table. The pinpoint of light was resting squarely in the center of the rough rectangle of red marks.

Do you think were moving at all? asked the man who was operating the plotter.

No way to tell for certain, I answered. Wait a minute, maybe there is. Up periscope.

Again the hiss of oil under pressure accompanied the slow upward movement of the smoothly machined periscope barrel. Again I looked out into the icy water. There was our friend the jellyfish. I watched him for almost a minute without being able to detect any movement. Down periscope. Were stopped all right, I said, explaining how I knew. Our jellyfish friend is still looking down our periscope.