Under the Red Sea Sun by Ellsberg Edward

Author:Ellsberg, Edward [Ellsberg, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781480493766
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

31

EARLY IN JUNE, PUSHING UP A HUGE bow wave that resulted in a report from the British naval lookout station that a destroyer was coming in full speed, my salvage tug, the Intent, arrived safely in Massawa. Three months on the way from Port Arthur, Texas, she had circumnavigated Africa, sailing 13,000 miles with her General Motors diesel pushing her steadily along. Always a mere lone speck on the face of the ocean, now with all the 1200 horsepower of her diesel electric machinery driving her, she came at full speed, eleven knots, into Massawa, her tiny hull invisible behind the foaming bow wave her stubby stem pushed up.

Edison Brown, skipper and salvage master, H. M. Keith, chief engineer, and their little crew of twelve men had done a fine job in bringing their trifling cockle-shell of a harbor tug half the distance round the world, mixing their seasons scandalously on the way. They had left Port Arthur in late winter, arrived in Capetown in mid-autumn, and reached Massawa in early summer. I welcomed them enthusiastically as they maneuvered slowly in against the pier at the Naval Base, both for their voyage and for this reinforcement to my sadly depleted salvage gang. In addition, I looked with pleasure on the two .50 caliber anti-aircraft guns I had ordered mounted on top the Intent’s bridge; now if we had an air raid on Massawa, I should at least have something to shoot back with at the bombers.

The next few days, so far as the Intent was concerned, were spent first in arranging quarters ashore in wooden barracks for her crew, since her stuffy little forecastle was uninhabitable beneath the Massawa sun and in taking her captain and engineer into Building 108 with me; and second in breaking out from the storeroom under her fantail, the salvage gear she was carrying. Naturally, being very small, she wasn’t carrying much—one small air compressor for diving use, a small electric generator lighting set, her diving rigs, four small salvage pumps, and some miscellaneous tools—enough to work with.

I had a salvage job already picked out for her. Two days after her arrival I took her over to the south harbor and introduced Captain Brown, Keith, her Chief Engineer, and their twelve shipmates to their first task, the scuttled S.S. Liebenfels, a large German freighter sunk at the south end of the line of seven wrecks strung out in a line there.

The Liebenfels, sunk to block the approach to the oiling pier for the large oil tank storage in the desert near by, had gone down as intended as a block ship. Her hull was well submerged; only her superstructure amidships and a little of her forecastle and poop showed above water, three little islands rising from the sea. Ahead of her lay the S.S. Colombo, capsized, and five more wrecks.

The British diving survey indicated that the Liebenfels had one large hole blasted in her hull on the port side forward. From the damage and the

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