VN1 AK\ l. I9i5.j 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



191 



The Canadian government wislu-d to seeure the mail mat- 

 ter; certain underwriters wanted to get the silver bullion 

 and specie, and the liner's owners, the Canadian Pacific Rail- 

 way, were especially anxious to recover the bodies of the 



Two Diving Outfits, with Cables, Hose, Etc. 



passengers The postal pouches, the treasure and most of 

 the bodies were inside of the ill-fated steamer. It is .111 

 extreme!} hazardous thing to enter a sunken ship, especially 

 if she is in deep and dark waters, hut the problem was made 

 still harder before the salvors could begin. The cargo shifted, 

 and this tended to bring the ship back towards an upright 

 position, but still left her heeled over at a sharp angle, while 

 the soft mud of the river bottom yielded and the liner sank 

 ■deeply int. > it 



The diagram accompanying this article shows the path 

 the divers took in reaching the ship's interior. The steerage 

 was on the same deck with the mail room and strong room 

 — the latter containing the bullion and the purser's safe. It 

 was out of the question to reach the strong room by any 

 of the regular hatchways or other hull openings, but the sal- 

 vors found another route available, provided the side-plating 

 of the ship could be cut through at a certain point — that 

 point having no outward mark other than that of an air port, 

 and that air port merely one among scores of others. To 

 find this particular air port it was necessary for the divers 

 to work from both ends toward the center and to count 

 ■carefully each glazed opening until they had identified the 

 •desired deadlight. This was a difficult job, because they had 

 to keep their footing on the slippery slanting side of the 

 liner. Finally; after some days of groping, they reached their 

 goal. They got into the sunken vessel by the hole which they 

 •cut at a point where the internal arrangement of the craft 

 made it fairly easy to reach the liner's strong room. The 

 opening was made by drilling a lot of holes with a pneumatic 

 tool fed with compressed air through an armored rubber hose 

 reaching to the surface, and despite the fact that the divers 

 had an awkward place to stand on the slanting side of the 

 vessel, still the drill did its work so well that the passage was 

 cut nearly as quickly down in that inky depth as could ordi- 

 narily be done in the open air. Of course they did not do this 

 blindly, ha\ ing submarine lamps to help them. From the first, 

 the question of lights in that perilous work was one of great 

 importance, but it was particularly desirable that the electric 

 lamp should not require a cable which might get tangled. 

 \n electric hand lamp was adopted, but it was necessary to 

 adapt it for the special conditions. Accordingly, the lamp 

 was made water-tight by a piece of motorcycle tire, closed 

 at one end by rubber cement and slipped over the lamp. The 



end not sealed hugged the glass, and with the aid of some 

 rubber tape a tight joint was made which kept out the water 

 without interfering with the illumination. At their greatest 

 depth, i. e . in the strong room, the divers worked 160 feet 

 below the surface, and yet the lamps were quite equal to the 

 hydrostatic pressure encountered. 



But before the men were allowed to go inside of the ship 

 to Salve the treasure and to recover the mail pouches, the 

 Ranking doorways to the six staterooms were sealed and the 

 lengthwise passage blocked off by two bulkheads in order 

 to give a straighter route and one freed, to just that extent, 

 of pitfalls into which the divers might turn should they be- 



come 1 used. Another precaution was taken to guard against 



accidents; The chief engineer had mack' a pasteboard model 



of ihi immediate path to the r n holding the bullion 



and the adjoining compartment containing the mail matter, 

 and the divers were drilled with this miniature until they 

 could describe with their eves shut just which way they would 

 have to turn in order to get out of the vessel should their 

 lights fail them at any point. 



Because of the coldness of the water the divers were soon 

 incapacitated by their hands becoming numb. < Ordinarily 

 the hands are the only parts of an under-water worker that 

 are not covered, and the reason for this is that the div.i 

 pends largelv upon his sense of touch to guide him where he 

 can not see. It was plain that something would have to be 

 done, and Yankee inventiveness suggested rubber gloves. 

 The English seamen divers and the Canadians objected at 

 first, but finally thin but durable American rubber gloves 

 were found and these, while protecting their hands, did not 

 interfere with a nice sense of touch. The importance of the 

 part played by these coverings can be gathered from the fact 

 that the twelve expert divers engaged used up quite a hundred 

 pairs before their services were ended. 



Owing to the hazardous nature of the work the divers al- 

 ways descended in pairs, so that one could help the other in 

 case of need and both could use their united efforts the better. 

 To further facilitate their joint labors a very recent develop- 

 ment of a submarine telephone system was employed, and 

 this was somewhat improved by modifications suggested by 

 one of the American engineers. Usually divers communicate 

 with the surface by means of signals in the form of pulls 

 upon the connecting lifeline or by tapping so many times 

 on the helmet of a companion worker. This code is limited. 

 It was vitally necessary that the men should be able to com- 

 municate vocally with one another so that their efforts would 

 tell most with the least physical stress, for in very deep sub- 

 mergences a man can really do but little muscular work. 

 Therefore each diver had a telephone circuit reaching to a 

 central station on the surface salvage vessel, and the at- 

 tendant there could relay at once a message from one to the 

 other of the divers or could send them orders or give ap- 

 propriate directions to assistants on the boat handling somi 

 part of the co-operating outfit, such as a hoisting engine, an 

 air pump, etc. This telephone system — and we know the part 

 that rubber must have played in its get-up — was one of the 

 most useful features of the salvage plant. 



One of the things discovered by the Admiralty investigators 

 was that the prevailing hand pumps did not furnish enough 

 air to the diver when working at depths of 130 feet and more. 

 The manufacturers set about improving the pumps, but the 

 salvors soon found the burden an extremely heavy one when 

 trying to send air enough down to the six divers working on 

 the sunken vessel. It took four men to crank each pump 

 and but a short time was needful to exhaust them, and four 

 more fresh men had to be ready to take up the grinding job 

 in order that there should be no halt in the air supply. A 

 break-down, even though brief, might prove fatal to the divers 

 below; and here, again. American ingenuity tilled the breach. 



