Remarkable rescue of crew of a stricken submarine off Cape Henlopen
“The men were trapped,” the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger reported on Sept. 3, 1920. “The emergency had come which every man who goes to sea in a submarine secretly dreads and tries not to think about.
"The five officers, all of them experts in submarine work, used every resource in their effort to start once more the electrically driven engines which are used to propel submarines when they are submerged. The crew, seasoned like their officers in submarine work, kept admirably cool, working with quiet energy to carry out the various expedients, tried and abandoned, to float the vessel.”
Submarine sailed from Boston, led by Lt. Comm. from Cape Henlopen
The maiden voyage of S-5, began innocently enough. The new submarine, over 200 feet long, sailed from Boston under the command of Lt. Commander Charles M. Cooke Jr. Southeast of Cape Henlopen. Cooke ordered a crash dive, but a critical air intake valve had not been closed, and the sea flooded the S-5 forward compartments.
Salt water flowing into the battery compartment generated dangerous chlorine gas, and the sub’s crewmen sealed the hatches to isolate the gas as they quickly retreated to the stern of the vessel. The flooded bow of the submarine came to rest on the bottom of the ocean; but the buoyant stern lifted the vessel to a steep angle.
After some difficulties, all the crewmen were able to reach the compartments in the stern that had been sealed off from the flooded areas of the S-5. The men were safe, but they were encased in a large iron coffin, and their air supply was dwindling.
Immediately after the nose of the sub came to rest on the ocean floor, Cook ordered the release of the emergency buoy from the deck of the submarine. Developed during World War I, the buoy rose to the surface, where its horn sounded a distress call. Cooke and the crew of the S-5 could only hope that it was spotted by a passing ship.
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Cooke knew that the water was 170 feet deep, that the submarine was 231 feet long and the S-5 was resting at steep angle. He concluded that the stern of the vessel might be protruding above the waves.
After Cooke crawled into the extreme stern of the sub, he could hear waves lapping against the side of the vessel. Although scores of ships passing Cape Henlopen sailed within a short distance of the S-5, none reported seeing the distress buoy, nor did they see the slender stern of the sub protruding above the water.
Submarine crew refused to give up
Cooke and his crew refused to give up. A hand drill was used to cut a hole through the ¾ inch steel plates that formed the skin of the S-5. The tiny hole allowed a small, but steady, stream of fresh air to pour into the submarine.
After several hours of additional drilling, and the laborious use of a hacksaw, the trapped sailors created a ragged six by five-inch opening. Attaching a shirt to a piece of pipe, a rudimentary signal flag was run through the hole.
Aboard the steamer SS Alanthus, a lookout spotted what he thought was a buoy, and a small boat was sent to investigate. When the sailors from the Alanthus reached the stern of the submarine, they spotted a face looking out through the small hole in the hull of the S-5.
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After another vessel arrived with metal cutting equipment, the rescuers were able to cut a hole large enough to extract the crewmen from the S-5. Commander Cooke ended the 37-hour ordeal, when he was the last man to climb through the opening.
An attempt to tow the S-5 to the shallow waters behind the Delaware Breakwater failed, but the officers and crew of the S-5 had kept admirably cool, and working with quiet energy, all aboard the S-5 were saved.
Principal sources
Evening Public Ledger, Sept. 3, 1920.
New York Times, Sept. 4, 6, and 7, 1920.
Wilmington Daily Commercial., Sept. 3 and 4, 1920.
Evening Journal, Sept. 3 and 4, 1920.
Erik A. Petkovic Sr., “To Hell, By Compass’: The Remarkable Wreck and Rescue of the USS S-5,” Naval History Magazine, December 2020, Volume 34, No. 6, https://www.usni.org/naval-history/wreck-of-the-S-5
Gary Gentile, Shipwrecks of Delaware and Maryland, Philadelphia: Gary Gentile Productions, 1990, pp. 149-154.
This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Submarine crew led by Cape Henlopen commander was remarkably rescued
