Operation Ice Breaker, page 11
“The Strait soundings probably originated with Parry,” I said, “augmented by other explorers early this century—between the wars, after 1918.” I slid my finger to the Narrows. “Nobody has yet transited the Narrows, so far as I know. These soundings were probably taken by Igloolik Inuit hunters through holes in the ice. The soundings themselves are probably accurate, but their placement might be questionable.”
“Fortunately,” Barry said, “depths are at least five hundred feet along most of the passage, except for this ridge leading south to Liddon Island. It shallows up to one hundred eighty feet.”
The skipper stood quietly, chin resting in his left palm, deep in thought. I could almost read his thoughts. Was I hasty in opting for this route? Should I cut bait and run north? I’ve got skids. I’ve got sidescan. I’ve even got the Basketball. If anyone can do it, I can! He dropped his hand and leaned over the chart.
“Here’s the plan,” he said.
“I’ll grab some breakfast and be back to relieve you,” I said to Doug.
This morning, Cedric had made fresh popovers. Talk about good eating! I arrived back in Control, well-fortified for what lay ahead.
The skipper wanted to cover the initial fifty-four nautical miles at 200 feet and ten knots. I set a course of 084 degrees. With baffle clearing, that took my entire watch. It was not exactly boring, but it didn’t really rise to a level of excitement either. Because of the paucity of depth information, I kept the secure bottom-sounder running. I did not want to discover an uncharted seamount the hard way.
When Bert assumed the watch, Teuthis was about four nautical miles due north of Purfut Cove, the northernmost point of Amhurst Peninsula, which is part of the Canadian mainland. He proceeded on a course of 113 degrees at five knots over the bottom at 200 feet. He compensated for the head current by making turns for eight knots, but he kept a close watch on the depth below his keel because he was coming up on Liddon Island Ridge. It took the better part of six hours to cover the twenty-four nautical miles.
We were in the general area where the polynya had been reported by Parry and several explorers following him. Following a burger and fries for dinner washed down with bug juice, I placed myself in Control so I could add whatever expertise I had to the mix. The skipper was there as Bert brought the sub to 100 feet and slowed to a hover. He had to maintain turns for about a knot to stay in one place, as indicated by the secure bottom-sounder. Barry showed up to assume the watch.
“Do you have a Transit bird overhead?” the skipper asked.
“Yes, Sir, for another twenty minutes,” Barry answered.
The skipper told him to let Bert get a fix before relieving him. Barry went back to the Nav Center to get ready for the sat fix.
“This is the captain…we are preparing to break through the ice to get a good navigation fix. Unlike the previous time, the ice above us is very thin. We will simply push the sail through the ice and then drop back to periscope depth and get our fix. We will briefly sound the Collision Alarm before breaking through the ice.”
The ice cover was just a few inches thick, a non-issue for Bert. As the sub settled at sixty-five feet and he swung his scope around, he said, “There’s clear water to the south as far as I can see. Diving Officer, make your depth six-zero feet.” As the sub came up, he said, “I can just see land broad off the starboard bow.”
“That’s a small island off Liddon Island,” Quartermaster 1st Class Gary Fonzarelli said. “That’s three-point-four nautical miles—your maximum visible range at ten feet exposed. Give me an exact bearing, please.”
“Bearing…Mark!” Bert said.
I stepped onto the periscope stand and read the bearing, “One-five-six.”
A couple of minutes later, Barry announced that he had his sat fix. It coincided with Bert’s line of position and maximum range circle—within about thirty feet, anyway. The main point was that the skipper—we—knew where Teuthis was.
Barry assumed the watch, eased the sub over Liddon Island Ridge, and dropped down to 200 feet. For two hours, he crept along at five knots while passing Liddon Island. Then he came slightly right to course 116 degrees for forty-five minutes. At the mouth of the Labrador Narrows, he came to a stop and hovered while checking the current. It was virtually zero, so there would be nothing pushing us off our path through the Narrows.
Neither the skipper nor I had left Control since Barry assumed the watch—the skipper because it was his ship, and me because I was absolutely fascinated by the process. Since I didn’t have the watch, I wanted to be as much a part of it as possible.
“I’m going to grab a sandwich and a cup of coffee while you launch the Fish and Basketball,” the skipper said.
I decided to do the same. Sitting at the Wardroom table with a tuna sandwich, the skipper with ham and cheese, I said, “You are making the first Labrador Narrows transit in history, but nobody will know about it, and only classified charts will display your soundings. That sucks!”
“Not really, Mac,” the skipper answered. “I know. The crew knows. When we return, the Dev Group will know. With time, the word will get out.” He smiled at me. “Let’s go do this!”
“I have the Conn,” the skipper announced, as he did when we first broke through the ice cover. “Lower the skids to full extension.”
Barry kept a close eye on the Fish and Basketball. He placed the Fish 100 feet in front of Teuthis and used the Basketball to investigate anything that seemed out of the norm. We had a bit over seven nautical miles through the Narrows. At five knots that would take 1.5 hours, but the way we were creeping along, stopping and starting as the Fish and Basketball gave us pause, we took a full three hours to transit the Narrows.
Not surprisingly, the floor was swept clean of nearly everything—a smooth, sandy bottom. We never really saw the sides. The skipper kept to the center, even in the wider parts to the west. Once we opened into Foxe Basin, the skipper secured the Fish and Basketball.
“Diving Officer, make your depth six-zero feet. Bring her up easy. Do not, I repeat, do not raise any scopes. Do not drop below sixty-five feet.” The skipper was calm but firm. “Lieutenant Commander Jacobs has the Conn.”
The surface above was solid ice between three and four feet thick. The bottom was not very far down, less than 150 feet for the next 350 nautical miles. We kept our speed at ten knots while remaining only sixty feet over the bottom. Several times, we had to slow down and ease our way nearly to the bottom as we passed below a downward thrusting pressure ridge. Due to these slow-downs, we averaged only eight knots over the entire transit.
After forty-four hours of anything but tedious boredom, as I assumed the watch, we turned southeast into the Hudson Strait. Even this late in the year, Hudson Strait carried traffic—tankers and cargo ships accompanied by a Canadian icebreaker.
Within an hour of assuming the watch, Sonar called me. “Conn, Sonar, I have a contact just off the port bow, designate Sierra-eight.” Shortly thereafter, “Conn, Sonar, Sierra-eight is two contacts. Sierra-eight is an icebreaker. The second contact is a cargo vessel, designate Sierra-nine. They’re headed the same way we are.”
“Sonar, Conn, range estimate?”
“Several miles, Conn. Best I can do right now.”
I called the skipper. “We’ve picked up an icebreaker breaking ice for a freighter. They’re headed out Hudson Strait. I think their destination is Thule.”
The skipper came to Control. “Show me what you have, Mac.”
We stepped into Sonar, where King walked him through it. “How fast is he moving?” the skipper asked King.
“Ten, fifteen knots. Depends on ice thickness. He’s making good time.”
“Skipper,” I said, “can we get under the freighter and accompany them all the way to Thule? They are loud enough to mask us completely.”
The water was deep, and their speed was acceptable. It took me a couple of hours to catch up with them, then a half-hour to nestle beneath the freighter. From that point, we did nothing more than station-keep under the freighter—for 1,500 nautical miles. I was right. The freighter’s destination was Thule.
Five days later, as Doug was finishing his midwatch, we had reached a point between Thule and the Careys. As I came into Control to assume the morning watch, the skipper was in his chair on the periscope stand. The icebreaker and freighter turned east toward Thule.
“I have the Conn,” the skipper said. “Make your depth one-zero-zero feet. Chief-of-the-Watch, commence hovering.”
CHAPTER SIX
Carey Øer
USS TEUTHIS—CAREY ØER
The DRT placed us eighteen nautical miles due west from the harbor entrance for Thule and twenty nautical miles southeast of Björling Øer, the last known location of the ill-fated 1892 Björling and Kallstenius expedition’s attempt to be the first to reach the North Pole.5F6
I knew a fairly strong current was pushing us northward, but in the short term, I didn’t have to worry about it.
“Take us to periscope depth in the freighter’s wake, get a good fix, and then drop back down to one hundred feet and take us to our survey zone five miles off Fireø,” the skipper said to me. “Then descend to eight hundred feet, prepare for Fish ops, and call me,” he added as he left Control.
Al confirmed we had a Transit bird available. I checked the under-ice sonar. It displayed clear water with chunks of floating ice. The wake had remained above us because it and we were moving with the current. Besides, the south end of the polynya still had to be somewhere above us. I wasted no time.
“Nav, prepare to get a fix. Diving Officer, make your depth six-five feet.”
I had the scope up before we hit sixty-five feet and began sweeping around the moment it broke water. The wake trailed off to the east, with the freighter still clearly visible. As I swept astern, I saw the navigation mast at full extension. A minute later, Nav announced he had his fix.
I dropped the scope. “Diving Officer, make your depth one-zero-zero feet.” And to Nav, “Give me a course.”
“Two-nine-zero, Sir.”
“Helmsman, come left to new course two-nine-zero, ahead standard, make turns for fifteen knots.”
We had about two hours on this heading. I planned to clear baffles about halfway through. Once we were settled on depth and course, I called Sonar.
“Sonar, Conn, in about two hours, we’ll commence our survey west of Nordvestø. Keep a sharp ear…I don’t want the Alfa to spring a surprise on us.”
I called Ham in Dive Control. “It’s time, Ham. As we discussed, within the hour, start pressing Harry, Whitey, Ski, and Jimmy down to a thousand feet.”
“Got it,” Ham said.
When we cleared baffles fifty-five minutes later, Sonar was unable to pick up the freighter or its icebreaker companion. By then, they were almost certainly tied up at the Thule pier, the crews headed for a beer at the local club.
Barry and his quartermasters had prepared a detailed chart of our survey area centered on the transponder position, from 4.5 to 5.5 nautical miles off Nordvestø and Fireø, and five miles along the island fronts. Barry activated the transponder, and I eased down to 800 feet and steered toward it while readying for Fish ops. As I neared depth with the transponder directly below, I called the skipper. He came out to Control and settled into his chair on the periscope stand, but let me continue to run the operation.
I intended to run at bare steerageway across the slope that formed the rise from the seafloor to the Carey Islands while keeping 200 feet over the bottom. Once we crossed the thousand-foot curve, I wanted to follow it to enable the Fish to get a detailed bottom image because the array needed to be placed at one thousand feet for best performance. Dr. Brand and Chief Ocean Tech Bart Davidson would then pore over the sidescan images to locate the best lie for the 1,000-foot array.
When Dive Control informed me that they were ready, the skipper nodded to me, and I told them to launch the Fish. Wally maneuvered it along the starboard side, past the bow, and commenced its scan about a hundred feet in front of Teuthis. Ten minutes later, Nav announced that we were crossing the thousand-foot curve from shallow to deep at a ten-degree angle.
“Mark your head, Helmsman,” I ordered.
“Three-one-zero, Sir.”
“Come right to three-two-zero.”
“You’re drifting right, Conn,” Nav told me.
“Come left to three-one-nine,” I ordered.
And so it went for the better part of two hours—slight adjustments right or left as we remained atop the thousand-foot curve as closely as possible. When we reached the end of the run, I hovered at 200 feet above the bottom while Dr. Brand and Chief Davidson analyzed the results.
I called Ham in Dive Control. “What’s your status?” I asked.
“A couple hours still.”
“That’ll work out about right,” I said.
About a half-hour later, Dr. Brand called Commander Roken to Dive Control, where he had the scan images taped together and laid out on the table. A few minutes later, the skipper returned to Control with a sidescan strip in hand, followed closely by Dr. Brand. They went to the chart table, and the skipper gestured me over.
“Here’s where Dr. Brand wants to lay the array,” he said, placing the strip on the table and pointing to a spot on the detailed chart that Barry had made.
ON THE SEAFLOOR—WEST OF NORDVEST AND FIRE ØER
TTeuthis settled on the seafloor at 990 feet. We rested on a flat ledge about half-way up a slope that started on the abyssal plain a thousand feet below us and continued above through nearly two feet of solid ice to form the steep sides of Nordvestø and Fireø. Keeping in mind that the Alfa was still a worry, we were pointed generally southwest, about 30 degrees to the right of the face of the slope. This would allow for a quick exit with minimal maneuvering should that become necessary.
I joined Ham in Dive Control right after Bert and his team relieved me and my watchstanders. Chief Davidson had flooded the CRC. Bill had equalized DDC pressure with the outside, and the divers were dressed and ready to do some real work for a change. We had designated Harry and Whitey for the first dive, backed up by Ski. I held Jimmy back for his medical skills should anything go wrong. Jer and Jake would press down right before we were ready to anchor the upcable just offshore of Nordvestø and Fireø.
Under the Basketball’s close scrutiny, controlled this time by Ocean Tech 1st Class Derrick Jensen, Harry and Whitey hit the bottom, wearing boots instead of fins. Harry carried a yard-long, U-shaped polymer anchor—like a U-bolt, but with non-threaded pointy ends. Whitey carried a hammer. They moved aft to the cable pipe directly below the CRC.
When we outfitted for this operation back at EB, the cable reel received two separate cables, one for Carey Øer and one for Point Hope, north of Bering Strait. Each cable set consisted of 1,000 feet of cable containing forty hydrophones at 25-foot intervals. This was permanently attached to sufficient armored cable to bring the acoustic signals to the monitoring stations. We carried seven nautical miles of armored cable to bring the signals to the monitoring station at Carey Øer.
The quarter-inch thick armored cable consisted of forty single nine-micron glass fibers, each with a 125-micron coating, jacketed with a waterproof, florescent orange plastic infused, aramid fiber sleeve. The cable was specially developed for this project under a Top Secret contract with Bell Labs.
The twenty-foot diameter cable reel in the CRC could carry 887 nautical miles of this special cable. We needed about seven and a half nautical miles for Carey Øer and about fifty-four nautical miles for Point Hope.
Using rollers built into the cable pipe, Bart Davidson had already lowered about thirty feet of cable to the seafloor beneath Teuthis. Harry grabbed the bitter end.
“I’ll stretch this back,” he squeaked. “You keep an eye out for anything hungry.”
Since the cable design made it a bit heavier than seawater, Harry had no difficulty stretching it back thirty feet and laying it into the bottom silt. The hydrophone at the end was just a slight bump in the slender cable, and the other visible hydrophone looked like a small critter consumed by an orange snake. Back at the cable end, Harry placed his anchor over the cable just forward of the hydrophone, and Whitey hammered it into the bottom until it firmly anchored the cable end without pinching it.
Both divers returned to the Egress hatch without incident and closed the hatch. I called Control.
“We need to move a hundred feet along the vector Nav laid out,” I told Bert. “Derrick will guide you with the Basketball. You’ll have the cable pipe on your monitor.”
Bert lowered both outboards, lifted Teuthis off the bottom about five feet, and moved forward slowly. Initially, the cable took a slight strain on the anchor, but Bert slowed his forward motion to compensate. Then he called me.
“Okay, Mac, we got it. I’m on the bottom. You can send your divers out to set the next anchor.”
Once again, Harry and Whitey set the anchor, wearing fins this time. Harry held the anchor, and Whitey pounded. While Whitey pounded, Harry looked around.
“There you are!” Harry squeaked. As soon as the anchor was secure, he darted fifteen feet upslope and grabbed a medium-size Greenland Halibut.
“You’re supposed to be looking for things that can eat us,” Whitey said.
“Yeah…but I got something we can eat.” Harry pushed the squirming fish that was nearly as large as the hatch into the Egress Lock. “Gimme a couple of guns, Ski,” he said.
Within a couple of minutes, Harry and Whitey had bagged two even larger halibut.
I grabbed the mike. “Stay alert, guys. This is Greenland Shark territory.”
That stopped them in their tracks. They shoved their new catch through the hatch, and then scuttled through themselves and closed it. While Ham and the divers locked the fish into Dive Control, I called Cedric to send his messcooks to come get them. Then I informed Bert that we were ready for the next segment. It was taking us about thirty minutes to lay each cable segment, lock out the divers with fins since they were not trekking on the bottom, anchor the section, and then retrieve the divers. Without fishing, it went a bit faster. We were moving about a third the length of the sub for each segment. I estimated that we had about four hours remaining to finish.
