With exaggerated deliberation, I climbed down the wooden ladder and entered the oil-covered water. My helmet was barely awash as I walked aft on the main deck, skirting wreckage. The dense floating mass of oil blotted out all daylight. I was submerged in total blackness.
Grunting with exertion, I tried to open the large hatch. “Topside, this damn hatch is stuck,” I said into my helmet phone. “The gasket probably melted from the heat of the fires. I’m going forward to the access trunk hatch and use that opening.”
I slowly groped my way across the littered deck to the trunk hatch. I forced the trunk hatch open and descended into the darkness below. This trunk was a square shaft that extended uninterrupted from the main deck to the third deck. I extended my right hand to guide myself down through the trunk. By following the shaft straight down, my hand was pointed in the direction necessary to follow the working plan. As I landed on the third-deck level I knew by the position of my extended arm that I was headed for the starboard side of the ship.
“Topside, I’m on the third deck. Give me three hundred feet of slack.”
I pulled down my coupled lifeline and air hose, coiling them at my feet. When I received the slack in my lines, I straightened up to get my bearings.
I moved cautiously, feeling my way with ungloved hands toward the starboard bulkhead in the compartment, which was my starting point. What I would find I had no inkling. Eventually, it would severely draw on every ounce of courage I possessed. As I looked up, I saw a light that glowed dimly, flickered, and disappeared. It must have been phosphorescence in the water, I thought as the blackness enveloped me once again. I shrugged as I thought: I would settle for just enough light to be able to see the end of my nose.
>>17810109
Suddenly, I felt that something was wrong. I tried to suppress the strange feeling that I was not alone. I reached out to feel my way and touched what seemed to be a large inflated bag floating on the overhead. As I pushed it away, my bare hand plunged through what felt like a mass of rotted sponge. I realized with horror that the “bag” was a body without a head.
Gritting my teeth, I shoved the corpse as hard as I could. As it drifted away, its fleshless fingers raked across my rubberized suit, almost as if the dead sailor were reaching out to me in a silent cry for help.
I fought to choke down the bile that rose in my throat. That bloated torso had once contained viscera, muscle, and firm tissue. It had been a man. I could hear the quickening thump of my pulse.
For the first time I felt confined in the suffocating darkness and had to suppress the desire to escape. “Breathe slowly, breathe deeply,” I commanded myself. I must stay calm, professional, detached. The dangers from falling wreckage, holes in the deck, and knife-sharp jagged edges were real, formidable hazards. I must not succumb to terror over something that could not harm me.
I concentrated on finding the first road sign before starting toward the shop.
“Topside, I’m facing the bulkhead and my left hand is on the fire hydrant.”
A voice answered. “Move to your left about ten feet and reach your hand up to the overhead and you should feel a large blower motor. Continue six feet beyond and you will feel a watertight door in the after bulkhead of the workshop.
I did as instructed and felt my way through the darkness toward the door to the machine shop, accompanied only by the sound of the air hissing into my helmet from the air hose trailing behind me.
At the shop doorway I hesitated and drew my lifeline toward me. “I’m inside the shop doorway.” There was that feeling again.
>>17810112
“Turn and face the after bulkhead and move to your right about twenty feet. There should be a fire hydrant on the bulkhead waist high.”
“Got it.”
“Good. Now turn around, and with your back to the bulkhead, slowly walk forward through the shop.”
Then I got the eerie feeling again that I wasn’t alone. Something was near. I felt the body floating above me. Soon the overhead was filled with floating forms.
Obviously, my movement through the water created a suction effect that drew the floating masses to me. Their skeletal fingers brushed across my copper helmet. The sound reminded me of the tinkle of oriental wind chimes.
This time I did not panic. Instead, I gently pushed the bodies clear and moved through the compartment. I shuffled through the workshop area, threading my way around lathes, milling machines, and drill presses. I stopped and again found myself surrounded by ghostly bloated forms floating on the overhead, all without heads. This shop had been the damage control battle station for one hundred of the crew. The violent explosions from bombs and torpedoes, plus the forceful impact of water, must have thrown the sailors like rag dolls against bulkheads, breaking their necks and severing skulls from spines. Voracious scavenger crabs had finished the job.
It was not something I wanted to think about, and I pushed it from my mind as I moved forward again. That is when I stumbled over what felt like a torpedo, the object I had come down here to find.
“Topside, I found it. I’m at the nose cone.”
“Careful,” warned the voice from topside. “That’s where the detonator is located.”
“I know. I’m still at the nose cone. It’s wedged under a lathe. As soon as I circle this machine, I’ll feel my way down the torpedo body and attach the propeller lock.”
“Keep us posted on your progress.”
>>17810117
Then, as if someone had thrown a switch, my air supply stopped. “What’s wrong with my air supply?” I yelled.
No answer. The topside phone key was depressed, but all I could hear was panic-stricken shouting.
I quickly closed the exhaust valve in my helmet before all the air escaped from my helmet and suit. “Take in my slack, I’m coming up,” I yelled, fear rising in my voice.
Back came a rapid reply, “Your lifeline is hung up. Retrace your steps and clear it as quickly as you can.” I knew the oxygen remaining in my helmet could not sustain life for more than two minutes. By now the air had escaped from my suit, causing the dress to press tightly against my torso, the pressure from the surrounding water flattening it. As the pressure increased, I felt the huge roiling mass of panic surge into my throat. I tried desperately to hold back the growing anxiety within me. I had seen what terror could do to a man. It could take possession of mind and body and prevent him from helping himself, even cause him to give up completely. I told myself to concentrate on surviving.
I grabbed the lifeline and started back, pulling hand over hand toward the access trunk. The 196 pounds of diving equipment on my shoulders became an incredible weight. Without buoyancy in my suit, it became a heavy burden dragging me down.
Stumbling, wildly now, I crashed through the corpses, my breath quick and shallow from fear and exertion. Blind terror could destroy me. I fought it as best as I could. I finally felt where a loop in my air hose was caught on the handwheel of a lathe. I cleared my lines and yelled, “Take up my slack!”
Almost immediately, I felt the answering strain on the lines as my diving tenders heaved them in.
“It’s free,” someone shouted over the phone. “Stay calm. We’ll have you up in a minute.”
I did not have breath enough to answer.
>>17810120
Without air pressure in my suit, foul fetid water poured in through my suit cuffs and the exhaust valve in my helmet. I could feel the coolness of it around my neck. I felt the constant frantic pull on my lines as my tenders heaved me in. I stumbled and fell as they pulled me over and around a milling machine. Filthy water gushed into my mouth. Somehow I was able to regain my feet, only to be slammed against a lathe and then pulled over the top of it in a mad, tumbling journey to the surface and fresh air.
But time had run out for me. I fell again, and putrid liquid rushed into my face. I stood up again, coughing and gagging. My breathing was labored and the panic was like a rat behind my forehead, twisting and gnawing. I was not aware that my instinct to survive had vanished.
Bursts of stars and brilliant white shards of light exploded before my eyes. A loud ringing filled my ears. Even in my dire state, I recognized the symptoms of carbon dioxide toxicity and oxygen deficiency. A hundred ugly visions flashed through my mind, grim reminders that I was going to die down here among these headless corpses.
The strain on my lifeline was from above my head now, holding me upright. A red haze passed before my eyes, grew fainter and fainter and finally disappeared into blackness. I was dying and the part of me that still cared, knew it. But for now I would just close my eyes and go to sleep.
>>17810131
It's from the memoirs of a Pearl Harbor Navy Diver.
Thought /x/ may enjoy it.
>>17810135
Ignore the shitlord and finish.
>>17810445
That was it, it's the prologue of his book. He doesn't actually die, though several other divers do when raising other battleships. Prologue takes place inside the USS Arizona.
They make an attempt later on to collect those bodies but quickly change their mind. Over a hundred in that one workshop area alone, most remain there today.
Thanks for sharing OP, I have a morbid curiosity when it comes to sunken ships. Awesome stuff.
>>17810748
Fuuck.
Moar please.
I can only offer the wiki about the submarine Kursk, which sank with a couple dozen guys alive.
>>17810797
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Kursk_(K-141)
>>17810135
Thank you. I think I'll pick up a copy.
>>17810741
Shitty video quality but it's interesting how well preserved some of Arizona is. Rooms that were largely closed off to circulation especially.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0TpsfxGDdo
Uniforms still hanging in the closet about half way through.
There's something terrifying about underwater structures like this.
It eats the metal away and cover it with layers of filth
It turns the bodies into monstruous fleshy things
The waters can be foul and hazy
The lack of oxygen
The coldness of it all
When I was in the islands nearly a generation ago, I was acquainted with a young American couple who had among their belongings an attractive little son of the age of seven--attractive but not practicably companionable with me, because he knew no English. He had played from his birth with the little Kanakas on his father's plantation, and had preferred their language and would learn no other. The family removed to America a month after I arrived in the islands, and straightway the boy began to lose his Kanaka and pick up English. By the time he was twelve be hadn't a word of Kanaka left; the language had wholly departed from his tongue and from his comprehension.
Nine years later, when he was twenty-one, I came upon the family in one of the lake towns of New York, and the mother told me about an adventure which her son had been having. By trade he was now a professional diver. A passenger boat had been caught in a storm on the lake, and had gone down, carrying her people with her. A few days later the young diver descended, with his armor on, and entered the berth-saloon of the boat, and stood at the foot of the companionway, with his hand on the rail, peering through the dim water. Presently something touched him on the shoulder, and he turned and found a dead man swaying and bobbing about him and seemingly inspecting him inquiringly. He was paralyzed with fright. His entry had disturbed the water, and now he discerned a number of dim corpses making for him and wagging their heads and swaying their bodies like sleepy people trying to dance.
His senses forsook him, and in that condition he was drawn to the surface. He was put to bed at home, and was soon very ill. During some days he had seasons of delirium which lasted several hours at a time; and while they lasted he talked Kanaka incessantly and glibly; and Kanaka only. He was still very ill, and he talked to me in that tongue; but I did not understand it, of course.
-Mark Twain Following the Equator
