Morse Code Conversations
“We have reached noon on Tuesday and the survivors of K-13 have been entombed for more than twenty hours. No word had yet come to them from outside of the efforts which were actively in progress for their rescue. But they were not destined to remain much longer in ignorance. Even while Herbert and Goodheart were making that effort at communication, which had been so grievously costly, the leaden soles of a diver were planted on the submarine’s deck. At first attempts were made to flash signals through the periscope, but the surer and simpler method of tapping Morse dots and dashes on the steel plating was quickly substituted. Between the inner and outer skins of K-13 were interposed five feet of water, admitted through flap valves in order to distribute the pressure when she penetrated the depths of the sea. Linked together by stays and trusses, these two skins formed an encircling girder of immense strength. Water is an excellent conductor of sound, and the Morse taps of the divers without could have been readily heard and interpreted by those within had their senses not been dulled by the thick bad atmosphere. Conduction was indeed so good that the replies of K-13, struck on the frames of the ship, were picked up and read without difficulty by the salvors on the surface of the loch. It happened, therefore, that though outside talked to inside and replies were received, it was by no means easy to get inside, to grasp and to carry out precisely what outside wanted done. And it was found to be particularly difficult to secure the exact and essential coöperation of those within K-13 when that flexible tube arrived which had been designed by Fairfields to be screwed into an ammunition hoist upon the deck.