Edward Beach - Around the World Submerged

Our foray into Magellan Bay is complicated somewhat by the discovery of three tall tree trunks sticking out of the water. Apparently they are ballasted to float vertically and are anchored to some sort of bottom structures, since they have no supporting wires of any kind. Maybe they delimit fishing areas. At all events, we carefully avoid them and the rock piles and anchor cabling they may mark.

1120 We have been carefully, without much luck, searching the south shores of the Bay to determine whether the Magellan monument can be seen. About this time, as I scrutinize the shore, it finally comes into full view. Without any doubt whatever, I announce to the conning tower party, “There it is!” The water is too shallow for us to approach close enough to get a really good photograph, but we take movies of what we can see of it from as many angles as it is possible to get them. It can be seen clearly from only one bearing, probably straight front, where trees and foliage have been cut away.

The monument is apparently made of masonry, probably recently whitewashed; it gleams white in the sun. There are dark objects in its center which might be one or more bronze tablets or possibly openings into the interior. It is a rectangular pedestal with long dimension vertical, straight sides and a slightly curved top, standing on a set of steps or a base. The impression is that it may at one time have supported a statue or been intended to, but what we see consists, in that case, only of the statue base.

1125 Sighted aircraft resembling a twin-engine DC-3 making a landing approach near the city.

There are numerous small boats in Magellan Bay, and we would not be surprised to find they are contestants in a sailboat race. Most of them are brightly colored pleasure craft.

One of these in particular intrigued me. Occupied by a single relaxed-looking gentleman, dressed in gay clothes and a broad hat, the boat was about fifteen feet long, painted white, with a white mast and white outrigger. The sail was red, with a large blue half-moon design on it, and like all sails of this type was a simple triangle mounted on a single crossed yard near the top of the mast, its pointed foot secured to a single cleat or snap ring at its base. Two “braces”—as Stephen Decatur would have called them—led from the yard-arm ends to the rear or cockpit of the boat, where its comfortably slouched owner handled them with one hand while he operated a rudder with the other.

At most, the boat had room for only two people, being a faithful replica of the narrow dugout canoe which had been its inspiration. Stability, in face of the lofty pressure center of the sail, was achieved by a narrow pontoonlike float held on outrigger arms half the boat’s own length on the starboard side. The rig was obviously speedy, shallow of draft, and extremely steady in any wind. A particular advantage which would appeal to many a sailboat buff was the untrammeled visibility in all directions.

She would be a pleasure to sail, I thought, and I wondered why no US boat builders had ever tried a similar model.

Enthralled, I counted fourteen gaily decorated sails of different hues and patterns, and half as many slatternly ones, which we took to be fishing boats. At the same time, we made frequent observations all around for the many navigation checks demanded by Will and to detect in good time any sailboat approaching too close. Our photographers, led by Joe Roberts and Dick Harris, snapped as many pictures as they could. This was something of a chore, for to take a picture I had to aim the scope, permit it to be defocused to a predetermined setting, then duck my head while the photographer held his camera against the eyepiece and fired away. Demands on periscope time were heavy, and I was conscious that we were leaving it up too long and raising it too often.

1146 Upon raising the periscope I am looking right into the eyes of a young man in a small dugout, close alongside. Perhaps he has detected the dark bulk of our hull in the relatively clear waters of the Bay, or he may have sighted our periscope earlier. He and I study each other gravely. His boat is a small dugout, perhaps 12 feet long, devoid of any paint and without mast or sail [which is why he got so close in on us]. He has a paddle with which he easily maintains a position abeam of us at our present slow speed. He looks ahead and looks behind, looks down in the water and maintains position about 50 yards abeam with occasional muscular sweeps of his paddle.

Down goes the periscope. At my startled comment, everyone had pressed in closer to it.

“Can we get a picture?” Joe Roberts asked.

“No. We can’t fool around with him.” But the look on Joe’s face would have melted a much harder heart than mine.

“You ought to let us snap him,” he begged. “Later on you’ll wish you had …”

“OK,” I yielded. “No time to argue. Up periscope!”

I fielded the handles as they came out of the periscope well, put my right eye to the eyepiece, rose with it to nearly its full extension, then stopped it with a sudden signal to Beacham.

“There he is—here!” The picture in the eyepiece blurred out of focus. I drew my head to the side, felt the warmth of Robert’s face near mine, his arm pressing on my shoulder. “Click” went the camera, then “click” again, and a third time.

Our friend is a dark-complexioned moon-faced young man with a well-fed physique. His clothing is tattered and he wears some kind of a battered hat for protection from the sun. Our photographic party obtains several pictures of him which will be interesting to look at later.

“Down periscope!” The steel tube slithers down into its well as I describe the scene above to the people in the conning tower. They would all like to get a look at him, but that isn’t too practical.

I motion for the scope to slide up once more. Sure enough, there is our friend impassively leaning on his gunwales and staring right at the periscope as we raise it barely two inches out of the water. “We’ve played with this gent long enough,” I mumble in-audibly. Spinning the periscope around for one last cut on the now-familiar landmarks and to say aloha to Magellan and his intrepid spirit, I sight a fair course between the nearest set of tree trunks, take a final look at our friend in the dugout canoe, and snap up the periscope handles as a signal for it to start down.

“All ahead two-thirds…. Right full rudder!” This is something our swarthy friend won’t be able to handle. Triton slips neatly ahead of him and away to the right. Upon slowing for a look a few minutes later, I spot the dugout many hundreds of yards away, being paddled rather strongly in the wrong direction.

For some reason, the concern I had expected to feel if some unauthorized person saw our periscope did not come. We had, it is true, discussed this possibility at that long-ago conference in the Pentagon. Our entry into Magellan Bay would expose us to detection, but the decision to go ahead had been made nevertheless. Though nothing more had been said, I remember feeling that Admiral Beakley was not too concerned over the possibility.

Still, there was a risk that some notice would be taken of our presence, and I might have worried more had not some of our more perceptive conning tower crew unconsciously said exactly the right thing:

In the conning tower, the irrepressible Bill Marshall says aloud, “Wonder what he is going to tell his friends in Cebu tonight.” Quartermaster Second Class Russell K. Savage probably has the right answer: “They won’t believe a word he says.”

As Triton eases slowly out of the Bay, checking her position every two minutes or so because of the swift currents we have encountered, we are all aware that today will go down as one of the high points of our trip. We have come more than halfway around the world to see this spot.