Edward Beach - Around the World Submerged

Dismounting, I pressed my face against the Plexiglass window of the passenger compartment to see the ship in which I had spent nearly a quarter of a year under water. She looked small, out of her element on the surface. Her sturdy sides were mottled where the paint had been stripped away, and they were speckled here and there with discolorations of rust. A small knot of men stood on her deck—the helicopter handling party whom I had just left—and a group of heads were clustered on her bridge. Slowly, under the command of Will Adams, she gathered way on the leisurely course toward New London which had been directed, holding her speed unaccustomedly low and making only a tiny bow wave. Quickly, she vanished in the distance.

The clattering of the helicopter engine made conversation practically impossible in the passenger compartment, and someone handed me a piece of paper on which was written, “What was your first impression of the world after returning to it?” I wrote back, “It smells fishy!” This was the most immediate sensation, a fishlike odor which had seemed to permeate the entire superstructure of the ship. A number of suckerlike organisms had attached themselves to the bridge area, and there were no doubt many more of them throughout the ship’s immense superstructure. There would have to be a pretty thorough scraping, scaling, and repainting job done during our “post-shakedown” overhaul, I reflected.

The grinding beat of the rotating blades brought us over a sandy beach, then some green and plowed farm fields. Here and there were houses. We passed one moderate-sized city, then suddenly were over a bigger one. The helicopter dipped lower. I could see streets and automobiles, and people walking on the sidewalks. There was a surprising number of trees, in many cases almost entirely concealing the streets beneath them. Then we were over a large muddy river. A tall stone obelisk, standing in the midst of a great expanse of grass, reached almost up to us. The helicopter ceased its forward motion, swayed gently fore and aft, swung completely around once or twice, slowly settled. Below us was more grass, a carefully kept lawn dominated by a large building. With a thrill I recognized the White House. The plane landed gently just a few yards in front of the South Portico.

The next two hours were, to say the least, kaleidoscopic. Scores of well-wishers greeted me. I shook hands a hundred times, and suddenly a pair of arms went around my neck from behind and a familiar kiss landed on my ear. There stood Ingrid, looking somewhat breathless but otherwise exactly as I had remembered her these three months.

“How is everybody?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said.

“Come along,” someone else said—and the next thing I knew I was talking to the President.

In my hand I carried a letter and envelope addressed to President Eisenhower, carefully cacheted with a replica of our circumnavigation plaque which we had printed with homemade ink. There had been a number of experimental inks concocted, but the most successful one—hydraulic oil, ground charcoal, and insulating paint, as I recall—was extremely slow in drying. To protect the envelope from being smudged, I had wrapped it, along with others for Mrs. Eisenhower, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the Navy, in the only readily available highly absorbent paper we had. Now, standing before the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, I shook his proffered hand, reported successful completion of our mission, and handed him the letter we had so painstakingly prepared for him. Only then, to my horror, did I realize that I had neglected to remove the protective paper covering.

“What’s this?” the President asked, with a slightly puzzled frown.

I froze with the realization of the enormity of my faux pas. “It’s—it’s just a little toilet paper we had to use to keep the ink from smudging,” I blurted out despairingly.

I had worked for the President in the fairly intimate capacity of Naval Aide a few years earlier, but nothing in our relationship had prepared me for this situation. I had never lost my feeling of great awe for him, and I stood rooted to the rug in his office, waiting for I knew not what result of this indignity.

People who knew President Eisenhower longer and better than I might perhaps have been able to predict his reaction. For my part, it was with the greatest relief that I became witness to a magnificent set of Presidential “Ha ha’s” and “Ho ho’s,” delivered as he shook with mirth, steadying himself with one hand braced on the top of his desk.

“What in the world did you say to the Old Man?” the Press Secretary demanded, as officials whisked me away again. I told him, and Jim Hagerty chuckled. “That’s probably the most fun the boss has had all week,” he said. “Good for you!” He said something else, too, and there was an undercurrent of seriousness in his manner which came back to me later, but at the time I was too bemused at all that was going on to catch it.

I had a few minutes chat with Admiral Rickover, and then found myself in yet another room where a large map of our route had been prepared, and several thousand newsmen, it seemed to me, had gathered. Each one had a camera, and each used it constantly. Someone had taken care of Ingrid, I saw with relief when I looked around. There were a lot of pictures and many questions, some humorous and some serious, and after a while the President reappeared to pose with us for a few moments. Then Ingrid stood beside me for more pictures, and a large model of the Triton was handed to the two of us, so that we stood there helplessly with all four arms gripping the six-foot-long gray-and-black replica.

“Kiss your wife!” someone commanded, and we dutifully obliged.

“This way—do it again!” We turned toward the latest importunator, kissed again.

The smile on Ingrid’s face was becoming just a little grim, I thought. She leaned over and whispered, “My heel has come off!” I looked around desperately for a rescuer to take the model. Someone nearby took over Triton, junior, and a White House policeman ran off with the shoe for emergency repairs.

Later, riding in a White House limousine toward the Pentagon to call on Mr. William B. Franke, Secretary of the Navy, I had my first sight of a recent newspaper. It was full of stories about the U-2, the high-flying reconnaissance plane which had in some manner been forced down in Soviet Russia, and I read the reports with growing concern and understanding. Ringing through my ears were the cryptic sentences uttered by Hagerty as he ushered me out of the President’s huge oval office: “Have you heard about the U-2?” he had asked.

“No,” I had answered. “What is it—a new German submarine?”

Hagerty’s laugh had not been one of amusement. “Well, you’ll find out soon enough. Thank God you made it back when you did!”

This, of itself, might have meant little to me, had it not been supplemented by another comment from another source: “You’ve shown the oceans are still free to all. Of all the things we’d planned to prove for the summit conference, you were the only one to come through!”

This was the outcome of the secret we had carried around the world! I had not realized that other efforts were being made at the same time as Triton’s, but it figured. A thing this important would not, logically, have been left to the single exertions of a single agent.

Five hours after leaving the Triton ’s deck, I was delivered back aboard in the same manner—full of news, good and bad information, and the plans for the next day’s arrival ceremonies at New London. I took over the ship’s announcing system to pass the word to as many people as possible all at once, and then surrendered to the avid questioners in the wardroom.