TELEPHONING TO DYING MEN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3246, 16 June 1911, Page 6

TELEPHONING TO DYING MEN.

THE MARVEL OF A CONNING TOWER BELOW THE SEA.

TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY OF MODERN SCIENCE.

A wonderful thing has happened In connection with the loss of a German submarine. The craft met with a mishap, sank, and could not rise. In the vessel were twenty-eight men, and they had oxygen enough stored to enable them to breathe *for forty-eight, hours. But the tilting of the vessel caused' some acids to upset, and so to set up poisonous gases. The commanding officer sent up a buoy carrying a telephone, so that the crews of ships going to the rescue could find the submarine and communicate with the prisoners below. The telephone was picked up, and 25 of the men were saved.

But the brave commanding officer, who had ordered these men to shut themselves up in a water-tight compartment, had himself gone, with two assistants to the conning tower to pump out the water. The rest were saved, but these three had slowly to die. Tlie men in the rescue boats could exchange messages with them but could not save them. The conning tower could not be opened' and air could not be forced into it. the machinery and fittings having become jammed. * So tlie men above held; up written messages in front of the periscope—the sort of reflecting telescope by which, men in submarines see what is happening above —and as long as they could the men inside answered by making telephonic signals. But gradually the captives got weaker and weaker, and were dead when taken out after 24 hours. Science made it possible for these men to travel in ships beneath the sea; it enabled the rescuers to exchange signals with the dying men; but it stopped short of the power to save them.