Off Provincetown

As darkness came over the ocean one night last week, a fleet of fishing smacks, tugs and tenders lingered together around a spot off the Cape Cod coast. Their rocking signal flares betokened rough weather and disaster. In the surf near Provincetown loomed a stranded shape, the U. S. destroyer Paulding. Somewhere beneath the flares at sea lay the U. S. submarine 54, with 39 officers and men and one civilian aboard. Patrolling the coast, the Paulding had run across the S-4 amidships when the 54, on a trial run, came up without warning dead ahead. The S-4 had sunk immediately. The Paulding, herself damaged, had had to run ashore. From the flare-lit ships at sea, men were fishing. Just before midnight, coast guardsmen grappled what seemed like the S-4's hull, more than 100 feet down and several hundred yards from where a "slick" of oil had marked the sinking ship's disappearance. Depth rescuers--including crews and equipment which finally raised the famed S-51 off Block Island two years ago (TIME, Oct. 5, 1925) --hurried to Provincetown from the New London, Newport, and Brooklyn Navy Yards. A diver groped his way down to the hulk and tapped with his hammer. Answering taps came from the torpedo room in the submarine's bow. Six men were still alive there. Their air was getting bad. Please hurry! Powerful compressors on tenders at the surface started pumping air into the S-4's forward ballast tanks. Perhaps she could be upended and her survivors cut free. But unless fresh air could be passed into the torpedo room; life there could be measured in hours. . . .