On Aug. 12, Maryland arrived at Honolulu with the pontoons and other gear needed for the final attempt, which required that the support chains be passed beneath the submarine, and the pontoons attached and dewatered. Divers, working at a depth of 46 feet⁸, excavated tunnels under the wreck, so that the cradling chains could be rove between the pontoons. This work was completed on Aug. 25, and the next day the large pontoons were positioned by the Reclamation, a wrecking barge in a four-point moor over F-4. Five-inch Manila “tending” lines were attached to the ends of the pontoons to control the lowering of each one to the seafloor as they were ballasted with water. Once the pontoons were on the bottom and flooded down, the chains that cradled the submarine were rove through the hawse pipes on the pontoons and secured with clamps by divers. Over the next two days, the smaller pontoons were lowered and secured. On Aug. 28, with all the pontoons in position, Reclamation was replaced by a coal barge carrying a bank of submarine air flasks to supply air for divers and dewatering the pontoons.

Early the next day, a beautiful Sunday morning, Navy divers connected the hoses from the air manifold on the barge, to the vents on top of the pontoons. Dewatering commenced at 0640. The two bow pontoons came to the surface at 1216 in a swirl of rising air bubbles, and within a half hour, the amidships and aft pontoons also appeared. After all pontoons had surfaced, the pontoons came to an even keel and the load was distributed on the supporting chains, the air vents and flood valves were closed and the air hoses disconnected.⁹ At that point, the bottom of the submarine was six feet below the surface, and the nearly upside-down F-4 drew a maximum of 20 feet. Lines were cast off at 1345, and F-4 and her supports were towed into the harbor. The stately procession proceeded to the Quarantine Wharf while nearby ships flew colors at half-mast. The next day the entourage moved into the floating drydock of the Inter Island Steamship Company, and at about 2345 on 30 August, F-4 came into view, lying on her side in the dock, a stream of fuel oil pouring from a gash in the hull.

In the early morning hours of Aug. 31, powerful lights were shone into the hull and revealed that the boat was filled with large quantities of muck, dead fish, and debris, which prevented further inspection until later in the morning. Subsequently, Navy crews removed the bulk of the debris through the gash in the port side and searched the boat’s compartments for the bodies of the crew. Some time later, the unidentified remains of seventeen men on eternal patrol were interred in a communal grave at Arlington National Cemetery.

Causes of the Disaster

Shortly after Maryland arrived in Honolulu in April, a Board of Inquiry convened to determine the causes of the accident. Although officers and men of the flotilla could lend some insight to general conditions in the division, without the wreck, the causes of failure could only be speculated. A second Board of Inquiry met for the first time as the drydock was being dewatered on Aug. 30. The Board held 16 meetings to analyze the cause of F-4’s loss – taking great care to differentiate the damage caused by recovery efforts, from that sustained in the sinking.

After the investigation of the wreckage in the dry dock, the board concluded that corrosion around the rivets in the forward battery tank was a major cause of the disaster. The 60 cells that comprised the forward battery were grouped in 12 slop tanks within a lead-lined well fitted with a drain so that any sulfuric acid which spilled into it could be pumped out. Unknown to the crew, some of the marine glue used by the builder to seal the tank seams had dislodged and plugged the drain, causing the acid accumulated in the well to dissolve the zinc impurities in the lead lining. This permitted the leaking acid to corrode nearby steel. The high stress areas around the rivets were particularly susceptible to corrosion. Seawater seeped around corroded rivets common to the middle main ballast tank and the forward battery tank.

The authors believe that the bypassing of an unreliable component – the magnetic reducer – in the ballast system and a closed Kingston valve in the forward ballast tank contributed to the delay in blowing the boat’s ballast. Also, as has been observed in subsequent problems in air lines, blockage due to constricted flow between the high-pressure air supply and the 100-pound manifold may have had a significant influence on the failure of F-4 to resurface.

The F-class boats of the Torpedo Boat Flotilla remained in Honolulu until relieved by a flotilla of newer K-class boats in November 1915. Towed back to Mare Island, the
F-class boats were decommissioned and thoroughly inspected for deterioration similar to that found in F-4, before being refurbished and returned to service. In subsequent designs, the battery wells were separated from other tanks by a cofferdam.

F-4 remained in Hawaii. In mid-September 1915, after completing the investigation into her loss, the Navy let her rest. Rather than being scuttled at sea, the ex-F-4 was towed to a backwater of Pearl Harbor and beached at half tide in 19 feet of water,¹⁰ in hope that natural deterioration would ease the eventual task of blasting and removing the hull. However, the Navy needed her temporary resting place for a 1940 expansion of the Pearl Harbor facilities, and that year her remains were rolled as fill into a large trench excavated next to the hulk. Under ground, she “now lies on a heading of 043.5 degrees true, 40 feet from the submarine berth Sierra 14.” ¹¹

Capt. Searle, a 1946 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, served as an Engineering Duty Officer until his retirement in 1970. From 1964 until 1969, Capt. Searle served as the Supervisor of Salvage under the then-Naval Ship Systems Command.

Mr. Curtis worked as a civilian with the Department of the Navy as an engineer in the Office of the Supervisor of Salvage beginning in 1968 and then as a planner and diver in the Field Project Office of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command.

Endnotes

1 Crowe, William J., Jr., United States Submarines, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, 2002, pp. 40-41

2 Board of Investigation aboard the USS Maryland April 15, 1915, into the causes that kept the F-4 from surfacing after being submerged on March 15, 1915. Citations of testimony is delineated by the witness’s name and the number of the question to which the witness is responding. Mallien, 11

3 A submarine bell, mounted on the after deck, provided a means of signaling while underwater. Operated pneumatically, it was struck, for example, to signal when entering and leaving port. It was replaced by the Fessenden electroacoustic “oscillator” which was capable of sounding signals in Morse code.

4Honolulu Star Bulletin, April 14, 1915, “F-4 is Found By Crilly in a Record Dive.”

5 Furer, J.A. memorandum 5001 of April 27, 1915, p. 47.

6 Furer, J. A., memo to: Bureau of Construction and Repair, of: Feb. 24, 1916, Subject: Salvage operations on Submarine F-4, p.55.

7 Furer, J. A., “Salvage Operations on Submarine F-4,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Annapolis, MD, v41, 1915, pp 1833-1871.

8 Furer. J. A., memo to: Bureau of Construction and Repair, of: Feb. 24, 1916, Subject: Salvage operations on Submarine F-4, p.55.

9 USS Maryland Deck Log of Aug. 29, 1915.

10 Bucon memo C&R No.2-S23-2 Serial No. 41703 of Oct.4, 1915 to: SECNAV, Subj: Report of beaching of submarine F-4 at Pearl Harbor.

11 John F. Riley, “USS F-4 Found Final Resting Place at Pearl,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Annapolis, MD, October 1963. p.22.

 

Many of the personnel who participated in the salvage effort are pictured here with F-4 and the giant pontoons that were used to raise her.