Reduction of submarine armaments was carried one step further last week by accident, which has sunk 20 submarines since 1904 at a cost of more than 700 lives.
Frenchmen were proud last week that they had lost no submarine since 1928, whereas the British Navy had lost three. The French first-class submarine Promethée of 2,000 tons (estimated cost $2,000,000) was maneuvering on the surface of the English Channel near Cherbourg, with several French bluejackets standing on her deck. Suddenly the Promethée began to go down by the stern.. Since her hatches were open, water poured in and she sank like a stone, carrying 62 men to their death. Her commander, a Lieut, du Mesnil, stepped out of the conning tower to see what the trouble was, just in time to save his skin.
Precisely why did the Promethée sink? Before this could possibly be known rumors grew that some clumsy seaman had opened the diving valves by accident. Another rumor had Lieut, du Mesnil commit suicide after he was picked up with six lucky survivors by a fishing smack. Actually the Lieutenant announced himself at the disposal of the usual naval board of inquiry. "Before realizing what had happened," he told reporters, "I was swimming for my life."
Soon Italy's famed Artiglio II, champion treasure-hunting ship (TIME, July 4, et ante), was called into action. Her divers reported that the Promethee lies on an even keel in 230 ft. of water where the current is exceedingly swift. Twice the divers' telephone connection with the Artiglio was ripped apart by the rushing waters. They expressed a professional opinion that it will be impossible to raise the Promethée, said that they found her hatches open, conjectured that an explosion may have ripped open the Promethée's stern, thus causing her to sink stern first. "The public has a right," observed long-mustached French Naval Minister Georges Leygues, "to know the truth!"
Commander Edward Ellsberg, U. S. Naval Reserve, whose work in raising the S-4 and S-51 won him the Distinguished Service Medal (TIME, Sept. 9, 1929) said at Westfield, N. J.:
"Considering the circumstances—that is, a submarine operating on the surface, with her hatches open, and her commander, and others, on deck, and showing no intention of submerging—the most probable cause of sinking is an internal explosion. All submarines give off an odorless gas, hydrogen, when charging batteries, and this gas, when mixed even in small proportions with air, forms an extremely powerful explosive mixture, which might be ignited from a number of causes inside the boat. The resulting explosion might easily have so damaged the hull as to sink the submersible immediately. In our own Navy there have been two cases of such hydrogenic explosions wrecking boats and killing large numbers of men.
"Life aboard a submarine is spent continually facing death."