It was scheduled to be a routine mission, a dive of about an hour's duration in only a few hundred feet of water off Key West, Fla. The 23-ft.-long submersible, designed by famed Inventor-Oceanographer Edwin A. Link—whose son, E. Clayton Link, 31, was one of the four men on board—seemed more than equal to the task. Since it began operating as an oceanographic research vessel for the Smithsonian Institution two years ago, Sea-Link* had easily plunged to depths of 1,000 ft. Last week, as the minisub maneuvered in swift currents of the Gulf Stream, routine turned abruptly into tragedy.
Sea-Link was checking and collecting fish traps near the wreckage of an old Navy destroyer, the Fred T. Berry. The ship had been scuttled last year to create a man-made reef that would encourage marine growth, and Sea-Link was trying to determine how successful the project had been. Suddenly, Sea-Link's crew heard the harsh, rasping sound of metal rubbing against metal. Apparently pushed off course by an unexpectedly strong current, the sub had become ensnarled in cables and other debris around the sunken warship. "I'm hung up," radioed Sea-Link's pilot Archibald ("Jock") Menzies, 30, who tried futilely to work the sub free with its six little electric propulsion motors.
Big Junkyard. As a flotilla of rescue ships hurried to the scene, 15 miles southeast of Key West, Sea-Link's crewmen were told to exert themselves as little as possible in order to conserve oxygen. The crew could do little else. At the pressure that exists at a depth of 360 ft. (162 lbs. per sq. in.), a free swim to the surface was considered far too risky. Trapped along with Menzies in Sea-Link's forward observation compartment—a helicopter-like bubble made of plastic—was Marine Biologist Robert Meek, 27. The younger Link and Veteran Diver Albert Stover, 51, were sealed off separately in the aluminum aft compartment.
The first effort to reach Sea-Link was made by Navy "hard hat" divers lowered on a platform from the submarine rescue vessel Tringa. The divers got close enough to see that the sub was entangled in "one big junkyard down there." In a second try, encouraged by radioed shouts from Sea-Link ("Move south, move south!"), one got within ten feet of the sub. "Keep coming, keep coming!" Sea-Link implored, but he could not penetrate the debris.
On board the submersible's mother ship, Sea Diver, the senior Link, 68 (long known for his World War II pilot training machines), realized that time was rapidly running out. The 9½-ton sub had only limited life-support chemicals. That was not the only problem. While the forward compartment's acrylic bubble acted as an insulator against the chilly (40° F.) sea, the rear compartment—where Link and Stover sat in light sports shirts and shorts—was quickly cooling off. The chill reduced the effectiveness of the chemical "scrubber," a sodium carbonate compound called Baralyme, which is used to remove exhaled carbon dioxide. To keep the chemical effective, the crew increased the air pressure inside the compartment.