Nine Hours' Submersion.

New York Times 100 years ago today, May 4, 1913:
Terrible Experience of the Crew of Russian Submarine.
    ST. PETERSBURG, April 20.— Owing to the official inquiry, the full details of the terrible experience of the commander and crew of nineteen of the submarine Minoga are now available. The boat under the command of Lieut. Garsoev was manoeuvring off Libau, when she was seen to take a sudden plunge. The appearance of the emergency buoy first gave the alarm. Then for nine hours nothing was known.
    The accident happened at 3 in the afternoon, but owing, it would seem, to the dispersal of the men on a Saturday the message was not acted on for several hours, and it was not until 9 at night that the salvage vessels reached the spot. The weather conditions remained happily favorable, and divers having fixed the lifting chains, the Minoga was successfully brought to the surface by midnight, having been nine hours at the bottom of the sea.
    When the after hatch was opened three men staggered out, barely able to crawl. Fifteen of the crew and the Captain were got out unconscious from the after part of the vessel. There remained only the coxswain, who was in the conning tower amidships. It was necessary to raise the submarine well out of the water to get at the conning tower, and this took another three hours' work, but the coxswain, when released after twelve hours' confinement, was in the best condition of any of the crew. Thus the whole command of twenty men was saved and the submarine recovered after lying nine hours at the bottom of the sea helpless.
    The cause of the accident has been ascertained to have been a defective ventilator. Before exercising, these ventilators, which are indispensable to the proper action of the accumulators which provide the motive energy of submarines, are screwed home from the inside. A ventilator in the forward part of the vessel was either defective or had not been properly screwed home. The latter might happen owing to the presence of some foreign body, a cleaning rag, for instance, which would suffice to prevent a proper watertight closing of the ventilator, while leaving the man who had charge of it under the impression that he had duly screwed it home.
    Whatever the inquiry may show to have been the immediate cause of the defect, it is known that the accident happened by water leaking in through this forward ventilator until the delicate trim of the submarine was affected and she plunged head foremost to the bottom. Water continued to enter until the air within the vessel was so far compressed as to resist the entrance of any more at a pressure of seven fathoms' depth.
    On this air the crew of twenty, survived, the Captain and fifteen men in the body of the vessel suffering also from the fumes of chlorine gas given off by the accumulators. The three men who crawled out unaided by the after-hatch, and the coxswain, who after being confined in the conning tower three lours longer than any of his mates was yet the least affected, were apparently out of reach of the chloritie gas fumes, and the latter, in addition, appears to have had more and better air to breathe. All have now recovered from the effects of their terrible experience.