Poseidon: China’s Secret Salvage of Britain’s Lost Submarine

6. Hews and Ho

Upon reaching the surface, Poseidon’s survivors were lauded as heroes, having the courage to attempt escape and the luck to succeed. But what actually happened in the torpedo room may have been different from what was presented in official reports. There are three known, complete versions of the events in the torpedo room and subsequent escape: Patrick Willis’s, first related at the court of enquiry hearing; Edmund Holt’s, also presented in part at the court of enquiry, but in full in Robert H. Davis’s Deep Diving and Submarine Operations, seemingly included in the text as proof of the concept of the author’s Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus (DSEA);1 and an account written by Walter Jeffery, Poseidon’s chief telegraphist. When Poseidon reached the bottom after its collision with Yuta, the following men were in the forward torpedo room: Patrick Willis; Reginald Clarke; George Hews; Edmund Holt; Arthur Lovock; Vincent Nagle; and two Chinese mate’s assistants, known as Ah Hai and Ho Shung. The torpedo room was about five meters (fifteen feet) from the point of impact but had a bulkhead and watertight door between it and the site where Yuta’s bow stabbed through Poseidon’s external fuel tank and pressure hull. On these details, all versions agree. It is also not disputed who survived, or that Hews and Ho never reached the surface. Patrick Willis Willis’s story provides the baseline account. As the highest-ranking man in the torpedo room, he was in charge. At the court of enquiry investigating Poseidon’s sinking, he was called upon to offer the official account. Also, because he left the torpedo room with the last group, Willis, unlike Holt, who floated to the surface earlier with Lovock, Chapter 6 Hews and Ho 58 Poseidon was uniquely qualified to say what had happened in chronological order. Willis recalled that, upon the submarine hitting bottom, he ordered his men to secure the watertight door, from which water was coming in. Shortly afterwards, he decided to flood the compartment so that the hatch could be released and an escape attempted. Willis described it as a decision of his own, whereas Holt remembered it as a “conference” between the submariners.2 After Holt and Clarke began flooding the room on Willis’s command, DSEAs were gathered, and it was discovered that there were only seven of them for the eight men present. All six navy men took one, and between the two Chinese mate’s assistants, Ah Hai received the last one as he was the elder, leaving Ho as the odd one out. As could be predicted, Ho realized there was no escape set for him, and reacted negatively. Willis barely mentioned Ho in his account, and he is never questioned about him. Willis said only that “the small Chinese boy got in a breeze,” but he calmed him with the white lie that, when they opened the hatch, they would be on deck. As the water crept higher and the claustrophobia and cold began to have an effect, Ho was not the only one who failed to “be British.” Willis mentioned the concern expressed by Hews that his DSEA was empty, and the petty officer described telling him another white lie that he could not hear the hiss of his own breathing gas either although Willis clearly knew that he too was out. His explanation suggested that Hews made it out of Poseidon but was lost on the way up. Willis was behind Reginald Clarke but above Hews and the two Chinese boys on the ladder, but he did not explain why he chose that order. “My idea is that as soon as he got clear of the hatch he swallowed water and got drowned. The DSEA gear would then take him down,”3 he said. Weighing about five to six kilograms (eleven to thirteen pounds), the DSEA would have been negatively buoyant on its own, but that would have been offset by any gas blown into or remaining in it. Edmund Holt Although it only covered events up to the point where he and Lovock ascended, Holt’s account added some necessary detail to the overall situation. He provided a more comprehensive description of the Hews and Ho 59 ascent and a different view of some of the events explained by Willis. Holt said of Ho: Unfortunately, one of the Chinese boys had no...