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MEN UNDER THE SEA
Commander Edward Ellsberg.
Published by Dodd, Mead & Co, New York, 1939.
(Dustjacket: top left, red,black, green). Hardcover, dustjacket,
370 pages, mono prints.
Published by George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, London .
1940. (Dustjacket: bottom left, light green). Hardcover, dj, 327 pages,
index, mono prints.
Includes the salvage of submarines S-51, S-4, and Squalus,
the Laurentic gold, the Egypt's gold, and previous century ships such as
the Rose of Algier, and James and Mary. Undersea tragedies including submarine
salvage work. A chapter of the lure of sunken treasure is also included.
[ps-both]
From the blurb of thr UK edition:
Writing with grim excitement and pulsing reality, Commander
Ellsberg here tells the thrilling story of the men who godown under the
sea into the green twilight and blackness of the ocean floor. He begins
with an account of the final stages of the salvaging of the submarine S51
and the quiet heroism of the divers who brought that ship up from the bottom.
From this he turns to the tragedy of the S4, sunk by the destroyer Paulding
off Provincetown Harbour, and in a matchless, series of chapters relates
his own breathless race by ambulance, train, and lifeboat to the scene
of the collision and its heartrending aftermath. These two undersea tragedies,
with the
attempted rescues, give Commander Ellsberg a background
for a description of the most recent inventions in submarine salvage work
and the latest safety devices for the rescue of men trapped in stricken
ships below the sea. One of the most fascinating of these stories is the
author's own perfecting of an undersea torch for cutting steel, with the
amusing and almost tragic tests by courageous divers. The lure of sunken
treasure and the possibilities of its recovery fill the closing
pages of this unique book of action and adventure. Here
Commander Ellsberg recounts the most famous undersea searches for lost
treasure, including the stories of Phips and his Rose of Algier and James
and Mary, the almost unbelievable reclamation of treasure from the Egypt,
the deepest salvage job ever undertaken; and the recovery of nearly five
million pounds in gold from the R.M.S. Laurentic, sunk in 1917. In a gripping
final chapter Commander Ellsberg tells how, hastily detached from duty
on the aircraft carrier Ranger at Hampton Roads, he arrived by air over
the submarine Squalus a few hours after her sinking off Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, and describes the unprecedented rescue from the sea of Lieutenant
Naquin and his thirty-two shipmates.
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A.
B.
C. |
ON THE BOTTOM
Commander Edward Ellsberg.
Published 1929 by Constable & Co.Ltd, London.
Published 1929 by Dodd, Mead and Company, New York.
 D. E. F |
Hardcover, embossed boards, dustjacket,
mono plates throughout.
This is a classic. I havn't read it yet, but covers early
standard dress use in salvage by one of America's top divers. No
doubt of great historical value in its content; not sure of its value as
a book as I have a feeling hat the print run would have been very high.I
have a first edition - do not know how many editions it ran to.
Note: The US edition is better presented with an embossed
cover, and twenty-five mono photographs, 324 pages, incl a two-page glossary.
The British edition has no embossed cover, 307 pages, no glossary, and
sixteen mono photographs.
Dustjacket images:
A. (blue with portrait) is a USA edition. (date?)
B. (with ship) is from a more recent softcover,
2004, what is caled a 'trade paperback'.
C. (brown) is a more recent 2002 reprint -see below.
D. (light green and yelow) is the British Constrantable
& Co. edition.
E. (dark green and yellow) is the USA Dodd
Mead Co. edition (certainly the 1940 reprint, maybe also the first edition
1929).
F. (blue and orange). Probably a reprint
but of which edition I have no idea. |
In a collision with a steamship, City of Rome, on the
night of September 25, 1925, the U.S. Navy Submarine S-51 sank in 132 feet
of water, taking 33 sailors to the ocean floor. The disaster evoked such
a storm of popular indignation that it was felt that at all costs a determined
attempt must be made to raise the S-51. No vessel had ever been raised
from such a depth, a feat the experts pronouced impossible. The task of
salvaging the sub fell to Lieutenant Commander Edward Ellsberg and a group
of divers scavenged from all over the fleet. The impossible was accomplished
painstakingly over a nine month period conquering obstacle after obstacle.
Working in hard hats and lead boots, in minimal light, while dragging air
lines behind them, each diver had about an hour of exhausting and terrifying
work before begginning a lenghy decompression process. This is the story
of the men charged with doing the impossible-raising the thousand ton sub
from the bottom of the sea. Added to this modern classic of true adventure
are a foreword and afterword giving specifics of the accident and the aftermath,
additional photographs, a publisher's preface, and appendices.
General synopsis: 1928. Illustrated. Contents: Collision;
On the S-51; Rescue Efforts; Vacillation; The Salvage Problem; Diving;
The Divers; Off Block Island; In the Engine Room; The First Snag; The Control
Room; Another Struggle; The First Pontoon; Blowing the Ballast Tanks; Outside
the Control Room; A Lost Diver; The Motor Room; Winter; A Diving School;
Lost, A Submarine; Pontoons Again; My First Dive; Sealing Up Aft; The Torch
Solves a Problem; The First Tunnel; The Cement Gun; An Ocean Oil Well;
The Engine Room Hatch; More Pontoons; A Tug of War; The Last Tunnel; Lashing
Up; June 22, 1926; Still More Pontoons; July 5, 1926; The Tow; Man of War
Rock; The Bell; and The End. [ps-brit ed, us no dj]
ON THE BOTTOM
Commander Edward Ellsberg
Introduction by Edward L. Beach, Captain, U.S. Navy (Ret.),
author of Run Silent, Run Deep
Reprint 2002, by Flat Hammock Press, Mystic, Connecticut,
USA. Hardcover with dustjacket, 256 pages, mono photos. It also includes
CD recording of the 1925 ballad The Sinking of the S-51, a 1979 oral interview
with Rear Admiral Ellsberg and a DVD of period newsreel footage.
(Lower image, left, C). |
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THIRTY FATHOMS DEEP
Commander Edward Elsberg.
Published in 1964 by Dodd Mead.
Details the loss of the Spanish Galleon, the Santa Cruz,
scuttled 300 years ago off Peru to save her treasure-jewels and great bars
of yellow gold from falling prize to Drake and his corsairs in the famous
Golden Hind. The treasure seekers must battle a ship of modern day pirates
to the death to recover the treasure. |
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HELL ON ICE: THE SAGA OF THE JEANNETTE.
Commander Edward Ellsberg.
Published by Dodd, Mead & Company in 1938. Hardcover,
421 untrimmed pages. (Cover image shown may be of a later edition).
Ebay description: Nearly sixty years have slipped by
since the Jeannette sailed away through the Golden Gate sped by cheers,
sirens, salutes, by high hopes -- and by a woman's tears; the first expedition
to seek the North Pole by way of the Behring Sea. Only a scattering of
people recall today her dramatic fate, though it was the sensation of the
time. No doubt she would soon be remembered only by Arctic historians had
not Commander Ellsberg, delving into the facts and circumstances of that
voyage, found them of the stuff that has made great human drama since the
days of Troy. Commander Ellsberg discovered in the half-suppressed logs
of the hapless expedition a story of incredible excitement and variety
-- a tale of men locked two years in the Arctic pack, of sudden disaster,
of desperate flight across the cruel ice, of a wild small boat passage
over the storm swept Arctic seas to the barren frozen tundra of Siberia.
But more than that, he saw in those events human heroism and courage in
the face of such hardships as have never been recorded before nor since.
He saw men who had been ordinary sailors and officers transformed by extraordinary
occurrences -- some into gallant leaders, a few into shirkers and mutineers,
others into lunatics, some into reckless martyrs, one at least into a hero
whom all men can be proud. No one could be more ideally equipped to make
this saga of the Arctic live than Commander Edward Ellsberg. Author of
On the Bottom, already recognized as a classic of the sea, himself a brilliant
engineer, he recounts of the story through the vivid personality
of George Wallace Melville, chief engineer on the Jeannette. A careful
research through diaries, journals, Naval Inquiries, and Congressional
Investigations enables him to use the actual dialogue and set down
authentically the characters of the whole ship's company. Above all, his
rare knowledge of men in action and his rare ability to depict them make
the reader virtually a member of the most extraordinary Artic expedition
in history. In Hell on Ice he takes a musty, never wholly known record
and recreates it in the flesh and blood with wild Arctic gales singing
through it, with the screech and roar of the tumbling ice floes, the flaming
colors of the Aurora Borealis, the smell of sweaty furs, and the cries
of men, now hoarse and desperate as they face destruction, now softened
by the hope of salvation; while through it all, strangely woven into the
fabric of the banner borne along till it falls from dying fingers to the
ice, is the presence of the woman who waits at home, in agony looking toward
the void of the unknown North.
Also: "The personal narrative in fictional form of the
chief engineer of the expedition, G.W. Melville."
Possibly another edition: THE CRUISE OF THE JEANNETTE. |
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NO BANNERS NO BUGLES.
Edward Ellsberg,
Dodd Mead and Sons, New York 1949.
I am not aware of its content. |
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UNDER THE RED SEA SUN.
Commander Edwrd Ellsberg.
Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1946. Hardcover, dustjackt,
500 pages exactly.
From the fly:
In Under the Red Sea Sun Commander Ellsberg tells his
greatest story - his own experiences, facing with his men an almost incredible
ordeal, in which every reader, man or woman, will find himself immediately
absorbed. The reader is taken to what is quite literally the hottest place
on earth, the smashed Italian naval base of Massawa on the African shore
of the Red Sea. There he is confronted with a challenge of truly titanic
proportions. With time of the essence as Rommel races across the Libyan
desert to the west, this sabotaged shambles of an erstwhile port must somehow
be made to operate. The blazing Red Sea sun made working conditions unbearable.
The trials and frus- trations of men struggling in that desperate situation
have an ageless appeal. What they were attempting had been pronounced hopeless
several times over. There were men on hand not only to discourage but actually
to obstruct any attempts to get the job done. In short, it was a completely
impossible task. And yet Commander Ellsberg, with a handful of Americans,
set to work. The impossible began to be accomplished. The wrecks came up
out of the sea, ships passed through drydocks. As agonized men strug gled
day and night in the fiendish heat great and heroic deeds were done. Under
the Red Sea Sun is not a book to describe; it is a book to read. A few
pages and you will find yourself under the spell of its urgency, caught
up in its tre mendous drive. This is Commander Ellsberg's greatest book,
a story destined to take its place as one of the great maritime epics of
our day. +end fly.
I agree with the fly - it is a tremendous book, exceptionally
well written and quite exciting. [ps] |
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SPANISH INGOTS
Diving on the Santa Cruz Treasure.
Commander Edward Ellsberg. |
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THE FAR SHORE
Edward Ellsberg,
Dodd Mead and Sons, New York 1949.
(Title page shown). |
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S-54
Commander Edward Ellsberg.
Dodd Mead, New York, 1939.
Hardcover, dustjacket.
Note: Copyright dates listed are 1930 1931 and 1932;
these are basically magazine publication dates under his copyright and
there is no specific Dodd Mead copyright date. |
