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The Silent Service's First Hero · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

0:10
Who else reads books about submarines?
0:13
My dad, yeah. Up Periscope.
0:18
Down Periscope. Yeah, just to be clear.
0:22
So these will be heard on every submarine in the Royal Navy.
0:26
Yeah, they're just automating and digitizing everything.
0:28
You know, the commander presses a button and the recording of
0:30
your voice will be heard. Yeah.
0:32
I'm not interested in all that. Can we just crack?
0:33
On. Fire the nuclear weapons.
0:39
Welcome aboard, my friends. It is me, Dave.
0:43
And I'm happy to have with me today a writer.
0:46
You know how I like writers. You know how I like reading
0:48
books, You see them all behind me.
0:51
If you're watching the video, you know how this goes.
0:52
So a few months ago started seeing posts on Facebook about
1:00
an upcoming book that intrigued me.
1:02
Now I got to tell you a little bit story here before we get to
1:06
to the book. At the time I was the base
1:09
commander for the Bremerton Sub Vets base, and I got a very
1:12
nasty, mean spirited e-mail one morning demanding to know why
1:22
there was something missing from the deck over at the Deterrent
1:27
Patrol Park Monument. We sell bricks there and there's
1:31
bricks. You know, you can buy a brick
1:33
for your submarine or whatever there are.
1:36
I think it's five, maybe more Medal of Honor winners and
1:41
submarine fleet in World War 2 have happened to be officers.
1:45
And in the entire history of the submarine fleet, there is one
1:49
enlisted Medal of Honor winner recipient, not winner.
1:53
And for some reason, when the American Submariner published
1:56
their article, they cut off the picture of the enlisted guy.
2:02
And I got an e-mail from Houston Sub Base down there.
2:05
So that's based down there demanding to know why there was
2:09
no brick for the one enlisted guy that won this.
2:13
So I had to, very early one morning, go over the base, which
2:18
is 3 miles away, I know, but take a picture of it, send it to
2:22
them and say, there it is. It's always been there.
2:27
Take a deep breath and relax. And it happened to be the brick
2:31
for this guy named Henry Brow, who was the only enlisted
2:35
submarine recipient of the Medal of Honor.
2:38
What I started seeing were book previews for a book about the
2:43
life of Henry Brow titled Henry Brow, the Silent Services First
2:48
Hero. And I started kind of connecting
2:51
with this and talking to the to the guy that's writing it who is
2:54
now sitting in front of his camera.
2:57
Not sure where you are. I think you're in the East Coast
2:58
somewhere back in Connecticut or something, right?
3:00
Groton, CT. Groton, CT, the submarine
3:03
capital World. Ryan Walker joins me.
3:05
Ryan, good to have you here. Welcome aboard.
3:08
I'm glad to be here, looking forward to talking about bro.
3:11
So tell me a little bit about yourself.
3:12
Who are you? Where?
3:14
Where are you from? Why?
3:15
Why are you in Groton? Talk to me about Ryan first,
3:18
then we'll talk about Henry. So my name is Ryan C Walker.
3:22
I I managed to make my way to Groton, CT the way very many
3:26
people do. I enlisted in the Navy and I
3:29
found during that my training, during my training period I
3:32
would be ending up in Groton, CT.
3:34
So I flew in in a Blizzard in Great Lakes from Great Lakes
3:37
Recruit Training Command, and I just fell in love with it.
3:40
It was one of the worst blizzards this area has ever
3:43
seen. It was in 2015 February and I
3:46
fell in love with the area. And I said, if I could stay
3:49
here, I'm going to try to stay here for, for more.
3:52
Now. I joined the Navy because I was
3:55
trying to find a way to pay for college like so many of us are
3:57
these days. And my brother walked in, said,
4:01
yeah, I just enlisted in the Navy.
4:03
It's like, why? I don't really have much else
4:05
going on myself, so I might as well give this a shot.
4:08
Took a look and sure enough, six months later I was going to to
4:12
to recruit training command. And then I served on submarines
4:16
from 2014 to 2019. Well, I did training my my full
4:20
naval career, but I ported on Springfield.
4:22
I qualified in 2016 and then I took her up to Portsmouth after
4:26
a deployment. Then I took her to Hawaii.
4:29
I also rode other boats, but met my wife here.
4:33
We talked about wherever we wanted to go and we ended up
4:35
staying here. Decision.
4:37
I do not regret whatsoever because like I said, I do love
4:39
it here. I will tell you, having gone to
4:41
sub school myself in Groton, CT, I went also in the winter time.
4:46
Arrived there December 15th. It was snowing.
4:50
Quite the adventure on Pilgrim Airlines flying into Groton, but
4:54
that's a story for another day. In those days, Ryan the the wet
4:59
trainer, the water in the wet trainer was pumped right out of
5:02
the Thames River. It was.
5:06
Already. Cold, cold.
5:09
But I, I liked it. Being from the Mountain West,
5:11
the snow didn't bother me at all.
5:13
On the other hand, I was sent to the Pacific Northwest to Sub
5:18
Base Bangor, where I had already been here much of a good portion
5:23
of my life. And this is kind of, it's not
5:26
quite home home, but it's, it's #2 homes that make sense.
5:31
Met my wife here and that's how I ended up here.
5:33
So, so there you go. So I, I, this is the question I
5:38
ask every author. They should, they should know
5:40
this before they get in here. But you don't just get up one
5:43
morning. You don't just roll out of bed,
5:45
grab a cup of coffee and say today I'm going to write a book.
5:49
Something happened. Something in this story grabbed
5:52
your attention. Something began to worm its way
5:56
through your brain. Talk to me about that process,
5:59
how you discovered this story, why you decided to write about
6:03
it. Absolutely.
6:05
Well, I always loved history. History was always my favorite
6:09
subject. I always excelled in it.
6:10
That's what I wanted to get my degree in, which is what I ended
6:13
up doing. But one of the first assignments
6:16
I received in Bess was to go down to the Nautilus Museum and
6:20
do a scavenger hunt, which I immediately did very first day
6:24
we got it. We walked down, I got got a
6:26
group of friends and we walked down and we did it together.
6:29
I'll never forget the very last question on that, that scavenger
6:32
hunt. It was who was the only enlisted
6:34
submariner to receive the Medal of Honor.
6:36
And I stood in front of his exhibit and that was the first
6:39
time I remember thinking that is what a submariner is.
6:43
That is what is expected of a submariner.
6:46
As I begin to do this educational journey that would
6:48
go through best through other other like I think, I think the
6:53
names have changed, but ATT and Techno and a school I knew
6:58
eventually I would have to qualify and that that conduct
7:00
wouldn't be expected to me and bro to me represented that bro
7:03
represented that very significant spirit of the summer
7:07
force that said I'm here to save the ship.
7:10
I'm here to save my shipmates and I'm here if I can save
7:13
myself in that effort as well. Over time, I I thought more on
7:18
the the IT never ever left me, man.
7:21
Then I'm standing, sitting in my master's program, my orientation
7:26
for that, I went to the University of Portsmouth online,
7:29
which was in the United Kingdom. And my, my professor, her name
7:33
is Catherine. She's talking about the major
7:35
research project, which I already knew.
7:37
I, I knew exactly what I want to do, I want to do on British,
7:40
British privateers in the North Atlantic.
7:42
I didn't think they quite matched the paradigm of other
7:45
privateering nations. So did that, had a lot of fun
7:48
with it. But I had a minor research
7:50
project to do as well. And that minor research project
7:52
had to be basically an article size of about 5000 words.
7:56
And I said, you know what this I've always wanted to look in
7:58
his story more. I'm going to look in Henry Brau
8:01
and that assignment slowly as I doing it became a book and that
8:06
book is the silent services first here, which I'm happy to
8:10
report you finally have some copies.
8:13
Let's. Start there, then let's talk
8:14
about I I got to tell people. So the spelling of this guy's
8:19
name Henry is easy, but BREAULT. And I got to tell you, for the
8:25
last 30 years, 40 years, I've been pronouncing it Briol.
8:29
But it's it's actually bro, bro, bro, one of those.
8:34
It's actually a funny story. It's funny you say that.
8:36
So I, I learned, we learned Brriol and the Navy.
8:40
If you talk to someone who was in the Navy in the past 20
8:44
years, they'll say, yeah, briol, briol, Briol.
8:47
And I did that until I went to the Aspinock Historical Society
8:50
in Putnam, CT And I visited to see their archives after
8:53
visiting his grave site because the grave site is in Saint
8:55
Mary's Cemetery in Putnam. He was born and raised.
8:59
So they have they, they're well aware of them.
9:01
The Albert J Brough VFW is there.
9:04
So that gives you an idea of the, the connections the Brough
9:06
family has to Putnam. I show up and I, I see the, the
9:09
nice folks there and I say, hey, I, I would like to see your
9:12
Brielle collection. And they're like who I said your
9:15
Briol collection, the Medal of Honor recipient, like, oh, your
9:18
bro, the bro collection. I was like, no, the Briol
9:20
collection. And eventually over enough times
9:22
of this, they start realizing I'm not getting it.
9:24
The polite hints like the bro family here pronounces their
9:28
name bro. Most likely he was named bro.
9:32
So there it's the confusion is well merited.
9:36
I generally out of respect for any potentially family that
9:38
survived, I haven't been able to located.
9:40
I generally say bro. So that's what we're going to
9:42
try to call it. I will probably slip up and use
9:46
some other pronunciations of it, so hang in there.
9:48
Let's talk about it. Let's talk about Henry.
9:51
Tell me about Henry's life. And you know, let's talk before
9:55
he gets to the Navy. Who was he?
9:57
How did he end up on the USSO 5? South Henry Bro was born in
10:01
Putnam, CT on October 14th, 1900.
10:04
He was the first child of Joseph Bro and Flora Bro and Joseph Bro
10:10
had served in the Spanish American War in the Connecticut
10:13
National Guard Union at Putnam Company G unit.
10:17
We know this. He was promoted to Sergeant.
10:19
Didn't see any action but they were waiting on the East Coast
10:22
in different outposts in case the Spanish invasion fleet came.
10:25
So there is military service in the background.
10:29
Bro was a French Canadian name. Joseph and Flora were both
10:33
French Canadians. They had been born in Canada and
10:35
they retained ties to Canada as well.
10:37
As best we can tell, he grew up in Putnam until he was about
10:40
nine years old. When he was nine years old, he
10:43
moved to White Plains, NY. The only reason we know this is
10:45
because there's a census record from 1910 that states his
10:49
youngest sister, Dan Estelle was born in New York, while him and
10:52
his older sisters, Beatrice and Diana were born in in
10:56
Connecticut. At some point they moved up to
11:00
Montreal, Canada and the only reason we know that is because
11:03
he enlisted in the Royal Navy Canadian Volunteer Reserve.
11:06
Now that was the the reserve component of the, the RCN, what
11:12
we call the RCN now and the Royal Canadian Navy.
11:16
It needed men. That's what it came down to.
11:18
Now there's the the Submarine Force Library and museum exhibit
11:22
says he did, He tried to enlist in the United States Navy.
11:27
It was found ineligible for whatever reason.
11:30
I haven't found any evidence of that, but I have found that he
11:34
was about 5-4. He was 16 years of age when he
11:37
tried to enlist and probably would have disqualified him in
11:42
the United States because they probably had records on them.
11:44
They didn't have records of him in Canada.
11:46
So he lied about his age. He said he was born in 1899 and
11:49
because of that he was 17. So he spent one month on what
11:52
they called the Boys Mess. The Royal Navy's a little bit
11:54
different. We do recruit training commands.
11:56
They send their young aspiring sailors to the Boys Mess, where
12:00
they learn to become sailors over time.
12:02
It's their acclamation period now that I don't think that's a
12:07
the standard practice anymore, but that's how they did it at
12:09
the time. It's pulled over from the age of
12:11
sail. So he spent one month and then
12:13
became a a ordinary seaman in the normal cruise mass.
12:17
And he did that in July of 1970. And then he decided let's stay
12:24
in Halifax. So he stayed in Halifax on HMCS
12:27
Niobe. And for those of you who are
12:30
unaware of what happened in Halifax during the First World
12:32
War, there's the Halifax Explosion.
12:34
The Mont Blanc explosion is commonly referred to.
12:36
The Mont Blanc was carrying ammo and fertilizer, not a good
12:39
combination. And when it got into a collision
12:42
they sparked, caused it to explode, causing the several
12:45
1000 casualties in Halifax. It's still very much ingrained
12:49
into their collective memory of the local place.
12:52
But he was allegedly engaged his his cousin, remember that he
12:57
told stories of both being on the Niobe and of helping find
13:01
survivors in the rubble. So we're just finding, we're
13:04
just beginning to understand the heroism of Canadian sailors in
13:07
that period. They were engaged in numerous
13:11
battles, fires across the town. And they were, they acted as a
13:14
police force as well and looked for survivors.
13:16
So now what do you do with the reserves?
13:18
The war is done. You demobilize them.
13:21
That's what reserves are for, quick demobilization.
13:24
So he gets demobilized in December 30th, 1918, shortly
13:28
after the war concluded. Now he gets a train ticket to
13:31
Putnam or a boat ticket to Putnam.
13:33
We don't know exactly how big he gets to Putnam, CT.
13:36
And that's where we get the only account from Fred St.
13:39
Onge. And Fred St.
13:40
Onge is his. He has actually his cousin.
13:43
He was his pallbearer at his funeral.
13:45
Now he was 82 years old when we got an interview for them.
13:47
But overall he gave a pretty positive review.
13:50
He he said he loved going out to sea.
13:52
He loved smoking Turkish trophies, you know, the standard
13:57
sailor coming home fair. And they got a good picture of
14:01
him in his role in Canadian Navy uniform.
14:04
You just get this impression that he was just a, a happy go
14:07
lucky dude and just happy to be at the sea.
14:10
Now he he spent some time bouncing around Connecticut and
14:14
New England in general looking he he did different jobs.
14:17
He worked at a bicycle factory, but for whatever reason he
14:21
didn't seem to acclimate well. So he decided to enlist in the
14:23
United States Navy this time around.
14:25
And he did so while working at a farm in Grand Isle, Vt.
14:28
And that was July 7th of 1920. So it sounds like he's a pretty
14:34
typical sailor of that era in my view.
14:37
IA lot of them like to do those kinds of things.
14:40
He ends up back in the United States Navy and just an
14:44
interesting sidelight. You said his father was in the
14:47
Spanish American War As a one of my research projects back in
14:51
March was on the the Holland and how the submarine fleet was seen
14:58
as a potential to keep the Spanish from invading the United
15:01
States at that point. And it was just an interesting
15:04
connection to the Spanish American War.
15:07
Then he comes back. So how does he submarines were
15:10
all volunteer. They always have been What
15:14
attracted him or do we even know what what said to him?
15:16
Hey, try this. It's it's right up your alley.
15:21
So I think he was making his way up to Vermont to re enlist in
15:24
the Royal Royal Navy. And that's what that's why he
15:28
was in Grand Isle, Vt, right across the river.
15:30
I think someone, probably his boss was like, yeah, the United
15:33
States Navy is also doing the same.
15:35
They had demobilized too many people, which often happens
15:39
after war. So all the forces were starting
15:41
to realize, oh, they're still there was not the end the war to
15:44
end all wars, unfortunately. So we need to actually be
15:46
prepared. So I think he got convinced to
15:49
enlist, went to Newport Recruit training command, and then he
15:53
stayed there for torpedo school. Now torpedo man were not a rate
15:56
yet he was. He was initially written for one
15:58
month that gunner's made with a specialty in torpedoes.
16:01
But I believe, based on the records that he has, that he was
16:04
the first torpedo man, among the first torpedo man's made.
16:07
And the TM's generally had two paths they could take.
16:12
They could take destroyers, patrol boats, or they could take
16:15
submarines. Now, every one of the periods of
16:19
research I'm doing for my PhD is 1915 and 1939.
16:23
And every account I have been able to find someone at some
16:27
point that was a submariner said, yeah, I met a submariner
16:29
or I took a tour of a submarine and they had what I call a
16:32
submarine evangelist. And the guy was like, yeah,
16:34
submarines are great For these reasons.
16:36
And they're, it's actually very remarkably similar to the
16:39
reasons they told me in the recruiting office when I had a
16:42
sonar chief telling me how great submarines were.
16:44
And it was basically guns out. Like you can get good food.
16:47
You don't have, you have very little regulation.
16:50
You know, you're a real person. You have real autonomy on the
16:52
crew. You can be someone you're not
16:54
just one of the faceless mass on the battleship.
16:56
So I, I believe at some point he was talking probably to ATM or
17:00
GM at that time. And the GM, Yep, submarines are
17:03
great. And then he decided to enlist.
17:05
Now they were looking for experienced sailors to put on
17:09
submarines. They hadn't really had enough.
17:11
They had plenty of volunteers. And then suddenly there, there
17:14
seems to be a real need for it. And I think it's because they
17:17
start operating in tropical waters for the first time.
17:20
So this is the beginning where they're actually starting to
17:21
see, yeah, they had boats in Hawaii, but Hawaii's not
17:25
horrible, you know, where they definitely had boats, didn't
17:27
have boats before Panama. And Panama is well renowned for
17:32
in Manila Bay as well. They're they're well renowned
17:35
for having remarkable heat. Now he ends up in New London for
17:40
after leaving recruit training command as a rated TM and he
17:44
reports the O 5 and 1921 as ATM 3, which was higher than his
17:50
equivalent rank while he was in the Royal Navy.
17:53
And he managed to get qualified and it seems at some point 1922
17:58
and he's shortly thereafter made terpetum.
18:00
It's made second class. I think he was on a program to
18:03
see how sailors would react, experienced sailors that is,
18:07
would react if they were thrust on submarines because he was
18:09
only in a sub school period for about four days.
18:12
So it would make sense because especially as time went on, they
18:16
like to find a lot of the accounts will read for the
18:19
Second World War. They started their careers off
18:22
in the submarine tender. They started their careers off
18:24
in an auxiliary vessel of some sort watching submariners and
18:27
decided to to volunteer. So replacing attrition losses
18:31
with experienced sailors was not an unusual thing.
18:33
So he made it to SEC class and the O 5 was switched to a Panama
18:40
command as part of the control force is what the organization
18:44
tentatively was and they were stationed outside in October
18:47
28th, 1923 when the collision with the auto Garrus happened.
18:52
Now, before we get there, I want to go back to this Panama thing
18:55
because I I didn't get to go through the canal.
18:58
I didn't get to go do any of that stuff.
19:00
But I did go to Hawaii twice. And listen, I'm from the
19:05
Mountain West. I grew up in Colorado, Utah,
19:07
Wyoming, that area. And let me tell you, it was
19:11
miserable in that boat for me. Everybody else was OK.
19:15
But when we got when we got liberty, I was one of the few
19:19
people that would go back to the ship to sleep because it was air
19:21
conditioned as opposed to the rest of the place.
19:23
And we were there in November, folks.
19:25
It was it was bad, but I got in trouble for turning off the vent
19:29
heaters up at the up at the switchboard because because it
19:33
was too damn hot to to sleep. So here we are.
19:37
We're on submarine O 5. Let's talk about that boat for
19:40
just a moment. What What's describe the O 5 to
19:45
us? The O boat was designed, you
19:47
could consider her to be the coastal epitome of First World
19:52
War technology, which means by 1923 she's obsolete.
19:55
Newspapers in that period called her that.
19:57
They had the S boats. The S boats were the brand new
19:59
thing. They were facing pretty severe
20:01
teething issues, but O boats were kind of considered to be a
20:04
second class boat. They were designed to protect
20:07
the coast, which is why they were shifted to the Panama Canal
20:09
to protect the vital area of national security.
20:11
And they, they generally were very small by any standard.
20:16
They were pretty small. They didn't have much in the, in
20:19
terms of habitability. They had a single toilet that in
20:23
calling it a toilet is a little bit nice.
20:25
They, he had a, they had very few racks that were in the
20:28
torpedo room. They would fold them up to eat
20:31
and then go on watch it. It's primitive and they're not
20:34
very reliable actually. O 5 in particular was well
20:37
renowned for being a bad luck boat.
20:40
It actually killed 3, three of its personnel now I think two of
20:44
its personnel, two officers and severely injured the third one
20:48
to the point where he almost died in 1918 while it was still
20:52
in shipyard from battery explosion.
20:53
So bad luck boat. There's an account that his
20:57
father allegedly broke, told his father that well off the Virgin
21:01
Islands, they almost sank there too.
21:03
So these are not the type of boats that are necessarily well
21:06
kept. They were not particularly well
21:08
designed and this they were kind of kept out of necessity.
21:12
This is also, I will note, if you ever wondered why there's an
21:15
O boat that is in the that that is in the tolling of the bells
21:21
because we lost one during training exercises, the O 10.
21:25
These things were not comfortable folks.
21:26
They had a a crew of about 20-9, maybe 30 on a good day, couldn't
21:30
dive very deep, couple 100 feet, very primitive, very early
21:34
technology. But the thing I will tell you is
21:38
the technology around stuff has changed as the F eighteens fly
21:42
over me. Sorry.
21:43
We're we're relatively near Whidbey Island here and Nimitz
21:46
is working up. So the technology changes, but
21:52
the way submarines work really doesn't.
21:54
It's just what, what opens the valves and what closes the
21:57
valves. And so even though O 5 is
22:00
obsolete by the 23, Ryan and I could go on there and I, I would
22:05
guess we would be able to figure it out.
22:08
It's maybe it's just a way of looking at it.
22:12
I suppose this boat is in the Panama Zone and it's getting
22:16
ready to do some exercises or patrol or whatever and out they
22:21
had, but they don't really make it, do they?
22:27
No, now they have the unfortunate luck.
22:30
We're not really exactly sure. So they were transiting in a
22:32
group and that's generally how pig boats transited.
22:35
They, they went on with a tender group and they were the lead
22:38
ship in this case. Now, for whatever reason, they
22:41
were stationary. We don't know if they had engine
22:43
problems, We don't know if they had issues trying to dive, but
22:46
they they had no no movement. Abengaras strikes the ship.
22:52
They they sounded a collision signals they were in a zone that
22:55
they couldn't necessarily be in there.
22:57
There did conflicting reports as to who was exactly at fault, but
23:01
Abengarra strikes O 5 causes a giant gash and the ship sinks.
23:05
The boat sinks within a minute, very little damage to Abengaras.
23:09
It picks up the survivors. They do a muster.
23:13
Harrison Avery does a muster. He's the commanding officer.
23:15
And he actually says, all right, we're missing 5 people.
23:19
And of those 5, three were three had passed, but two were still
23:24
trapped in the O 5. So they sent divers down.
23:27
And while the divers were down, they realized that Henry Bro and
23:30
Lawrence Brown were stuck in the torpedo room.
23:33
Now the reason that had happened was because Lawrence Brown and
23:36
they they were both stationed in the torpedo room and during the
23:40
maneuvering watch. Now a verbal order was given to
23:44
abandoned ship by Harrison Avery.
23:47
I don't know if there was a problem with the the one I'm see
23:49
they did have announcing circuits, but maybe they assumed
23:52
that a verbal order was good enough.
23:55
At least several people did not hear that.
23:58
Bro did not recall hearing it. He knew there was something
24:01
wrong then. So he makes his way up the
24:02
Hatch, which is the normal access, sees the ship is
24:06
sinking, closes the torpedo room hatch, cutting off his only
24:09
means of escape. But that saved the life of both
24:12
him and Brown. They stayed in the torpedo room
24:15
because they were able to close the watertight compartments in
24:17
time, and Brown would been fairly unaware of the severity
24:21
of it. But he knew something was going
24:23
on. And now that I know Brown's
24:24
story a little bit more, and I've read two First World War
24:27
submariners, Journey and Elbows. He was an Elbow sailor in the
24:30
North Sea, in the Irish Sea. And they had gales the likes of
24:34
which you couldn't imagine their 69° rolls.
24:38
And I actually believed, I didn't believe that.
24:40
But I have two journals from the same boat.
24:42
And the only difference was as the commanding officer reported
24:45
68° and Fred Ligwell reported 69 degrees.
24:49
So he's probably like, oh, not these waves again.
24:52
Well, it's a little bit more severe than a wave this time.
24:55
And that happens to be why he he manages to get torpedo room, but
25:01
they are able to sit there now. There's completely hellish,
25:04
especially for the first hour. The battery explodes.
25:08
So it's literally a classed alta fire underwater and it's burning
25:12
itself out. But they must have felt they
25:14
were in some sort of hellish pot where they were being boiled
25:17
alive. There was about 12 inches of
25:20
water. They managed to stop all the
25:22
leaks and they've had only one flashlight and for about 6
25:27
hours, the Navy divers tap are taking charge.
25:30
They find them, they tap on the hole, they let them there.
25:32
But for three hours, they weren't sure what's going on.
25:34
They had no way to communicate to the surface.
25:37
And they they even recalled Lawrence Brown was the only one
25:41
who actually gave an eyewitness testimony to this.
25:43
He said they stared at the clock for 15 hours until they couldn't
25:46
take it anymore. They couldn't talk.
25:48
The air was bad. So they tried resting every once
25:51
in a while, banging on the hole with a hammer.
25:54
The Navy dive has turned it over to a man named Shepard Shrieves.
25:57
Now Shrieves was a civilian dive master, and he would spend over
26:02
24 hours almost consecutively with brief breaks clearing the O
26:06
five, hooking up the the actual, the harnesses from the Ajax and
26:12
Hercules crane barges. And they would literally try to
26:15
lift it each time because there's no way to have any
26:17
submarine escape. They had tested through the
26:20
torpedo tubes, but one person would have had to remain.
26:26
So at some point, Brown and Bro were sitting there like I could
26:29
probably, well, one of us could escape, but they decided it's
26:33
either both of us or neither of us.
26:35
And there's something to be said about that for both of them.
26:38
Finally, 31 hours later, on the fourth attempt, three times the
26:43
crane had snapped, the hook had snapped, and they weren't able
26:46
to do it. They raised it to the surface
26:49
and they opened the Hatch through a gust of wind from the
26:53
pressure itself leaving the boat because they were under severe
26:57
pressure. The they actually haven't.
26:59
They have estimated between 25 and 50 PSI.
27:03
Yeah, the doctors that actually took that disagreed with it, but
27:07
bro would actually have case on disease because he was on
27:09
opening the Hatch. I believe he held his breath
27:12
because he was trying to actually crack open the Hatch
27:14
and keep him from popping open. And then he actually goes to the
27:18
O 7 to go and do a decompression chamber.
27:21
Almost died, but they managed to get him back into a healthy
27:25
state. So they're asking Brown because
27:28
Brown is the only one that's there still, they're badgering
27:30
him with questions. Now Brown's to his credit,
27:35
electricians May chief says that man saved my life.
27:38
Bro was the only reason I'm here to stay.
27:40
Completely unsparing and praised.
27:42
And bro to his credit was he's being whisked away.
27:45
I air sick said I didn't know what exactly was happening but I
27:49
wanted to stay and help if I could.
27:52
Can you imagine that? I mean, you and I have both been
27:55
through sub school. We've both been through.
27:57
I assume you went through escape training.
27:59
I did. There's no really way to tell
28:02
people how terrifying that is. Now I want to say something here
28:09
that maybe there may be our compatriots won't see the same
28:12
way. But you and I both have glasses.
28:17
I don't know what your vision is without glasses, but I know what
28:20
mine is. I'm essentially blind and being
28:23
in that escape tower without my glasses, you're having to feel.
28:28
I'm having to feel my way around things.
28:30
I can't see anything. It's not dark, but on a
28:34
submarine it would have been. I'll tell you, I I spent time
28:38
thinking about those things, more time than I should have
28:42
spent thinking about those kinds of things.
28:45
It's terrifying even now to sit here and think about that
28:49
submarine. Dark, stinky, The pressure's
28:52
building, the air is rancid, and all of a sudden this thing
28:56
starts jerking up and then falling back down and jerking up
28:59
and falling back down and jerking up and falling back down
29:01
and jerking up and you don't know if it's going to go up or
29:03
not. It's got to be terrifying.
29:07
Yeah, it's it really I I think about in so the disabled
29:12
submarine, especially in the interwar period, that was the
29:15
enduring submarine story. That was what everyone wanted to
29:18
know about the experience and especially rescue stories.
29:21
They loved hearing that because it was happening so
29:23
infrequently. Not too far away from 1923 and
29:27
1920, the S5 sank and it actually did this number and the
29:33
Afghan was peeking out and they were able to to drill into the
29:36
side of the hole to get help. They survived. 1921, you had the
29:41
S 48. They did the opposite number
29:43
where they actually had a shipyard worker climb out of the
29:46
torpedo tube in December off the Sound and managed to jump in the
29:50
water tie tie a rope to a bollock so they could climb out
29:54
when they needed to. Incredible stories of just hair
29:58
was but you also had plenty of stories like the S5 the S or not
30:02
the S5, the S4, the S 51 ones that are lost with all hands and
30:07
despite a valiant effort by many to rescue them, they they passed
30:11
away and they remain on eternal patrol.
30:15
So this is this is a huge story. This is a big deal that they
30:18
managed to rescue these people for their the first time without
30:20
any pleasant circumstances helping them with such as the
30:25
the angle of the ship being being out and bro actually
30:30
writes home. We have a write a letter that he
30:32
wrote to his mother and father and it basically says, gave us
30:37
an account of the story and he's, he's, he describes it in
30:41
enough detail. I believe it's his, I don't know
30:43
if it's unabridged, but we don't because we don't have the
30:45
original letter. And essentially it goes through.
30:47
He's like, we couldn't drink water out of the lead tanks
30:49
because we, we were worried about lead poisoning.
30:51
So these guys are well trained, they're intelligent and they're
30:55
doing the best they could. He says they're they spent their
30:57
time plugging up leaks. But this statement at the very
31:00
end is probably the bravest statement I ever heard in my
31:03
life because he just went underwent this.
31:05
This is five days later on November 3rd, he says.
31:08
Fortunately, it did not bother me at all.
31:13
I get out of here, I'm going to go out and other.
31:14
Him, but no he I'm. Going to go out on a limb and
31:16
say that's a lot. You got to go back because you
31:20
got to get back on the horse. But yeah, it's a, it's a weird
31:24
thing. So after this whole thing
31:26
happens, Brow tells tells his story.
31:29
What does what does he tell people about what happened?
31:33
Overall, we can't find much information on Brow besides that
31:36
letter. And like we said, Brown was the
31:38
primary teller of the story. He he was very effusive in his
31:41
praise towards Brow. I believe that the commanding
31:45
officer, Harrison Avery was listening in to that.
31:47
And Harrison Avery said that man deserves a Navy crossed and
31:51
you're thinking, oh, I thought he received the Medal of Honor.
31:52
He did and what's cool is the way that that award progressed.
31:56
Now in the military, you get recommended for award goes to a
31:59
chain of command and that's how you get it.
32:01
Harris Navy writes it and he sends it to his superiors.
32:04
Now one of them is actually RH English who was Comsa pact
32:07
during the Second World War. He was not that high up in the
32:10
rank yet, but RH English, I concur.
32:13
He sends it to AIM and Branson. He concurs.
32:16
That makes it's way to a man named Montgomery and Taylor.
32:19
Now Taylor doesn't get enough credit for what he did.
32:21
He wasn't a submariner himself, but he was the he was the
32:24
commander of the control force. He was a Rear Admiral.
32:27
Now he's also the same guy that took Captain Ernest King's
32:30
recommendation to to actually formalize a submarine badge, as
32:35
they called it at the time. Something became our fish.
32:38
He's the same one that said we need this, And then six months
32:41
later, when he heard nothing, recommended it once more.
32:44
So he did plenty for the submarine force.
32:47
He hears the story from bro about bro, and he says, no, that
32:51
man deserves the medal lot. So he actually upgrades the
32:53
recommendation. And that makes its way to the
32:56
Secretary of the Navy, Edwin Denby.
32:58
Denby concurs and sends out general order #25 it was
33:02
announced on February 20th, 1924.
33:05
They send out orders for him to travel via ship.
33:08
He makes his way. They said, all right, make it
33:10
here by March 5th 1924 and we're going to have a great award
33:15
ceremony we're going to have people here we're going to have
33:17
pictures taken and they wait and they're standing on the lawns of
33:20
the White House and bro never shows up so he what ends up
33:24
happening is we don't exactly know why newspapers couldn't
33:28
wait to jump on it like simple gobs snubs, presidential
33:31
appointment. They're, they're the only
33:33
account we get from him is he said to a local newspaper in New
33:37
York that that his parents were written to because I saw no
33:43
reason to hurry. But allegedly he did it because
33:47
he needed a new uniform. Is that not the ultimate second
33:50
class party officer? So he needed he needed a
33:56
uniform, probably all of his uniforms were lost during the
33:59
collision. We do have a a uniform
34:01
reimbursement chip for him that was bought for lot marine
34:04
losses, maritime losses. So he, he got a new uniform and
34:07
then the other portion is, I believe his ship was late.
34:11
I haven't been able to prove that.
34:12
But you know, Trent, we, we, we kind of assume, Oh yeah.
34:15
You just get on a train and you get there at some point or you
34:18
get on a ship and it's going to be punctual.
34:20
It's not always punctual. It's not always perfect.
34:22
They end up really redoing the ceremony on March 8th, 1924,
34:26
which is where we have the four pictures.
34:28
There are some lower quality ones that are for newspapers,
34:31
but the four, there's very 4 high quality ones that are the
34:34
original negatives from the Bain News Collection in the Library
34:37
of Congress. That's actually where the title,
34:39
the title, the cover page of my book is designed from.
34:43
He asks, he gets the Medal of Honor, shakes Calvin Coolidge's
34:46
hand and he says, can I get some leave to go home?
34:51
So they put him on a ship to New York.
34:55
They put him on a ship to New York and said, you have two
34:56
days. He meets up with his family,
34:59
which is where we get the Brooklyn, the Congressional
35:01
Medal of Honor Society has a loose paper clip bearing of his
35:03
visit. He's saying goodbye on the pier.
35:06
And they add they, he, he was not wearing his Medal of Honor.
35:09
He, he actually kept it in his pocket.
35:11
It was inscribed, but they, he kept it in his pocket.
35:14
And they, they ask him the what do you want?
35:17
What do you intend to do next? What do you want to do?
35:19
Do you want to stay on submarines the rest of your
35:20
life? And he says, I hope to tell you,
35:22
which was at that time, it's kind of now kind of now
35:25
antiquated, but I mean, emphatic agreement that he was hoping to
35:28
be a Navy man for the rest of his life.
35:31
And was he? He was, so he actually ends up
35:37
staying on O5, takes it up to Portsmouth where he gets
35:39
decommissioned. He gets out for 86 days, staying
35:43
some time in New York. I actually think he helped buy
35:45
his family a house in Great White, White Plains, NY, where
35:50
he would they would keep that address for a long period of
35:52
time. So that's why I think that he
35:53
helped buy and help him move in. He writes to his congressman,
35:56
the Honorable Benjamin Fairchild, and Fairchild writes
36:00
a letter on his behalf saying this man is a Congressional
36:02
Medal of Honor holder. He has requested to go to the
36:05
Asiatic Theatre and the Asiatic Theatre is the cool place to go
36:09
now. That's that's where you want to
36:11
go in the interwar period, get to go to China where the
36:13
American dollar goes further. And he's the reason he gives
36:16
this is like, I think it'll help my career.
36:19
So but the real, real reason is he's probably looking forward to
36:22
the Manila light life. And they they they agree.
36:27
They let him re enlist in Brooklyn and then he gets on a
36:30
ship and he makes his way out to the S 38 and he spends time out
36:34
in Manila. It's a, it's a, it's an
36:39
incredible story and it, it has it's amusing moments.
36:43
And as a former second class myself, I, I like it when they
36:48
push that push those limits. That's that always gets me in
36:52
there. So you've got this story, you
36:54
write this book. Tell me about that process.
36:56
How long did it take you? What, what did you enjoy?
36:58
What did you learn about yourself writing this thing?
37:03
The book itself was the easy part.
37:05
I I had a lot of fun writing it. So I had the assignment.
37:08
The assignment actually, yeah, believe it or not, I only ended
37:11
up getting about AC on it. The UK grading skill is
37:13
different, but my my supervisor was Micah, Micah Spester of the
37:18
University of Portsmouth. And he was like, great story,
37:21
great, great portions of it. It's looks more like an outline
37:24
for a book effectively is what he told me, rather than an
37:27
article. So that's why I start building
37:29
it up. I start building up these
37:30
sections and sure enough, it, it really just kind of wrote itself
37:35
because the official military personnel files, my my primary,
37:38
my primary means to actually build, reconstruct his life.
37:42
So like all like you and I have all this paperwork from our time
37:45
in the service. So did Brown.
37:47
He had 500 documents that have previously not been analyzed.
37:50
That's why I've been able to find so much on him as we were
37:53
able to track his career. Now that's great for career
37:55
stuff. How do I find out that, for
37:57
example, he was married and we didn't know that?
38:00
Well, he followed the dependence reimbursementship for travel
38:03
from when they were stationed up in Bremerton, WA back to Los
38:06
Angeles, back when there was a shipyard there.
38:09
So you have these small clues. You have to dig through all 500
38:12
files to spine small bits and pieces here and there.
38:15
And then you have to fill in the holes with a potential range of
38:17
response of range of possibility.
38:20
So sailors at that time had a reputation for, let me, I'll,
38:26
I'll come out and say it. A lot of things.
38:28
They were the cool people. They were, they were could they
38:31
could be a sex symbol for both masculine and feminine
38:33
archetypes. They're, they're the, the guys
38:36
you want to be in any case whatsoever because they actually
38:39
had access to a lot of material wealth that other people didn't
38:42
have. So there I try to represent that
38:45
as the varied range, but I say, hey, let's return to the
38:49
evidence. The evidence says this and the
38:52
evidence says he was married, He adopted a daughter.
38:55
The evidence says he purchased a car and at some point fell
38:59
behind on the car payments. No junior sailor has ever done
39:02
that. He he actually went to a a ton
39:08
of different ports that are really cool to look at.
39:10
And I looked at this and you'd say, all right, you could look
39:15
at it as a couple ways. You could look at him as a
39:16
foolhardy young sailor, or you could look at him as a guy that
39:19
just young ambitious sailor, or you could even look at it as he
39:24
was just a good sailor. That's all he wanted to be.
39:25
He intentionally made the effort to stay just a good sailor.
39:30
And for me personally reading it, I mean, he bro did a lot of
39:32
the mistakes I made, bro bro did a lot of the things that pushing
39:38
the boundaries that we talked about.
39:40
And in a lot of ways, I think a lot of sailors are going to look
39:42
at themselves in this book and they're going to real.
39:44
It helped me make peace with my career.
39:46
It was a very short career, but it helped me make peace with my
39:49
career and my path moving forward.
39:51
And it helped me realize that sailors, as much as we have
39:55
gotten, have changed. There's always still everyone
39:58
that this that disagrees that the old baby is better than the
40:01
current new Navy or stuff like that.
40:05
He he seems I'm just looking at his picture and that sideways
40:08
smile just says. I just love it.
40:11
Yeah. I I love seeing the, that's the,
40:15
that's the exhibit picture in the Nautilus.
40:17
And I saw the the crooked smile, the half cocked.
40:20
He's he's in front of the president.
40:22
I could picture, you could almost picture a conversation
40:24
where bro's sitting there with, let's say Chief Brown and Chief
40:27
Brown's like, bro, you're going to meet the president of the
40:30
United States. You're going to meet the
40:31
commander in chief, you better show up in a SAT uniform or
40:34
don't bother showing up at all. And he is like, OK, that makes
40:37
sense to me. And it's Calvin Coolidge on top
40:40
of all that. So that conversation was
40:43
probably short and to the point. However you want to look at it,
40:48
you've. Good job.
40:49
Shit mate, yeah. You got the book done.
40:51
You got it published. What?
40:53
As a as a potential author myself, I get people pinging on
40:56
me all the time. When you can read your book,
40:58
when you read your book. That's the part that scares me
41:01
is, is dealing with publishers. We live in the 21st century.
41:04
self-publishing is a deal. You didn't go that route.
41:08
Why? And what did you?
41:10
What was that experience like for you?
41:13
So I didn't go self-publishing because I I have a path that I
41:17
want to be an academic historian.
41:19
Now. self-publishing has absolutely become much more
41:21
accessible. It has also become much more
41:23
acceptable and there's no issue with self-publishing award.
41:26
Having said that, if you want to be an academic, it's still
41:29
viewed they're out, they're still behind the time.
41:31
They are still viewed as sub tier.
41:33
As a matter of fact, I just dealt with a peer reviewer for
41:36
one of my books on American American submariners during the
41:39
Second World War, their debt charge experience.
41:41
And one of the complaints was on Ron Smith's Torpedo Man.
41:44
And it's like, yeah, it's self published.
41:45
It's not really that good. Well, like there's there, hold
41:49
on. It's his experience.
41:50
It's his like that's what I'm analyzing is their experience.
41:53
Not not a factual retelling. So you that gives an idea of
41:58
what that looks like now, because I did that and I said I
42:03
remembered some advice again, Catherine Pierce, University of
42:06
Portsmouth, she said when you're starting to write your book,
42:09
what you're going to want to do is remember the publishers of
42:12
the books you cited. What that means is they already
42:16
have an interest in that area. Pen and Sword was one of the
42:19
publishers that I did, and I actually ended up doing that for
42:22
almost all of them. Now, here's the frustrating
42:24
part. You put a proposal together,
42:25
right? And the most infuriating thing
42:28
wasn't the rejection letters to me.
42:30
The infuriating thing with me was they very clearly didn't
42:33
read the proposal and the I can live with rejection.
42:39
And I did. There were actually a couple
42:41
ones that that should have stung, but it's, you know,
42:43
they're publishers, they need to sell books.
42:46
I apply. I sent it to about 40 and only
42:50
two actually ended up accepting me.
42:51
That's the Cambridge Scholars Press and the Pen and Sword
42:54
Maritime Press. I paid a pen and sword because
42:57
they were first. That's really what it came down
42:59
to. And they, the others said
43:03
varying things. There's like, yeah, we don't
43:05
publish biographies. And that's how I knew they
43:06
didn't read it because this isn't a biography, it's a micro
43:08
history. I I make that very clear about
43:11
the proposal that it's a micro history.
43:13
It uses bro's life as a vehicle to understand the sailor in the
43:17
20s and 30s, that it's never been really told from a
43:20
submariners perspective. Nope.
43:22
We don't write about biographies.
43:24
It's like, OK, got to go on to the next one.
43:27
That's OK. And I was lucky enough to pen
43:30
and sword. They showed interest.
43:32
About four months later, I had a contract in hand signed and
43:36
you're like, OK, that's it. That's the end of it.
43:38
Right now. It begins the marketing phase.
43:40
And the marketing phase, like you're saying a couple months, a
43:42
bit ago, the marketing phase is actually one of the more
43:44
difficult ones overall for if you're writing submarine stuff,
43:49
you know, the general audience can be subbed to veterans.
43:52
But this is this is the Medal of Honor also adds a certain amount
43:56
of authenticity to an account. So the second you have someone
44:00
with the Medal of Honor, you can probably tell their story a
44:02
little bit easier than most. And that's kind of where I've
44:05
leaned towards my audience in general.
44:07
So I would say of all the parts, the marketing has been the most
44:10
stressful and the most annoying because you have to be
44:13
persistent. You don't know if you're doing
44:15
it right. The, my, my initial
44:19
understanding is the book sales are going good, but you never
44:22
know if you're doing it right until you get to that point.
44:24
And even if you're like what? There's still a part of you
44:26
that's like, I could have probably done it better this way
44:28
because you learn as you go. So you did a book book signing
44:33
this past week, right? Yes.
44:36
At the Connecticut Maritime Heritage Festival.
44:39
And that was an enjoyable experience for you.
44:40
What's that like? I mean, you, you talked about
44:42
the other guy telling you you were displaying your books
44:45
wrong. That's I mean, they're books.
44:48
How do you display them? And the guy walks up and says,
44:49
hey, you're doing this wrong. You could have gotten snarky
44:53
about it, but you didn't. Oh, he was a great guy.
44:56
His name is Matt. He actually runs teacup signs.
44:59
I actually ended up buying one of his art pieces, the the fish
45:02
emblem he has. And he was explaining he's like,
45:05
hey, graphic artist design, please let me help you with
45:07
this. So I'd only had one book out and
45:10
then he he actually spreads them out.
45:13
And the reason I was like, OK, there's something to this is
45:15
because that's exactly how Pen and Sword has been marketing my
45:18
book. They've been showing it like
45:20
multiple copies arranged. It's pleasing to the eye.
45:22
And I'm like, OK, this guy knows what he's talking about.
45:24
I'm not going to, I'm not going to interject if he's going to
45:26
help me. And he absolutely did help.
45:28
I ended up giving about 140 business cards away.
45:31
The business cards are, do I have more I'm running out?
45:35
The business cards have the picture of the book on the back,
45:38
QR codes to the Facebook page and my LinkedIn profile.
45:41
So it was really cool to talk about the growth and it was
45:45
really cool to see people in Connecticut where he's from.
45:48
Obviously they're all what's going on with this.
45:51
Never heard of this. Or there were a couple sailors
45:53
who were like, yeah, I know exactly who you're talking
45:55
about. And I'm like, yeah, I'm the
45:57
first one to write the book. And that's really actually
46:01
allegedly there's AI haven't met him yet.
46:04
There's AFT one bro on the USS Idaho.
46:07
And he's like his great, great nephew.
46:09
So maybe I made a connection that way.
46:11
I'm hoping they'll come out to a book signing at Epicure Brewery
46:13
in here. But it's it's, it was an
46:16
absolutely pleasant experience. I actually got pretty sunburned.
46:20
I thought my mom's from India, so I don't usually get
46:24
sunburned, but I was out in the sun for about 8 hours both days.
46:28
I get home, my, my wife, who's very pale.
46:31
It's like, yeah, you're going to get burnt.
46:32
Like, no, it's fine. No big.
46:35
Turns out living 10 years and 10 years as a Yankee, That'll
46:39
that'll, that'll take out all your pigmentation.
46:42
I grew up, like I said in Mountain West End up on my boat.
46:46
We pulling into Hawaii. The first time I'd been to
46:48
Hawaii 84 and they needed someone to go topside to rig
46:53
cleats. Pulling into Pearl, Sure, I'll
46:57
do that. So I popped up the Hatch.
46:58
The first thing that happened when I popped through the Hatch
47:00
was I was looking out towards the Pacific.
47:04
Not said to my friend is those islands don't look very big.
47:10
He said turn around. So I did.
47:12
And of course there's Diamond Head and everything else.
47:14
But yeah, I was up there for like 20 minutes and got burnt to
47:18
almost to a crisp because I'm, I'm, I'm pale as well.
47:23
So those are the great kind of stories.
47:25
So what's next? You've you've told this story,
47:30
You're going to sell lots of books.
47:31
I hope everybody that's listening should be going to get
47:34
a book. They make great Christmas
47:36
presents and birthday presents. That's what I told my wife the
47:40
other day, kind of. Stuff so.
47:44
What's next? Where do you go from here?
47:46
So my biggest project right now is my PhD research for the
47:49
University of Portsmouth. I did so well online.
47:52
They were like, yeah, we we'll give you a chance to do it
47:54
virtually basically. And the use, the reason they
47:57
used to justify was location for archives.
48:00
Some by archives primarily are in Groton, here in Washington,
48:03
DC, Saint Louis. But I, I would like to be an
48:07
academic researcher full time at some point.
48:11
PhD is going to be a prerequisite to this.
48:12
But the naval history aspect, never going to leave it.
48:16
I have articles that are coming out.
48:18
I have articles that are out my pretty good historical profile.
48:20
My, my three primary areas of research are actually American
48:25
naval capital, American naval capital towns.
48:27
I call them NCTS. That's places like Rotten,
48:30
that's places like Bremerton, that's places that have built an
48:34
identity that's associated with naval capital.
48:36
So the shipyards, the bases in the area, and I, I think that's
48:40
a fascinating subject that's been, I don't think anyone's
48:42
ever really looked at it the way I have because it's, it
48:46
decenters the military industrial complex or the
48:48
defense industry. It decenters it and says, all
48:51
right, if we stop looking at it, it is happening in this far off
48:54
distant place like Washington and we start looking at, oh,
48:57
electric boat down the road does it, or the submarine base that
49:01
everyone talks about is there. That would actually change the
49:05
perspective of where that what actually happens to that money
49:07
and where it gets channeled to the other one is American
49:11
submariners and a primarily it's from 1915 to 1939 right now.
49:15
I do have some interest in other areas like the loss of the
49:18
threshold impact on submarine force afterwards.
49:21
I don't, I don't try to nothing against people who try to
49:25
actually understand what happened for the threshold
49:27
Scorpion. I, I try not to go into those,
49:30
those areas and I try to understand what happened after.
49:34
And, and that's specifically how it impacted my own career and my
49:37
own historicity because, well, most submariners at the thresher
49:41
can thank unfortunately, the crew there for, for letting us
49:46
have these great boats that keep us safe to this day.
49:51
And finally, British priveteers. Now that's not as important to
49:54
this discussion, but British priveteers are a weird.
49:57
We know American priveteers, we know John Paul Jones, we know
50:01
French priveteers, Soukouf, all the, all the ones that attacked
50:04
during the poleonic wars. But British privateers, not
50:07
really too much. They, they're weird.
50:09
They're more opportunistic. They take the time they, they
50:12
did convoy missions. So imagine that these commerce
50:15
Raiders, they were protecting from other commerce Raiders.
50:17
They, they, they, they're very strange.
50:20
They basically filled in gaps for the Royal Navy wasn't fully
50:22
there yet. So they're almost private
50:23
contractors that we that, that was a very unique British way of
50:27
war that Americans also adopted by heritage as well.
50:30
So it's a really interesting little research.
50:33
That's why I did my master's thesis on and I'm hoping to make
50:35
it into a book or a series of articles.
50:37
I haven't decided which one yet. But yeah, naval history, love
50:42
it. I've loved every second of my
50:43
history work in Portsmouth and Southern New Hampshire.
50:47
And I look forward to bringing more, especially for the
50:50
submariners to understand the kind of a forgotten period.
50:54
That's where most of our cultural cultural symbols came
50:57
from. The diving tower was founded in
51:00
1930s as a direct response to the disabled submarines.
51:04
You have the submarine warfare Insignia fish, they were, they
51:08
were formalized in 1924, your bro 1924.
51:13
You have all these small cultural artifacts that happened
51:15
in that period. And to me, that's indication of
51:17
a strong and salient culture that no one's really taking the
51:20
time to look at. Well, it is the silent service,
51:23
so maybe it's time to open that up a little bit.
51:29
If you had to give the elevator pitch for the book, what is it?
51:34
The Silent Services First Hero is about a person who put
51:38
himself at great personal risk to save his shipmate's life.
51:43
If that isn't deserving of a read, I don't know what is.
51:48
Ryan Walker, he's the author of a new book called Henry Bro, the
51:51
Silent Services First Hero, which you can get where?
51:55
I know it's on Amazon, but it's pre-order on Amazon.
51:57
But where else can you get it? Currently you can order it
52:01
directly from the publisher at Pen and Sword, the UK UK you can
52:05
get it delivered to the United States.
52:08
One retailer I found that's actually cheaper than how much
52:11
anywhere else you can get it is Blackwells.
52:12
They are a retailer in the UK. The price I saw was $27.00 and
52:17
you can get it with free shipping as well.
52:19
There you go folks, check it out.
52:21
Plus he's on the web. You can find him on Facebook.
52:23
He's a member of our sub vet group.
52:25
Ryan's out there looking for you to talk to him about Henry Bro
52:30
Ryan. It's been great to talk to you.
52:32
Looking forward to these other books as well.