Medal of Honor Winner Henry Breault
Henry Breault was born in Putnam, Connecticut on October 14th, 1900. At the age of sixteen, Henry enlisted in the British Royal Navy, where he served for four years. He then proceeded to enlist in the United States Navy. He attended submarine school in Groton, Connecticut, and on October 28th, 1923, he found himself onboard the USS O-5, a submarine that was based at Coco Solo in the Canal Zone. The sub was under the command of Commander Submarine Force; on this fateful day the commander, Lieutenant Harrison Avery, was given orders to escort three other submarines through the Panama Canal and into deep water on the Pacific side. It was a Sunday, early in the morning, as the O-5 led a column of submarines consisting of O-3 (SS-64), O-6 (SS-67), and O-8 (SS-69) across Limon Bay toward the entrance to the Panama Canal near Cristobal.
At the same time the steamship SS Abangarez, owned by the United Fruit Company and being captained by Master W.A. Card, was on its way toward Dock No. 6 at Cristobal. Unbeknownst to the parties involved it was on a collision course. At 6:22 a.m. Captain Card, seeing that a collision was about to transpire, sounded a danger signal. The Abangarez quickly backed emergency full speed and dropped her starboard anchor. The O-5 did not acknowledge the danger signal and held her rudder amidships, continuing on her southerly heading. Two minutes later, at 6:24, the Abangarez struck the starboard side of the submarine. A ten foot long hole was ripped into the O-5 and she rolled to port about fifteen degrees, righted, and in less than a minute sank bow first in forty two feet of water. The Abangarez was left undamaged.
The steamship was able to pick up eight survivors, among them the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Harrison Avery. They had either been topside or climbed up quickly through the conning tower hatch when the collision occurred. Several other sailors were saved by nearby tugs and ships in the area. A total of sixteen crewmen were rescued, but five remained missing. The bodies of two of these missing men were later recovered; one man was never seen again. Henry Breault had been at his post, working in the torpedo room when the collision rocked the O-5. As he headed up the ladder to reach topside, he realized that Chief Electrician’s Mate Lawrence Brown had been asleep below. Instead of going over the side to safely escape the sinking vessel, Henry Breault made a courageous decision, one that would eventually win him the Medal of Honor.
Henry turned around and went below to get Brown, his good friend, who was now wide awake but unaware that the order to abandon ship had been given. Breault shut the deck hatch over his head just at the moment that the bow went under. The two men headed aft to attempt an exit through the Control Room, but the water coming into the compartment made that escape route impossible to use. As the water rose around them, they made it into the torpedo room.
Meanwhile, rescue efforts began almost immediately as divers were sent down from a salvage tug that arrived from Coco Solo. There were no artificial breathing devices at this time. To search for trapped personnel men had to dive down into the water in diving suits and hammer on the hull, hoping for a response. Sheppard J. Shreaves, the supervisor of the Panama Canal’s salvage crew, took it upon himself to make these dives. When he heard the trapped men return his hammer blows from the torpedo room he knew they were still alive.
“I could spot the O-5 on the bottom by the air bubbles exhausted from the compartment where Breault and Brown were trapped. To survive, they were bleeding air from 3,000-pound compressed air reserves in the forward torpedo room. Since the Navy divers had given me a good briefing on the position of the O-5 and the location of the two trapped men, I went right in through her side. The light of my lamp was feeble against the pitch black. The inside was in an awful mess, and it was tight and slippery going. I was constantly pushing away floating debris. When I reached the forward bulkhead of the engine room I hit it with my diving hammer. Faint raps were returned. Breault and Brown were alive. I acknowledged their taps, but almost with a feeling of hopelessness because I couldn’t do anything for them at the time.”
The technology of the day was limited in what it could do to salvage a submerged vessel. There were two options, lift it physically from the mud by using cranes or pontoons. There were no pontoons within two thousand miles of the disaster area, but as luck would have it two of the largest crane barges in the world, Ajax and Hercules, were located in the Canal Zone. They had been built in Germany specifically for handling the huge gates of the canal locks. By midnight, the Ajax had arrived, but not before a freak landslide that hindered its progress through the canal had been cleared enough to let her squeeze through.
Divers began the treacherous work of tunneling under the O-5’s bow so cables could be attached. The 38 year old, barrel chested Shreaves had been working non-stop through the night to dig the tunnel, work the cable under the sub, and hook it to Ajax’s hoist. When the lift began the cables broke. Shreaves and his men managed to work another cable set under the bow and the crane tried once more. But the cable broke again. Finally, on the third try, the huge crane was able to pull the submarine free from the mud and ooze of the ocean floor. The O-5 broke the surface a little before midnight and Henry breault and Lawrence Brown escaped the certain death they had been facing. They had been submerged for thirty one hours.
Henry Breault received the Medal of Honor from President Calvin Coolidge on March 8th, 1924, for the inspired valor he showed by not deserting his friend to a watery grave. Sheppard Shreaves was recognized with a Congressional Lifesaving Medal and a gold watch that the Coco Solo Submarine Base gave him for his heroism. Breault died of a heart condition two days before Pearl Harbor, in Newport, Rhode Island, at the age of forty one. He has had a bridge in his hometown of Putnam, where he is buried, dedicated to him and a Navy pier in Hawaii bears his name. Shreaves lived into his early eighties, having made over one thousand dives, none more important than the ones that made sure that Henry Breault’s bravery that long ago day did not go for naught.
