The Rescuer

About this book

This is the story of a man and a ship. He was a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy but the ship was not his command. Yet on May 23, 1939, it seemed as if all this man’s vision, doggedness and life’s work had been shaped directly toward that place and that moment when the submarine “Squalus” fell 243 feet to the bottom of the sea, trapping fifty-nine men within her. He was Charles Bowers Momsen, 43, an Annapolis graduate who entered the submarine service in 1921 and for years had been a thorn in the flesh of the Navy establishment.