One hundred years later, it remains one of the greatest survival stories in Navy history.

The submarine USS S-5 (SS-110) was off the Delaware Capes practicing a crash dive on Sept. 1, 1920, before heading to Baltimore as part of a recruiting trip.

Protocol dictated that the main air induction valve, which fed oxygen to the submarine’s diesel engines, be left open until the engines came to a complete stop and then close just before the submarine submerged.

But a faulty valve prevented it from closing, pouring seawater into the submarine, which, pointed at a downward angle, hit the bottom of the sea floor. For the next 37 hours, the crew would be trapped.

Diver Erik Petkovic, who lives in Maryland, came across the story of the S-5 about 15 years ago, when he was researching Navy shipwrecks. It's a heroic tale he said many are not familiar with.

This past winter, he began talking with Capt. Rustin Cassway, operator of the Cape May, N.J.-based shipwreck diving boat Research Vessel Explorer, about planning a dive to the final resting place of the submarine to commemorate the 100th anniversary of its sinking and the historic rescue that followed.

The men began perusing the internet in search of the obituaries of the crew members, now long gone, to find any living descendants whom they could contact.

That led them to Kathy Steward of Waterford, whose grandfather Charles F. Grisham was an officer aboard the S-5.

Steward, whose husband, Dan, served as first selectman of Waterford for 14 years, said she was originally skeptical when she answered a call from an unknown number one morning several months ago. She spent the next hour on the phone with Cassaway, who explained what he and Petkovic wanted to do: dive to the wreck to photograph it, and they wanted Steward to join the excursion.

“It was like a gift,” Steward said of the call.

She fondly remembers her grandfather coming home from work, putting on his silk smoking jacket and sitting with her in a big, red leather chair in the den of his home in Hamden to "talk about things 10-year-olds wanted to talk about." It wasn't until after he died in 1977 that her mother, the youngest of Grisham’s five kids, told the story of the S-5 in “a very heroic, loving way.”

The account of those harrowing 37 hours is detailed in the book “Under Pressure, The Final Voyage of Submarine S-Five” by A.J. Hill.

The crew made several attempts to pump water from the submarine to raise it from the sea floor. In the control room of the submarine, several hours in, Grisham was thinking about his wife, Mary.

“In spite of himself, he imagined the scene: Mary answering the door, her hair done up in the scarf she wore when she was cleaning. According to Navy tradition there’d be two people on the doorstep, one a senior officer from the base and the other probably a chaplain. Charlie could picture Mary’s expression, the little frown she got when she was worried growing deeper as the implications of the visit became clearer,” Hill wrote in his book.

'Hell by compass'

Eventually the crew was able to blow water from the aft tanks, situated at the rear of the submarine, causing the boat to rise from the sea floor. Knowing the depth of the water, the submarine’s commander, Charles M. “Savvy” Cooke Jr., thought there was a good chance that the ship’s stern was protruding above the water’s surface. So the crew began to drill a hole in the hull.

“When air and not water was the result, the crew cheered and set to work to extricate themselves with fresh strength and hope,” Cooke said in a 1920 New York Times article.

Twenty-four hours after crew members began drilling, the hole was only about six inches long by eight inches wide. A sailor’s undershirt was rigged to a length of brass pipe and put out through the hole as an improvised distress signal.

Luck struck when a crew member on the small wooden freighter Alanthus, which was passing nearby, noticed an usual object protruding from the water. Through Morse code hull taps, the Alanthus determined that the S-5’s crew was still alive.

“In one of the most famous submarine signals, in response to 'Where bound?' the S-5 replied 'Hell by compass,'” an account on the Naval History and Heritage Command’s website says.

Alanthus signaled to another steamer, SS General G.W. Goetha, which had the necessary tools to enlarge the hole enough to enable the 38 men aboard the submarine to escape. Cooke, the commander, was the last one off.

The S-5 ultimately was not able to be saved. The battleship USS Ohio (BB-12) tried to tow the submarine to shallower water but the cable connecting the two vessels parted and the S-5 sank again. The exact location of the submarine was unknown for decades afterward. In July 2001, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship Whiting located the S-5.

Steward said for health reasons given the coronavirus pandemic, she will not be joining the dive to the site of the wreck Tuesday. But she's giving her son-in-law, who is going in her place, her grandfather's hat to bring with him. She said she's eagerly awaiting his recount of the trip and to see the images from the dive.

For Petkovic, one of the expedition leaders, any dive to the site of a shipwreck is sacred. Add to that, they will be diving on the centennial of the submarine's sinking and bringing descendants of the crew members there.

"We're connecting history with family," he said.

j.bergman@theday.com