He did not set out to be a hero. Most submariners did not. They signed on for steady work, for a trade, for the promise of learning a machine well enough that it would not kill them. Frank Nelson Horton belonged to that quiet fraternity of men who understood engines the way farmers understand soil. He knew how things were supposed to sound, how they smelled when they were healthy, and how to tell when trouble was coming before it arrived at full speed.

The irony is that history remembers men like Horton precisely because they never sought remembrance.