If by handling you mean you want to avoid it, then set the soTimeout on the HttpConnectionManager and use that to configure a message-sender for the gateway.
Code:
<bean id="httpConnectionManager"
class="org.apache.commons.httpclient.MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager">
<property name="params">
<bean class="org.apache.commons.httpclient.params.HttpConnectionManagerParams"
p:soTimeout="5000" <!-- 5 seconds -->
p:maxTotalConnections="100"
p:defaultMaxConnectionsPerHost="100">
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="httpSender"
class="org.springframework.ws.transport.http.CommonsHttpMessageSender">
<constructor-arg name="httpClient">
<bean class="org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpClient"
p:httpConnectionManager-ref="httpConnectionManager"/>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>
<int-ws:outbound-gateway
message-sender="httpSender"
and the usual stuff />