Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER SEVEN.

  HISTORICAL BUT NOT HEAVY.

  There can be no question of the fact that authentic history sends itsroots into the subsoil of fabulous antiquity. In turning to the recordsof submarine exploration we are staggered on the very threshold of thequestion with obvious absurdity. We are depressed. We seek to diveinto our subject, but find it too deep for us. If we were to put on thelatest "patent improved diving-dress," with all its accompaniments ofdouble-extra pumps, pipes, powers, and purchases, and descend to a depthof antiquity that would suffice to collapse a whale, we should findnothing but idiotic speculation in the midst of chaotic darkness.

  In this chapter we shall give a mere outline, and even that somewhatdisjointed, of the subject of diving. We feel tempted to pass by thefabulous period altogether, but fear lest, in our effort to eschew thefalse, we do damage to the true. Perhaps, therefore, it were well towalk humbly in the beaten path of our forefathers, and begin at thebeginning.

  It is not certain whether Adam was a diver. There is reason to believethat he wore no "dress" of any kind at first, so that, if he dived atall, he must have used his natural powers alone. These powers, we learnfrom the best authorities, are barely sufficient to enable a man to stayunder water for two minutes at the furthest. Experience corroboratesthese "best authorities." It has been asserted that pearl-divers cansometimes stay under water as long as three, four, and even fiveminutes, but we don't believe the assertion. If the reader does, wehave no hesitation in pronouncing him--or her--credulous.

  To return to Adam. We have no doubt whatever that he--perhaps Evealso--could dive. It is possible, though not probable, that they"guddled" small trout in the streams of Paradise, and dived for the bigones in the deeper pools. We _may_ be wrong in supposing that they did,but he would certainly be bold who should assert that they did _not_.Unfortunately neither Adam nor Eve used the pen, therefore we have noauthentic records as to the art of diving at that period of the world'shistory.

  The first writer who makes reference to diving is Homer, who is supposedto have lived somewhere about a thousand years before the Christian era,and he refers to it not as a novelty but in an off-hand way that provesit to have been at that time a well-known art, practised for the purposeof obtaining oysters. Then we find Aeschylus comparing mental vision tothe strong natural eye of the "deep diver." But Thucydides speaks moredefinitely of divers having been employed at the siege of Syracuse tocut down barriers which had been constructed below water; to damage theGrecian vessels while attempting to enter the harbour, and, generally,to go under and injure the enemy's ships. All this inclines us to thinkthey must at that time have learned to supplement their natural powerswith artificial.

  Livy mentions the fact that the ancients employed divers for the purposeof recovering property from the sea. The Rhodians had a law fixing theshare of the recovered treasure which was due to the divers who savedit. According to this law the remuneration was in proportion to thedepth from which it was brought up, and the risk incurred. But as thesedivers considered four fathoms or thereabouts an extreme and dangerousdepth, it is probable that they did their work in the natural waywithout the aid of apparatus.

  For the benefit of the credulous we may mention several statements whichhave been more or less received. The Dutch were once celebrated divers,and it is reported that some of them have remained under water more thanan hour! From this report some have argued that these Dutchmen musthave possessed artificial means of maintaining life below water. Tothis we reply, if that were so, is it likely that the reporter who madereference to the length of time spent below water was ignorant as to themeans--if any--by which this apparent miracle was accomplished? And ifhe was not ignorant, would he have passed over such means in silence?The idea is absurd. The probability is rather that the reporter hadbeen gulled, or was fond of drawing the "long bow."

  Again, mention is made by one Mersennius of a man who could remain sixhours under water! If Mersennius were in a position to becomeacquainted with that diver's powers, how comes it that he failed tobecome acquainted with his apparatus? Simply because there was no suchapparatus, and the whole affair is a fable.

  But the most remarkable of these stories is recorded by a certain FatherKircher, who might appropriately be styled a father of lies! Here is_his_ fabrication:--

  In the time of Frederick of Sicily there lived a man named NicoloPesce,--Nicholas the Fish. This man's powers seem to have beendecidedly superhuman. He was evidently an amphibious animal. Heappears to have acted the part of ocean-postman in these old times, forit is related of him that he used to carry letters for the king far andwide about the Mediterranean. On one occasion a vessel found him out ofsight of land in the discharge of ocean-postal duty--bearing despatchesof the king from Sicily to Calabria. They took him on board and had achat with him. It is not said that they smoked a friendly pipe with himor gave him a glass of grog, but we think it probable that they did!After a little rest and refreshment Nicholas the Fish bade themgood-bye, jumped overboard, and continued his voyage. The end of thispoor man was very sad. The king, being seized with an insane desire toknow something about the depths of the terrible gulf of Charybdis,offered Nicholas a golden cup if he would dive down and explore them.He dived accordingly, remained below nearly an hour, and brought back aglowing account of the wonders and horrors of the seething whirlpool.The king, far from being satisfied, became more than ever desirous ofknowledge. He asked Nicholas to dive again, and tempted him with theoffer of another and larger cup, as well as a purse of gold. The poorFish, after some hesitation, again dived into the gulf and was nevermore heard of!

  We don't wonder at it. The greatest wonder is, that Nicolo Pesce everobtained a place in the encyclopaedias of the world. From the fact,however, that he has been thus rescued from oblivion, we conclude, thatalthough much that is said of him is false, the man himself was not amyth, but a fact; that he was a man of the Captain Webb type, whopossessed extraordinary powers of swimming, perhaps of diving, to theextent, it may be, of nearly three minutes, and that he possibly losthis life by rashly venturing into the vortex of some dangerouswhirlpool. That he did not use diving apparatus of any kind is clearfrom the fact that nothing is said about such apparatus, which, had itreally existed, would have claimed as much attention and caused as muchtalk as did the man himself.

  The earliest authentic records we have of the use of diving apparatusbelong to the beginning of the sixteenth century. In an edition ofVegetius on the _Art of War_, published in 1511, there is an engravingof a diver walking in the sea with a cap over his head and shoulders,from which a flexible tube rises to the surface. This was, no doubt,the embryo of our "diving-dress." John Taisner, in 1538, says that hesaw two Greeks, at Toledo in Spain, make experiments with divingapparatus, in presence of the Emperor Charles the Fifth and ten thousandspectators. Gaspar Schott of Numberg, in 1664, refers to this Greekmachine as an "aquatic kettle;" but mentions, as preferable in hisestimation, a species of "aquatic armour," which enabled those who woreit to walk under water. The "aquatic kettle" was doubtless the embryoof the diving-bell.

  From that time onward inventive minds have been turned, with more orless success, towards the subject of submarine operations, and many arethe contrivances--clever, queer, absurd, and useful--which have been theoutcome. Not content with "kettles" and "bells," by means of which theycould descend into the deep and remain there for an hour or more at atime, and with "armour" and "dresses" with which they could walk aboutat the bottom of the sea, men have constructed several submarine boatsand machines, in which, shut up like Jonah in the whale, they purposedto move about from place to place, sink to the bottom and rise to thesurface, at will, or go under the bottoms of enemy's ships and fixtorpedoes wherewith to blow them up, and otherwise do them damage.These latter machines have not attained to any noteworthy degree ofsuccess--at least they have not yet done either much good or much harmto the human race; but the former--the "kettles" and the "
armour,"--inother words, the "diving-bells" and "dresses"--have attained to a highdegree of perfection and efficiency, and have done incalculable goodservice.

  The diving-bell was so styled owing to the first machines being made inthe shape of a gigantic bell. An inverted wine-glass, thrust mouthdownwards into water, will not fill with water, owing to the air whichit contains keeping the water out. It will partially fill, however,because air is compressible, and the deeper down it is thrust the morewill the air be compressed. At a depth of thirty-three feet the airwill be compressed to half its bulk--in other words, the glass will behalf-full of water. It is clear that a fly or any small insect couldlive in the air thus confined although thrust to great depths underwater. But it could not live long, because air becomes unfit for useafter being breathed a certain time, and cannot sustain life. Hence, ifwe are to preserve the life of our fly, we must send fresh air down toit.

  The first diving-bells were made so large that the air contained in themsufficed for a considerable period--an hour or more. When this air hadlost its life-sustaining qualities, the bell had to be drawn up and theair renewed. This was so inconvenient that ingenious men soon hit onvarious plans to renew the air without raising the bells. One plan,that of Dr Halley, was to send air down in tight casks, which wereemptied into the bell and then sent up, full of water, for a freshsupply of air, while the foul air was let out of the bell by a valve inthe top. Another plan was to have tubes from the bell to the surface bywhich air was made to circulate downwards, at first being forced down bya pair of bellows, and afterwards by means of air-pumps.

  Round the inside of the bell ran a seat for the divers. One or moreholes fitted with thick plate-glass, gave them light and enabled them touse the various tools and implements required in their vocation. Fromsome of these bells, a man could be sent out, when at or near thebottom, having on a water-tight head-piece connected by a tube with theair inside the bell. He could thus move about with more freedom thanhis comrades inside, but of course could not travel further than thelength of his tube, while, being wet, he could not endure the cold forany great length of time.

  As time went on the form of the bell was improved until that of a squareor oblong box of iron came to be generally adopted. The bell now in useis that which was made in 1788 by the celebrated engineer Smeaton, whoapplied the air forcing-pump to it, and otherwise brought the machine toa high degree of perfection. He used it with great advantage in theworks at Ramsgate harbour, and Smeaton's diving-bell, improved byRennie, has continued in constant and general use on all submarine worksuntil a very recent period. It has now been almost entirelysuperseded--except in the case of some special kinds of work--by thediving-dress--the value and the use of which it is the province of ourtale to illustrate and expound.

  In regard to the diving-dress, we may say that it has grown out of the"aquatic armour" of the olden time, but no great advance in itsimprovement was made until the end of the eighteenth and beginning ofthe present centuries, when the names of Rowe, Halley, Spalding,Bushwell, and Colt, appear in connection with various clevercontrivances to facilitate diving operations. Benjamin Martin, a Londonoptician, made a dress of strong leather in 1778 which fitted his armsand legs as well as his trunk, and held half a hogshead of air. Withthis he could enter the hold of a sunk vessel, and he is said to havebeen very successful in the use of it. Mr Kleingert of Breslau, in1798, designed a dress somewhat like the above, part of which, however,was made of tin-plate. The diving-dress was greatly improved by MrDeane, and in the recovery of guns, etcetera, from the wreck of the_Royal George_, in 1834 to 1836, as well as in many other operations,this dress--much improved, and made by Mr Siebe, under Deane'sdirections--did signal service.

  It has now been brought to a high state of perfection by the well-knownsubmarine engineers Siebe and Gorman, Heinke and Davis, and others, ofLondon, and Denayrouze of Paris. It encases the diver completely fromhead to foot, is perfectly water-tight, and is made of thick sheetindia-rubber covered on both sides with tanned twill--the helmet andbreast-plate being metal.

  For further information on this subject we refer the inquisitive readerto the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, to the descriptive pamphlets of thesubmarine engineers above named, and to an admirable little book styled_The Conquest of the Sea_, by Henry Siebe, which contains a full andgraphic account in detail of almost everything connected with diving andsubmarine engineering. [See Note 1.]

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  Note 1. It may interest practical spirits to know that they can _see_the diving-dress and apparatus in operation, by going to Number 17 MasonStreet, Westminster Bridge Road, London, where Messrs. Siebe and Gormanhave erected a large Tank for the purpose of illustrating theirapparatus. At the Alexandra Palace, also, Messrs. Denayrouze andCompany have a tank for the same purpose.