Trieste's first deep dives

Auguste Piccard · 1953 CE – 1958 CE · Earth

Trieste's first deep dives — Auguste Piccard · 1953 CE – 1958 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Prove that a bathyscaphe of his own design could carry a crew to great depth and bring it back unaided.

Historical context

A sphere hung from a cable can go no deeper than the cable is long, and Piccard judged the cable's breaking its most serious danger. His answer was to cut it: a float of light petrol for lift, iron shot for ballast, and a craft that would rise by itself if the current failed. His first bathyscaphe, FNRS-2, passed to the French Navy; the second, Trieste, built with his son Jacques and with Swiss and Italian help, was launched on 1 August 1953 and proved the idea off Capri and Ponza within two months.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Launched at Castellammare

    1 August 1953

    On 1 August 1953, the Swiss national holiday, the giant crane of the Navalmeccanica yard at Castellammare di Stabia lowers into the harbour a float fifteen metres long with a steel ball bolted under it.

  2. First deep dive off Capri

    August 1953

    After trials in the harbour and in forty metres of water, the Trieste is towed out on 25 August; next day father and son dive south of Capri and settle in mud at 594 fathoms, about 1,086 metres.

  3. Towed towards Ponza

    1953 CE

    The bathyscaphe cannot go far under its own power, so a tug drags it: late in September the Italian Navy's Tenace leaves Castellammare at four in the afternoon, runs past Capri and Ischia and tows it through the night towards the deep plateau south of Ponza.

  4. Down through the basin

    30 September 1953

    At dawn, in a medium swell, father and son climb down into a sphere two metres across; the air tanks flood and the Trieste sinks ever faster, past the depth Beebe reached and past its own dive off Capri.

  5. Three thousand one hundred and fifty metres

    30 September 1953

    On 30 September 1953, south of Ponza, the Trieste settles on mud; the gauges read 325 atmospheres, which Piccard gave as 3,150 metres, more than three times the depth Beebe reached.

  6. Sold to a navy

    1958 CE

    After 1953 money runs short. The Trieste dives with scientists from 1954 and with American funds in 1957, off Capri and Ponza, and in 1958 the United States Office of Naval Research buys it.

Outcome

3,150 metres south of Ponza on 30 September 1953, in Piccard's figure, a depth record until the French FNRS-3 went deeper in February 1954, and a craft the United States Navy bought in 1958.

Auguste Piccard

Physicist who took a sealed cabin into the stratosphere and designed the bathyscaphe, a free deep-diving craft; by his own account the submarine idea came first.

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Sources

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