The half-mile dives off Bermuda

William Beebe and Otis Barton · 1934 CE · Earth

The half-mile dives off Bermuda — William Beebe and Otis Barton · 1934 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Lower a steel sphere half a mile into the open Atlantic and describe what lives there.

Historical context

Until 1930 everything known about deep-sea animals came from nets, which arrived at the surface full of crushed and faded remains. Beebe's answer was to go and look, inside a ball of steel hung on a single cable, with no way of getting out and no way of coming up except the winch. The half-mile dive of 15 August 1934 was the last, and the deepest anyone would go for fifteen years.

The voyage, step by step

  1. The station on Nonsuch

    1934 CE

    Beebe's laboratory occupies a fourteen-acre island at the mouth of Castle Harbour, from which he has been dredging one patch of ocean for six years.

  2. The Ready on station

    1934 CE

    Eight miles out, a towed barge carries a winch salvaged from an old expedition ship, a coil of steel cable and a ball of steel weighing two and a half tonnes.

  3. Through the twilight

    1934 CE

    The colours go out one by one as the sphere sinks: red within fifteen metres, orange, yellow, and by 300 metres a blue that Beebe calls unearthly.

  4. Living lights

    1934 CE

    Below 600 metres the only light is made by the animals themselves: rows of pale portholes on passing fish, sudden sparks, a shrimp that vomits a cloud of fire.

  5. Half a mile down

    15 August 1934

    On 15 August 1934 the sphere stops at 923 metres because the last turn of cable has left the drum; they are allowed five minutes there.

  6. Back up the cable

    1934 CE

    The winch hauls them up through the same layers in reverse, the blue returning before the green, and a quart of condensed breath sloshing in the bottom of the sphere.

  7. Half Mile Down

    1934 CE

    Beebe writes up the season on Nonsuch, and the book reaches the shops in time for Christmas 1934 and sells out at once.

Outcome

A depth of 923 metres on 15 August 1934, a world record that stood for fifteen years, and the first eyewitness account of the deep sea.

William Beebe and Otis Barton

A naturalist and a young engineer who lowered themselves inside a steel ball off Bermuda and became the first people to watch the deep sea alive.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

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