Challenger Deep dive

Jacques Piccard · 1960 CE · Earth

Take the US Navy’s bathyscaphe Trieste, under Project Nekton, to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point of the ocean.

Historical context

Auguste Piccard’s bathyscaphe, a crew sphere hung beneath a float of petrol, needed no cable and could in principle reach any depth. The United States Navy bought his Trieste in 1958 and, under Project Nekton, took it to Guam, about 200 miles from the Challenger Deep. In Don Walsh’s account, Admiral Arleigh Burke approved the deepest dive only if nothing was announced before it succeeded. No crewed vessel returned to the bottom of the Challenger Deep for fifty-two years.

The voyage, step by step

1. Towed out from Guam

   1960 CE

   From Apra Harbour the tug Wandank tows the Trieste at five knots towards the Challenger Deep, some 220 miles away; the tow takes four days by Piccard’s count.

2. Descending into the trench

   23 January 1960

   On 23 January 1960 Piccard and Don Walsh seal themselves into a steel sphere, and at 8:23 in the morning, by Piccard’s account, the Trieste begins to sink.

3. Through the cold layers

   1960 CE

   Layers of colder water stop the descent four times in the first 160 metres; Piccard lets petrol go to keep falling.

4. A bang near ten thousand metres

   1960 CE

   At 32,500 feet, about 9,900 metres, a dull crack and a heavy shock shake the cabin; finding nothing wrong, the two men go on down.

5. The deepest point on Earth

   1960 CE

   At 13:06 they settle onto a floor of pale ooze nearly eleven kilometres down and spend twenty minutes there.

6. Something alive on the floor

   1960 CE

   As they land, Piccard sees a flat, sole-like fish about thirty centimetres long; later a shrimp swims past the porthole.

7. Three and a half hours to daylight

   1960 CE

   They drop iron shot and rise for three and a half hours, surfacing at 16:56 into the late afternoon.

Outcome

On 23 January 1960 Jacques Piccard and Lieutenant Don Walsh reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep, in a descent of almost five hours, spent twenty minutes there and returned safely. Their gauge read 37,800 feet; corrected for its fresh-water calibration, the depth was given as 10,913 metres. No crewed craft went back until 2012.

Jacques Piccard

Swiss oceanographer who descended with Don Walsh to the deepest point of the ocean in the bathyscaphe Trieste.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Jacques Piccard — Wikipedia
• Man’s Deepest DiveJacques Piccard · National Geographic Magazine 118 (2), August 1960; republished on National Geographic’s DEEPSEA CHALLENGE site · 1960
• Marine Technology Society Journal 43 (5), Winter 2009: the 50th-anniversary issue on the Trieste’s deepest diveDon Walsh, Charles B. Bishop, Robert L. Fisher, John Michel, Will Forman, William Kohnen and others · Marine Technology Society · 2009
• Navy Bathyscaph Trieste Makes 37,800-foot Dive (press release)Department of the Navy · 23 January 1960; Office of Naval Research website, archived 2002 · 1960

Continue exploring

• The search for USS ThresherTrieste (the Thresher search) · 1963 CE
• Calypso in the Red Sea and Indian OceanJacques Cousteau · 1955 CE
• Trieste's first deep divesAuguste Piccard · 1953 CE – 1958 CE
• The Galápagos Rift hydrothermal expeditionJack Corliss and the Alvin team · 1977 CE