There can be no question of the fact that authentic history sends its
roots into the subsoil of fabulous antiquity. In turning to the records
of submarine exploration we are staggered on the very threshold of the
question with obvious absurdity. We are depressed. We seek to dive
into our subject, but find it too deep for us. If we were to put on the
latest "patent improved diving-dress," with all its accompaniments of
double-extra pumps, pipes, powers, and purchases, and descend to a depth
of antiquity that would suffice to collapse a whale, we should find
nothing but idiotic speculation in the midst of chaotic darkness.
In this chapter we shall give a mere outline, and even that somewhat
disjointed, of the subject of diving. We feel tempted to pass by the
fabulous period altogether, but fear lest, in our effort to eschew the
false, we do damage to the true. Perhaps, therefore, it were well to
walk humbly in the beaten path of our forefathers, and begin at the
beginning.
It is not certain whether Adam was a diver. There is reason to believe
that he wore no "dress" of any kind at first, so that, if he dived at
all, he must have used his natural powers alone. These powers, we learn
from the best authorities, are barely sufficient to enable a man to stay
under water for two minutes at the furthest. Experience corroborates
these "best authorities." It has been asserted that pearl-divers can
sometimes stay under water as long as three, four, and even five
minutes, but we don't believe the assertion. If the reader does, we
have no hesitation in pronouncing him--or her--credulous.
To return to Adam. We have no doubt whatever that he--perhaps Eve
also--could dive. It is possible, though not probable, that they
"guddled" small trout in the streams of Paradise, and dived for the big
ones 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 no
authentic records as to the art of diving at that period of the world's
history.
The first writer who makes reference to diving is Homer, who is supposed
to 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 proves
it to have been at that time a well-known art, practised for the purpose
of obtaining oysters. Then we find Aeschylus comparing mental vision to
the strong natural eye of the "deep diver." But Thucydides speaks more
definitely of divers having been employed at the siege of Syracuse to
cut down barriers which had been constructed below water; to damage the
Grecian vessels while attempting to enter the harbour, and, generally,
to go under and injure the enemy's ships. All this inclines us to think
they must at that time have learned to supplement their natural powers
with artificial.
Livy mentions the fact that the ancients employed divers for the purpose
of recovering property from the sea. The Rhodians had a law fixing the
share of the recovered treasure which was due to the divers who saved
it. According to this law the remuneration was in proportion to the
depth from which it was brought up, and the risk incurred. But as these
divers considered four fathoms or thereabouts an extreme and dangerous
depth, it is probable that they did their work in the natural way
without the aid of apparatus.
For the benefit of the credulous we may mention several statements which
have been more or less received. The Dutch were once celebrated divers,
and it is reported that some of them have remained under water more than
an hour! From this report some have argued that these Dutchmen must
have possessed artificial means of maintaining life below water. To
this we reply, if that were so, is it likely that the reporter who made
reference to the length of time spent below water was ignorant as to the
means--if any--by which this apparent miracle was accomplished? And if
he was not ignorant, would he have passed over such means in silence?
The idea is absurd. The probability is rather that the reporter had
been gulled, or was fond of drawing the "long bow."
Again, mention is made by one Mersennius of a man who could remain six
hours under water! If Mersennius were in a position to become
acquainted with that diver's powers, how comes it that he failed to
become acquainted with his apparatus? Simply because there was no such
apparatus, and the whole affair is a fable.
But the most remarkable of these stories is recorded by a certain Father
Kircher, 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 Nicolo
Pesce,--Nicholas the Fish. This man's powers seem to have been
decidedly superhuman. He was evidently an amphibious animal. He
appears to have acted the part of ocean-postman in these old times, for
it is related of him that he used to carry letters for the king far and
wide about the Mediterranean. On one occasion a vessel found him out of
sight of land in the discharge of ocean-postal duty--bearing despatches
of the king from Sicily to Calabria. They took him on board and had a
chat with him. It is not said that they smoked a friendly pipe with him
or gave him a glass of grog, but we think it probable that they did!
After a little rest and refreshment Nicholas the Fish bade them
good-bye, jumped overboard, and continued his voyage. The end of this
poor man was very sad. The king, being seized with an insane desire to
know 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 a
glowing account of the wonders and horrors of the seething whirlpool.
The king, far from being satisfied, became more than ever desirous of
knowledge. He asked Nicholas to dive again, and tempted him with the
offer of another and larger cup, as well as a purse of gold. The poor
Fish, after some hesitation, again dived into the gulf and was never
more heard of!
We don't wonder at it. The greatest wonder is, that Nicolo Pesce ever
obtained a place in the encyclopaedias of the world. From the fact,
however, that he has been thus rescued from oblivion, we conclude, that
although much that is said of him is false, the man himself was not a
myth, but a fact; that he was a man of the Captain Webb type, who
possessed extraordinary powers of swimming, perhaps of diving, to the
extent, it may be, of nearly three minutes, and that he possibly lost
his life by rashly venturing into the vortex of some dangerous
whirlpool. That he did not use diving apparatus of any kind is clear
from the fact that nothing is said about such apparatus, which, had it
really existed, would have claimed as much attention and caused as much
talk as did the man himself.
The earliest authentic records we have of the use of diving apparatus
belong to the beginning of the sixteenth century. In an edition of
Vegetius on the _Art of War_, published in 1511, there is an engraving
of 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 he
saw two Greeks, at Toledo in Spain, make experiments with diving
apparatus, in presence of the Emperor Charles the Fifth and ten thousand
spectators. Gaspar Schott of Numberg, in 1664, refers to this Greek
machine as an "aquatic kettle;" but mentions, as preferable in his
estimation, a species of "aquatic armour," which enabled those who wore
it to walk under water. The "aquatic kettle" was doubtless the embryo
of the diving-bell.
From that time onward inventive minds have been turned, with more or
less success, towards the subject of submarine operations, and many are
the contrivances--clever, queer, absurd, and useful--which have been the
outcome. Not content with "kettles" and "bells," by means of which they
could descend into the deep and remain there for an hour or more at a
time, and with "armour" and "dresses" with which they could walk about
at the bottom of the sea, men have constructed several submarine boats
and machines, in which, shut up like Jonah in the whale, they purposed
to move about from place to place, sink to the bottom and rise to the
surface, at will, or go under the bottoms of enemy's ships and fix
torpedoes wherewith to blow them up, and otherwise do them damage.
These latter machines have not attained to any noteworthy degree of
success--at least they have not yet done either much good or much harm
to the human race; but the former--the "kettles" and the "armour,"--in
other words, the "diving-bells" and "dresses"--have attained to a high
degree of perfection and efficiency, and have done incalculable good
service.
The diving-bell was so styled owing to the first machines being made in
the shape of a gigantic bell. An inverted wine-glass, thrust mouth
downwards into water, will not fill with water, owing to the air which
it contains keeping the water out. It will partially fill, however,
because air is compressible, and the deeper down it is thrust the more
will the air be compressed. At a depth of thirty-three feet the air
will be compressed to half its bulk--in other words, the glass will be
half-full of water. It is clear that a fly or any small insect could
live in the air thus confined although thrust to great depths under
water. But it could not live long, because air becomes unfit for use
after being breathed a certain time, and cannot sustain life. Hence, if
we are to preserve the life of our fly, we must send fresh air down to
it.
The first diving-bells were made so large that the air contained in them
sufficed for a considerable period--an hour or more. When this air had
lost its life-sustaining qualities, the bell had to be drawn up and the
air renewed. This was so inconvenient that ingenious men soon hit on
various plans to renew the air without raising the bells. One plan,
that of Dr Halley, was to send air down in tight casks, which were
emptied into the bell and then sent up, full of water, for a fresh
supply of air, while the foul air was let out of the bell by a valve in
the top. Another plan was to have tubes from the bell to the surface by
which air was made to circulate downwards, at first being forced down by
a pair of bellows, and afterwards by means of air-pumps.
Round the inside of the bell ran a seat for the divers. One or more
holes fitted with thick plate-glass, gave them light and enabled them to
use the various tools and implements required in their vocation. From
some of these bells, a man could be sent out, when at or near the
bottom, having on a water-tight head-piece connected by a tube with the
air inside the bell. He could thus move about with more freedom than
his comrades inside, but of course could not travel further than the
length of his tube, while, being wet, he could not endure the cold for
any great length of time.
As time went on the form of the bell was improved until that of a square
or oblong box of iron came to be generally adopted. The bell now in use
is that which was made in 1788 by the celebrated engineer Smeaton, who
applied the air forcing-pump to it, and otherwise brought the machine to
a high degree of perfection. He used it with great advantage in the
works at Ramsgate harbour, and Smeaton's diving-bell, improved by
Rennie, has continued in constant and general use on all submarine works
until a very recent period. It has now been almost entirely
superseded--except in the case of some special kinds of work--by the
diving-dress--the value and the use of which it is the province of our
tale 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 its
improvement was made until the end of the eighteenth and beginning of
the present centuries, when the names of Rowe, Halley, Spalding,
Bushwell, and Colt, appear in connection with various clever
contrivances to facilitate diving operations. Benjamin Martin, a London
optician, made a dress of strong leather in 1778 which fitted his arms
and legs as well as his trunk, and held half a hogshead of air. With
this he could enter the hold of a sunk vessel, and he is said to have
been very successful in the use of it. Mr Kleingert of Breslau, in
1798, designed a dress somewhat like the above, part of which, however,
was made of tin-plate. The diving-dress was greatly improved by Mr
Deane, 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's
directions--did signal service.
It has now been brought to a high state of perfection by the well-known
submarine engineers Siebe and Gorman, Heinke and Davis, and others, of
London, and Denayrouze of Paris. It encases the diver completely from
head to foot, is perfectly water-tight, and is made of thick sheet
india-rubber covered on both sides with tanned twill--the helmet and
breast-plate being metal.
For further information on this subject we refer the inquisitive reader
to the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, to the descriptive pamphlets of the
submarine engineers above named, and to an admirable little book styled
_The Conquest of the Sea_, by Henry Siebe, which contains a full and
graphic account in detail of almost everything connected with diving and
submarine 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 Mason
Street, Westminster Bridge Road, London, where Messrs. Siebe and Gorman
have erected a large Tank for the purpose of illustrating their
apparatus. At the Alexandra Palace, also, Messrs. Denayrouze and
Company have a tank for the same purpose.