Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters by R. M. Ballantyne (best romance ebooks TXT) 📕

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