ARCHIVE PAPER Published in Feb/Mar 1980, Vol. 14, No. 1

Twenty Years After the "Trieste" Dive

On January 23, at the Naval Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Navy held a special ceremony in commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the Bathyscaph Trieste dive. (See reports in the MTS Newsletters for December-January and February.) Dr. Don Walsh, MTS Council Member and Editor of the MTS Journal, was one of the two men who completed the original dive to a record depth of 35,800 feet into the Challenger Deep. The other man, of course, was Jacques Piccard, son of the Swiss physicist and inventor of the Bathyscaph. For those of you in or visiting WaShing- ton, the Bathyscaph will be on permanent display at the Naval Museum.

On February 4, the Honorable Paul N. McCloskey, Jr. made the following appeal in the House of Representatives and included in the record Dr. Walsh's own account of the Trieste adventure. Both are reproduced here for the information and interest of our members. - The Managing Editor.

Mr. Speaker, last year 53 of our colleagues asked the tion, research during the past several decades has President to dedicate the 1980's as a decade for ocean resulted in the development of new uses and markets resource use and management. It is appropriate that we for marine life Including underutilized species of fish, do so. The oceans are a frontier which have not been marine plants, and other marine organisms. developed to their full potential, and which must be, if we hope to maintain our standard of living and raise the One of the pioneers of basic oceans research is Don standard of living of those who are currently less Walsh, currently director of the Institute for Marine and fortunate than us. Coastal Studies of the University of Southern Califor- nia. Don has spent a lifetime studying the oceans and is Much of the groundwork for this development has been one of this country's experts in their use for commer· done. The 1980's will see the development of the min- cial, scientific, and military purposes. One of Don's erals and petroleum of the deep seabed which was early projects, involving both scientific and military made possible only through the technological advances aspects of oceans research, was his participation In the made in the 1970's. The 1980's will also see intensified bathyscaph Trieste's dive to the bottom of the Marianas fishing efforts which will be subject to management Trench-the deepest known place in the oceans. I am regimes resulting from the imposition of fisheries inserting in the RECORD a copy of Don's account of his management zones and the development of biologically experience which illustrates the depthS that some dedi- sound management practices during the 1970's. In addi- cated people go to learn more about the oceans:

VOYAGE TO THE BOnOM OF THE SEA

(By Don Walsh)

Nearly twenty years ago two men crowded into the depth for the Challenger Deep dive was determined to cramped interior of the United States Navy's Bathy- be 35,800 feet, almost seven miles down. scaph Trieste. They were located at a spot about 300 miles southwest of the island of Guam in the Western But was this bit of exploration two decades ago just an Pacific. More significantly, they were just above the event to gain publicity or did it have a real purpose? And deepest known place in the oceans: the Challenger what Impact is to be seen today from this early pioneer- Deep In the Marianas Trench. ing in deep submergence? Having been Trieste's Navy commander, the co-pilot on the deep dive and the first Nine hours later, when they returned to the surface, they submersible pilot in the Navy, I hope to give some idea brought with them the world's depth record. The ottical of what was done then and what it means today.

Summer 2006 Volume 40, Number 2 105 ~ First, It Is Important to have some Idea of the begin· creative and effective engineer. His book, Earth, Sky nings of deep submergence; how the bathyscaph came and Sea Is a delightful account of his scientific adven· to be invented by Professor Auguste Piccard, and how It tures In these three environments. eventualy Joined the United States Navy. Even before his balloon exploits Plccard has thought To set the scene we should go back about fifty years to about applying the concepts of the free balloon to an 1930·1934 when the American zoologist, Professor undersea craft. This would give the desired indepen- WIlliam Beebe was experimenting with his bathysphere dence from surface ship and its cable tether. He began in the waters near Bermuda. Beebe and Engineer Otis the design of the first bathyscaph (this word simply Barton had devised the bathysphere as a means to take means "deep ship") in 1938_However, as the sounds of the scientist's trained mind and eye directly into the war gathered in Europe it became clear that his under· ocean environment. water balloon would have to walt until the return of peace. Beebe's logic was simple. Why deny scientists direct observations simply because the research site was In 1948 Piccard's first bathyscaph, the FNRS-2 (named covered by ocean water? On land biologists and geolo· after the initials of the Belgian foundation that spon- gists made direct observations in the field. But In the sored the project), was test dived. While It performed oceans the marine scientist was forced to lower variOus well as a submersible, it had many deficiencies as a sur- gadgets into the sea to bring up often multllated face craft. Considerable modification was called for samples. These artificial hands and eyes were poor and the FNRS·2 was taken to the French Navy yard at substitutes for direct observation. Toulon for rebuilding. In the early 1950s, prior to com· pletion of the conversion of the FNRS·2, into the new The Beebe bathysphere was simply an iron ball which FNRS-3, the Piccards (since the end of World War II, was fitted with ports for observation and photography. Professor Piccard had his son, Jacques, as his co- An entrance hatch (bolted from the outside!) provided worker on all his bathyscaph projects) left the French access for the two-man crew. The ball was then lowered Navy program. They had been offered the opportunity to by a cable into the sea. Electrical power and communi- build a completely new bathyscaph to be supported by cations with the surface were through a second cable. several sponsors in Italy. The principal sponsor was the City of Trieste. Beebe's classic book Half Mile Down is an eloquent tribute to his imagination and his dedicated team. The In mld-1953 the Bathyscaph Trieste was launched at narrative of their thirty-second dive in August, 1934 to Castellemare di Stabia near Naples. By coincidence the 3,028 feet is as exciting as any epic of exploration. Dr. FrenCh Navy launched FNRS-3 at this same time. The Beebe was the lirst true deep submergence explorer. world now had two bathyscaphs.

But the bathysphere had Its limitations. Cable has From 1953 to 1957 the Piccards operated Trieste on a weight and theoretically if you lower enough of it over variety of test and scientific projects in the Mediter- the side it will finally pull apart from its own weight. ranean. However the cost of operating such a complex Oceanographers, well aware of this, use tapered cables piece of scientific equipment made it clear to the Pic- to lower equipment into the deepest parts of the sea. In cards that they would have to find a permanent long. addition, since the bathysphere is attached to the term sponsor for their submersible. mother ship by the cable, any motion of the surface ship results In a similar motion of the ball. Thus if there were In 1957 the United States Navy's Office of Naval eight foot high waves at the surface the ball would also Research (ONR) sponsored a series of scientific dives move up and down eight feet. This would make it very with the Trieste at Capri. This program permitted difficult to do any precision observations close to the American oceanographers from several different disci- seafloor. Finally there is the problem of "cracking the plines (biologists, geologists, acousticians, etc.) to whip" when the motion of the mother ship and the sample the uti Iity of the bathyscaph as a tool for their length of cable are out of phase. If the whip motion is partiCUlar research Interests. At the end of the series severe enough, the ball can be snapped right off the their submitted reports and evaluations were used to end. A better "innerspace ship" was needed. determine whether or no't the Navy would purchase the Trieste and bring it to the United States. Professor Auguste Plccard was a Swiss physicist who was active in the study of cosmic radiation in the 1920s The final evaluations were positive. In 1958 Trieste was and 1930s. Because the Earth's atmosphere shields this purchased and shipped to the Navy Electronics Labora- radiation from space, Professor Piccard became an ac- tory (NEL) at San Diego, California. I joined the project complished alpinist taking his equipment up mountains at NEL in December 1958 and by March was appointed to higher altitudes to reduce this shielding effect. But Officer-in-Charge of the bathyscaph Trieste, a position I this was not enough and he designed a high altitude held until leaving the project three years later. free balloon to get better numbers for his research. In- cidental to getting the figures he set several altitude Essentially the bathyscaph has two major components, records. He was not only a good scientist, he was also a the float (balloon) and the cabin. The float is filled with a

106 Marine Technology SocietyJournal ~ lighter-than-water liquid; in the case of Trieste it was and Buono were brought to NEl with the Trieste to help aviation gasoline. This provided the buoyancy, or lift, re- train the United States Navy project team how to quired to carry the weight of the vehicle and its payload operate and maintai n this radical new craft. into the ocean's depths. In the spring of 1959 the Trieste made six more dives for The cabin was simply a steel sphere with very thick (5-7 scientific and training purposes. On the twelfth of May, I inches) walls designed to keep the crew of the submer- got my first sample of deep submergence with Trieste sible in "shirtsleeve comfort." Inside the cabin the on a plunge of seventy feet in San Diego Bay! But a real pressure was almost always at atmospheric pressure, dive was not far behind; ten days later we dove to a so we did not have to contend with any of the pressure depth of 4,100 feet off San Diego. From this vantage problems faced by divers. point I saw the depths of the ocean as few others had. We were well beyond the penetration of sunlight and To submerge the bathyscaph it had to be made heavier were into the domain of bioluminescence, seeing than water. To slow down the rate of descent, stop, or to animal forms not found in any aquarium collection. ascend to the surface weight had to be gotten rid of to make it become positively buoyant. For surface buoyan- During that spring, while we were busy learning how to cy the float had two large ballast tanks, one at each end use Trieste, a much more important aspect of the proj- of the float, which were filled with air during surface ect was being worked out: our plan to take the submer- operations. To submerge, the air was vented off and the sible to the deepest place in the ocean_ Not only was a Trieste became heavier than water. Weight reduction great deal of preparation involved, but also many tech· was through an ingenious system which employed two nical changes to the bathyscaph were necessary. Fortu· large containers (shot tubs) hanging on the underside of nately, Lieutenant Larry Shumaker, an AnnapOlis class· the float. Each container held about eight tons of steek mate of mine and a former shipmate in submarines, shot, much like beebees but made from steel. At the bot- joined the project as Assistant Officer-In-Charge. larry tom of each shot tub, was a funnel-like constriction immediately took over responsibilities for the technical which was surrounded by an electromagnet. When the side, under the careful guidance of Piccard and Buono. magnet was energized the shot was magnetized and This left me free to work out the planning details for would not flow through the opening. When the electrical Project Nekton, the name we had given to the deep-dive power was shut off the shot then flowed freely through program, working closely with our project's Chief Scien· the orifice. In emergency situations both shot tubs tist Dr. Andreas B. Rechnitzer. could be jettisoned instantly.

In the mid-1950s Andy Rechnitzer was a marine biolo· Limited mobility at the seafloor was provided by three gist, fairly fresh out of his training at Scripps, when he small electrical maneuvering motors mounted on the took a position in the Marine Sciences Program at the float_ This did not make a submarine out of Trieste, Navy Electronics Laboratory. When he heard about the mobility was limited to a few thousand feet from where Office of Naval Research dives at Capri with Trieste he it landed. got himself invited as a participant. On 20 July 1957 Andy made his first dive and like myself, he was a con- Outside the front window of the cabin (the plastic win· firmed "deep submerger" from then on. As part of the dow was seven inches thick) were a series of external post-dive review team for ONR, Andy was able to lend lights, a remote control camera and strobe lights for the hi:s voice to those who wanted the Navy to buy the sub· camera. mersible for undersea research. Furthermore he made a convincing case for bringing it to the Navy laboratory at Basically the bathyscaph represented a simple, effec- San Diego. He pointed out that this location offered tive means for the oceanographer to do in situ work. deep water near the coast, year.round good operating This very simple solution to a difficult set of problems is weather, and the proximity of major Navy support a monument to the genius of Auguste Piccard. facilities and equipment. However, his most important act, in my view, was that he recruited me into the Trieste Trieste had joined the United States Navy at the age of five. Though it was to be used to advance Navy interests program! in deep ocean research, the first major task was to get the submersible ready for its ultimate test, a dive to the By the late spring of 1959 I had taken our Project Nekton deepest part of the ocean. plan to the Navy Department and had gotten approval for it. The Navy approved the program but we were The Bathyscaph made its first dive as a Navy unit in directed to maintain a very low profile and not encour- December, 1958_This was a checkout for the Navy crew age any pUblicity or publiC announcement of our inten- of military and civilian personnel who had been assign- tions. In fact, one very senior naval officer, the Chief of ed to the project at NEL. Jacques Piccard and his Naval Operations, told me that if the Trieste did not sur· engineer, Giuseppe Buono, completed the team. Buono face from the deep dive the two men in It would be the had been with the Trieste since its construction when lucky ones! The implication was that those people left he was the project foreman in the Italian shipyard and on the surface would feel the full weight of his wrath. was In charge topside during diving operations. Piccard This was a pretty full order for a young lieutenant, but

Summer 2006 Volume 40, Number 2 107 ~ my quick education in how the Navy makes decisions stre88 on the epoxy joint the glue finally pulled away had paid off and we had our green light to proceed. with a great bang.

Concurrently Trieste was undergoing major modlflca· While there was no danger of flooding we were concern- tlons at the Navy's Ship Repair Facility In San Diego. ed about the small quantity of seawater that was weep- Basically we needed to Increase Its working depth ing through the joint. The formation of rust in the In- capability from 20,000 to about 40,000 feet. To do this terior joint faces might cause a reduction of strength. It we had to increase the gasoline capacity of the float was clear that we would have to put Trieste back Into (balloon), add more shot ballast capacity and Install a her drydock, disassemble the sphere and work out a new sphere that had greater depth capability. The first way to seal it. We cleaned the sphere joints carefully two items were done in San Diego, but the new sphere and sealed them with compounds and rubber strips had to come from the Krupp Works in Germany. Never- from the outside. Our wizard machinist, Navy Chief theless, it all came together surprisingly quickly and by Petty Officer Jon Michel, designed and built a system of the tate summer Trieste was back at NEl ready to begin metal bands that would mechanically bind the sphere local test dives. rings together. We gave up on trying to glue it again and instead relied on a mechanical fastening system. Even The first dive was the eleventh of September, followed at that, we could not get all three rings in perfect allgn- by a second one four days later. We were pleased with ment, they were about 0.008 of an inch off, but since the the results and quickly began the business of dismant- joints were about five inches wide. we felt we had a ling the bathyscaph for shipment to Guam in the West- good margin of safety. ern Pacific. Needless to say, we did not bother to feed our misgiv- One of the more furtunate aspects of our plan for Proj- ings to superiors in Washington or NEl. I knew we ect Nekton was the proximity to Guam, where a major would probably be ordered home and that would be the Navy base with all the support facilities we would re- end of our attempt at the Challenger Deep. Since I was quire, lay only 200 miles from the Challenger Deep. to make the deep dive, I felt no one would be more con- cerned about the potential safety of Trieste than I less than two months after we had tested Trieste in its would. That notion was to be my guide for the work that new configuration off San Diego, we had the submersi- was to follow. ble back in the water at Guam for a post-assembly test dive. Somehow our small project team of fifteen people During the Christmas holidays we took advantage of the had gotten tons of equipment packed; the bathyscaph quiet time to test the Triesre's new sphere joints and to disassembled into several major components; had got train Rechnitzer, Shumaker and myself as bathyscaph ourselves out of Guam, and back in operation in about pilots. By January, 1960 we were ready to resume our six weeks time. dive series, and the Navy had its first three submersible pilots. Our plan was to conduct a series of increasingly deeper dives until we felt all was ready for the deepest dive. By On Jan,uary 8 we dove to 23,000 feet in the Nero Deep 15 November 1959, Piccard and Rechnitzer brought the near Guam and on the twenty-third of that month we world's depth record home to the United States with a were ready for the profoundest plunge of all-the dive to 18,150 feel. The previous record had been 13,500 Challenger Deep. This final dive in Project Nekton took feet set by the French Navy's FNRS·3 off Dakar in West Jacques Piccard and myself nine hours to complete. Africa in January 1954.

But on this dive we also developed a difficulty with the At 300 feet we encountered the thermocline, a layer sphere that gave us some real problems. The Krupp where the water term perature drops sharply. Since the sphere was made in three ring.like sections, held cold water was denser than the water we had been together by epoxy glue. In theory the water pressure. passing through, we became relatively more buoyant even at the surface, was sufficient to hold the pieces in and stopped. We had expected this. Part 01 our stan- alignment. The epoxy was to keep the joint watertight dard diving procedure was to use this brief halt as an and provide mechanical strength to hold the sphere opportunity to make a final instrument check. Then, by together when it was out of the water. But because of releasing a little gasoline from our maneuvering tank, the different metallic masses of the rings the epoxy we got rid of some of our excess buoyancy and started glue failed. The two outer rings, containing the entrance down again. hatch and the viewport, were much larger masses of steel than the center ring. Thus when the rings were At about 600 feet we entered a zone of deepening warmed or cooled, they tended to expand and contract twi Iight where colors faded off into gray. By 1,000 feet at different rates, the thinner ring reacting more quickly. the light had gone completely. We turned out the lights On the dive to 18,000 feet the sphere got very cold in in the sphere to walch for the luminescent creatures waters where the temperature approached 33 F. When that are sometimes visible at this level. We saw very the submersible surfaced this very cold metal was bath· few. Eventually we turned the cabin lights back on and ed in surface water of about 80 F. With such severe briefly tested the forward lights that throw a beam in

108 Marine Technology SocietyJournal ~ front of the observation window. Formless plankton foot per second. At 33,000 feet, only about 600 feet off streamed past, giving us a sensation of great speed. the expected bottom, we turned on our sensitive fath- ometer, which always before had quickly and accurately We were now dropping fast, at about four feet per picked up the floor for us. It showed nothing. second. It was getting colder and we decided to put on dry clothing. It was quite an operation: two grown men We checked our speed to half a foot a second and con- changing clothes in a space thirty-eight inches square tinued. At that rate, time and distance pass very slowly, and only five feet, eight inches high. and I think for the first time in the dive both of us had the feeling of awe that comes from exploring the totally There were minor incidents such as the small leak that unknown. always developed in one of the hull connectors-a place where wires from lights and instruments on the I did not take my eyes off the fathometer and Jacques outside of the sphere pass through the hull. The leak never stopped watching out of the tiny porthole with its started at about 10,000 feet. It was an old friend, a tiny weak probe of light. No bottom was in sight at 36,600 drip, drip, drip. I timed the drips and found no change feet, or at 37,200. But at last at 37,500 feet the fathom- from before, which meant that it had not become more eter traced the beginnings of the bottom. Soon Jacques serious. We expected it to disappear at about 15,000 could see a difference in the effect of our light in the feet, when the water pressure packed the pastie sealer water, as the rays reflected off the bottom. As we ap- in more tightly-and it did. proached the floor I called the fathometer readings to Jacques in fathoms: "Thirty ... twenty ... ten ... " At Up to this point we had managed to maintain voice con- eight, he called that he could see the gray-white bottom. tact with the people on the surface, using Project Nekton's specially developed underwater telephone. As we sank through the clear water near the bollom, we had a tremendous piece of luck. Peering through the But now, at 15,000 feet, we lost them-possibly tiny porthole, Jacques spoiled a fish. It appeared to be because they were a good distance from us laterally as browsing, searching for food along the ocean floor. It well as vertically. We were truly on our own now except looked like a sole or flounder, flat with eyes on the side for a crude system of tone signals we had arranged. By of its head. It was about a foot long. Our sudden appear· means of a special key the underwater telephone can ance in his domain, with our great light casting illumina- send out a tone that sounds something like a radio time tion such as he had never seen before, did not seem to signal. These carry farther than voice transmission. in bother him at all. After we had been watching him for a our code, all even number signals are for good news: minute, he swam slowly off into the darkness again, two means all is well, four means we are on the bottom, beyond the range of our light. six means we are on the way up. The bad messages come in odd numbers: three means we are having At 1:10 p.m. we sank gently onto the soft floor. A great mechanical difficulty and are coming up but not in cloud of silt rose around us. We had found the bottom at distress, five means something has gone wrong and we 37,800 feet, I 1,600 feet deeper than the rough soundings are coming up In an emergency. We never had to use the made from the surface had led us to expect. odd numbers. The fifteen-man, Navy civilian/military team had set a At 27,000 feet we checked our rate of descent to two record that could not be broken. And as all good ex- feet per second by dumping some shot ballast. We were plorers do, we planted the United States flag at the not too sure of the underwater currents here and we did deepest spot in the ocean. not want to go crashing into a wall of the trench by mistake. As we neared 30,000 feet I started thinking Subsequent to the completion of Project Nekton, the about the changes we had planned to make when we project team went home for a well-earned rest. We had got within 1,000 feet or so of the bottom-which we now worked virtually twelve hours a day, six days a week for were expecting to find only another 3,500 feet below us. five months to reach our goal, and we all needed a I was running through a mental checklist when we respite. Trieste stayed at Guam, as we intended to do heard and felt a powerful, muffled crack. The sphere Project Nekton II later in the spring. rocked as though we were on land and going through a mild earthquake. By May the Nekton II project team was assembled at Guam. Piccard and two·thirds of the original military We waited anxiously for what might happen next. and civilian personnel from Nekton had left. Thus we Nothing did. We flipped off the instruments and the began the new program with only five of the original tif- underwater telephone so that we could hear better. Still teen people (Walsh, Shumaker, Rechnitzer, Buono and nothing happened. We switched the instruments back Michel). We planned only five ocean dives in this short on and studied the dials that would tell us if something program so we could get the Trieste shipped back to the critical had occurred. No, we had our equilibrium and 'After the dive, it was discovered thaI the fathometer had were descending exactly as before. been calibraled In distilled water. Adjusted to seawater, il indio cated a true depth of 35,800 feet, a figure more in line with the We dumped more ballast, checking our speed to one soundings.

Summer 2006 Volume 40, Number 2 109 ~ United States before August when the typhoon season modules that increased available power, and tech· reaches its peak at Guam. nlQues which improved operational safety.

We did not intend Nekton II to end quite so quickly, but But Trieste was stili the only operational submersible in on the July 9 dive we had a complete failure of the out· the Navy and only one of four in the world. We therefore side lighting system. Replacement parts were only spent a considerable amount of our time at our "second available in Europe and we felt that in the two to three job"; the selling of deep submergence to the Navy. It remaining weeks before the arrival of the worst of the was not a task taken lightly since there were many who typhoon season there would be not time to fix this wanted to scrap the Trieste once it had set the world's system. record for the Navy. We in the project saw the record dive a little differently. This adventure helped us to gain By the second of August, Trieste and all its equipment access to the policy makers who could help see that had been placed on a United States·bound ship at such programs were supported and expanded. I guess Guam. The Guam programs were now over. we were successful, in a general way, because nearly 100 submersibles have been built throughout the world From late 1960 until I lell the Trieste Program in since then. While only about eleven have been United mid·1962 we operated at San Diego in support of States Navy, the early Navy designs for the submer· various Navy research projects. Among these were sibles and development of their systems have influ· seafloor studied, acoustics, deep scallering layer inves- enced most of these thc>.th.ave come after them. tigations and gravity measurements. Also we spent nearly nine months doing a complete reconstruction of Looking back over two decades since we made our the Trieste to reflect the lessons learned in the submer· "vovage to the bollom of the sea." I would say we have sible's first seven years of operation. This gave us a met our early expectations. It took longer than we had vehicle that was much more capable for scientific and anticipated, but this is true of every new frontier. All of technical work than the Trieste that the Navy purchased us who were with the original Trieste from 1959 to 1964 three years earlier. New lights, cameras, instruments are proud to have been among the first pioneers in and sampling devices were developed. The first submer· innerspace. sible applications of TV, CTFM sonar and remotely operated manipulator were developed. In addition, the Ed. Note: Dr. Don Walsh is now Director of the Institute for Trieste team designed systems that made the submersi- Marine and Coastal Studies, University of Southern California. ble easier to service and handle at sea; new ballery Los Angeles.

Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard (Ielt), co-designer and technical advisor of the bathyscaph Trieste and Lieu· tenant Don Walsh, USN, officer in charge of Project Nekton, are shown aboard the Trieste.

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