Master of the Abyss Page #4

make front-page news-

a triumph Beebe hopes will translate

into dollars.

At the age of 55, Beebe's energy

is inexhaustible,

and his ambition unfettered.

He decides to make one more expedition

to smash the half-mile barrier

which has eluded him.

But the Great Depression has made

private money scarce.

Beebe works for over a year,

seeking funding.

Finally, the National Geographic

Society agrees

to finance a series of dives

in summer, 1934.

Otis Barton has not been as fortunate.

A victim of hard times,

he is scrambling to make a living

for the first time in his life.

Barton launches a career

as a movie producer,

and spends 1933 filming

an underwater adventure.

The film is a flop.

But William Beebe has not forgotten

the man

who has helped make him

an international luminary.

In 1934, he remembers his pledge to

include Barton on his bathysphere dives,

and invites Barton to join him.

For four years,

Barton has slipped into the shadows

as Beebe's star has risen.

Despite his grievances, Barton agrees

to join Beebe once again.

John Tee-Van and Gloria Hollister

also return

for what is to be the bathysphere's

most dangerous descent.

After countless hours

at deep-ocean pressures,

the capsule needs an costly overhaul.

The price tag includes

new quartz windows,

a new oxygen purifier, and improved

communication lines.

On August 7, 1934, an unmanned test

reaches 3,020 feet.

The refitted capsule

performs perfectly.

Satisfied, Beebe and Barton squirm

into the steel chamber.

While Beebe's personal goal is

to break the half-mile barrier,

he will continues to relay

his observations,

convinced that the deeper he goes

the more he'll discover.

And Beebe delivers.

He announces his discovery of

three more new creatures-

and gives them fanciful names.

Pallid Sailfin

Three-Starred Anglerfish

Five Lined-Constellation Fish

And once again,

no one since has seen these fish.

Barton attempts to document

the sights outside the sphere,

but his movie film shows only faint,

blurred images.

Only Beebe's descriptions endure.

The dive drops Beebe and Barton

to 2,510 feet,

shattering all old records,

but still short of the half-mile goal.

Then, eight days later on August 15,

Beebe pushes the ball

to its absolute limit.

It comes to a rest at a depth of

The spool of cable has nearly run out.

One more revolution could send

the capsule

in an unstoppable death plunge

to the ocean floor.

At this depth, the bathysphere's steel

and quartz

withstands more than a thousand

pounds per square inch of pressure.

Steel and quartz hold firm.

William Beebe and Otis Barton

pause at a depth

no explorer before them has ever

reached, for a moment of contemplation.

"The only other place comparable to

these marvelous nether regions,

must surely be naked space itself,

where the blackness of space

must really be closely akin to

the world of life

as it appears to the eyes of

an awed human being,

in the open ocean,

one half mile down."

Even after his record-breaking

descent,

William Beebe remains obsessed

with the deep ocean.

But by the mid-30s the Depression

has claimed too many victims,

and privately funded exploration

fades into memory.

Beebe must abandon his Bermuda

headquarters in 1937.

Beebe returns to jungle research

for the Bronx Zoo, now known as

the Wildlife Conservation Society.

He spends the last years of his life

in Trinidad,

and never loses the love for action

that once made him a household name.

But his fame slips away as years pass,

and Beebe dies quietly, far from

the limelight, in 1962, aged 85.

Otis Barton leaps from one scheme

to another.

In 1948, he returns to the ocean

in an improved bathysphere-

and breaks his own record by

descending alone to 4,500 feet.

But the world takes little notice-

Barton dies in 1992, aged 93,

and five people attend his funeral.

Barton's record endures until 1960,

when the US Navy submersible Trieste

descends to 35,000 feet-

more than six miles.

That record stands.

Today, most of Beebe's discoveries

have been verified.

The risks he took opened up

a new era of exploration.

His gift to us is a new way of

looking at the ocean,

that thrives today as the modern

science of oceanography.

In a crude copper helmet-

in a primitive steel ball-

William Beebe dared to challenge

the ignorance of the ages,

to search for life in a dark

and hostile world.

His legacy is one of adventure

and knowledge-

a pioneer and a wanderer

in the living sea.

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