Submarine diving

“ He had followed the hazardous profession of a deep sea diver, spending years out in Far Eastern seas, diving with the natives for pearl oysters, and in many ways had managed to accumulate quite a nice little fortune.
The stories he spun to Ballyhoo, Oscar and Jack thrilled them with a boyish desire to also see some of the wonders of that same submarine world. Then, as the old man learned how they had already shown a disposition to do and dare, he began to interest them in his latest and greatest scheme. ”

“ While the submarine is under way, submerged, the operator at every piece of individual machinery stands at its side ready for action. Here are the gunner's mates at the diving rudder. They watch steadily a (p. 322) big gauge on which a needle which shows how deep the boat is sinking. When the required depth is reached swift turns of two big brass wheels set the horizontal rudders that check the descent and keep the boat on an even keel. Other men stand at the levers of the Kingston valves which, when open, flood the ballast tanks with water and secure the submergence of the boat. ”

“ These facts, verified many times in the descents which I have executed with the diving apparatus of my laboratory at Nice during the last three years, appear to me important from several points of view.
It is evident that a submarine boat can not see its way under these conditions. Slow as may be its movement, there will not be time for it to retreat if it sees some obstacle rising in front of it; for it would not be more than ten metres away from the impediment at the moment of perceiving it. ”

“ A modern submarine vessel is a complex mechanism capable of being navigated on the surface of the water just as is any boat, but with the added faculty of disappearing at will beneath the surface, and of being operated beneath the surface in any desired direction at any desired depth. Some submarines are able to wheel along the bottom itself, and are also provided with diving compartments from which members of the crew, encased in diving suits, may readily leave and re-enter the vessel during its submergence. ”

“ The rapid movement of the ice was astounding. Orders cracked from the lips of Gilbert Mathews and Bob Smith. The crew tumbled back into the submarine. The main hatch was slammed and battened down. A crash dive was in order. They were going under the ice again.
Harry dreaded the thought. The last time their margin of safety had been slim; too slim. This time they might not come up.
The tension inside the Neptune was terrific as Bob gave the orders for the dive. Valves were opened wide; water roared into the diving tanks. The Neptune settled swiftly. ”

“ The problem of diving demands attention next. For surface sailing a submarine boat, like any other, needs considerable buoyancy, so as to float with a considerable fraction of its bulk free above water. For diving, on the other hand, her buoyancy must be very small. These conditions are met by varying the amount of ballast carried. This is universally done by admitting water into, or expelling it from, suitable air-tight tanks distributed through the bottom of the boat. The filling of these tanks requiers only the opening of a valve. To empty them ”

“ At other times there is a pleasure in diving, thus protected; and the divers consider it, as it is, the only true way to visit the submarine world. The first sensation in descending is the sudden, bursting roar of cascades in the ears, caused by the air driven into the helmet from the air-pump. As the flexible hose has to be strong enough to bear a pressure of twenty-five to fifty pounds to the square inch, the force of the current can be estimated. The drum of the ear yields to the strong external pressure. ”

“ A problem which has been exercising the minds of those engaged in submarine work is the greatest depth at which it is possible to work, for, as is well known, many a fine vessel with valuable cargo and treasure is lying out of reach of the diver owing to the pressure which he would have to sustain were he to attempt to reach her. Mr Leonard Hill, and Drs Greenwood and J. J. R. Macleod conducted experiments in conjunction with Messrs Siebe, Gorman & Co., with a view to solving this problem, and their efforts have been attended with some considerable success. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sketch showing the submarine "Argonaut III" on the bottom and operator in diving compartment inspecting the waterbed through the open diver's door.
There is also a very numerous class of persons who hold that the submarine is a very risky and dangerous mechanism; they feel that the principles of its operation have not yet been brought to a point of safety or certainty. ”

“ Diving, as heretofore conducted, has been difficult and dangerous work, and only the strong could stand the hardships connected with it. The advent of submarine salvage vessels fitted with proper machinery and in the application of scientific methods, however, will clear away many of the hardships and dangers connected with salving a sunken cargo, and more experience and proper apparatus will prove that certain cargoes may be removed from sunken ships in moderate [278] depth with almost as much rapidity as they can be lifted from the hold of a vessel alongside of a dock. ”

“ Ted and Jack were glad to know what it was all about and listened attentively to the commands of the navigating officer and the interpretations given by their new-found friend. Bill explained that the process of diving was called "trimming" in submarine cruising, and that the pumping of the water being directed by Binns was done to fill the ballast tanks, thus increasing the displacement of the Dewey and causing it to settle in the water. First one tank was filled, and then another, until the vessel was submerged on an even keel. ”

“ Finally, however, his cool-headed patience is rewarded with success. He gets the chest to the open air and restores it to its owner; but in so doing he has made the worst mistake of all; he has mistaken the character of the man; he never paid, or offered to pay, the fifty dollars.
Another instance of cool determination in the unforeseen dangers of submarine diving occurred to a diver who was [620] engaged in the recovery of the valuable dry dock at Pensacola Bay. ”

“ The submarine work which it has been instrumental in accomplishing is incalculable. But some idea of the importance of the invention may be gathered from the fact that diving apparatus on Siebe’s principle is universally used to-day in harbour, dock, pier and breakwater construction, in the pearl and sponge fisheries, in recovering sunken ships, cargo and treasure, and that every ship in the British navy and in most foreign navies carries one set or more of diving apparatus. ”

“ By donning a diving suit members of the crew may also leave or enter the vessel when on the bottom. The water is kept from entering the diving compartment by air compressed to the same pressure as the surrounding water pressure, corresponding to the depth of submergence, the same as is done in my military submarine boats. A motor, drawing its power from a dynamo on the surface vessel, drives through suitable gearing the tractor wheel arranged near the bow of the [273] submarine. This tractor wheel may be turned by its vertical steering post so as to propel the vessel in any desired direction. ”

“ The captain and the young inventor lost no time in donning the diving suits. They each took a heavy metal bar, pointed at one end, to use in assisting them to walk on the bed of the ocean, and as a protection in case the sharks might attack them. Entering the diving chamber, they were shut in, and then water was admitted until the pressure was seen, by gages, to be the same as that outside the submarine. Then the sliding steel door was opened. At first Tom and the captain could barely move, so great was the pressure of water on their bodies. ”

“ This entailed a considerable loss of steam, due to condensation, but it produced enough power to propel the submarine, having Mr. Dunkerly's launch alongside so as to allow free vertical movement, as when diving, so that we could test the efficiency of the boat's horizontal and vertical rudders. The vertical rudders, those that controlled horizontal motion, proved to be very effective, but the horizontal rudders, placed on the level of the centre of buoyancy, proved to be useless. We proved that the boat should move three or four times more rapidly before they could produce a useful effect. ”

“ Next, the Diving Control Compartment.—The compartment containing the diving control, by means of which the submarine can be made to dive and to come to the surface, is fitted with the following devices:
First, there is the diving wheel, which works the horizontal or diving rudders.
Next, there is the angle indicator, which is simply a quadrant—that is, a quarter of a circle—marked off into degrees and each degree into quarters. It has a needle which moves over the quadrant as the pilot turns the diving wheel and this indicates the number of degrees up or down the horizontal rudders have moved. ”

“ In short, sharp ones, she seems to rise and fall bodily with very little tendency to pitching.
"A notion seems to prevail that the proper duty of a diving boat would be to carry a diver, who could come out and fasten a torpedo to a ship at anchor, then retire into his boat and move away ”

“ Let us hope every ship now built after this Chapter will be a “Double-Ender.” But in this world you are a lunatic if you go too fast.
Take now the submarines. They began by diving123 head first to get below water; and in the beginning some stuck their noses in the mud and never came up again, and in the shallow waters of the North Sea this limited the dimension of the submarine. But now there’s no more diving. A lunatic hit by accident on the idea of sinking the ship horizontally; so there is no more bother about the metricentric problems, and all the vagaries of Stabilities. No limit to size! ”

“ But there was nothing to be gained by do226ing this, as, at such great depths, pressure and friction would be so increased as to seriously impede the submarine craft’s progress, and haste was a necessity.
After this digression concerning the night, we will follow the boys up to the deck after breakfast, for at dawn the White Shark had been driven to the surface and the ventilators opened. While the air was not foul, still it was a relief to open everything that could be opened, and set in motion fans that drew the stale air out of the interior of the craft. ”

“ The towers upon each side of the river had to be so high that a very deep foundation, going down to the original rock, had to be laid, and the workmen engaged in building it worked in a submarine apartment, supplied with air forced down by a steam engine.
The submarine hydrostat, as it is called, is one of the most ingenious and recent applications of the diving-bell principle. Thirty men may work in it at once, for a number of hours, without any inconvenience ”

“ If someone forgets, then the story makes the front page and the navy goes hunting for another lost submarine.”
Tim felt an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew the S-18 was going to be undermanned, but then the only diving they intended to do would be at the actual scene of the salvage operations.
“This torpedo compartment will be made into a diving room,” went on Pat. “A special bulkhead will be built to reinforce the regular one and a door cut in the side of the hull through which the diver can walk when we settle down on the bottom beside the Southern Queen. ”

“ The necessity of such features as bottom wheels and diving compartment is now being brought out in the present war. I believe the mining and countermining features must be incorporated in one type before the submarine reaches its full development. The impotency of the great combined English and French fleets of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines must be galling to the people who have paid for them by the sweat of their brows. ”

“ It is then actually displacing more than its own weight of water, for if left to itself it will rise rapidly and it is only the speed and the action of the rudders which keep it under. We see, then, that the action of a submarine in submerging itself is a real genuine dive. ”

“ In fact, practical inventors of submarine craft, at least of late years, have ceased to attempt to provide more than a surface-going boat which shall be able at any time or place to dive beneath the surface to the depth desired, to remain under water for considerable periods of time, either stationary or moving, with both safety and comfort to the crew, and then, the purpose of the dive having been accomplished, to return speedily and safely to the surface. ”

“ A diver being lowered from a vessel is swung to and fro like a pendulum, and if there is any sea on—the open sea is never entirely still—the surge naturally affects the diver so that it is beyond human possibility to limit his descent to a nicety or to take the time either in going down or coming up that science has proved necessary to his physical well-being in the most generous sense. The greater the depth the greater the difficulties, and to reach a submergence of one hundred and fifty feet is now practically prohibitive except under ideal conditions. ”