perhaps something of the true wonder of
our native earth struck the man who
sailed the Nina the Pinta and the Santa
Maria beyond the gates of Hercules and
perhaps there are those today who pause
before the miracles of traveling to
space and beneath the sea for this is an
age of wonder it'll produce in the
bigger perspective of time new
Columbus's and Magellan's that men will
remember when our own age of exploration
is history Sealab one is part of that
adventure a beginning part in our own
times
a free-swimming diver moves through the
realm that was once called the silent
world if only because there were no men
to hear the sounds and understand the
message from the deep on his back the
scuba gear proclaims him for all his
presumption an outlander to this realm
an alien in times beyond the telling all
that lived upon our planet when native
to these waters waters the caste of blue
light is far into space as the size of
this planet Earth and its Sun reflected
light permit
this only place in all the universe
where man is discerned liquid water this
rarest of ingredients in the cosmos what
is rare in the known universe like it's
our hometown world the planet Earth some
70% of it is covered by the sea the
continental shelf alone this water
covered plateau that surrounds the
continent in the size of Africa or three
times the size of the United States
explorable as we see exploitable - and
how much more so it would be if man were
a freer agent like these individuals at
least an immigrant
a kind of resident before me he didn't
have to come up for air so often but he
has to come up soon relator for purposes
of ocean exploration elated the better
as long ago as the 1870s Francis Paul
Bert discovered the formula that is the
e equals MC squared of the diver he can
prevent the possibly fatal bends by
slowly decompressing at the rate of 20
minutes for each atmosphere of pressure
in 1915 professor Thompson of MIT
mentioned to the Bureau of Mines that
helium should make a good guess for
breathing under the heavy pressures of
the undersea waters this was a
breakthrough indeed well us now for the
sake of getting to the point pass over
those meters and tinkerers those
scientists and technicians those curious
types of many lands and generations who
brought the state of the diving art to
the scuba inde are our present Chronicle
begins in late 1963 when two Navy
doctors kept in George bond and
Commander Robert workmen supervised
project Genesis in which human beings
remained in a highly pressurized chamber
for two weeks
that they could do so with reasonable
comfort and in perfect safety was a
tribute to BOMs 8 years of research on
the feasibility of breathing gas
mixtures rather than normal air he and
working verified the usefulness of
helium as a substitute for nitrogen to
prevent the dangerous in our kosis that
high under water pressures could cause
you
let us now leap forward in time to
midsummer 1964 the Office of Naval
Research inspired by project Genesis had
designed a strange-looking capsule the
work of lieutenant commanders Roy
Lamphere and Arthur Brooks it was
nothing less than a laboratory for
living men to observe themselves and
their environment and need some very
waters of the sea can man indeed live
within the sea as an inhabitant rather
than a brief visitor it takes a heap of
logistics to bring a normal world into
an abnormal place but that perhaps is
what exploration means so imagine if you
can all the planning and thinking
confirm in designing research and
construction that took place in the
months and years before this particular
Navy took began to tell this unique
orange capsule the place America's
man-made structure called Argos Island
in the waters 30 miles southwest of
Bermuda the time July 1964 the occasion
the proof of the pudding for Sealab 1
the protagonist the u.s. named in the
person's of hundreds of scientists
technicians engineers divers navigators
and auxilary personnel but six men in
particular deserve the main focus of our
attention take them in George Bond
director of the medical research
laboratory of the submarine base in New
London Connecticut commander Roy Lanfear
and those all selected by captain bromme
who will enter the strange shape you see
before you dr. Robert Thompson
Lieutenant Commander US Navy 36 years
old a native of Los Angeles and three of
listed men of some special note expert
divers Oliver name is much at home
underwater as men could be up to the
time Robert Bart
Lester Anderson
sandurz Mannion Navy men in their 30s
who were to be the human subjects of the
sea lab experiment here at the Navy's
oceanographic station Argos Island the
heavy logistics proceed for four men to
live together at the bottom of the sea
for three weeks you are attempting
something more than just a diving
expedition of a few hours or so anyone
so to speak can dip his foot into the
water but that's not the same as a
cross-channel swim
cause the time for all the maneuvering
and preparations all the testing and
retesting when you stop cutting bait and
start to fish in this case we load up
the bins of the capsule with ballast say
ten dozen railroad axles and about ten
tons of steel clumps and we'll stop
floating and start sinking
simultaneously you work precisely and
even delicately with luring mines cables
connections availability can be fatal in
this new seamanship at this point in
oceanographic exploration a man can
still use his umbilical cord it houses
his power and communications cables over
and around beneath the surface and
manner of anxious midwives the divers
make certain that all as well
all stations report ready for rolling
Argus control report each motor descent
61 feet I 62 feet I 63 feet
150 feet I you have gas enough to go all
the way to the bottom
see laughs one on the bottom I caused by
bubbling all conditions normal all
systems going
Mazzoni will you check the absolute
pressure please 95.1 on the bottom see
lab one hour orange capsule has not yet
received its complement of mankind
the deep dark blue ocean of Lord Byron
is a lot more interesting if you can in
captain bonds words make man a free
agent in the sea not just for a few
minutes but for days and so four men
entered the submersible decompression
chamber or SDC to take an elevator ride
192 feet down to the bottom of the sea
you
they entered Sealab one at Twilight
through the hatch an explorer because
inside pressure had been equalized with
the outside water pressure the hatch was
left open
the gas mixture approximated 96% helium
and 4% oxygen but it was gradually
adjusted to 76 percent helium 20%
nitrogen and 4% oxygen the interface of
water at the open hatch tended to absorb
the nitrogen faster than the other gases
normal air of course contains 78%
nitrogen but a Casillas pressure it
would be forced into the bloodstream to
create nitrogen narcosis a dangerous
intoxicating condition topside captain
bond kept in constant touch with his
protegees below referring to himself as
Papa topside and to them as his children
he managed nonetheless to keep the
foursome under scrubber because of their
deep respect for him
hadn't he after all taken some hefty
dives at his own including one of the
three hundred and two feet and 54
seconds back in 1958 wearing only a
lifejacket that was about three times as
far as experts considered a safe limit
the television monitor the topside takes
in the spectacle of fooling around with
a fishing rod on the back porch even in
these depths privacy is not already the
video ID big brother takes it all in a
man can do many things theoretically he
can for example assume a certain
atmosphere on Mars and then deduce its
effect on a human being but there's
nothing like being there so blood
samples from a man 192 feet below the
surface of the sea are worth the taking
and the logging
six man-hours every day the forsen
devoted to free swimming within a range
of a thousand feet around the caption
they set up gear for scientific
experiments along the bottom land of
white coral sand they squinted at the
legs of the Argos Island tower to see
how the welding seams were - no
corrosion to take in this new
countryside just beyond their back porch
sometimes they mix with divers from the
barge including photographers and
cameraman
Columbus and Magellan did not have such
scraggly who for all their press
privileges must decompress like anyone
else they wish to come up to the surface
alive
you take your time coming up
master driver sheets typifies this new
breed of explorer technician athlete
seaman who understands the principles of
seamanship and the mysteries in the
underwater realm pressure and
decompression breathable and
unbreathable gas mixtures and the
seamanship of buoyant capsules and lines
and rigging and balanced and supply
within the deeps for this tune is
seamanship this art and science of man
upon sea and within the scene
for the longer trips the men wore scuba
gear
but for the shorter swims hookah gear
suffice this consisted of two teams
connected to c1 to bring them the Sealab
zone mixture of helium seven atmosphere
the other to return the used gas to the
capsule and what the men saw below for
all the tired sophistication sometimes
dogs our civilization was like a kingdom
out of the soaring fancy of the child
and the coat of man and youth and all
the ages of this whole planet apart
emerald green or Zenith blue depending
upon the state of the sky above the
kingdom changes its hue and lo the angel
officially beautiful sausage visitor
said they had never seen before
even in this teeming liquid world with
its millions of species
the barracuda the fearsome creator of
one-legged men in the pirate legends
were on their most benign behavior for
the tourist invasion the big fish eat
the little fish said the Latin poet
version and his meaning is literal as
well as figurative the men began to feel
close and neighborly toward the fish so
much so that a diver from abroad
spearfishing brought forth a cry of
protest from God for a man living on the
bottom of the sea may see his vicious
neighbors rather than his quarry for his
hunting day followed day it was a tight
life in the sea life after four days it
became home sweet home all forty by nine
feet of it - of course space for three
transformers and all the other gear such
as six berths cables storage lockers a
shower six electric heaters the chamber
of commerce sorry
a hot plate cooking however was limited
to baking and broiling frying would
create greasy hydrocarbon smolkin gases
there was enough food water and gas for
breathing to last six weeks atmospheric
pressure and 86 pounds per square inch
was six times that of female hehe him in
the special atmosphere gave a curious
quality to men's voices everyone sounded
like Donald Duck topside the helium
unscrambler made the men's voices
somewhat more comprehensible she lab
wanders a Sealab control Anderson man
the helium unscrambler and give me some
test phrases are you on let's have the
test phrases now please
it's very good I hear you loud and clear
on the scrambler the Sealab atmosphere
did not contain enough oxygen to light a
match
hence no smoking it also permitted the
men to bring water to a heat far above
at sea level boiling point but without a
trace of steam or vapor open a soft
drink and the bottle would suck air in
rather than fizzing out let us remember
these rare moments on the ocean bottom
Manning and Anderson playing cribbage
before bedtime
going topside after a visit to the
Sealab Shepherd Walter Mazzone technical
project officer mail delivery about his
prompt is anywhere else under the
American flag
but the dented plastic jug shows what
pressure can do they also serve who only
endure day after day and night after
night beneath the sea there was times
below from time to read as well as to
work for a man that endures a man who
simply is is triumph enough 192 feet
down
dr. Thompson keeps a medical mind
focused on the others who indeed are
busy enough with their daily swims
collecting bottom samples checking gas
Sounders and taking pictures for later
analysis the men living in the still
alien realm of the waters lost all their
fear began to feel that they belong to
where they were that they can go for a
swim without their air tanks you even
forgot you had to go back to Sealab for
air dr. Thompson recall one night I
dreamed I was breathing oxygen from the
sea there came forth here beneath the
sea at Venus and a routine that were in
themselves a new tribute to man's power
of adaption it's here why not on the
moon why not on Mars and so it went for
eleven days but on the 11th day
intimations forebodings from the look of
things
topside trouble brewing in the form of a
tropical disturbance the weather man's
tentative euphemism for what later
became a full-fledged hurricane hurried
conferences evaluations decision to
abandon operation Sealab after 11 of the
21 and program days from below
objections complaints but the risk to
topside support ships and personnel and
therefore in time to all concern was too
great so began the ascent overland
stayed in the sea lab for two nights and
a day while it was slowly raised at the
rate of one foot every 20 minutes at
which place and then didn't became
accustomed to the decreasing pressure as
they neared the surface but at the 84
foot level trouble already the sea upon
the surface was churning from the rising
winds and the surge carried below
rocking the scene that capsule back and
forth
decompression pressures could no longer
be contained
so at 84 feet the men transferred to the
submersible decompression chamber to
rise to the surface
where they remained another 25 hours
before they saw once again
the light of atmospheric day the
compression took fifty five and a half
hours in all had the men not descended
gradually ridding themselves and the
absorbed gas little by little dangerous
bubbles might have formed in their blood
streams and listened to their brains a
fatal probability this danger boss said
is the monkey on every divers back it's
tedious of course waiting it out in the
SBC but tedium is preferable to death
patience is the most important virtue a
diver can have
raising Sealab itself was an engineering
feat of some note since all on the
scenes technology is in the nature of
pioneering
scratched by cables rubbing against it
she emerged none the worse for the
11-day weight of the ocean apartment and
when the men of God the sea remains from
its teeming deep serve fish and plankton
and algae enough to feed the entire
foreseeable earth if men will learn how
to harvest these frigid waters the sea
remain rich in minerals of all kinds
some of them like oil already in
production the sea remains for Sealab
and the descendants for those who will
go down to the bottom of it and stay
long enough to do some thinking and some
work Sealab 1 proved that man can take
it down below but if he stays down 24
hours or more his tissues become fully
saturated with helium beyond that period
the time required for decompression does
not increase however long he remains
below Sealab was an adventure test of
man's capacity to survive where survival
is the biggest job he has beyond
survival lies progress and perhaps a
civilization of growing permanence for
the sea remains Sealab 1 is but an
incident a point in time already in the
past
Sealab 1 proved that man does not have
to decompress between work periods
beneath the sea that he can under the
precise conditions we have seen remain
below indefinitely
what lies before man here on his own
planet here in the watering interstates
that has known as a challenge to his
talent and his endurance then the space
beyond the upper atmosphere will he have
the genius to harvest the fruit of the
sea food enough even for the exploding
population of the crowded land we grow
factories to process the Seaford or will
he in this less than perfect world use
the underwater realm for military
purposes will they be manned outposts on
the ocean bottom fortresses submarine
bases supply depots will he build for
the better life resort hotels
sightseeing and scientific buildings
within these waters
we'll remind the elements everything
from iron to cadmium from aluminum to
oil that rest unexploited within this
planet earth beneath the sea we are
reminded of the words of the late John F
Kennedy we are just at the threshold of
our knowledge in the oceans he said
already their military importance their
potential for weather predictions for
food and for minerals is evident
knowledge of the oceans is more than a
matter of curiosity our very survival
may hinge upon it Sealab one is a part
of the strange colorful Hardware of our
age names chock full of wonders but
still a time when there remains unknown
realms
which to adventure adventure yes but
more important is the knowledge gained
from scientific investigation of the
unknown from knowledge comes strength a
step in progress toward the essential
strategic goals of the future which will
require increasing utilization of the
vast oceanic areas for our security
you
you
