CHAPTER VII.
Davy Jones’s Locker, and those who Dive into it.
Scientific Diving—General Principles—William Phipps and the Treasure Ship—Founder of the House of Mulgrave—Halley’s Wooden Diving-bell and Air Barrels—Smeaton’s Improvements—Spalding’s Death—Operations at Plymouth Breakwater—The Diver’s Life—“Lower away!”—The Diving-Belle and her Letter from Below—Operations at the Bottom—Brunel and the Thames Tunnel—The Diving Dress—Suffocation—Remarkable Case of Salvage—The “Submarine Hydrostat”—John Gann of Whitstable—Dollar Row—Various Anecdotes—Combat at the Bottom of the Sea—A Mermaid Story—Run down by the Queen of Scotland.
The art of unassisted diving having been considered, the reader’s attention is invited to divers and diving aided by scientific appliances. But for these developments, how could one hope to recover anything large or valuable that had once disappeared beneath the waves? How properly build gigantic breakwaters, piers, and bridges, or examine and clear choked ports and channels?[29] Some of the grandest achievements of modern practical science would have been impossible without their aid.
Every reader understands the general principle involved in the construction of the diving-bell. Invert a tumbler in a deep vessel of water, and the liquid will only ascend to a certain height inside, however far down you place the glass. Insert a tube in a hole drilled in your tumbler, and blow downwards, and the water recedes still lower. This is what happens when the air is pumped down into the modern diving-bell. In descending in a diving-bell and remaining under water you will feel a slight inconvenience in breathing, and perhaps a tingling in the ears; this comes, not from scarcity of air, but from the fact that the atmosphere of the interior of the bell is really denser than it is outside; the air, forced downwards by the powerful air-pump, is pressed upwards by the water. Readers may remember that Robert Fulton and his friends [pg 80]remained under water in his submarine boat for over two hours, the air in that case being supplied from a large globe containing highly condensed air, which was allowed to escape as required. The foul air passed off from tubes in bubbles to the surface.
A DIVER AT WORK (WITH SUBMARINE LAMP).
As early as the year 1663 an Englishman named William Phipps, the son of a blacksmith, invented a plan for recovering from the bottom of the sea the treasures out of a Spanish vessel which had sunk on the coast of Hispaniola. Charles II. lent him a ship and all that was necessary for his enterprise, but the matter did not turn out successfully, and William Phipps fell into a state of the greatest poverty. Notwithstanding this nothing could discourage his ardour, and to set himself afloat again he opened a subscription list in England, of which the Duke of Albemarle was one of the subscribers. In 1667 Phipps embarked in a ship of 200 tons burden, having undertaken beforehand to divide the profits between the twenty shareholders who represented the associated capital. At first starting his search proved altogether unavailing, and he was just beginning to despair, when he fell in with the golden vein. The fortunate diver returned to England with £200,000; £20,000 he kept for himself, and no less than £90,000 came to the share of the Duke of Albemarle. Phipps was knighted by the [pg 81]king, and became the founder of the noble house of Mulgrave, which has played no inconsiderable part in the affairs of the United Kingdom.
It is little more than a century and a half ago since the celebrated astronomer, Halley—about the first to commence those experiments in submarine exploration which have been continued to the present epoch—descended to a depth of fifty feet in a diving-bell which he had constructed. It was built of wood, and covered with sheet lead. The air that was vitiated by respiration escaped from the chamber through an air-cock, while the pure element was supplied by barrels, which descended and ascended alternately on both sides of the bell, like buckets in a well. These barrels, lined with metal, each contained some thirty-six gallons of condensed air; they were connected with the interior of the bell by leathern tubes. As soon as one of these air receptacles was exhausted another was let down. Halley himself relates that in 1721, by the aid of this apparatus, he was able to descend with four other persons to a depth of nine or ten fathoms, and to remain under water an hour and a half.
It is to Smeaton, the celebrated engineer of the famed Eddystone Lighthouse, that the diving-bell owes its leading characteristics, as he was the first to abolish Halley’s rather clumsy contrivance and apply the power of the air-pump; he also constructed the first cast-iron bell. In 1779 he made use of the diving-bell to repair the piles of Hexham Bridge, in the north of England, the foundations of the structure having been undermined by the violence of the current. A few years after a sad accident occurred from the use of Halley’s barrel apparatus.