William Beebe and Otis Barton: Depth-defying pioneers

Nature can still compete with the metaverse. At least that's what the spectacle of thousands of Americans glancing up from their screens for a look at yesterday's total eclipse of the sun would seem to suggest.

Many even left their homes, traveling hundreds if not thousands of miles to be in the path of totality. It's nice to know the urge to see something with our own eyes remains, even in this era of 4K.

William Beebe and Otis Barton had a similar need to see, although their vision was trained on the depths of the sea rather than the vast firmament above us.

Beebe was a zoologist and explorer made famous by his books detailing his adventures. Barton was a young Harvard-trained engineer living off a sizeable inheritance. What these two men accomplished when they joined forces is a tribute to the amateur spirit of invention that still survives in America, despite various forces working against it.

Although Barton's money was enough to complete construction of the cramped iron sphere they dubbed the Bathysphere, the men realized they needed more financing to carry out their dives. To this end they shrewdly won the backing of National Geographic.

They also gained attention for their project by broadcasting one of their descents over the radio. Their flair for publicity did not detract from their courage, however. A small leak in the Bathysphere would have sent highly pressurized drops of water tearing through them like bullets.

On August 15, 1934, Beebe and Baxter descended to a depth of half a mile, setting a record that stood until Baxter himself broke it in a new vessel in 1949. Some scientists scoffed at their showmanship as unseemly and accused them of exaggerating.

Yet their detractors could only mock from the surface. Unlike them, Beebe and Baxter experienced this previously unknown world firsthand, “under a pressure which, if loosened, in a fraction of a second would make amorphous tissue of our bodies, breathing our own homemade atmosphere, sending a few comforting words chasing up and down a string of hose … privileged to peer out and actually see the creatures which had evolved in the blackness of a blue midnight which, since the ocean was born, had known no following day.”