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Can You Live Under the Sea?

A whole new world awaits man under the seas. Not a dream any longer, it is coming closer every day.

BY FLOYD B. McKNIGHT

“SHALL we take the sub-train down to Sea City?” you ask.

“No,” your companion replies, “Let’s take the Aquascender. We’ve been using the sub-train all week!”

You follow the crowd of commuters into the pressurized transparent cabin, much as you would enter an elevator on the top floor of a skyscraper. The door is closed. The atmosphere becomes almost imperceptibly darker as the stewardess turns on the light-conditioners to accustom your eyes to what is coming. A soft hissing sound informs you that the breath-conditioners are also on.

Yes, the light in space around you is controlled, and so is the air you breathe. So accurate are the controls when the motors begin to purr and the actual descent begins, that you do not even notice the change.

People used to swell up at the joints and die trying to do what you are doing now. Thanks to science, you are enjoying the thrill of vertical descent to the ocean floor in perfect comfort.

Fish, large and small, silver and blue and gold, plain and striped, with weird designs, saw-toothed or hatchet-faced or just everyday fish, swim up to the transparent walls of the Aquascender shaft. You glimpse phosphorescent creatures rippling electrically among watery weeds and ferns, flowers delicately white and yellow and red, and rocks and grottos, strangely shapen, overgrown with sea-moss, coral and vines.

Then, faintly visible, rising from below, you see the transparent, watery spires of Sea City in all its enchanted reality! It is built of the same substance as your Aquascender car and the shaft through which it has made its descent—a new, transparent plastic, stronger than metal, made to withstand the terrific underwater pressures. These are the “Buildings That Breathe” as they are known in the world of earth and air above.

The Aquascender comes to a gentle stop. You step out into streets that also breathe within the transparent tunnels that enclose them. All the undersea structures, harder and more solid than those of the earth above, literally “breathe.” They use compressed air lungs, just as your Aquascender uses. All are regulated, floor by floor, to harmonize your bodily organism with actual conditions of undersea living, working, playing, venturing.

Through it all you remain dry as powder —that is, provided you want to. You can also don your own fins, artificial lungs and water-weights and go out among the “workers in the field,” swimming about like veritable mermen and mermaids, drilling for oil, cultivating agar, kelp and strange mosses in lush undersea gardens, photographing the treasure of a sunken ship or of a submerged Atlantis!

Does this picture of a possibly not-too-distant future seem fantastic? Do you think it is impossible? If so, it is because you do not realize how far undersea science has gone toward this very development right now! The picture is not only possible. Much of it is a thing of the present—not the future!

The vision of almost unlimited periods of submersion has now become a fact, with the actual development of an apparatus which manufactures oxygen from purified sea water. The Navy has awarded a $150,000 contract to a company to build the device for use in submarines. With a continuous supply of freshened air, and fuel from an atomic pile, submarines will be able to remain submerged for two years at a time without having to surface at regular intervals to revive the atmosphere and charge batteries. The adaptation of these principles to other structures surely removes the aura of fantasy from the possibility of a city under the sea!

Until fairly recently it was thought that the bottom limit for safe “skin diving” was thirty-five feet and that a diver going farther might come up with a terrible case of “the bends.” The cause was the rapidly increasing pressure of the water with increasing depth. Nineteenth-century British Admiralty researches placed the increased water pressure with each foot of descent at .44-pound per square inch. No human organism could stand it.

In about 1850 a man who went down 120 feet came up with bleeding nose, terrific pains in head and body and swelling at the joints. The bent-over posture of the sufferers caused pier builders to name the ailment after the designation which certain fashionable women of the period gave to a peculiar drooping movement which they affected—the “Grecian bend.”

Investigators found that increasing pressures at greater depths caused proportionately greater quantities of nitrogen in the inhaled air to dissolve in the bloodstream. Nitrogen thus “occluded” in the blood was harmless as long as the diver stayed down. The damage started with his reascent. A quick return lessened the pressure so fast that the compressed nitrogen expanded and foamed like soda water in the blood. Bubbles blocked off the smaller capillaries and forced them to burst. If large bubbles lodged in the valves of the heart, it stopped beating and death ensued.

The remedy proved to be gradual reascent. Returning from a 100-foot dive, the diver paused for a half-hour at 80 feet, then for a certain time at another level, and so on. The nitrogen in his blood thus was given time to become decompressed and gradually escape. Statisticians computed elaborate “decompression tables.” The diver had but to consult his chart to calculate how many hours he should take to reascend from a dive which required only a few minutes. The deepest descent ever made was that of William Beebe and Otis Barton in Bermuda waters in August, 1934. Beebe’s famous “Bathysphere,” a spherical structure of thick steel, with windows of quartz, whose coefficient of expansion is almost identical to that of steel, went down 3,028 feet and despite the terrific pressures at that level returned intact to the upper world.

From 670 feet downward, plant life was no more, and an important door to the upper world was closed, though he was constantly giving descriptions and instructions by telephone to his co-workers above. Here the fish were often powerful, colorful, sometimes of giant proportions and often highly luminous. Some of them bore lights like traffic signals on special tentacles protruding from their bodies. At 1,680 feet one of these luminous fish suddenly “exploded” in the inky water right outside the quartz window of the Bathysphere. Later there were other “explosions,” all with blinding flashes of light, and only after repeated experiences of this phenomenon did he learn that a flame-throwing shrimp was defending itself by literally pouring a stream of flame out of its body to drive away some terrible-toothed marauders of the deep in one of nature’s wars deep-hidden from the eye of the upper world. The teeth of some fish a half-mile down were shiningly phosphorescent, with black interspaces between the teeth and bodies that seemed now like transparent veils or again deep black like the water itself.

As such information is garnered by the courageous scientists who go down to the depths and report what they have seen, the big question mark in our knowledge of the ocean is gradually being reduced.

In experiments at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Max Gene Nohl, Captain John Craig and others built their own laboratory pressure chamber and lived in it to test on their own bodies the possibility of breathing new atmospheres containing inert gases other than nitrogen. An oxygen-helium atmosphere was found best because helium did not “occlude” in the blood.

Further research showed that the effects of carbon dioxide, which can accumulate disastrously in the lungs at depths of 200 feet and lower, are surmountable by proper pressurizing. Thus we have learned to avoid the so-called “rapture of the deep” from which less experienced divers have suffered —an intense and intoxicating dizziness which may cause the diver to ignore danger by going down still farther after his attack or even losing his breathing and other mechanical equipment and plunging to death.

Some undersea men have advocated the fish’s breathing method for man—the inhalation of oxygen directly through the water by means of artificial gills. But the human organism cannot endure straight oxygen, and the technical problem of blending it with an inert gas such as helium has not yet been mastered. The “Aqualung” used by Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his French associates embodies regulation of the flow of compressed air in ratio to depth and exterior pressure. Along with whatever breathing contraption the “skin diver” may take down with him, he may use such mechanical aids as weights to offset natural buoyancy and flippers on the feet.

The problems of underwater communication are rapidly being solved. It has been found that a throaty speech sometimes aids communication under water because it sets up bone vibrations. Bone oscillators, transceivers, tank microphones and helmet telephones have been used effectively.

Television, too, has been successfully applied to undersea communication. A surface monitor screen can give a constant picture of the scene being photographed below. The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, in association with Siebe, Gorman and Company, Ltd., has used this principle in England. A Marconi image orthicon camera is equipped with remote controls to govern focus and lens aperture. A water indicator warns of any moisture in the camera’s pressure casing and all cameras and equipment are pressurized to protect them from being shattered by the strong pressures. A compass and an inclinometer are a part of this TV equipment, and infrared lighting has been suggested to overcome the difficulty of photography in muddy waters.

The United States Navy’s Ordnance Laboratory has used highspeed photography to study the effects of underwater explosions two miles down. With explosion detonation, camera “shooting,” flash and aperture control automatically synchronized to milliseconds, the photographers took pictures at a rate of 20,000 frames per second, giving the Navy needed information at nominal cost in contrast to the $500,000 that construction of a tank adequate for the experi- ment would have otherwise required.

Modern science and industry have launched a joint endeavor to conquer the sea, as they have the land and air. Actual undersea conditions are produced in laboratories, such as the 125-gallon duplicate of the ocean bottom in a downtown New York skyscraper. Here, Western Union engineers have artificially created the black, freezing, high-pressure depths nearly two miles down in the North Atlantic within a five-ton tank with four-inch-thick steel walls. The operation of delicate undersea cable amplifiers for installation on the ocean bottom may now be carefully tested under “actual” conditions far from the ocean.

With such developments already thought out and used, what obstacles remain to the construction of man’s undersea city? Certainly, none that cannot be overcome! For years, industry has produced reinforced plastics that are stronger than metal. It has manufactured synthetic substances with other needed properties almost at will. A few more steps, at most, will produce the desirable building materials for the city.

Perhaps at deep levels the structures will be portable, movement being easier there because of the greater buoyancy of the water.

The shark problem is less menacing than some hair-raising accounts suggest. Man is by no means ignorant of shark behavior. The presence of blood in the water makes the shark ferocious. Otherwise, unless the creature is exceedingly hungry or has been hurt by a man, it will not attack him.

The known repulsion of sharks by the presence of a dead shark in the water led to an interesting discovery in World War II. Aviators over the Pacific were far more fearful of sharks than of drowning, and it was found that the dead shark developed in its. body a substance which the living shark did not possess. Dow Chemical Company researches produced this substance synthetically, so that it might be dumped from planes into the shark-infested waters whenever a plane went down.

Thus man’s knowledge has gone far toward conquering this last remaining frontier of the physical world. And why should he bother? Well, on the materialistic side there is untold wealth! With Near Eastern oil threatened, the exploits of drillers operating clumsily from ships off California and Texas have gained attention, and undersea science will make possible actual drilling on the sea bottom. Commercial values are there. They gained official recognition when President Dwight D. Eisenhower granted, and both houses of Congress passed bills confirming, states rights to all mineral resources in the tidelands areas and perhaps further out to sea when the law is further defined. Thus, the states affected have gained mineral rights to a ‘”sea” of wealth. It is estimated that full scale oil well operations on these underwater “tidelands” can eventually produce about 200,000 barrels of petroleum, as well as 600 to 800 million cubic feet of natural gas, each day. During the course of these activities, the discovery of new major oil and gas fields will continue to offer fresh sources.

In certain deep ocean areas lies the primordial ooze, an eight- to ten-foot film thought to contain the makings of plastic materials. Portions of it are radioactive. Samples already entrapped prove that this layer is a rich source of oil. It is now believed that nearly half of the oil remaining in the earth is still stored in large pools beneath the oceans, within ancient coral or shell reefs and in “traps” under the sea floor.

Many minerals of the undersea are known. Manganese, so essential in our industrial civilization, is present in thick crusts on the rocky summits of submarine mountains. Only one such sea mount in the central Pacific is estimated to contain fifty million tons, ten times the present annual world production. The rising standard of living throughout the world may well exhaust our present sources of iron within the next hundred years. Magnesium extracted from the sea, the likely substitute, offers a source of supply sufficient for over ten million years.

Gold deposits run out to sea, often for considerable distances. A cathode ray tube, showing radar reflections in terms of brilliance, might easily locate them. It is estimated that if the quantity of gold in sea water were all extracted and distributed equally, each man, woman and child in the world would receive an amount worth about $4,000.00. (Before taxes.) The famous German chemist Fritz Haber was the first to draw practical conclusions from the fact that sea water is an inexhaustible source of gold. He was charged with this task by the German government during World War I, and succeeded in working out an extraction method, but was not given the opportunity to perfect it and make it economical. After the war ended no further funds were available for the project.

The fact that gold is highly diluted in sea water does not mean extraction can’t pay. There is a plant called horsetail which has the property of accumulating gold by selective absorption. These plants might be raised on “plantations,” and the gold extracted from them.

Coal companies, too, have tunneled out from land to mine under the water, and have also drilled directly from the sea bottom. Incidentally, a better-burning coal results from sinking it so that it may absorb salt, as anyone knows who has observed the effects of “bunkering” it beneath water-level on a steamship.

Ambergris, malodorous carrier base for delicate and expensive perfumes, originates in the stomach and intestines of the sperm whale.

With new access to the medicinal oils of the livers of the cod and whale will come a new scientific understanding of the plankton, those near-microscopic creatures which absorb sunlight on the surface of the water, then are eaten by these big fish which in turn give sunlight and vitamins to man through cod and other fish-liver oils.

Varying temperatures of the water at different levels can produce the power for man’s undersea activities, and the most forward-looking explorers of the deep envision manufacturing their own power supply below the surface.

Long ago Simon Lake espoused underwater freight to save energy and expense, because he saw the economic value of loss of weight of heavy objects during transportation.

Strategically, supersonic signal stations could be built well out from shore, and a photoelectric fence could help warn of enemies and keep them out. One fantastic but not impossible dream of earlier undersea enthusiasts was the diversion of the warm Gulf Stream where it meets the cold Labrador Current at the Grand Bank, east of Newfoundland. Engineers believed that at this point it would not be too difficult to direct these currents and change the climates of continents, so that palm trees might line Fifth Avenue!

The triumph of undersea science is not one primarily of new gadgets and devices, although these are important, but of recognition of a set of laws apparently different from the natural laws which govern life on land.

“Drop” an object undersea and it rises instead of falls. The force of gravity becomes the force of levity—the more so the deeper one goes, and very rapidly more so. The scientist is learning to use these phenomena to advantage—and in many respects his job is an easy one. Underwater lighting, for example, is much simpler than dry-land lighting because the heat generated by a burning electric bulb in an ordinary air medium is tremendous, whereas water cools the bulb so that a 1,000-watt bulb under the sea need be no larger than a 60-watt bulb on land.

Man has conquered practically the final obstacles standing in the way of his new adventure. Arthur Carpenter, a member of the board of governors of the Explorers’ Club, in collaboration with a group of explorers, scientists and engineers, has created an actual undersea station in which ten or a dozen men can go down to depths of 100 feet or more and live there even for several weeks at a time if they so desire.

Another explorer, J. E. Williamson, has stayed overnight in his underwater sphere anchored on the seafloor off the Bahamas. His sphere, six feet in diameter, is even recognized as an undersea post office of the British Government as long as he keeps it there!

Within the next few years, the undersea will become more than an overnight lark, a post office for tourist parties or a place for a casual dive or photographic trick. That is because the scientist, the technologist and the engineer have taken over. Yesterday, the “city under the sea” belonged to the researcher and adventurer.

Tomorrow it will belong to you and me!

————

“The only other place comparable to these marvelous nether regions, must surely be naked space itself, out far beyond atmosphere, between the stars, where sunlight has no grip upon the dust and rubbish of planetary air, where the blackness of space, the shining planets, comets, suns, and stars 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 a half mile down.”
-William Beebe

Aquaplanes Carry TENNIS to Sea

IT JUST had to come! With a mile-long waiting line at the public tennis courts of most cities, the devotees of the sport just had to find some place to play; and as a net across the pavement might interfere with traffic to a certain extent there was no place left except the wide-open spaces of lake, river, ocean, or what kind of water have you in your neighborhood?

Aquaplane tennis, which started in the South last winter and rapidly obtained a foothold at the northern resorts during the summer, requires three speed boats, two aquaplanes, four bathing beauties and a lot of water. If the service is rotten you can always go swimming. It’s a great racket even if it is all wet!

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Training Divers to Fight Undersea Perils

USING a special dry-land pressure tank, Navy officials have perfected a method of training deep-sea divers to combat perils hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the sea.

YOUNG men who wish to become deep-sea divers can learn the fine points of the profession without getting any closer to the ocean than Washington, D. C, thanks to scientists who have developed a system of pressure-tank training which enables divers to stand on the bottom of a tank twelve feet deep and experience exactly the same pressure and temperature conditions that obtain in the ocean at depths of 200 to 300 feet. Deep-sea diving is a profession which demands a sturdy body, a steady nerve and clear judgment, but for young men who wish to choose a life work which holds forth promise of adventure, diving offers thrills second to none.

At Washington navy yard, a diving school whose personnel includes 25 enlisted men and 6 officers is now in session. Tyros are converted into skilled divers in the short period of six months. Furthermore, these newly trained divers understand thoroughly the perils that they must encounter under the surface sooner or later, and they are taught just how to protect themselves when danger threatens.

The green divers of the U. S. Navy descend to depths of 150 to 200 feet or more in a tank only 12 feet high and 8 feet in diameter, containing some 8,000 gallons of water. By the use of compressed air, underwater conditions are simulated in this tank. Beginners master diving secrets in the tank without danger to life and limb such as they would experience if “learning their trade” in salt water. Such menaces as the octopus, deep-sea monsters and other marine menaces are eliminated from this training school program.

One former impediment was the extreme difficulty of breathing satisfactorily for long intervals at points far below the surface. Experiments with the diving chamber have resulted in the perfection of new combinations of synthetic atmosphere. Helium gas has been introduced most successfully in these mixtures. As a result, Chief Gunner W. F. Loughman has made a successful descent to a point 306 feet below the ocean surface—and remained there 20 minutes. In another test, this same diver performed important salvage work on a sunken ship at a depth of 265 feet.

In the experimental tank at Washington, one expert diver working under simulated sea conditions has attained a depth of 355 feet and has remained there for one-half a minute. This is the deepest dive ever made. The pressure to which this daring diver was exposed was stupendous—sufficient to crush to atoms some of the strongest buildings built by man.

An additional atmosphere of pressure equivalent to 14.7 pounds per square inch developed in the diving tank by compressed air control exerts similar pressure on the diver as though he had descended another 33 feet. In raising the trainees to the surface of the tank after their experimental dives, care is exercised in gradually decreasing the pressure as where this is done hurriedly, caisson sickness is liable to develop.

If you are familiar with the precarious occupation of the professional diver, you have, unquestionably, heard about men who have suffered from “bends” or caisson sickness. The extreme pressures of deep sea diving, if reduced abruptly, leave bubbles of nitrogen in the blood vessels, tissues and body fluids. If these bubbles penetrate to the spinal cord or brain, death or paralysis generally results. The associates of the deep sea divers are extremely cautious in raising their mates from the vicinity of the ocean floor after deep descents.

However, when the sea is rough and the waves are “bumpy,” there is a liability that the diver may suffer severe ear injury or total loss of hearing. Helium gas is particularly important in such “decompression” for it is inert and absorbs the nitrogen bubbles readily.

Science has perfected the efficient decompression chamber known popularly as the “iron doctor” among the diving fraternity. This is a large cylinder of iron and steel with two compartments and various control doors and gauges in which the divers who suffer caisson sickness are treated in order to eliminate the nitrogen bubbles from their systems. Pressure is artificially applied within the tank to simulate the gradually diminishing pressure of a slow ascent to the surface.

During the era not so long ago when 200 foot dives were championship feats, the mill-run of divers customarily suffered nausea attacks in one dive out of ten. The provision of better equipment, the use of helium gas in the airlines and similar precautions have reduced this record to one case of illness in 50 dives. The experimental research and standardized training for naval divers fostered by Uncle Sam promises to further curtail this form of diving illness. Potentially, it may even be stamped permanently from the deep sea diving picture.

The U. S. Navy will train 62 men and officers annually for deep diving and subsequently will station them at strategic points along the coast. They will be ready constantly for emergency calls—to aid in the salvage of sunken ships and submarines and the succor of those endangered in such wrecks. They will also be available for routine underwater service at naval stations and in the repair and maintenance of our national fleet. Special boats used by these divers will be equipped with the all-important decompression chambers and other demonstrated accessories of comparable utility. The use of synthetic atmosphere in this decompression chamber reduces the treatment period from one-fourth to one-third over the time required where ordinary air is used. Furthermore, the use of helium gas in the diving airlines has practically doubled the time in which the divers can remain at work in the salt sea at perilous depths.

Whenever a group of naval divers are commissioned to aid in the salvage of a sunken ship, each man aspires to find and bring to the surface the signal bell of the waterlogged craft. It is the badge of honor —the coveted prize which proves the superiority of its discoverer over his mates. The rivalry is friendly and results in submarine sport and byplay which lends spice to arduous and hazardous labor at the bottom of the sea.

The diver must be expert in various repair activities such as the adjustment of marine machinery, electric torch work and related tasks. Even though skilled highly in such work, his efforts are hampered when buried under a blanket of salt water 150 to 200 feet deep so that his efficiency is only one-sixth of what it would be on land. The U. S. Navy through its remarkable instruction courses seeks to make the average diver more proficient than formerly and to educate him so that he will be qualified to make good in every emergency.

Five compressors whose individual capacity ranges from 50 to 75 cubic feet of air per minute are installed at the Washington Navy Yard.

Blimp Tows Aquaplane to Give Latest Aquatic Thrill
HITCH hiking behind the Goodyear blimp Volunteer is the latest form of water sport for thrill seekers on the California bathing beaches. One of the most ardent devotees of the sport is Elmer Peck, of Long Beach, holder of the world’s record for endurance on an aquaplane. He is shown in the accompanying photo stunting on an aquaplane in tow of the Volunteer which is flying low over the water at a clip of 60 miles per hour. Stunting like this demands the utmost in nerve and skill.

Plane Carries Tourists on Side Trips

AIR and ocean travel are combined in a Mediterranean steamer which carries a hydroplane on its deck for passengers’ use. When the ship calls at points of historic interest the hydroplane is launched and tourists are given a view of the strange city from the air.

The hydroplane is powered with a 320 h. p. motor and can carry five passengers in addition to the pilot and mechanic. The flying boat is carried on the stern of the steamer where it can easily be lowered into the water when desired.

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SUBMARINE SAFETY – An Insolvable Problem?

Must submarines, by their very nature, always be death traps for the men who operate them? No successful rescue device has yet been developed which can be depended on infallibly in all circumstances, and recent losses of life indicate that the problem of safety is no nearer solution now than it was 20 years ago.

THE recent tragic sinking of the British submarine M 2, with a loss of 62 lives, brings to the fore again the old problem of submarine safety. Following disasters such as the M 2, and the loss of the American S-4 and S-51, with their appalling cost in human life, inventors have been prolific in producing ideas intended to prevent recurrence of such tragedies.

Yet not one of these ideas has solved the problem—at best, they have merely palliated it. The M 2 was a submarine of the latest type. It was designed to carry an airplane in its decks, and as the first of its type was played up in the pages of Modern Mechanics and Inventions an issue or so ago. Its men were equipped with the official Davis Submarine Escape Apparatus—a mechanical lung which was supposed to enable the men to rise to the surface, breathing a supply of artificial air, in case of trouble.

Not a man escaped. In an emergency the lung failed them. Perhaps the escape locks were blocked; perhaps the compressed-air apparatus, on which their escape to an ex- tent depended, did not function. No one really knows.

The Momsen escape lung, used by the United States Navy, is very similar to the Davis apparatus. In addition, our government has experimented with escape chambers built in as part of the submarine, through which men can emerge when wearing the lung, and with a portable escape chamber, to be lowered from a ship above the stranded submarine, clamped to an escape hatch where the men can climb into, it, and then lifted up to the surface—very much like an under-water elevator.

Designers object to the built-in escape chamber on the grounds that it adds excessively to the weight of the submarine. An under-water vessel must be perfectly balanced, so if an escape lock is added to the forward portion of the ship, an equal weight must be established to counterbalance it at the rear. A submarine is regarded as a stripped-to-the-bone war weapon, and attachments which hamper its efficiency are frowned upon by naval men.

The portable escape chamber is satisfactory under ideal conditions, but it cannot be used until the stranded submarine is located. It would have been useless in the case of the M 2, whose location on the sea bottom was not known until several days had elapsed and the men had drowned.

To locate stranded submarines, devices such as that illustrated on page 54, in which a coiled flexible cable attached to a buoy is fastened to the submarine’s side, to be released and floated to the surface in case of danger, have been frequently suggested. Through the tube air could be pumped to keep the men inside the sub alive. The position of the buoy on the water’s surface would mark the spot where the ship sank, and speed the work of rescue.

Admitting that this idea is practical, Navy men nevertheless do not look with favor on it, claiming that depth bombs would set the device loose, betraying the submarine’s location to the enemy in case of war.

Italians make use of a modified escape-chamber, as illustrated on page 54. It consists essentially of a tube within the hull of the submarine, pointed up through the deck. Into this tube a man enters, wearing a mechanical lung. Compressed air is admitted until outside water pressure is equalled, and he is shot out into the sea, to emerge at the surface or to enter a similar tube on a rescue sub lying alongside.

The job of raising a sunken submarine is entirely divorced from the problem of saving its occupants. The pontoon system, in which huge metal cylinders are sunk beside the vessel, attached to it, and then blown out with compressed air, floating the sub, is still the favored method.

An improvement in this method, however, has recently been suggested by Jesse W. Reno, whose success in salvaging sunken vessels entitles his4 system to serious consideration.

Mr. Reno makes use of vertical pontoons instead of the usual horizontal type. They are open at the lower end and have constant lifting power. A few years ago he demonstrated their efficiency in a mid-winter salvage of the 500-ton coast guard cutter Scally, which sank in Long Island Sound to a depth of 65 feet. Although operating from an ordinary derrick lighter, and through one foot of solid ice, Reno succeeded in re-floating the Scally, a feat widely reviewed in the press.

The Simon Lake expedition to recover treasure from the Lusitania, described in our February issue, is a less ambitious proposal than Mr. Reno’s plan, advanced some time ago, to raise the entire vessel. Now, with the Cunard Company abandoning its plans for the construction of a gigantic super-liner, owing to financial difficulties, Capt. Reno renews his suggestion that the Lusitania be raised from her bed, instead of being merely stripped of her treasure.

“A staunch vessel like the Lusitania, with a hull shaped out of one and one-half inch plates, suffers little from exposure to deep sea conditions,” says Capt. Reno. “Under high pressure, sea water allows less disintegration, in fact, than the surface elements. There is no doubt that the Lusitania can be floated and reconditioned. The principal consideration at this time is whether her reconditioning is economically expedient.”

On a rough estimate, 100 pontoons, each with a lifting strength of 200 tons, would be sufficient to raise the Lusitania; thus a salvor would have at his command about 20,000 tons to lift a deadweight of 15,000 to 18,000 tons of submerged ship. (The Lusitania’s displacement is about 31,000 tons.) At $4000 each, the cost of the pontoons would amount to $400,000. Miscellaneous equipment would add another $100,000. Hence, for an initial outlay of about $500,000 the Lusitania could be floated, towed and anchored in a safe harbor.

The method he proposes for the Lusitania is a modification of the one employed to raise the coast guard cutter Scally.

“To raise a ship of any size I employ two sets of pontoons, one attached directly to the ship portholes and the other at the surface. Thus, with a wreck as big as the Lusitania, I would attach about 92 pontoons directly to the hull—48 on each side of the ship—and keep eight stabilizing pontoons near the surface. By this method the lower set of pontoons is made to bear about 90 per cent of the load, which is not quite enough to raise the wreck.

“The 10 per cent balance of power rests with the eight stabilizing pontoons, which are only partially filled with water. Slowly displacing the water with air, we increase their buoyancy steadily until they barely manage to lift the wreck. Thereafter the ship is hoisted foot by foot as corresponding small amounts of air are pumped into the stabilizing pontoons.”

NEW PLEASURE CRAFT

A LOS ANGELES man has invented a new type of pleasure boat. The boat has a round, metal air-filled pontoon to keep it afloat. There are twin paddles to control the boat. One of them furnishes the motive power while the other steers the odd craft. The interior of the boat is shown here with three young ladies engaged in giving it a trial spin. The boat is built to carry four persons comfortably but a maximum load of eight people can be safely handled.

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Diving Under Ice to Solve Polar Mysteries

by LEW HOLT

Sir Hubert Wilkins’ amazing journey under the North Pole in the submarine Nautilus, now under way, may discover evidence which will solve long-standing polar mysteries. Are there undiscovered islands near the pole—will the expedition discover a fathomless hole at the axis of the earth? Some of the riddles they will answer are described here.

HOW deep is the Polar sea? What is the effect of Arctic ice on the world’s weather? Can meteorologists, from a study of conditions at the North Pole, forecast months in advance droughts and hurricanes which will visit the rest of the world? Is there any basis of truth in the beliefs of some scientists that the Arctic basin represents a great hole in the earth left when the moon hurtled out of it ages ago? Will a submarine traveling through Arctic waters emerge gold-plated because of the supposed relatively heavy gold content of northern seas? These are a few of the scores of scientific riddles which will be solved by Sir Hubert Wilkins and his crew of the amazing submarine Nautilus, which is now traveling toward the Arctic, bent on the startling project of diving under the ice of the North Pole to settle once and for all questions which have puzzled scientists for years. If the mechanical safeguards installed on the Nautilus—described in last month’s issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions—are able to carry the submarine safely through the innumerable perils it will encounter on its daring journey through the top of the world, then this expedition, which many men have called foolhardy and doomed to certain destruction, will have justified itself adequately in the eyes of science.

It may seem at first glance that the mysteries locked in Arctic ice can have little practical interest to a world which occupies warmer lands thousands of miles removed from the North Pole. But if, through the establishment of weather stations at various points in the Arctic, meteorologists are able to gather information which will enable them to tell the corn growers of Iowa that they are due to have a hot, dry summer two years hence, or to inform orange growers of California that the season of 1935 will be wet and cold, then the value of the information gathered at the top of the world will have proved itself well-nigh priceless. That is one of the purposes of the Wilkins expedition. It hopes to find spots where permanent weather stations can be established.

It has been calculated that 18,000 cubic miles of drift ice reach the Atlantic ocean yearly from Arctic regions. When you consider that all the people in the world can crowd into a space of one cubic mile, as illustrated elsewhere in this article, you begin to realize the tremendous volume of ice which affects the world’s weather. There is even more ice in the Antarctic—so much that sea levels throughout the globe would be raised 30 feet if it were to melt in a day. The movement and distribution of polar ice is not uniform from year to year. Weather stations could report on its distribution and so supply information which, in connection with knowledge already at hand from temperate regions, would make long-distance forecasting a possibility.

There may be islands in the Arctic sea on which permanent stations could be established. If there are, the Nautilus is likely to find them. There are thousands of miles of polar wastes which have never been explored. Who can predict what mystery land may be discovered by the expedition? The whole trip is the most amazing voyage of exploration since the days of Columbus. All existing maps may have to be re-drawn when Wilkins returns.

No one has any idea of the contour of the bottom of the Arctic basin. There is even a theory which has gained some credence that there may be a hole through the center of the earth, extending to unfathomable depths. This is not likely, but possible. The fact that the sounding instruments carried to the Pole by Peary were not long enough to strike bottom has given encouragement to believers in this theory. No one can definitely say, now, what the facts are—but when the Nautilus returns it will bring with it an accurate chart of the sea bottom. Soundings will be made by the electrical method familiarly known as the “sonometer”, in which a sound wave is sent from the submarine to the bottom of the sea and its return echo registered. The time interval consumed makes it easy to compute the distance traveled.

Ice drills in the submarine which can bore through 100 feet of ice enable fresh air to be brought aboard the ship, and makes it possible for observers from the sub to get out on the ice to study polar conditions, even when there is no stretch of open water available for the ship to come to the surface.

A photographic balloon filled with helium will be used to send up a camera to take aerial photos. In case it seems desirable to know the nature of the country before venturing out of the submarine, the camera balloon can be sent up through the conning tower and an air photo snapped. This will show the country for miles around. A compass carried in the balloon will be photographed on the same plate, so that the problem of direction will be solved. In effect, the aerial balloon will produce a made-to-order map in an emergency.

Water-tight movie cameras are also part of the equipment of the Nautilus. With them pictures can be taken beneath the ice of the polar sea.

Experiments in short-wave radio broad- casting will be conducted at the Pole. It is not known whether the sub can broadcast when submerged, but it will be lying on the surface often enough so that operators in the United States with short-wave receivers should be successful in catching the signals from the North Pole.

What sort of life exists in the Arctic? Walrus and polar bears are about all that occur to the average person. But there is unquestionably a wide variety of sea life, animal and vegetable, existing in minute form in Polar waters. A unique mechanism by which the Nautilus can collect samples of such life, and preserve them for reference, has been devised.

A roll of muslin, unfolding something after the fashion of a roll of film, will filter samples of Arctic water through it constantly. Sea life which collects on the muslin will be preserved as the roll is wound up. Later on, when the sub returns to civilization, it will be a simple matter to unroll the precious muslin and make an exhaustive study of the sea life adhering to it. No one can predict what odd forms of life will be discovered.

Even the bottom of the sea will yield up its secrets. Hollow tubes will be lowered from the submarine, collecting deposits of ooze which will give geologists an insight into the physical construction of the northern hemisphere. Evidence thus collected may serve to disprove or substantiate current theories as to the origin of the world. Perhaps, ages ago, there was land at the Pole where now is only water. Perhaps the temperature was warmer, the land occupied by a long vanished race. If so, the sample-collecting tubes of the Nautilus will probably supply the evidence. Magnetism, that odd force which operates compasses, will likewise be studied. Probably the Nautilus will float directly over the magnetic pole. If she does, her compass needles will likely point vertically instead of to the north.

What about currents in the Arctic ocean? It is roughly known that there is a current flowing from the Bering Sea towards Spitsbergen, but there is very little real knowledge on the subject. Many problems of economic importance can be hastened toward solution when scientists know more about Arctic currents. For instance, it is possible that the great Hudson Bay country in Canada can be opened up by connecting it with England by means of a submarine trade route. Hudson Bay is a natural sea outlet for the great wheat-raising country of western Canada. If the Nautilus demonstrates its ability to fend off and dodge icebergs in the region of Greenland, the submarine may come into its own as a wheat cargo carrier. For, as a glance at the map reproduced elsewhere in this article will show, a northern submarine route between Hudson Bay and Liverpool, a world wheat market, is the most direct and shortest that can exist. Furthermore, a submarine can carry a respectable cargo tonnage which may some day make it a competitor of steamers in certain cases.

The “polar front” theory of weather prediction, which may be studied by the Wilkins expedition through the use of sounding balloons and instruments for measuring air densities, has as its basis the following facts: The mass of air in the northern hemisphere is 10,000,000,000 tons greater in January than in the following July. This means that this vast tonnage of air is shifted once a year, developing terrific energy. The horsepower developed by winds has been calculated at 20,000,000,000. Some day this vast source of latent power may be tapped.

Even the force of gravity, always a mystery, but today more mysterious than ever with Prof. Albert Einstein challenging the principles established by the great Newton, will be investigated by the expedition. It is known that the force of gravity varies in different locations on the earth. Instruments carried on the Nautilus will enable scientific members of the crew to take records that may have an important bearing on the mystery of gravitation.

Some one has suggested to Sir Hubert Wilkins that his submarine will be gold-plated when it comes home from the Arctic. It is supposed that the Arctic ocean has a heavy gold content, and that it will be deposited on the metallic sub, attracted by the electric batteries which propel the ship—a sort of huge electroplating scheme devised by nature. There is little likelihood that this much to be desired event will come to pass, but there is a certain amount of justification for the prediction. Not only Arctic seas, but all sea water, contains minute quantities of gold in suspension. Science has long known this, but no satisfactory means of extracting the metal cheaply has yet been devised. Submarines traveling through temperate waters have shown no tendency to collect gold-plate on their hulls.

It will be seen from the foregoing that it would be a brave man indeed who would describe the Wilkins expedition as a mere adventure. It is an adventure, of course— so was the journey of Columbus to the new world—but it is a project which may prove of inestimable value to the world at large.

There is always the possibility that these daring men may not come back. The Nautilus may be crushed in grinding ice, may become hopelessly wedged in the bottom of an iceberg. No one denies the dismaying odds of peril and sudden death which confront the expedition.

Even as you read these words, the Nautilus is somewhere on its way toward its amazing goal.

Bon voyage!

Crossing The Atlantic in this overgrown barrel is the intention of Peter Olsen and Mark Charlton. Their $2,500 tub is 10 feet long; 6 feet, 9 inches high at the bilge; weighs more than two tons; and has a four-foot, 700-pound keel and a four-foot rudder. A 22-foot mast fits into the foremost hole of the barrel.

Floating Fuel Station for SEAPLANES

IN THE future, when airplane travel comes to be as commonplace as automobile travel, we may expect to see floating filling stations, such as shown in the drawing above, dotting the airplane travel lanes of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This is by no means a fantastic project of dreamers, for already just such floating service stations are to be seen scattered along the Pacific coast; and a west coast oil company, looking to the future, has announced its intentions of establishing a chain of 99 such stations for the accommodation of planes journeying up and down the seaboard.

These floating service stations are marked by neon lighted towers and are equipped to service a plane in any way necessary, their chief function, however, being refueling. A wireless transmitter and receiver keeps the station in constant communication with land, so that weather information and emergency orders can be provided for the pilots. When a pilot wants to take on fuel he brings his ship up alongside the barge, fastens his mooring lines to the mooring post, and swings the hose, which is attached to the projecting fuel arm, into position and signals to the attendant to begin pumping.

The barge is moored in place by means of anchors. All fuel tanks are below decks, with no projection above save for the office at the stern. The fueling pumps are sunk in pits to safeguard the wings of planes moored alongside.

Auto-Boat Speedy on Land or Sea

YOU may take your choice and call it a sea-going auto or a road-boat, but whatever it is, the vehicle shown in the photo below performs nicely on land or water, developing 25 miles an hour in the liquid element and 40 per on terra firma.

The land-boat (or sea-auto) was invented by Peter Prell of Union, New Jersey, presumably for the purpose of beating the jam on both tube and ferry while commuting to New York.

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UNDERSEA SPIES

BY JAMES NEVIN MILLER

BACK in December, 1944, Lieut. Earl E. Cook of Seattle, won the Navy Cross for a unique achievement. First, in a successful effort to locate three enemy depth bombs known to be in immediate danger of detonation, he dove deep inside a patrol bomber sunk in a vital channel off Oahu, Hawaii. Then for three never-to-be-forgotten days he directed a six-man team of divers which finally recovered the death-dealing weapons.

This daring young officer was one of a group of “undersea spies” who undertook the most dangerous and difficult assignments of the war. Trained with painstaking care in a unique type of Intelligence work, most of them were members of the Navy’s underwater demolition teams.

Unarmed, dressed only in swimming trunks, members of these teams swam to action, braving enemy fire and sharks, to clear with explosives any natural or man-made obstacle from the beaches chosen as objectives of our amphibious landings.

These “spies in trunks” in many instances were provided with revolutionary equipment that furnished underwater photographic eyes for their special brand of sub-sea Intelligence. Incidentally, this new equipment is expected to have important applications in peacetime salvage. Right after Pearl Harbor, faced by the problem of determining accurately the amount of damage to American warships crippled or destroyed by the Jap sneak attack, the Navy found existing underwater photographic equipment and techniques impractical in the extreme depths and dirty water in which they were forced to work. Sketches made by divers from personal exploration took precious time and lacked the extreme accuracy and detail required for salvage work. So it happened that the en- gineers of Photo Utilities, Inc., in cooperation with the Navy, developed an electrically-operated multiple exposure camera capable of withstanding pressures at depths up to 225 feet. In this connection they used the automatic motor and film transport mechanism manufactured by Graflex, Inc., the 90 mm. wide-angle Graflex Optar lens in the Graflex synchronized shutter originally designed for Speed Graphic press cameras, and a special aluminum pressure case with pressure type controls for lens diaphragm and shutter. The camera, using only standard film, filters and flashbulbs, can be operated from the surface by remote control, yet it is compact enough to be carried and operated by a single diver.

Because of the extreme murkiness of choppy waters and great depths, most undersea photographic work requires from one to four standard size flashbulbs. Special waterproof socket reflectors developed by the Mines Equipment Co., prevent the danger of short circuits and make it possible to change bulbs under water. In crystal-clear areas of the Pacific however, standard snapshot exposures are possible at depths as great as 100 feet.

Extreme depth of field and focusing from two feet to infinity are possible with a helical mount which moves the film toward and away from the lens instead of the opposite standard procedure.

A dome-shaped aluminum pressure case protects the camera from damage by water or pressure. For the first time in undersea equipment, the curved protecting glass over the lens forms an integral part of the optical system, providing critical definition under all conditions. Special waterproof compartments within the camera prevent total damage in case of accident to one or more sections.

Getting back to the exploits of the “underwater spies”: exactly how they were able to invade enemy beachheads to pave the way for landings in force probably never will be told in its entirety. This much, however, may now be revealed: They were the first ashore and al- ways faced the risk of heavy casualties. In fact, their losses in Normandy were as high as 40 per cent.

Yet their work was vital to the success of our landing operations. They cleared enemy beaches of obstructions. They blasted ways through reefs so landing ships might enter. Their sacrifices helped to keep down the casualties among the soldiers who arrived on the succession of D-Days in the Pacific, invariably days after the sub-sea Intelligence experts had done their work.

The first training school for underwater demolition teams was organized by Commander Draper L. Kauffman of Bethesda, Md. He and his daring associates went through a big part of the Pacific war. * “Every time our men went in,” he said, “they expected to suffer heavy casualties. After one or two operations we felt certain that the Jap would take steps to prevent our accomplishing future jobs other than by simply shooting at us. We expected to be blown sky high by mines waiting for our swimmers and to find other traps specifically designed to stop us when the teams left their boats and swam in to carry out reconnaissance and demolition of obstructions. These the Jap failed to do and contented himself with plastering us with cannon, rifle and machine gun fire. We didn’t want to emphasize his mistakes.”

In open daylight jobs destroyers and converted destroyers, cruisers and even battleships, along with bombing and strafing planes, kept the enemy at bay while our underwater experts worked around reefs and along the beaches.

The value of the sub-sea spies was twofold. They obtained information as to whether mines and obstacles lay in the way of a planned landing operation, and they eliminated obstructions wherever necessary.

Their attire was simple—swimming trunks, light swimming shoes sometimes fitted with a fin to speed up swimming, and large goggles for working under water. Their tools, besides the sub-sea camera, were explosives and fuses and gear for securing them into position.

Their mother ships were converted destroyers which carried smaller landing craft for transporting personnel when close to the reefs. From here on in, small rubber boats and swimming were the only means of transportation.

Underwater spying had to be rapid and sure. Often on exposed reefs where a man was too clearly a target, the demolition men had to work for short periods when tides partially or fully covered the reefs. Early in the work our officers and men learned that it was very difficult for the enemy to hit a human head bobbing in the water. Normally the demolition men laid their high explosives, connected by cords of instantaneous explosive material, around a large group of obstacles to be blown out. When the safety fuse was touched off, the whole area of obstacles went up together. Synchronized watches and radio contact were used among the platoons or groups of men to assure that explosives were not touched off prematurely. On pre-arranged signal, all swimmers would get out of the area of danger as fast as they could to their rubber boats, thence to landing craft to escape the deluge of flying coral, concrete, steel and broken timbers.

They not only blew up these obstructions but often cut channels through the reefs so that the larger landing craft could bring men and tanks to the chosen beaches. Time after time secret reconnaissance was required at selected landing beaches without leaving a trace that the beaches had been visited.

Auto Fitted With Floats to Navigate Both Land and Water

DESIGNED to ford streams and rivers on a 12,000 mile jaunt of exploration around the world, a new amphibian automobile has been constructed by Capt. Geoffrey Malin, British explorer, which floats by means of huge inflated bags attached to a special electron frame at the side.

This combination auto and ferry boat is driven by means of paddles attached to the rear wheels, and is so arranged that the water can in no way damage the motor. Before taking to the water the floats are attached to the frame and pumped up, appearing like huge sausages, as shown in the photo above.

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“Poor Man’s” Yacht

This floating dream-home will allow you to cruise the river in millionaire style.

By Rudy Arnold

HAVE YOU ever dreamed of cruising down the river in your own private yacht? If you have, now is the time to do it and enjoy the plushness of a modern dream-home complete with front and back yard.

Wesley H. Dyer’s “Dumbo” has made a low-cost family yacht a practical reality for the water-loving landlubber. Dyer, president of the Metal Products Company of Nashville, Tenn., named his original family yacht, shown on these pages, after Walt Disney’s flying elephant because his novel craft was big but surprisingly agile for its size.

In recent years the forming of numerous lakes in Tennessee and Kentucky—like the Kentucky Lake, largest man-made body of water in America— by the building of large dams stirred up a lot of excitement about family boats in the area. Dyer heard people talking about big, comfortable boats that had all the space and accommodations of a home, as well as absolute safety.

The more conservative citizens of Nashville laughed when they heard that Dyer was going to take the plunge and build land-locked boats. They chalked off his idea as a silly delusion. Besides, they said, it would take a millionaire’s income to afford a dream boat capable of transporting an entire family in such handsome style for a holiday week-end or the summer.

Dyer set out to see if he couldn’t make a real houseboat that would give the new lake dwellers exactly what they wanted. He recalled that he had made special pontoons for many military uses during World War II. He talked to his chief engineer, Charlie Mager, about designing an inexpensive but spacious yacht with an auto trailer as the cabin.

The two men decided the best way to build the hull was to put it together in pontoon sections so that the family yacht could be constructed to fit the size of the family pocketbook. It would take eight sections bolted together, each holding three 55-gallon oil drums, to make a 16×24-foot hull able to float a 16-foot housetrailer.

If you supply your own oil drums, each section would cost $45. With $35 for deck lumber this would make the basic boat cost only $395. The same layout with special pontoons supplied would cost $60 per section. Add to this the $35 for the deck lumber and you get a total of $515 for this unique craft.

For Dyer’s original experimental Dumbo he* used 19 pontoon sections bolted together to form a barge 15 feet wide and 40 feet long on which he placed a 23-foot Mid-State housetrailer.

Each pontoon section has an angle member on either side of the bottom and channel members on both sides of the top. These members are bolted to three steel pontoons 25^x42 inches long and 15 inches deep. Together with the angle frame at each end they form a pontoon section 3 feet, 6 inches wide by 8 feet long and 18 inches deep. Each section supports 100 pounds for each inch of submersion. The entire unit will support 1,900 pounds for every inch of water it draws.

Dyer made up the steel pontoons in these sections from 18-gauge cold-rolled steel. He then had the metal rustproofed with a zinc phosphate coating inside and out. They were then tested with two pounds of air pressure to check against possible leaks and sprayed with an oil mist on the inside. For further anti-corrosion treatment he had all parts painted with Navy specification zinc chromate primer. The bolts are all cadmium plated.

On the forward end Dumbo has a false bow which is not essential to the boat. For the power plant there are motor mounts for two outboards at the stern. Instead of a rudder, the mounts are set near the sides of the vessel. By controlling the engine speeds of each motor Dyer can steer his craft from the flying bridge with greater flexibility than a rudder-guided motorboat and can turn his ship around in almost its own length at any running speed—an impossible stunt for a conventional yacht.

The Dumbo’s skipper can sail the housetrailer from the flying bridge. Once the outboards are firing, you can refuel the family yacht under way without stopping from two five-gallon tanks hung under the flying bridge.

A storage battery powers the navigation lights. Under the flying bridge on the deck is the trailer’s gasoline-powered generating plant for interior and running lights and for powering the water pressure unit for the modern kitchen and shower bathroom.

In its trial run up the Cumberland River through Tennessee and Kentucky into the Ohio River, Dyer deliberately navigated close to giant tugs to test the structural rigidity and seaworthiness. The Dumbo rode the waves like a duck on a midsummer millpond. Strong winds had very little effect on the yacht’s handling. On the maiden voyage Dumbo covered 271 miles from Nashville to Paris Landing on Kentucky Lake in 71 hours.

Dyer recently discontinued the original Dumbo for an improved version he devised with an all-steel hull with four watertight compartments 13 feet wide, 46 feet long and 30 inches deep.

He has already had the last laugh on those who scoffed at his idea and the boating fraternity got their dream—at a price that they could afford. •

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Mi’s “Flying Saucer” Cruiser

This 21 “foot dream boat cruises at 50 mph with its triple 25-hp outboard motors and will carry four people comfortably on a sea-going vacation.

By David Lockhart

HAVE the biological processes of mating and multiplying forced you to give up that fast* outboard hydroplane of your palmier days for a slow family cruiser? Well, the Flying Saucer is one cruiser that can trim the pants off your old hydroplane—even loaded up to here with a wife and two youngsters—and bring back the thrills of your misspent youth.

This 21-foot Saucer cruises at 50 mph, accommodates four people and includes galley and restroom facilities. She can rack up a better average speed on a day’s run than the family car—weather permitting—and take you from New York to Florida, for instance, in three days.

As the primary purpose in developing the Saucer was to come up with a really fast, good-looking outboard cruiser, triple 25-hp outboard motors and hydrofoils seemed like the answer.

However, it is practically impossible to design a craft with the usual foil equipment that doesn’t look like something you’d beat to death with a stick. Instead, longitudinal foils or skis of the type used successfully under the new jet seaplanes were chosen, being simpler, stronger and easier to build into the hull.

The Saucer is of molded construction and the central bridge portion of the hull is somewhat reminiscent of the sea sled. The bow is blunt and tunnels down and back to a flat bottom. As she gains speed, her central portion leaves the water and her bow, acting as a funnel, forces the airstream under the hull with the resulting venturi effect, helping to raise the craft higher on her skis. The outer edges of the ski pontoons are beveled into non-trip chines and both skis are equipped with fins.

Although she is a hydrofoil craft, you might call her a catamaran—and so she is. But then, you might also call any planing catamaran a hydrofoil. However, she is no more catamaran than any of the current “three point” racing hulls that plane on twin sponsons at high speed.

A boat as fast as the Flying Saucer should look fast too, so by moving the galley unit into the cockpit, it was possible to keep the silhouette low and rakish. Most outboard cruisers look like seagoing greenhouses in their determination to give you worlds of cabin headroom only necessary because of the galley.

This anti-social arrangement that banishes the little woman from the sun and air to get you up a meal, is also inhumane, especially if she is subject to that queasy feeling at sea. Beside that, there is a sporty element of risk involved in sending anyone into a space somewhat smaller than a piano crate to build a fire with little or no escape faculties behind her—unless, of course, you prefer your wife well-done.

Flying Saucer’s styling is simple and streamlined. Her rounded foredeck is uncluttered except for a bow chock, grab rails and a streamlined air scoop unit.

This chrome unit is a grille, screening a sexed-up version of a waterproof ventilator. A ring in the grille design leads the anchor hawser into the rope locker below. Running lights flank the grille and the streamlined fairing behind the air scoop unit is actually a hatch cover with a deadlight to brighten up things below.

Although you can get forward through the forehatch, you can get there more readily along the rubbing strake that runs the length of the boat and encircles the bow. Since the rounded contours of the foredeck make walking impossible—especially when wet—the chrome rubbing strake has a rubberized top surface wide enough for you to walk forward on, with grab rails to steady you along the way. The unusual width of the strake is also necessary to protect the chines, because of the excessive tumble-home of the top sides.

Under the foredeck are twin berths lying athwartship with hanging lockers beside them on the starboard side. Forward is the rope locker and plenty of room for general stowage in the round bow. The after portion of the Saucer is divided into fore and aft cockpits with a connecting passage way. The forward cockpit is sheltered by a wraparound windshield and a rigid top. The helmsman’s seat, wheel, controls and compass are on the port side. The seat on the starboard side has a toilet under it and a canvas curtain is provided for intro- verts. On the bulkhead in front of the seat is a dropleaf table.

The divider between the cockpits contains a refrigerator on one side of the passageway and a galley unit on the other, with a locker door hinged to swing down and form a working surface. The seat runs the width of the rear cockpit and converts into two thwartship berths.

The afterdeck, or engine hood, not only carries out the modern sweep of the Saucer’s styling, but also bounces engine noise back away from the boat. The hood hinges at the back for access from the cockpit. The center engine is equipped with a generator and a davit can be slipped into sockets to lift any engine into the cockpit or onto the dock.

A canvas canopy covers the after cockpit and with side curtains she can be completely enclosed.

A short mast is stepped on the rigid roof over the foreward cockpit. It is equipped with a masthead light and a flag halyard. With no one sitting in the rear seat, the roof can be undamped from the windshield and swung aft and down to become a rear cockpit cover, the mast becoming a stern staff. The practical reasons for this are rather obscure although it might be an ideal way to smother a squabble among mutinous small fry. In any case, it looks very sporty indeed and would enable the helmsman and friend “to get some sunshine.

There are many small fast boats on the Florida run these winters, with minimum cruising facilities, whose crews depend on sleeping ashore as often as possible en route, as though they were driving instead of boating. They spend nights in any of Florida’s many bayside motels and rubberneck or fish by day. The Saucer should be ideally suited to this form of North-South cruising. The longer day’s run, resulting from her high speed, gives a wider choice of ports that afford good accommodations convenient to the waterfront. And her sturdily molded construction assures a safe voyage wherever you want to travel with your good-looking Flying Saucer cruiser. •

Hand-Powered Motor Boat Gives Real Watersport Thrills

A DIMINUTIVE motor boat powered not by a motor but by a hand crank operated by the swimmer has been devised by a clever home craftsman to provide watersport thrills at the bathing beach. The propeller of this odd craft is geared to a pulley which is in turn belted to the hand crank on the front, as illustrated in the drawing above. Buoyancy of the craft is increased by use of small pontoons fitted between the boards running lengthwise of the craft.

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$5,000 Worth of Junk
IF you have a yen for something different like Robert A. Street of San Francisco, Calif., you can buy a bona-fide junk imported from Hong Kong for $5,000. The 30-ft. junks have some minor innovations like wells for the twin 18-hp outboards you need when there is no wind for the rust-colored sails. The boats are made of Borneo hardwood with one-inch thick decks. You get a charcoal hibachi-type stove with the craft and table service for six, including bowls, chopsticks and tea cups. You also get a proven 2,000-year-old design in these serene boats.

Undersea Sledge HUNTS Sunken GOLD

THE tedious and dangerous task of searching the ocean’s bottom for sunken ships laden with treasures is simplified by a diving sled perfected in Germany.

The floor of the ocean is literally strewn with ships which went down, taking with them to Davy Jones’ locker hundreds of millions of dollars in gold.

The heavy weights which a diver must carry in his boots to counteract the weight of his helmet and the buoyancy of his air-filled garment, make it extremely difficult for him to do much exploration. Shifting tides frequently move big ships which have settled to the bottom of the sea and consequently divers are often unable to locate the treasure.

The new diving sled is expected to overcome this. For in it, a diver can descend to the bottom of the sea and be towed for miles on the ocean’s floor.

The diver takes his seat in a manner much the same as in an airplane. A tug lakes up the tow and when ready to dive, the operator simply pushes forward on a joy stick, which is about the same as an airplane control. This in turn works the diving fins. The diver guides the right and left motion of his sled by use of rudder bars which in turn control the rudders.

The sled is easily controlled. It slips along the bottom of the sea until it encounters rocks or other obstacles, in which event the operator uses his control stick and zooms up over them, returning to the sea’s floor when all is clear.

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Tunnel-Hull Boat Won’t Roll

GAR Wood, the silver-haired king of speedboat racing, has designed the most stable boat in the world.

The no-roll Venturi is 188 feet long and 40 feet wide, and has twin hulls which slice through the waves instead of climbing over them as do conventional craft. Propellers are 4-1/2 feet in diameter and extend below the hull, increasing draft at the stern to about 8 feet when underway. At 26 knots the air rushing through the tunnel buoys up the ship so that she draws only 6 inches of water at the bow. This air cushion also acts as a shock-absorber for all up-and-down movements of the boat. Wood says, “We have sailed in seas so rough that 60 of our 188 feet have been out of water between wave crests, and have made full-rudder turns at top speed with waves 10 feet high and we didn’t heel over more than one or 2 degrees.”

The present model was originally designed as an AAF target vessel resembling a baby flat-top. It has four pancake Diesels totaling 4,800 horsepower, is flat-bottom with a gross weight of 120 tons. Engine rooms are located % of the way aft in each hull. Hulls are planked in %-inch 9-ply mahogany. Forty watertight bulkheads make it unsinkable.

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FAMILY YACHT FROM A LANDING CRAFT

He bought a LCVP from Navy surplus and from it fashioned this nifty “floating cottage.”

By Marylaird Wood

IT ALL began when Thomas L. Collins of Alameda, Calif., bought a LCVP from Navy surplus. The discarded landing craft sold for $24.00. It didn’t look much like a family boat but Tom thought it had possibilities.

Collins and his 14-year-old son, Tom, Jr., love the water. When they bought the LCVP they already owned a 30-foot sailboat but the problems of overnight accommodations, limited cabin space, and the fact that the ketch required a crew, took some of the fun from weekend sailing. What Tom and his son really wanted was a yacht they could take up to the Sacramento River for cruising and fishing. They wanted plenty of deck-space, convenient sleeping quarters and a trim cabin, at a price easy on the family budget. Although his only experience with boat-building was assembling a 14-foot Chris-Craft runabout from a kit, Tom bought the LCVP and set to work.

After almost two years of weekend labor, this amateur with the help of young Tom and a friend, Fred Steiner, has completed “The Bullfrog,,, a 36-foot cruiser that ranks in the luxury class.

It boasts a complete galley with a four-burner butane range with oven, a 30-gallon water heater with table-top counter, a sink of stainless steel, a 12-cubic foot icebox and 24 cubic feet of cupboard space. All work surfaces are Micarta-topped. All the ceilings are soundproofed with acoustical tile.

In the cabin, paneled with marine plywood, are a double-decker bunk and a built-in table with seating space for six. Collins has built ingenious cabinets on all available walls; he carefully engineered the storage space for clothing, fishing gear, water skiis, swimming equipment and food supplies. Other lockers store life-preservers, sleeping bags and deck chairs. There are, in all, 70 cubic feet of cupboards.

Space-saving, but convenient, are the cabin-bunks. Both measure 74 inches in length. The lower bunk is 36 inches wide; the upper is 28 inches. The upper bunk folds down against the wall to form a backrest for daytime seating. Both beds have foam rubber mattresses.

Next to the bunks, and separating the cabin from the galley, is a clothes closet that measures six feet ten inches high and three feet wide.

Collins had no blueprints for his cruiser. In fact, he says he built it “hit or miss.” However, he had some aid from a boat-expert friend, Jack Freitas, who also put a “cabin atop” an LCVP.

Collins says it took four months of weekend work just to prepare the hull. In fact, this stripping out is the most discouraging phase of the work, for instead of building up the handyman is tearing down. First Tom had to remove all the armor plate. Then it took weeks to clean up grease and Diesel fuel. All the old paint had to be removed, layer after layer of it.

Another arduous task was plugging up all the holes—almost 400 in all—left after the plate was taken off. To do this job, Collins bought plugs that were formerly used for plugging machine gun bullet holes. Each little cone had to be sawed flush, then sanded, then glued, then puttied, then sanded. Collins reiterates: “It was quite a job!”

The next step was to put up the rough framework of the cabin and stretch on the canvas. Protected by a base coat of paint and the painted canvas, the cabin was ready for winter weather.

Throughout the winter, Collins worked in the engine room. The engine is a 115-horsepower Chrysler Crown with V-drive, two-to-one reduction. Collins bought it used and rebuilt it in his basement. The engine was salvaged from a boat that had been sunk in San Francisco Bay.

These two phases of the work took almost a year. It was during the second year that Collins took up his saw, hammer and paint brush to tackle the interior finishing details.

The amateur boat-builder used paint gaily. He selected shades of rosy biege, brown and lime-green for his interiors. All the wood trim is either teak or mahogany. He had even added valances to the windows and a wall-to-wall shag rug on the floor of the all-yellow bath. For comfort—and a bit of decorating whimsy—he has installed a little antique pot-bellied stove in the cabin.

On deck, Collins has used pearl-gray and bright yellow canvas, teak seats, mahogany railings. The hatches are Fiberglas. Of course, he kept the winch and the landing ramp. This deck, which is six inches above water level when lowered, is now lacquered a mottled green and is an ideal spot for fishing, sunning, diving and water-ski take-offs. For more water-fun, Collins tows along his little outboard, “The Polliwog,” which he built from a kit.

The cruiser’s exterior is bright and gay, combining turquoise, coral and cream for colors on the hull. The speed is seven knots—just right for leisurely cruising. After, under the stern, is the 12-volt generating system, the engine, the air-compressor plant and automatic fire extinguisher.

Tom finished his cruiser in August, 1955—just in time to take advantage of the warm fall weather in the Sacramento River country. It was a big job and it took a long time but Tom says it’s all been fun. And he’s had the satisfaction of doing it himself.

Now that the job’s finished, you’d never guess the cruiser’s origin. It’s a yacht that is streamlined, convenient, and planned for sun-loafing and recreation. Actually, it is a floating summer cottage.

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DOWN GOES PICCARD!

Yea, he’ll go down four miles BUT… will he come back up?

THE African sun slants its dawn rays across the Gulf of Guinea. From the deck of a ship a huge crane swings out over the water. Slowly it descends and with scarcely a ripple deposits the amazing thing on the ocean’s face.

Inside the Thing a little man with wide metal-rimmed glasses orders crisply: “Cut the ropes,” and the world’s strangest submarine, its only contact severed, begins it’s descent into the world of endless night in the ocean’s depths. Through the portholes the light of day fades quickly. The zoologist, the little man’s only companion, peers outside, scribbles his observations. Time passes.

The free swimming submarine is now miles below the surface, in the heart of the black deep which two powerful arc lamps turn into a wonderland of marine fantasy. A dozen hours have elapsed. His studies complete, the professor presses a switch and.

But here this narrative must stop.

Up to this point we know what will happen when the little man, who is Professor Auguste Piccard of stratosphere fame, makes his fateful experiment.

But will his invention, upon which he has worked for years, rise to the surface? The professor himself does not know. The answer will be flashed to the world from the west coast of Africa on a February morning when the professor attempts to descend four miles into the ocean, far deeper than the present record of 3,028 feet held by Professor William Beebe.

The steel sphere in which Piccard will make his perilous journey into the unknown weighs ten tons, is nearly seven feet in diameter and has walls three and one-half inches thick. Nevertheless, without ballast, it is lighter than sea water, and therein lies the professor’s hopes.

Without the lighter-than-water twist, the bathyvessel would plummet into the sea and be lost forever. For there will be no cable, such as was used by Beebe, to haul it back to the surface. A cable would permit Piccard’s sphere to dangle no deeper than Beebe went… if he went further the weight of the cable would almost certainly cause it to snap.

Piccard hopes to rise again through applying the balloon principle to his queer submarine. To the sphere Piccard has attached a boat-shaped float filled with 494 cubic feet of*a light, buoyant oil. This takes the place of the hydrogen gas bag on a balloon. Below it, held tightly by electro-magnets, are large chunks or iron ballast. If a speedy ascent is demanded, these large pieces of iron can be released, but the professor has arranged for a slow, controlled method of rising. In a large copper funnel he has placed hundreds of pounds of iron filings. When current to the electromagnet is cut, the filings flow out at the rate of 60 pounds a minute.

There are two plastic portholes, six inches thick, on each side of the cabin. One is for photographic equipment which will automatically snap ten pictures per second, and the other will be used by the two men for observations. To pierce the gloom of the deep, Pic- card has attached 3,300 candlepower arc lights in,such a way as to produce streams of light which will cross the axis of the portholes perpendicularly. And he has provided two electrical motors which will move the sphere forward or backward. The speed will be low, about five inches per second.

Professor Piccard hopes to enrich immeasurably science’s presently limited knowledge of the ocean’s depths. Virtually all that man knows has been gleaned from the admittedly unsatisfactory soundings and net castings from surface ships. Divers have not been able to go deep enough or stay long enough. Beebe alone has ventured clown but, thinks Piccard, not far enough.

And so the eminent professor, who was the first to soar ten miles into the stratosphere, is poised to set another record, destination downward—round trip preferred. February will tell.

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BOAT RUNS ON SEA WATER

Free, unlimited electric power from the salty sea may soon replace gas, diesel engines in marine use.

EVERY so often someone comes up with an idea so simple and apparent that millions of Monday-morning quarterbacks promptly kick themselves and mutter “Now why didn’t I think of that?” Occasionally the idea is completely original. Usually, however, it is an old chestnut that has been kicked around until some bright lad finally dopes out a way to make it work. Ralph E. McCabe, designer and patentee of a practical, new salt water battery, does not claim to be the first to conceive the notion of extracting electric current from the ocean brine. He does claim to be the first to produce a seagoing wet cell that will pull enough juice from Davy Jones’ locker to run a boat and haul a payload!

McCabe’s battery is the result of no sudden stroke of genius. Since he first latched on to the basic idea back in 1948, he has slowly and painfully developed it to its present state of efficiency. During that time no less than 36 model boats have been built and tested at various points in the Atlantic, Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. His latest models, Mamie and the Eighth Wonder of the World, are each 21 in. long with a 4-1/2 in. beam and they weigh 2-1/2 and 3 lbs. respectively. Each produces a little over one volt and up to three amperes of current, enough to drive them through the water at speeds up to five mph. This, as any boatman can tell you, is quite impressive for a working model of that size. In addition to the propulsion motors, some of the models are fitted with electric fights, foghorns, etc., all operated from the same basic power source.

The theory behind McCabe’s power plant is simply that of the familiar wet battery. The salt water of the sea acts as a conductor of the electric current flowing between a carbon-graphite positive plate and a nickel-zinc negative plate. This current operates a D. C. electric motor which, in turn, drives the boat’s propeller. The plates are corrugated or grooved to provide increased working area without increasing their overall dimensions.

Some of McCabe’s earlier models stalled after a short run due to the polarization or “balancing” of the ions. Eventually this difficulty was overcome and his latest boats have ticked along steadily until the motor brushes or armatures became dirty—a running time of five-and-a-half hours and a distance of some 20 miles. After cleaning they promptly took off again as strong as ever. With stand-by motors and facilities for automatic changeover, there is no reason why such a power plant should not run indefinitely.

McCabe has applied his boat-battery principles to a newly patented flashlight cell which he hopes to have on the market this year. Circular in section, it embodies a grooved carbon-graphite positive rod in the center surrounded by a cylindrical, zinc negative plate, deeply corrugated for increased area. He states that this new arrangement produces twice the amperage of the present cell of similar size and lasts twice as long.

The dry cell set-up, shown in the diagrammatic insert in the lead illustration, suggests an efficient wet battery arrangement suitable for large, seagoing freight and passenger ships. Encased in long tubes stretching fore and aft between the longitudinal bottom members of the conventional double hull, the batteries „ would occupy the space now used for fuel-oil tanks. Subsurface intakes on either side of the bow admit seawater to the battery tubes in a through-flow system that exhausts it from exit vents beneath the stern. The moving water, with its constant saline content, forms a perfect electrical conductor. The current thus generated is fed into banks of storage batteries from whence it can be drawn in an even, steady supply to operate the ship’s propulsive motors and auxiliaries. Such a power plant can be controlled directly from the bridge with no engine room telegraph ‘ necessary. The D.C. motors are instantly reversible under full loads, eliminating heavy reversing gear and increasing the vessel’s maneuverability.

Assembled in short, quickly detachable sections, the battery tubes are easily accessible for cleaning, repair or replacement of worn electrodes. Individual pumps and gate valves, fore and aft, permit any particular battery to be closed off and drained without affecting the others. With a few extra units built in for reserve power, the ship can proceed at normal cruising speed while repairs are completed. At the voyage’s end, plates can be readily pulled and replaced without the necessity of dry-docking the ship.

Similar sea-water battery arrangements can be adapted to small pleasure craft. As shown in the diagram atop page 86, they can be hung in sheet form on either side of a sailing yacht’s keel or spread horizontally across the flatter bottoms of motor cruisers. While the original investment in generating and storage batteries, motors and wiring would undoubtedly equal or exceed the cost of an internal combustion engine with its exhaust pipes, plumbing, tanks, etc., the elimination of dangerous and expensive fuels, engine vibration, noise and mechanical reversing gear would make it well worth while in the long run. It would certainly be far simpler, more easily controlled, lighter and more dependable than today’s cranky power plants.

McCabe feels that while he has developed his sea-water battery to a fairly efficient stage there is still plenty of room for improvement. He hopes, therefore, that some of you MI readers will pick up the ball and carry it a few yards further, “as the amateurs did in the radio field.” With this in mind he offers a free permit to use his improvements in advanced experimentation and will be glad to discuss plans and procedures with any interested amateur. His ideas, however, are patented and can not be used commercially without specific permission.

To encourage their continued development, McCabe plans a series of sea-water-powered boat races late this summer. He explains that initial battery experiments can easily be conducted in the family bathtub if two or three per cent of salt is added to the water.

The basic idea seems perfectly valid and you may get in on the development of a brand new form of marine propulsion—free electric power from the seven salty seas! •

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MI’s Wonderful Car-Boat

Turbine-powered cruiser of the future travels on either highway or waterway.

SOME DAY in the near future a long, sleek car with a bubble canopy will drive down to the water’s edge and then splash right in. Once afloat, its wheels will retract and the driver, shifting from gears to a jet thrust; will become coxswain of a speedy family cruiser.

This strange new vehicle will be the car-boat. Propelled by a gasoline turbine engine it will skim over highways at better than 90 mph and reach a top pace afloat of nearly 50 mph. The cabin will serve up air-conditioned comfort for its passengers and offer the riding ease of today’s luxury cars.

The arrival on the market of a practical, efficient car-boat now appears imminent. This split-personality cruiser has never quite made the grade to date because of a multitude of engineering problems. They began with the power plant and extended into transmission and methods of shifting power from wheels to prop. The need for good watertight shaft and grease seals complicated matters further.

Several companies are experimenting with land-water buggies and most major roadblocks now have been cleared away.

Bassons Industries of Yonkers, N.Y., a plastics concern, is concentrating on a smallish vehicle resembling its new postman’s-helper car.

Custom Hydrocraft of San Diego is working under the theory that the craft should be closely related to the car. The firm’s prototype Hydromobile has three retracting wheels, uses a standard auto engine and has done 85 mph on land and 30 on water.

In preparing its car-boat design MI has made the body molded Fiberglas for easy construction and repairs. Overall length is 20 ft. and the beam measures 6 ft. A dual-light system includes headlights for road driving and the red and green markers necessary for marine travel. Just aft the cabin is a radio aerial-flagstaff topped by a 360-degree white navigation light.

A scoop on the bow furnishes fresh air to both cabin and engine, which is accessible through a hatch. Basic marine navigation instruments are mounted on the dash along with automotive gauges. Watertight flaps close over the retracted wheels for streamlining and pumps evacuate the water inside.

The car-boat makes a luxury sports car or it can carry the family to the beach, take them for a spin on the bay and then return them home via highway. You can troll from its deck and you never need worry about a ferry. You have your own with you!—Robert G. Beason

GUARDING AGAINST “SUPER-ENTHUSIASTS”

One of the Armed Police Boats

These gasoline police launches, carrying machine guns and trained operators, now are scurrying back and forth in the waters of New York Harbor. Over one hundred veterans of the Spanish-American war-members of the force—are detailed to this duty, which is guarding the wharves and shipping against a repetition of the disastrous explosions and fires of the past few months.

The Fighting Deck of the Tug Fire Patrol

In addition to the police boats, the harbor is well protected by a squadron of these fire tugs, each carrying several high-pressure nozzles.

JET-STYLED model liner designed by German Dieter Jansen is powered by six miniature diesel engines. Ship can be radar guided and is said to travel 60 mph on calm water.

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Cheating TIME on the North Atlantic

Crossing the Atlantic in 60 hours is the feat claimed possible by Remy, inventor of an ocean hydroglider! Contrast this with methods of travel as developed in the last two hundred years.

SPEED! Speed!! Speed!! Ever since the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock—ever since the days when Virginia was first colonized, there has been the cry among shippers for greater speed in crossing the stormy North Atlantic!

Ships have grown in size and have varied greatly in type since Colonial days. From the ships of the Mayflower era with their “record breaking” trips of 80 days, down to present day liners and speedy aircraft, the one thought uppermost in the minds of men has been the reduction of time consumed in crossing the water barrier between the capitals of the old and New Worlds. At present shipping men are fired with the dreams of wealth which are sure to be showered upon the engineer who will furnish the best and most reliable way of crossing the Atlantic in what is termed “airplane time.”

So it is that one of these days natives of New York may be surprised to see, racing up the harbor past Governor’s Island, a queer looking hydro-glider. Flashing to the Battery at 70 knots an hour, it is possible that this strange craft will dock in the New World but 60 hours from Cherbourg. Behind the actual accomplishment of this feat will be the romantic story of shipping development—the story of scudding sailing ships, hard driving masters, the story of colossal liners with hearts of steel, and of patient, obscure thinkers who make these advances possible.

It is a far cry from the crude machinery of James Watt, who built the first marine steam engine for crossing the Atlantic, to the modern floating palaces which are shortly to be superseded in their four day schedule by faster means of carrying precious documents, gold, and letters of state between the two world centers. It is a still further cry from ships of Columbus’ time, of Hendrik Hudson’s time, to the new R-100, the British dirigible, and to \he Remy surface hydro-glider.

Behind all the development which has taken place in cutting hours and minutes from inter-continental schedules there has ever been the urgent cry for speed, more speed!

Before the days of the trans-Atlantic cable, there was a great premium paid to owners of ships that could bring to the new world freights of a perishable nature in the lowest elapsed time. News, bank clearings, and the intricate documents of international banking were carried on specially constructed ships which earned fortunes for their owners. It was such competition which forced the development of the first steamers, and drove the less efficient sails from the seas. Speed, more speed!

Why Speed?

Why? Because “there is money in it,” as the hard headed men of business say. They have learned that trans-Atlantic trade showers rich returns on the man who devises the quickest means for bringing the continents closer together.

It is true that the cable eased the burden of the ships somewhat, but after the cable had been laid and news was being rushed undersea with the speed of light, gold still had to be carried, international banking clearances were being held up pending arrival of money shipments at their destinations, and the formal processes of government were rendered all the more sluggish for each extra hour consumed in bringing m^il and express matter from one side to the other.

The building of such fast mail and passenger steamers as the Mauretania, the Olympic, Berengaria, and Leviathan seemed the ultimate in ocean transportation. When they were built, the airplane was a back lot toy. It was hardly worthy of even military recognition, and certainly not considered as a possible means for hopping the Atlantic with any degree of reliability.

Though airplanes have spanned the ocean, the fact remains that planes to- day have not developed to such an extent that they are reliable transports. Business will not yet trust valuable express matter and shipments of gold to airplanes. Though planes will cross the sea in 35 hours, they are not capable of carrying pay-loads reliably. For the present they are out of the picture as far as an improvement in trans-Oceanic express work is concerned.

But there is at present, actually built and ready for a trial trip, a queer design for a trans-oceanic speed boat which was constructed by Adrien Remy, a French engineer. Built on the banks of the Seine at the Saint-Ouens marine works, the odd craft was given her trials early this year at the little town of Javel. A proposed trip to prove her the ultimate type of trans-oceanic speed carrier is planned for the early winter.

Pontoon Boat Aims at 150-Mile Speed

Strange Craft Has Tractor Propeller Under Its Cockpit and Draws Inch of Water

SAFE water travel, at speeds that only the most daring race pilots now attempt, is brought within reach of everyone by a radically new type of water craft. When suitable motors are installed, the inventor expects it to shatter all records and attain 150 miles an hour. Despite its swiftness, the airplane-shaped boat demonstrated extraordinary stability in its first trials on Long Island Sound, N. Y., the other day. It amazed marine experts among the spectators by turning around in its own length, at high speed, without upsetting.

The inventor, Thomas A. E. Lake, son of Simon Lake, famous builder of submarines, predicts that his superspeedboat will banish risk and discomfort from two-mile-a-minute water travel. It skims the surface on three pontoons equipped with shock-absorbers drawing only an inch of water when in motion. The wide span of the forward pair of pontoons accounts for the craft’s stability. When the helmsman turns the steering wheel, the rear pontoon pivots to serve as a rudder. Meanwhile, through interlocking levers, the forward pontoons are automatically banked to aid in rounding a turn. A tractor-type propeller, beneath the center of the twenty-one-foot craft, pulls it along. The whole boat rotates about this center when a turn is made. A thirty-five horsepower outboard motor was used in the experimental trials, and installed just in front of the pilot’s seat so the hinged propeller shaft could be drawn up into the cockpit.

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HELIUM METHOD RAISES SUNKEN TREASURE

HUGE fortunes in gold and gems lying in the holds of sunken ships are no longer beyond recovery now that a record-breaking descent of 420 feet has proved salvaging sunken treasures safe and practicable.

Gold-laden ships, previously barricaded by unconquerable depths, were literally swept into shallow water by the record depth Max Nohl reached recently preparatory to salvage efforts on the S. S. Lusitania and Merida.

Nohl’s record descent was 108 feet deeper than the torpedoed Cunard liner Lusitania, down 12 miles off Old Head of Kinsale on the southern coast of Ireland. Since May 7, 1915, the Lusitania’s strongroom has hoarded $5,000,000 in gold bullion, packed in wooden chests, and the purser’s safe holds another million dollars in money shipments and jewelry. It is 201 feet deeper than the ill-fated Merida, sunk in collision 70 miles off the Virginia Capes in 1912, with $2,000,000 in gold and the former crown jewels of Mexico in her vault. These ships are located and marked with buoys, ready for divers equipped with helium breathing units to raise their treasures.

They have remained untouched so long because of the divers’ helplessness in steel armored suits and their inability to leave diving bells designed to withstand overwhelming water pressure. Fear of contracting bends, diving’s greatest terror, was also a deterrent.

Nohl has perfected and successfully proven a new type of suit with self-contained helium and oxygen breathing unit, which unfailingly immunizes divers against paralysis, or bends. Supported by equal amounts of pressure inside and out, the suit can withstand pressure at unlimited depths.

The suit is flexible, made of thirty layers of paper-thin rubber, and enables the diver to operate undersea searchlights and blow torches for cutting through steel blukheads which bar the way to ships’ strong-rooms. It allows full use of the arms and legs. Access to ship’s interiors is not hampered by helmet-to-surface air hoses which imperil the diver when fouled. Air lines to the newly-perfected aluminum helmet run only to export valves of the steel tanks of helium and oxygen strapped to the diver’s back.

Totally immunized against bends by breathing helium, divers can put in a full day’s work cutting or blasting open steel doors without being effected by water pressure. Thus the recovery of sunken gold may be expedited. Otherwise, it was previously a problem how divers could stay with the Lusitania long enough to get some work done.

The new helmet is fitted with a telephone so that the user can direct the operations of other divers on the job. With a switchboard on the surface ship, divers on the bottom and surface crews can communicate with each other. When entering wreckage, however, divers can disconnect telephone cables and make them fast below, to avoid fouling or damaging them.

Incorporation of helium in diving has dispelled old theories that the human body can withstand limited submarine pressure. It proved that man has infinite ability to descend far deeper than previously without ill-effects.

The cause of bends has long been known, but means of prevention is entirely new. The “bends” is literally the poison from fangs of great ocean depths that have defeated divers’ attempts to reach coveted fortunes.

In diving parlance, bends is the term for the often fatal paralysis and convulsions caused by breathing excessive amounts of nitrogen. Old methods, involving helmet-to-surface air hoses, require breathing compressed natural air pumped down by compressors. Stepping up the air pressure thus subjects the diver to breathing four to six times the normal amount of nitrogen. Atmospheric air contains 79.93 parts nitrogen.

The blood can cope with normal amounts of nitrogen entering it from the lungs, but not excess quantities forced down by compressed natural air. Consequently, the excess forms gas bubbles in the bloodstream. These retard the circulation, even check it entirely, and total or partial paralysis is the result. Hence bends.

The type of breathing gear used by Nohl avoids use of natural air, thus preventing all nitrogen from entering the lungs. Breathed instead is helium, a life-giving gas, pleasant to breath and odorless. To meet physical requirements, it is mixed with oxygen by the diver as he uses it.

Under pressure, helium is not only highly efficient but it does not escape through the lungs into the blood appreciably. In diving, nitrogen dopes the mind and body, while helium exhilarates like a tonic.

The two high-pressure steel tanks of the breathing gear, one for helium and the other for oxygen, each hold 2,000 pounds of pressure, and 25 cubic feet. This is sufficient to sustain a diver 23 hours.

Here’s how he utilizes the pressure he carries to offset water pressure. For every 100 feet the diver descends, he must resist 42 pounds lateral water pressure against every square inch of his suit. The suit’s area is roundly 3,000 square inches. Working on the Lusitania at 312 feet deep will subject the diver to 478,000 pounds of water pressure, or 136 pounds per square inch. It should prove still easier than the record-breaking depth which experienced 520,290 pounds of water pressure, or 176.4 pounds per square inch, at 420 feet.

In descending, to resist the increasing water pressure, the diver fills his suit with corresponding amounts of air pressure, by means of valves at his side. The descent is made gradually so that the body adjusts itself to the pressure. In the test dive, Nohl reached bottom 420 feet down in nine minutes, by which time 180 pounds per square inch were valved into his suit. At the same time, the same pressure was breathed to prevent crushing of the lungs.

As the water pressure decreases coming up, blasts of air are released by pushing an outlet valve on the helmet. In this way the air pressure within the suit is equalized with the lessening water pressure without. Otherwise the suit would inflate like a balloon and perhaps burst. The diver is constantly advised his depth by telephone. The pressure gauge before his face on the instrument panel of the helmet registers the air pressure.

Between the two opposing pressures at great depths Nohl’s suit of 1/2″ rubber is compressed to 1/8 inch. Interesting is the fact that divers breathing helium can return from the Lusitania’s depth almost immediately without fatiguing periods of decompression. Because the body decompresses, or adjusts itself to changing pressures, much faster with helium, the decompression time for 312 feet is less than one hour.

This compares with U. S. Navy decompression time tables, which require six hours for 300 foot descents with natural air. While it has none for 400 feet or more, it would presumably be eight hours. Natural air took no diver deeper than 306 feet, a previous record set in 1915 by Frank Crilley, a navy diver, who hooked hoisting cables to the sunken submarine F-4 on the bottom of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

To pierce the eternal darkness of undersea depths, specially designed submarine searchlights, with multiple 5,000-watt bulbs of heavy glass, are being developed to aid Nohl in his salvage work. Also are new types of acetylene blow torches designed for underwater efficiency. The torches will be equipped with high-pressure oxygen blowers which will hold back the water while acetylene flames cut through steel.

Preparatory to salvaging the Lusitania, Nohl and his crew will start operations on the Merida in May. A ship equipped with sand-sucking machinery will be employed to clear the mud that washed into the wreck. Then the way to the safe will be clear. How the treasure is to be recovered and lifted will be determined on the job. By August, Nohl plans to be across the Atlantic working on the Lusitania.

Revolutionizing the field of diving, helium-equipped diving suits may succeed in salvaging other treasure-laden ships on which complicated methods have failed. In the Klondike gold ship, Islander, sunk off Admiralty Island, near Juneau, Alaska, since she collided with an iceberg in 1901, lies $3,000,000 in gold dust nuggets. Attempts to drag the Islander ashore by lifting her with 40 cables suspended from two ships, and float her with the tide, were partially successful. Two thousand feet from shore in 190 feet of water, the Islander broke in two. The forward half, containing the valuable cargo, was again lost.

Untold millions in gold and silver are yet to be recovered from the sunken fleet of Spanish galleons in Vigo Bay, off the Spanish main. In 1702 the fleet of 17 pirate ships were returning from a three-year loot on high seas. Homeward bound they encountered reprisal-seeking British warships and anticipating defeat, the pirates scuttled eight of their fleet with a similiar treasure of gold that was recovered from the remaining nine before they sank.

With helium equipment, salvage expeditions at last have a fighting chance to regain the gold glittering on the ocean floor.

France Builds DIVING Plane Carrier

CAPABLE of carrying a fighting seaplane, a full complement of big guns, and a crew of 150 men, the most powerful submarine in the world was recently added to the equipment of the French navy. It is known as the Surcouf, and is in reality a light cruiser capable of traveling under water, since when submerged it has a greater displacement than a floating cruiser. The Surcouf is by far the most powerful submersible yet conceived, and represents France’s latest bid for sea power.

As depicted on this month’s cover of Modern Mechanics, the submarine carries its seaplane equipment in a water-tight tubular compartment on deck which is tightly closed when submerging. When emerging on the surface one end of the compartment is moved toward the stern of the sub on tracks built for that purpose, a seaplane is lifted to a catapult by a derrick and launched into the air, all within a space of a few moments. At the same time the planes are being launched, the sub’s war guns can be bombarding an objective while torpedoes are being launched at a distant battleship, giving the submersible tremendous destructive power.

Diesel engines drive the Surcouf at a speed of 18 knots per hour on the surface; electric motors develop a 10-mile speed submerged.

DESIGNS BARREL SHIP FOR USE AT SEA
To demonstrate the feasibility of his design for a high-speed ship that rolls over the water like a barrel, a marine engineer of Port Blakely, Wash., has constructed an electric-powered model that is reported to perform all the maneuvers of a conventional vessel. He proposes building full sized ocean vessels on a similar plan, with stationary decks for passengers and cargo inside the revolving, electrically driven shell. The project recalls that of another barrel ship inventor of an earlier day, who actually completed a 110-foot model of his steam-powered craft and piloted it 200 miles across Lake Ontario (P.S.M., Dec, ‘33, p. 26).