Sub Marine Explorer
(1866-United States) from Wikipedia
| Sub Marine Explorer is a submersible built between
1863 and 1866 by Julius H. Kroehl and Ariel Patterson in Brooklyn, New
York for the Pacific Pearl Company. It was hand powered and had an interconnected
system of a high-pressure air chamber or compartment, a pressurized working
chamber for the crew, and water ballast tanks. Problems with decompression
sickness and overfishing of the pearl beds led to the abandonment of Sub
Marine Explorer in Panama in 1869 despite publicized plans to shift the
craft to the pearl beds of Baja California.
Construction
Sub Marine Explorer had an external large volume
(560 sq. ft.)[clarification needed] high air pressure chamber which was
filled with compressed air at a pressure of up to 200 pounds per square
inch (1,400 kPa) by a steam pump mounted on an external support vessel.
Water ballast tanks were flooded to make the Sub Marine Explorer submerge.
Pressurized air was then released into the vessel to build up enough pressure
so it would be possible to open two hatches on the underside, while keeping
water out. This meant that air pressure inside the submarine had to equal
water pressure at diving depth, exposing the crew to high pressure, making
them susceptible to decompression sickness, which was unknown at the time.
To surface, more of the |
| Name: |
Sub Marine Explorer |
| Builder: |
Julius Hermann Kroehl & Ariel
Patterson |
| Complement: |
3 to 6 |
| Displacement: |
80 tons |
| Length: |
39.4 ft |
| Beam: |
11 ft |
| Propulsion: |
Manual, single propellar |
| Speed: |
4 knot |
|
|
pressurized air was used to empty the ballast tanks
of water. A contemporary (August 1869) newspaper account of dives in Sub
Marine Explorer off Panama documents 11 days of diving to 103 feet (31
m), spending four hours per dive, and ascending with a quick release of
the pressure to ambient (sea level) pressure. Modern reconstruction of
Explorer's systems suggests an ascension rate of 1 foot per second (0.30
m/s); or a rise to the surface in just under two minutes. Even if it took
longer to rise, decompression sickness would have been a factor. Using
now-standard U.S. Navy diving tables, the men inside Explorer would have
exceeded their no-decompression limit in 25 minutes at 103 feet (31 m).
After a two hour dive (half of the documented time spent) a decompression
schedule of one hour, 32 minutes and 40 seconds was required with staged
stops at 30, 20, and 10 feet (9.1, 6.1, and 3.0 m). The problems of decompression
do not appear to have been clearly understood; the contemporary reference
notes that at the conclusion of the dives, "all the men were again down
with fever; and, it being impossible to continue working with the same
men for some time, it was decided, the experiment having proved a complete
success, to lay the machine up in an adjacent cove....(The New York Times,
August 29, 1869).[1]
The basic premise of Sub Marine Explorer was based
on an earlier 1858 patent by Van Buren Ryerson of New York for a diving
bell also named "Sub Marine Explorer." Ryerson and Kroehl had worked together,
Kroehl using Ryerson's bell to blast and partially clear Diamond Reef in
New York harbor. Kroehl, working with Brooklyn shipbuilder Ariel Patterson,
extensively modified Ryerson's design, extending the hull form to a 12
m-long (39 ft), 3.3 m-diameter (11 ft) craft of intricate design. While
some have termed Kroehl's Sub Marine Explorer a "glorified diving bell,"
its sophisticated systems of ballast, pressurization and propulsion make
it a nineteenth century antecedent to more modern "lock out" dive systems
and subs.
History
After construction, the Sub Marine Explorer was
partially disassembled and transported to Panama in December 1866, where
she was reassembled to harvest oysters and pearls in the Pearl Islands.
Experimental dives with the Sub Marine Explorer in the Bay of Panama ended
in September 1867 when Kroehl died of "fever." The craft languished on
the beach until 1869, when a new engineer and crew took it the Pearl Islands
to harvest oyster shells and pearls. The 1869 dives, with known depths
and dive profiles that would have inevitably led to decompression sickness,
laid the entire crew down with "fever", and the craft was laid up in a
cove on the shores of the island of San Telmo.
The wreck of the Sub Marine Explorer was rediscovered
on San Telmo in the Pearl Islands in 2001 by archaeologist James P. Delgado
of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. The wreck was well-known to locals,
but was assumed to be a remnant of the Second World War. Identification
of the craft, with the assistance of submarine historians Richard Wills
and Eugene Canfield, led to four separate archaeological expeditions to
the Explorer in 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008. Documentation of the Sub Marine
Explorer has resulted in detailed plans, including interpretive reconstructions
of the craft, scientific study of its environment and interaction with
the surrounding water, bathymetric assessment, scientific analysis of rates
of corrosion, and considerable historical research. Work in 2006 was funded
by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the Office
of Ocean Exploration. The 2008 expedition was funded by the Waitt Institute
for Discovery of La Jolla. The vessel is now included in the Historic American
Engineering Record of the U.S. National Park Service. A recent (2007) report
summarizes preservation options for the submarine for the Panamanian government
and recommends the recovery, preservation and public display of the craft
in Panama. Metal analysis confirms that the craft is in a critical stage
and faces irreversible deterioration and loss.
The Sub Marine Explorer was the subject of two
documentary films; the first was an episode of the "Sea Hunters" that aired
on National Geographic International Television in 2004, and the second,
by Der Spiegel, which aired in Europe and in the US on the Smithsonian
channel in 2010.
Google
Earth image 08°16'53.58"N-78°50'45.01"W @ 200'
Here's a two part article with on site photos.
Early Sumarine Discovery: Secret of the Pearl
Islands by ven Robel
Part
One
Part
Two |
