Category: Submarines

Bookshelf: Down the Cayman Wall

Down the Cayman Wall – Gary Montemayor

Down the Cayman Wall
Down the Cayman Wall

Down the Cayman Wall is the self-published account of submersible pilot Gary Montemayor’s time spent on the Cayman Islands. While the blurb and subtitle of the book indicate that it concerns the hunt for an improbably large shark, in reality the book meanders through various subjects all held together by the presence of the author.

Montemayor spent several years on Grand Cayman piloting a research submersible that also escorted tourists into 1,000 metres of water down the almost vertical undersea wall surrounding Grand Cayman (he may have worked for this company; this one and this one also operate tourist submarines). The Cayman Islands are situated in the Carribbean and boast spectacular visiblity, making such deep water trips a viable possiblity. In addition to the visibility, the Cayman Islands are surrounded by jagged reefs which hold countless shipwrecks, making them a divers’ paradise. Montemayor’s description of island life, history and culture made me want to pack my dive gear immediately.

Montemayor is a Richard Ellis fan, and cites Ellis’s books Sea Monsters, Great White Shark and The Search for the Giant Squid as inspiration and research material in his quest to figure out what giant undersea creature struck his submersible – with considerable force – during a dive. His account of the search begins with great promise, but Montemayor is distracted by the death of his free diving buddy Mauricio Solis, and describes their friendship, the events leading to Mauricio’s death, and the search for his body – first by divers, and then using the submarine that he pilots.

Rather abruptly, the subject of the book returns to the search for the creature that struck the author’s submarine, now presumed to be a sixgill shark. Montemayor escorts a camera man and researcher from the BBC Blue Planet series down the Cayman Wall one night, during which time they set a large tuna fish as bait to attract a six gill shark as it rises from incredible depths during the night in order to feed. Once the shark is sighted and captured on camera, the book ends quite suddenly. Here’s the footage of the shark in question:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=ZA&v=sQhuWlCltrc&w=540]

This is a tremendously engaging and entertaining read, despite a lack of flow and the occasional feeling that the book was written by two different people. One of the apparent authors writes clearly and correctly – the other uses no punctuation or capitalisation, writes at the level of a 10 year old, and produces phrases like “caverness hallow” instead of “cavernous hollow”. There is also a curious note in the first chapter, addressed to the author and inserted into the text, along the lines of “Gary, don’t you think we should provide the pronunciation of Architeuthis in a footnote?” Perhaps this indicates the presence of an editor, and the curious sections of unpunctuated text are sections that he missed!

Despite the fragmentary nature of my impressions of this book, I’d recommend it as a quick, light read with no scientific pretensions. Here’s a short video promo:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUHRI0bMvBE&w=540]

You can buy the book here if you are in South Africa, and here if you’re not. If you want to read it on your Kindle, go here.

Documentary: Ghosts of the Abyss

Ghosts of the Abyss
Ghosts of the Abyss

I must say I was not filled with optimism when the Disney logo swirled across our screen at the start of the DVD, but having watched all 60-odd minutes of this James Cameron (he of the 1997 film Titanic, inter alia) production, my concerns were dispelled.

In many ways this documentary can be viewed as the companion piece either to the movie Titanic, or to the various books by Robert G. Ballard concerning this great wreck. Having become fascinated by the ship, Cameron mounted an expedition in August and September 2001, on board a research vessel loaded with Mir 1 and Mir 2, two Russian submersibles, as well as two ROVs, each about the size of a cooler box (albeit cooler boxes costing $250,000), that were able to penetrate the wreck while being operated remotely, tethered to the main submersibles by fiber optic cables.

The documentary is narrated by Bill Paxton, star of my favourite series Big Love, who played a role in the movie Titanic and actually goes on a dive or two in the submersibles. The experience of descending the 4,000 or so metres to the ocean floor, and seeing the great ship illuminated by a special lighting rig to facilitate cinematography, must be life-altering. Tony and I had a (brief) debate as to whether we’d accept the offer of a visit to the wreck in one of the tiny (three-man) submersibles… The agreement was that we would, as long as we went together!

The view out of the windows of the Mirs is very limited, so cameras mounted outside the submersible record the state of the wreck and the faces of the submersible passengers as seen through their view ports. Animation is used to show where fittings and decorations existed, and then faded away to show the way the wreck looks now (or did, ten years ago). On one hand it’s a scene of great devastation, but on the other surprising details remain as they were that April night in 1912. A water carafe stands on a dresser, undisturbed; leaded glass windows survive intact; and part of the ship’s steering equipment remains on the bridge.

Until now the most complete pictures I’d seen of this wreck were artist’s renderings – its great depth, size and the darkness surrounding it preclude wide-angle photography. The sophisticated lighting and camera equipment used by Cameron’s crew produced spectacular footage that evokes both the loneliness and the grandeur of the wreck. The film was originally produced for an Imax in 3D.

You can get the DVD here if you are in South Africa, otherwise here.

Bookshelf: The Death of the USS Thresher

The Death of the USS Thresher – Norman Polmar

The Death of the USS Thresher
The Death of the USS Thresher

The USS Thresher was a state of the art nuclear powered attack submarine operated by the US Navy, commissioned in 1961. During sea trials in the North Atlantic in early 1963, after an extensive overhaul, she encountered difficulties, dropped deeper than her hull’s crush depth (the depth beyond which the hull is unable to withstand the surrounding water pressure), and imploded, killing the 129 men on board. Her remains were located in 2,500 metres of water not long after she was lost, and were further photographed by Robert Ballard on his way to search for the Titanic. The USS Thresher was rated to about 400 metres – at that time, the deepest of any submarine.

This book was first published in 1964, but has been updated and the latest edition is 2004’s. The recent updates allowed the author to include previously classified information. Submarine sinkings subsequent to the USS Thresher, such as the Russian submarine Kursk in 2000 (you can read Cry from the Deep for more on that), give extra perspective to the earlier sinking, and allow comparison between the approach of the respective governments to such catastrophic loss of life.

While the Russian government obfuscated, refused foreign assistance, and lied until long after it was clear that their men were beyond rescue, the US Navy acted swiftly and compassionately. They immediately informed the families of the men on board the Thresher that she was lost, presumed sunk, and shared as much information as possible as they searched for the submarine. The upper echelons of the Russian military alternately claimed that they were doing all they could to rescue the men in the Kursk (they weren’t), and that they had died instantly (they didn’t) so rescue efforts were futile. No discussion of the relative merits of democracy and communism (and its after-effects) are necessary to persuade one that being an American submariner 1960 was far, far preferable to being a Russian submariner in the 21st century.

Those who have read The Terrible Hours (and I’d recommend it) will be familiar with some of the submarine rescue techniques Polmar mentions, as well as several of the leading players in the US submarine service and associated organisations. Sadly, even though submarine technology has advanced massively since the early 20th century, it doesn’t seem to (my untutored eye) that the probability of accident – collision, total loss, whatever – has commensurately decreased.

I read this book sitting on a balcony overlooking one of the watering holes at Mokolodi Nature Reserve just outside Gaborone, surrounded by animals in their natural environment. This was an exercise in strange juxtapositions. Submariners are, like scuba divers, operating in an environment that is hostile to human life. Their pressurised tube of metal filled with air has countless moving parts, enabling them to travel at great depth and speeds, with incredible stealth, and to fire weapons of dizzying sophistication. The problem with lots of moving parts is that moving parts break, rupture, corrode, seize up, fail and explode. It’s believed that a small pipe soldered with silver failed, allowing water inside the Thresher. Ordinarily this wouldn’t cause a problem, but combined with an inability to ascend – perhaps caused by an electronic failure related to the water leak – caused the submarine to sink rapidly. As the outside water pressure increased the leak would have become more and more powerful, until the entire submarine was ripped apart and flooded by the surrounding ocean.

When I was a child I was obsessed with submarines, and would have given anything to have a ride on one. Now, however, I’m happy enough visiting one at the Navy Festival in Simon’s Town each year. Moored to the dock, with hatches open!

You can get the Kindle edition of Polmar’s book here, and the printed book here or here.

Bookshelf: Cry from the Deep

Cry from the Deep – Ramsey Flynn

Cry from the Deep
Cry from the Deep

The massive Russian submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea (north of Russian, on the eastern side of Norway, right near the Arctic circle) in August 2000 with 118 men on board. I remember the news reports – there were immediate offers of assistance from the USA, Britain and Norway, some of whom had submarines and vessels in the area as part of a naval exercise. The Kursk was situated close to the coast, in about 110 metres of water – shallow enough for human divers to access her, and almost certainly shallow enough for one of the various available submarine rescue techniques to be used.

The Russian government, however, seemed determined not to appear weak or lose face before the western nations – an after-effect of the Cold War, and stemming from an acute awareness that, to put it kindly, their naval dockyards and fleet of submarines and ships was a pile of steaming garbage. (One of the Russian crew on a visit to a NATO rescue vessel, when faced with the capabilities of the British and Norwegians, observed that “we are twenty years behind.”) The Russians therefore refused assistance until it was too late.

If the deplorably poor state of the Russian navy and all her installations was combined with compassion and regard for human life, particularly the lives of the unfortunate souls who served on her leaky rustbucket vessels, this story might not have been written. But after the Kursk sank – a result of an outmoded, incredibly unstable torpedo design that had a propensity for detonating in the torpedo tube before it could be released – the Russian navy and government officials engaged in an astonishingly disingenuous attempt first to conceal the fact that men were trapped inside the submarine on the ocean floor, and then to make it seem as though they had the capability to rescue them and were working hard to do so. In fact, nothing of the sort was going on. After taking their time locating the downed submarine, the rescue vessel – which had a shallow keel and was top heavy – struggled to launch its ageing submersibles, succeeding instead in bashing them repeatedly against the side of the ship as she rolled in heavy seas. A lack of maintenance and the absence of tools and spares meant that this effort was dead in the water.

The explosion in the torpedo room of the Kursk had killed a number of men instantly, and flooded several compartments, drowning others. Twenty three out of the 118 sailors on board barricaded themselves in the stern of the boat, and survived for – possibly – several days in the darkness before a fire caused by a chemical cartridge (containing potassium carbonide – remember from high school chemistry what potassium does when mixed with water?) dropped in water suffocated and burned the surviving sailors to death. A note found on one of the men in the stern compartment confirmed that – contrary to claims by the Russians – all 118 sailors had not been killed instantly by the torpedo explosion.

The bodies of all but one or two of the crew (vaporised in the torpedo room) were recovered. The entire remaining hull of the Kursk was eventually raised from the seafloor and returned to a naval base on the Kola Peninsula where access to it was heavily restricted.

I found this book fascinating – it’s the first coherent account I’ve read about the Kursk, and the colour provided by descriptions of the sailors’ living conditions in the naval base, their families, and life on board the submarine added interesting colour. I did, however, feel that the author failed to pull everything together at the end. After navigating through the denials and counter-claims by the Russians, I felt that I didn’t have the sequence of events quite straight.

Furthermore, it wasn’t actually completely clear why the Russians were so otherwise regarding rescue of the men. Was it as simple as trying to save face before hopelessly superior technology and organisation exhibited by the westerners, or was there a more sinister motive? The world’s press at the time of the accident seemed to imply that the Russians were refusing help from the NATO countries because they had something to hide, and they were actually waiting for the men on the Kursk to die before mounting a recovery attempt. Were they simply trying to hide their dangerous, irresponsibly poorly maintained equipment?

There have been several other books written about this incident – I’m going to try and get hold of one or two for some extra understanding. For a bit more insight into the Soviet submarine program, check out the article and pictures here.

You can purchase a copy of this book here if you are in South Africa, and here if you’re not. For the Kindle edition, go here.

Bookshelf: Archaeological Oceanography

Archaeological Oceanography – Robert D. Ballard (editor)

Archaeological Oceanography
Archaeological Oceanography - edited by Robert D. Ballard

Robert D. Ballard is the man behind the discovery of (amongst other shipwrecks in the deep) the Titanic where she lies in her final resting place. He’s the author of several books I’ve reviewed here, most of them aimed at a lay audience.

This is a more scholarly, textbook type work, with contributions from a number of his colleagues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and from elsewhere. Ballard acts as editor, advisor, and author of a couple of chapters.

The book deals with discovery, archaeological study, and – to a lesser extent – preservation of shipwrecks, ancient and modern, in the deep ocean. Ballard has worked extensively in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Pacific Ocean and Baltic Sea and the chapters in this book draw on specific projects from these locales. There are ample illustrations (my favourite part!) showing everything from sonar search patterns, the tethered ROVs in action, to photomosaics of wreck sites, to paintings of massive shipwrecks as they now look (a photograph showing the entire Titanic, lying as it does in the darkness at 4000 metres, is impossible). The artist for most of these is Ken Marschall, and if I could find an entire book of his work – eerie, awe-inspiring and accurate – I’d buy ten copies!

This isn’t a light read, but as a reference for anyone who is particularly interested in underwater oceanography, ROV and submersible technology, or the intersection of oceanography and archaeology it is invaluable.

The book is available here and here.

Bookshelf: The Terrible Hours

The Terrible Hours – Peter Maas

The Terrible Hours
The Terrible Hours

The Terrible Hours reads like a thriller, and chronicles the sinking and recovery of the Squalus, a top of the range US Navy submarine on the eve of World War II. It is also describes the career of Charles “Swede” Momsen, a navy officer and member of the US Navy Experimental Diving Unit who pioneered mixed gas diving using helium in addition to or instead of nitrogen, and made contributions to the development of the navy dive tables. Momsen also had a keen interest in submarine rescue techniques, and worked on a device known as the Momsen lung, and a diving bell that docks over submarine hatches now known as the McCann-Momsen (or just McCann) Rescue Chamber. Several high-profile incidents where submarines were downed in fewer than 30 metres of water but there was no way to rescue the trapped crew spurred him on in this regard. In fact, 700 submariners were lost between 1929 and 1939, in what became known as the “Coffin Service.”

The Momsen lung resembles a small life preserver, and enabled a submariner to exit the submarine and swim to the surface, breathing all the while from a rubber bladder roughly the size of a human lung (these dimensions prevented excessive buoyancy – leading to the bends – and made it possible for the submariner using the lung to inhale comfortably against the ambient water pressure). A substance that absorbs carbon dioxide kept the air in the bladder clean (the user both inhaled and exhaled into the lung), while a small oxygen cannister topped up the oxygen levels. When ascending up the life line from a great depth, it was necessary to pause at intervals to avoid getting bent. On the surface, the lung functioned as a floating aide.

The rescue chamber was essentially a diving bell with a rubber gasket that docked over specially designed escape hatches positioned fore and aft of the submarine. Once it was positioned, the hatch could be opened and crew could be transferred from the submarine into the chamber. It was this device that was used to raise the 33 surviving crew members of the Squalus in four successive trips (and not without incident). I couldn’t believe that the events I was reading about took place in May 1939 – I make the mistake of thinking that all technological innovation took place in the last 30 years, and take things like dive tables for granted. The truth is that (regarding dive tables), courageous and foolhardy individuals figured out the absorption and dissipation rates of nitrogen and helium in human tissues by actually doing the dives (in a chamber, most of them). Sometimes they got bent. Momsen did many of these test dives himself.

As James Hamilton-Patterson points out in his review of the book, Momsen is lionised by Maas to a degree that could be seen to detract from the massive team effort it took to rescue the surviving crew and then raise the submarine. I did feel that Maas gave due credit to Momsen’s divers, who went down alone, to 80 metres, on air, to perform complex manual tasks on the deck of the submarine. These men worked under very difficult conditions, fighting both nitrogen narcosis (some of the accounts of their actions at depth and the transcripts of the conversations they had with Momsen, who was supervising from the surface, are downright hilarious) and the build up of carbon dioxide in their helmets when they over exerted themselves. Most of the men worked with Momsen in the Experimental Diving Unit, and had thus all spent considerable time at depth and in a pressure chamber testing different gas mixes, ascent rates, and diving conditions.

The last portion of the book deals with the raising of the submarine from the ocean floor, where it lay at 80 metres, partially flooded. The logistics of raising a 1,500 ton vessel half full of water are staggering, but after much trial and error it was done. The conning tower of the Squalus now stands as a monument in the navy yard in Portsmouth. The book contains several photographs taken after the rescue of the crew and during the raising and towing of the Squalus into port. There are more pictures here. There’s a YouTube slideshow of images and some of the history here, too:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxa5iNvdANc&w=540]

Submarine rescue techniques have progressed a little bit since 1939. But sometimes to no avail – I am looking forward to reading Cry from the Deep by Ramsey Flynn, about the sinking of the Kursk a few years ago.

You can get a copy of The Terrible Hours here, and I promise you’ll read it in no more than two sittings!

Article: Wired on escaping from a submarine

Ever wondered whether submariners can escape when their vessel floods, catches on fire, or needs to be ditched for some other reason? Wired.com, source of many nifty nuggets of joy, has a diagram and a video of a training facility located in the United States, for submariners to practice escaping their submarines. Check out the article here.

The dude is yelling in the video to release air from his lungs, thus avoiding a lung over-expansion injury. It’s the same reason you exhale when doing a CESA, as a scuba diver.

Article: Wired on deep sea robots

Wired magazine published a short piece on a robot that roves along the ocean bottom, called The Benthic Rover. It’s able to stay down for extended periods of time (like a whole month or more), and monitors conditions on the ocean bottom. This enables scientists to compare surface conditions with what’s happening down below.

The robot can go down to 4 kilometres beneath the seas, and operates with little to no direction from its handlers. The conditions under which it works are in some ways similar to outer space, given their inaccessiblity and hostility to human life!

The full article is to be found here.

Bookshelf: Three Miles Down

Three Miles Down: A Hunt for Sunken Treasure – James Hamilton-Paterson

Three Miles Down
Three Miles Down

I struggled a bit with this book. James Hamilton-Paterson has a highly literary style, which I enjoyed in Seven Tenths. In this book, however, he has a more well-defined topic: a joint British/Russian expedition to search for the wrecks of a Japanese submarine, and a British passenger liner. The ultimate goal was to determine whether either of these ships was carrying gold (both were believed to be doing so) in order to mount a salvage operation.

As in Peter Matthiessen’s Blue Meridian, the ocean is revealed to be uncooperative and capricious, and most of the expedition is spent waiting and following dead-end leads. Hamilton-Paterson focuses on the personalities on board, and the dynamic between scientists and treasure hunters, Russians and British.

My favourite part of the book was a description of the voyage that Paterson had the opportunity to take on one of the Russian submersibles that were being used to follow leads picked up by the sonar on the seabed. He descends nearly five kilometres to the ocean floor, and describes both the journey and what he saw with reverence and recognition of the privilege that this experience was.

As with Seven Tenths, this book is a series of ruminations on man’s relationship to the ocean, and how the ocean mediates man’s relationship to his fellow man. It’s not the cracking adventure story I thought (and hoped) it would be – it’s ruminative, slow, meditative and ultimately inconclusive.

Buy the book here, or here if you are in South Africa.