CHAPTER VII.

DAVY JONES’S LOCKER, AND THOSE WHO DIVE INTO IT.

Scientific Diving—General Principles—William Phipps and the Treasure Ship—Founder of the House of Mulgrave—Halley’s Wooden Diving‐bell and Air Barrels—Smeaton’s Improvements—Spalding’s Death—Operations at Plymouth Breakwater—The Diver’s Life—“Lower away!”—The Diving‐_Belle_ and her Letter from Below—Operations at the Bottom—Brunel and the Thames Tunnel—The Diving Dress—Suffocation—Remarkable Case of Salvage—The “Submarine Hydrostat”—John Gann of Whitstable—Dollar Row—Various Anecdotes—Combat at the Bottom of the Sea—A Mermaid Story—Run down by the _Queen of Scotland_.

The art of unassisted diving having been considered, the reader’s attention is invited to divers and diving aided by scientific appliances. But for these developments, how could one hope to recover anything large or valuable that had once disappeared beneath the waves? How properly build gigantic breakwaters, piers, and bridges, or examine and clear choked ports and channels?(29) Some of the grandest achievements of modern practical science would have been impossible without their aid.

Every reader understands the general principle involved in the construction of the diving‐bell. Invert a tumbler in a deep vessel of water, and the liquid will only ascend to a certain height inside, however far down you place the glass. Insert a tube in a hole drilled in your tumbler, and blow downwards, and the water recedes still lower. This is what happens when the air is pumped down into the modern diving‐bell. In descending in a diving‐bell and remaining under water you will feel a slight inconvenience in breathing, and perhaps a tingling in the ears; this comes, not from scarcity of air, but from the fact that the atmosphere of the interior of the bell is really _denser_ than it is outside; the air, forced downwards by the powerful air‐pump, is pressed _upwards_ by the water. Readers may remember that Robert Fulton and his friends remained under water in his submarine boat for over two hours, the air in that case being supplied from a large globe containing highly condensed air, which was allowed to escape as required. The foul air passed off from tubes in bubbles to the surface.

As early as the year 1663 an Englishman named William Phipps, the son of a blacksmith, invented a plan for recovering from the bottom of the sea the treasures out of a Spanish vessel which had sunk on the coast of Hispaniola. Charles II. lent him a ship and all that was necessary for his enterprise, but the matter did not turn out successfully, and William Phipps fell into a state of the greatest poverty. Notwithstanding this nothing could discourage his ardour, and to set himself afloat again he opened a subscription list in England, of which the Duke of Albemarle was one of the subscribers. In 1667 Phipps embarked in a ship of 200 tons burden, having undertaken beforehand to divide the profits between the twenty shareholders who represented the associated capital. At first starting his search proved altogether unavailing, and he was just beginning to despair, when he fell in with the golden vein. The fortunate diver returned to England with £200,000; £20,000 he kept for himself, and no less than £90,000 came to the share of the Duke of Albemarle. Phipps was knighted by the king, and became the founder of the noble house of Mulgrave, which has played no inconsiderable part in the affairs of the United Kingdom.

It is little more than a century and a half ago since the celebrated astronomer, Halley—about the first to commence those experiments in submarine exploration which have been continued to the present epoch—descended to a depth of fifty feet in a diving‐bell which he had constructed. It was built of wood, and covered with sheet lead. The air that was vitiated by respiration escaped from the chamber through an air‐ cock, while the pure element was supplied by barrels, which descended and ascended alternately on both sides of the bell, like buckets in a well. These barrels, lined with metal, each contained some thirty‐six gallons of condensed air; they were connected with the interior of the bell by leathern tubes. As soon as one of these air receptacles was exhausted another was let down. Halley himself relates that in 1721, by the aid of this apparatus, he was able to descend with four other persons to a depth of nine or ten fathoms, and to remain under water an hour and a half.

It is to Smeaton, the celebrated engineer of the famed Eddystone Lighthouse, that the diving‐bell owes its leading characteristics, as he was the first to abolish Halley’s rather clumsy contrivance and apply the power of the air‐pump; he also constructed the first cast‐iron bell. In 1779 he made use of the diving‐bell to repair the piles of Hexham Bridge, in the north of England, the foundations of the structure having been undermined by the violence of the current. A few years after a sad accident occurred from the use of Halley’s barrel apparatus.

In 1783, Mr. Spalding, of Edinburgh, who had made some improvements upon the mechanical arrangements of Halley’s bell, but had retained the barrel air service, engaged to recover some of the cargo of an East‐Indiaman which had been sunk on the Kish Bank, Ireland. He and his assistant went down, and after the first supply of air was exhausted the barrels were sent down as usual. No signal having been given for some time, the bell was drawn up, and Mr. Spalding and his assistant were found to be dead. It is supposed that by some means they failed to discharge the air from the barrels into the bell, and were consequently suffocated. The barrel service was always more or less dangerous, from its liability to get out of gear, and if Spalding had adopted the invention of Smeaton, he would not have lost his life in the manner he did.

The improved diving‐bell was soon generally adopted by engineers, and played an important part in the works which have so altered the port of Ramsgate. The great engineer Rennie made constant use of the diving‐bell in fixing the foundations of the eastern jetty, and in protecting it in parts against the attacks of the sea by a shield of solid masonry. It was extensively used in the construction of the Plymouth Breakwater. M. Esquiros, who visited the divers during the progress of that great work, gave an interesting account of their _modus operandi_:—

“But we now,” says he, “approached the breakwater—that causeway of giants—by the side of which we soon discovered an old dismasted ship. This vessel is rough in appearance, and covered over with a kind of pent‐house roof. In it live, as in a floating house, the operatives who are still working at the breakwater. They pass, alternately, one month on board ship and one month on shore. One of their little sources of profit consists in the sale of small fancy articles, which they say that they cut out with the blades of their pocket‐knives from the rocks which they bring up from the bottom of the sea. Very soon I heard the loud throbbing of machinery, snorting and puffing like so many marine monsters; it was the wheezy noise of the air‐pumps which supply the bells when buried under water....

“I then noticed a small boat managed by a sailor rowing it, which glided under the mouth of the bell, and from this hollow I saw emerge a pair of large loose boots, reaching above the knees, which, being followed by another pair of large boots, convinced me that two men were jumping down into the skiff. The boat itself, in fact, at once got clear of the dome, under which it had been half hidden, and I saw it come back to the vessel with two workmen on board, wet up to the waist and covered with mud. They had just finished making their half‐day under the water, and appeared to be fatigued. Their swarthy complexions were tinged on the cheeks and forehead with a bright sanguine hue. The position of the bell was not at all altered; it was as if they wished to give it an opportunity to dry itself and breathe a little fresh air. It was then dinner hour for the men employed at the works. I had just been a spectator of the process of raising the bell to the surface; I now had to see it let down again to the bottom of the sea.

“The same little boat which brought the two workmen to the great floating house took them back again, after an hour’s rest, to the vicinity of the diving‐bell, which, hung just over the water, looked very much like an immense iron box open at the bottom. The procedure in making ready for the descent has really something rather imposing about it, and to an excited imagination might very well suggest the preparations for the execution of a sentence of death. Nothing is wanting for the purpose; the scaffold, the secret cell, and the gulf of the menacing waves are all there. The divers, thank goodness! do not in the least anticipate such a fate, but, on the contrary, seem proud to walk safely over the bottom of the sea, where so many others have found their grave. Be this as it may, the boat soon places itself underneath the bell, raised as it is three or four feet above the surface. The two workmen climb one after the other up into the inside, helped by an iron ring hung to the arched roof, which can easily be laid hold of by the hands. They take their places on two wooden benches fixed at a certain height in the hollow of the bell. Sometimes four, or even six, workmen have to find seats in this curious vehicle. When all this is done the boat goes away, and in another moment the voice of the foreman gives the order, ‘Lower away.’...

“In places where the water is troubled by sand, the diver often passes through a kind of twilight or submarine fog, which compels him to light his lamp. More often, on the contrary, the light is sufficiently strong to enable him to read a newspaper in small type. A story is told even of a lady who wrote a letter in the diving‐bell, and dated it thus: ‘16th June, 18—, at the bottom of the sea.’ Her courage obtained for her among the divers the _sobriquet_ of the Diving _Belle_.

“I also wished to make my mind easy as to the lot of the poor workmen whom I had seen descending in the bell. The foreman assured me that they enjoyed every comfort in it. Have they not seats to rest themselves on, a wooden ledge on which to place their feet, an assortment of tools and necessary utensils suspended on a cord or hooked on to the walls of their hut, which is nearly as well furnished as that of Robinson Crusoe’s? From all this explanation I was bound to conclude, unless the foreman was mixing up a little irony in what he told me, that the divers were quite ‘at home’ in the bell. The fact is, that really they pass in it a great part of their existence. Almost all of them suffer a great deal at first from a violent pain, which they themselves define as ‘a toothache gone into the ears,’ and they have a humming in the head, ‘as if some one had let fly a swarm of bees there;’ but these troublesome symptoms disappear after the second or third descent. Their confidence in this dry chamber, almost isolated in the midst of the turmoil of the ocean, approaches sometimes to temerity. In 1820, Dr. Collodon, of Geneva, who had gone down in a diving‐bell on the coast of Ireland, bethought himself that at the depth at which he then was, a stone, or any other trifling cause obstructing the action of the air‐valve, would be sufficient to enable the water to invade the bell. He confided this not very reassuring reflection to one of the divers who was with him. The latter, smiling, answered him by merely pointing out with his finger one of the glazed loopholes which were over their heads. The doctor examined it attentively, and ascertained, in fact, that the glass was cracked sufficiently to allow bubbles of air to escape pretty freely. This was a very different and more serious cause of uneasiness than the rather improbable contingency of an obstruction of the air‐valve. The diver was well aware of the cracked glass, and cared nothing about it.”

Some time since, when the present writer descended in the diving‐bell exhibited in London, a seal which then disported in the tank would rub its nose outside against the little glass windows, and look in, as though wondering what on earth a visitor was doing there in _his_ element! The same poor animal afterwards came to grief in a very sad way. When the water was drained off out of the tank the seal got into the pipes below, and thence to the sewers. It was found, still alive, some time after, in the sewers of the Euston Road, a considerable distance away, but succumbed later to the mephitic influences of the filthy stream.

M. Esquiros continues:—“‘They are just beginning to work’ was soon remarked to me by the superintendent, who followed, even under the waves, every movement of his labourers. The nature of their operations varies, of course, very much according to the undertaking in which they are engaged. The two divers who had just gone down had for their task to clear away round the adjacent portion of the foundation of the breakwater. As soon as they reach the bottom they jump off their seat, and, armed with a pickaxe, begin to dig into the moist sand in order to get out the stones. It often happens that the movement of the tide or some other cause disturbs the water round the rocky base of the breakwater. The workmen have then much trouble in seeing clearly, and complain that ‘the water is muddy.’ Generally, however, the water is so transparent, that even a cloud passing across the sky is visible at the bottom of the sea. The workmen also can labour with nearly as much ease and quite as much energy as if they were on land. The movements they themselves make in conjunction with the circumstances which surround them occasionally cause something like a thick mist to rise before their eyes, hiding from them the nearest objects; they get quit of it by calling for an ‘air bath.’ The air‐pump redoubles its pace in working, and sends down to them through the pump an extra current of air, which soon blows away the mist.

“I was very soon enabled to judge for myself as to their industry; sacks which they had filled with muddy sand, and buckets laden with stones, came up to the surface every moment, drawn by cords. One might have fancied it to be the mouth of a mine, to which invisible arms were constantly sending up fragments of rock; but here the mine was the sea. The nature of their digging did not allow them to work very long together in the same place. The divers had already requested by signal to have their position shifted on the bed of the sound. How would they manage to comply with their wish? As regards air and locomotion, the men shut up in the bell depend entirely on the apparatus working on the surface. The chief organ of movement is a sort of _traveller_ on four wheels, running over two tramways, allowing it to come and go in every direction. Immediately on the signal being given from below, the bell was raised from the bottom of the sea, like a heavy balloon. This operation was, of course, carried out by means of chains, and the diving‐bell remained for a minute or two motionless in mid‐water, like the pendulum of a stopped clock. But the traveller begins to move, and as it also acts as a crane, the pulley on the surface and the bell under water shift their position at the same time. The divers call this ‘travelling.’ They can thus move from north to south, from east to west, backwards and forwards. As they are in motion, if they come upon a piece of rock which encumbers the bed of the sound, they give the signal to stop, and the bell becomes stationary, and then descends again slowly towards the block of stones. If they have been carried on a little too far, and want to retrace their steps, they communicate afresh with the men working on the surface, and the obliging machinery soon brings them to the exact point desired.”

The diving‐bell has many times rendered service to engineers, by enabling them to descend and ascertain the nature of damages going on, which might otherwise have ruined their work. When Brunel was building the famous Thames Tunnel, and the current had broken through its arched roof, he went down in a diving‐bell to see for himself the extent of the disaster. After a descent of nearly thirty feet, he reached a serious opening in the masonry, but the hole was too narrow to allow the bell to enter. It was therefore necessary for some one to dive into it, and brave Brunel immediately declared his intention of doing it. Taking hold of the end of a rope, he plunged into the hole, where it is said he remained nearly two minutes, mentally noting the damage done. So intent was he on this examination that he let go the rope just as his companions above, alarmed at his long stay below, were hauling it up. He had just time to catch hold of it again, and was happily drawn safely into the bell.

The diving dress was a later development, and owed much of its present practical shape to French men of science. The object of the dress, which is of canvas or india‐rubber and metal, is, of course, to give each individual wearing it the utmost liberty of motion, while having at the same time a proper supply of vital air. The condensed air‐reservoir is made of steel, and capable of resisting great pressures. The diver carries this apparatus on his back; from it a respiratory tube issues, and is terminated by an india‐rubber mouth‐piece, which is held between the lips and teeth of the diver.

The diver’s is a rough life, most assuredly. During the diving business on the _Royal George_, Private John Williams, early in the season, tore his hands very severely in attempting to sling a mass of the wreck with jagged surfaces and broken bolts. After a few days’ rest he reappeared in his submarine habit, and dived as before, but from excessive pain in the ears was again _hors de combat_ till the 11th of July, when, on re‐descending, he was grievously injured by the bursting of his air‐pipe a few inches above the water. This casualty was indicated by a loud hissing noise on deck. A few seconds elapsed before the rupture could be traced and the opening temporarily stopped. With great alertness he was drawn up, and on being relieved of his helmet, presented a frightful appearance. His face and neck were much swelled and very livid, blood was flowing profusely from his mouth and ears, and his eyes were closed and protruding. Though partially suffocated, he possessed sufficient sensibility to speak of the mishap. A sudden shock, it seems, struck him motionless, and then followed a tremendous pressure, as if he were being crushed to death. A month in the Haslar Hospital restored him to health, and on returning to the wreck he at once recommenced his laborious occupation.

The following is a remarkable example of a salvage effected by the help of divers. “The packet boats _Ganges_ and _l’Impératrice_ came into collision in the outer port of Marseilles. The _Impératrice_ had one of her wheels broken and the officers’ quarters damaged. One of the cabins contained a chest full of gold, which fell into the thick mud which forms the bottom of the port of Marseilles. It was important that this precious package should be recovered the next day. The sea was rough, and the exact spot where the accident occurred unknown. The box was not strong; its colour was black. At the supposed spot a plumb of sixty kilogrammes was sunk. This plumb carried two cords divided into metres; two divers dragged them in separate directions, and taking each the knot corresponding to one metre, they described consecutive circles, examining the ground at each step. After searching three hours, the gold was found, and restored to its owner, who had watched the operations with intense anxiety. This salvage was effected on February 19th, 1867, by M. Barbotin, contractor for submarine work at Marseilles.”

The diving‐bell proper has been much improved by another Frenchman, M. Payerne. His “Submarine Hydrostat” will descend or fall at the will of those inside. Thirty men may work in it with ease for a number of hours without inconvenience. It is, therefore, of great service in clearing ports, and in facilitating the execution of other submarine work. “The principle of the machine is very ingenious. Externally, it has the appearance of one large rectangular box, surmounted by another smaller one, completely closed in except at the bottom. The interior consists of three principal compartments. The _hold_ communicates by a large shaft with the upper compartment. Between these is a third compartment, or _orlop deck_, which only communicates with the others by means of stop‐ cocks. The hydrostat is twenty feet in height, and its base, which has the bottom of the sea for a floor, covers an area of 625 square feet. It may be made to rise and fall at will, and it will readily float about like a raft.” This ingenious machine has proved of much service. The port of Fécamp was choked up with shingle, which closed it against all vessels beyond a certain tonnage. The hydrostat was employed, and the port cleaned, and again opened to commerce.

The old divers are fond of recounting the glories of their craft, and are specially impressed with any information as to the fate of the vessels of the Armada. This spirit has been fostered no less by the successes of the ancestor of the Mulgraves than by the good fortune of John Gann, of Whitstable. The old diver was, many years since, employed on the Galway coast, and used to pass his evenings in a public‐house frequented by fishermen. One of these men, repeating a tradition which had long existed in the district, told Gann that one of the Spanish vessels had been wrecked not far from that coast, and intimated that he himself could point out the spot. Gann, having finished his special job, made terms with the fisherman, and they were both out for many weeks dragging the spot indicated for any traces of the wreck. They were at last rewarded by coming upon obstructions with their grapnels. Gann brought out his diving apparatus, and sure enough the truth of the tradition was vindicated by the finding of a number of dollars, which had originally been packed in barrels. The barrels, however, had rotted away, and left the gold stacked in barrel shape. With the money so recovered John Gann built at Whitstable, his native place, a row of houses, which, to commemorate the circumstance, he called Dollar Row.

Corporal Harris, almost entirely by his own diligence, removed in little more than two months the wreck of the _Perdita_, mooring lighter, which was sunk in 1783, in the course of Mr. Tracy’s unsuccessful efforts to weigh the _Royal George_. It was about sixty feet in length, and embedded in mud fifty fathoms south of that vessel. The exposed timbers stood only two feet six inches above the level of the bottom, so that the exertions of Harris in removing the wreck were Herculean. Completely overpowered by fatigue, he claimed a respite for a day or two to recruit his energies, and then resumed work with his accustomed assiduity and cheerfulness.

There was a sort of abnegation, an absence of jealousy, in the character of Harris which, as the rivalry among the divers made them somewhat selfish, gave prominence to his kindness. He met a comrade named Cameron at the bottom, who led him to the spot where he was working. For a considerable time Cameron had fruitlessly laboured in slinging an awkward timber of some magnitude, when Harris readily stood in his place, and in a few minutes, using Cameron’s breast‐line to make the necessary signals, sent the mass on deck. It was thus recorded to Cameron’s credit; but the circumstance, on becoming known, was regarded with so much satisfaction that honourable mention was made of it in the official records.

Lance‐Corporal Jones, engaged on the wreck of the _Royal George_, one day lodged on deck from his slings a crate containing eighty 12‐pounder shot. With singular success he laid the remainder of the kelson open for recovery, and then, sinking deeper, drew from the mud, in two hauls, nearly thirty‐five feet of the keel. He also weighed a small vessel of six tons burden, belonging to a Mr. Cussell, which drove, under a strong current, upon one of the lighters. Becoming entangled, the craft soon filled and foundered, grappling, in her descent, with the ladder of one of the divers, grounding at a short distance from the interval between the lighters. Jones was selected to try his skill in rescuing her. At once descending, he fixed the chains under her stern, and while attempting to hold them in position, by passing them round the mast, the tide turned, the vessel swung round, and the mast fell over the side, burying Jones under her sails and rigging. Perilous as was his situation, his fearlessness and presence of mind never for a moment forsook him. Working from under the canvas, and carefully extricating himself from the crowd of ropes that ensnared him, he at last found himself free. A thunderstorm now set in, and, obedient to a call from above, he repaired to the deck; but as soon as the squall had subsided he again disappeared, and cleverly jamming the slings, the boat was hove up; but she had become a complete wreck, and was taken on shore.

A dangerous but curious incident occurred on the _Royal George_ diving operations between Corporal Jones and Private Girvan, two rival divers, who, in a moment of irritation, engaged in a conflict at the bottom of the sea, having both got hold of the same floor timber of the wreck, which neither would yield to the other. Jones, at length, fearful of a collision with Girvan, who was a powerful man, got his bull‐rope fast, and attempted to escape by it, but before he could do so Girvan seized him by the legs and tried to draw him down. A scuffle ensued, and Jones succeeded in extricating himself from the grasp of his antagonist. He then took a firmer hold of the bull‐rope and gave a kick at Girvan, which broke one of the lens of Girvan’s helmet, and as water instantly rushed into his dress, he was likely to have been drowned, had he not at once been hauled on board. Two or three days, however, at Haslar Hospital restored him; and the two submarine combatants resumed work together with the greatest cordiality.

A diver’s “Nursery Tale” must not be omitted. The hero, “Jack” (this is the name of a diver who “lived once upon a time”), had been busy for some weeks in gathering up the relics of a shipwreck, when on a certain day he saw appear at one of the windows of his bell the pale face of a woman, with long hair intertwined with sea‐weed. He had often heard tell of the beauty of mermaids, who are, as every one knows, lovelier than the most lovely of women; but Jack never believed that any creature so perfect as this could have existed. With a voice softer than the murmuring of the waves under a gentle breeze, she said to him, “I am one of the spirits of the sea. On account of your kind disposition I have marked you out among the rest of your companions, and I will protect you, but on one condition only, and that is, that you shall be sure to recognise me under any shape into which I may be pleased to change myself.” The beautiful spirit disappeared, and Jack remained very much surprised, but with a strong feeling of joy thrilling within him. He prospered exceedingly in all that he undertook. But at last prosperity spoiled him. He kicked and ill‐ treated a polyp, a kind of devil‐fish, but still an animal, and one that had done him no harm, not knowing that the beautiful spirit was disguised under that mass of ugliness. A few days afterwards an accident occurred and Jack was drowned. Moral: Take the advice of kindly mermaids—when you meet them.

And now for our last yarn, a true one. Some years ago a large vessel, having on board a valuable cargo, including gold bars, was run down and sunk by a steamship in the Thames between Northfleet and Gravesend. She was afterwards successfully raised by Captain George Wilson, of Milton, the famous oyster place, near Sittingbourne, in Kent, and which is also famous for its divers. It is principally, however, to the names of the vessels concerned that attention is directed. The _United Kingdom_ was run down by the _Queen of Scotland_!