Classic literature still offers rich lessons about life in the deep blue sea

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In the novel, a supposedly indestructible vessel strikes an iceberg.

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Wednesday, July 12, 2023

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In the novel, a supposedly indestructible vessel strikes an iceberg.
A man of untold wealth dreams of voyaging to the bottom of the sea, sharing with a select few passengers a glimpse of the mysteries of the deep.
He descends to the ocean floor in order to gawk at the wreckage of a great ship that sank years before.

A “league” (French “lieue”) was a measure that has been different lengths at different times in history.
In Melville’s novel, the great white whale rams the good ship Pequod and drags Captain Ahab to a watery death.
For Hardy, the claim that the Titanic was “unsinkable” is a prime example of human arrogance.

Indeed, it is often said that we know more about Mars than we do about the bottom of the sea.
The National Ocean Service reminds us that the seas cover more than two-thirds of the planet.
This fear is depicted in such haunting paintings as Théodore Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa” and J.M.W.
In our world of marine biodiversity loss, bleached coral and ocean acidification, we need positive as well as paranoid imaginings of the deep.

It was only with the invention of the submarine that humans could reach more than a few feet below the surface of the waves.
In the 1620s the Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel descended into the River Thames in a bell-shaped submersible powered by oars, his oxygen supplied by setting fire to saltpeter.
His more immediate inspiration was the Plongeur, designed for the French navy in the early 1860s.
It reached a depth of 30 feet – or 9 meters – and could stay underwater for two hours.
Verne saw a model of it at the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where he also learned about a recent discovery: the mechanical power of electricity.