Remington

• 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.

Exploring the ‘seven seas’

• 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.

Unexplored depths

• 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.

Among the first

• 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.