Classic literature still offers rich lessons about life in the deep blue sea
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Wednesday, July 12, 2023
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In the novel, a supposedly indestructible vessel strikes an iceberg.
Key Points:
- 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.