Various
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873
Such were the condition, period and place—the people crushed between the upper and nether millstones of two hostile and contending civilizations—when native thrift evoked a new element, that set in sharp contrast the heroism of life and the heroism of death, the courage that incurs danger to save against the courage that accepts danger to destroy. The work was the saving of the valuable arms—costing the government thirty thousand dollars per gun—and the machinery of the sunken Milwaukee.5 By a curious circumstance this party of divers was composed partly, if not principally or entirely, of mechanics and engineers who were exempt from military service under the economic laws of the Confederacy, yet who in heart and soul sympathized with the rebellion. They had worked to save for the South: now they were to work and save for the North. It was a service of superadded danger. All the peril incurred from missile weapons was increased by the hidden danger of the secret under-sea and the presence of the terrible torpedoes. These floated everywhere, in all innocent, unsuspicious shapes. One monster, made of boiler iron, a huge cross, is popularly believed to be still hidden in the bay. The person possessing the chart wherein the masked battery's place was set down is said to have destroyed it and fled. Let us hope, however, that this is an error.
Keep in mind, in reading this account, the contrasted picture of peace in Nature and war in man—the calm blue sky; the soft hazy outlines of woods and bay-shore dropping their soft veils in the water; the cottages, suggesting industry and love; the distant city; the delicate and graceful spars of the Hartford; the busy despatch-steamers plying to and fro; the bursting forts and huge ugly monitors; the starry arches of flying shells by night and flying cloud by day; the soft lap of the water; the sensuous, sweet beauty of that latitude of eternal spring; and the soft dark violet of the outer sea, glassing itself in calm or broken into millioned frets of blue, red and starry fire; the danger above and the danger below; the dark mysterious caverns of the sea, rich with coral grots and grove and abounding marine life; the impenetrable gloom of the ship's hold, whose unimaginable darkness and labyrinthine intricacy of machinery set obstacles at every turn and move and step; the darkness; the fury; the hues and shape, all that art can make or Nature fashion, gild or color wrought into one grand tablature of splendor and magnificence. War and peaceful industry met there in novel rivalry, and each claimed its privileges. The captain of the Search said to the officers, while crowding his men behind the turret, with sly, dry humor, "Come, you are all paid to be shot at: my men are not."
More than once the accuracy of the enemy's fire drove the little party to shelter. Though the diver was shielded by the impenetrable fickle element that gave Achilles invulnerability, the air-pump above was exposed, and thus the diver might be slain by indirection. There lay Achilles' heel, the exposed vulnerable part that Mother Thetis's baptism neglected.
The work below was arduous: the hulk crowded with the entangling machinery of sixteen engines, cuddies, ports, spars, levers, hatches, stancheons, floating trunks, bibulous boxes heavy with drink, and the awful, mysterious gloom of the water, which is not night or darkness, but the absence of any ray to touch the sensitive optic nerve. The sense of touch the only reliance, and the life-line his guide.
But the peril incurred can be better understood through an illustrative example of a perilous adventure and a poor return. Officers and men of the unfortunate monitor asked for the rescue of their property, allowing a stipulated sum in lieu of salvage. Among these was a petty officer, anxious for the recovery of his chest. It involved peculiar hazards, since it carried the diver below the familiar turret-chamber, through the inextricabilis error of entangling machinery in the engine-room, groping among floating and sunken objects, into a remote state-room, the Acheron of the cavernous hold. He was to find by touch a seaman's chest; handle it in that thickening gloom; carry it, push it, move it through that labyrinthine obscurity to a point from which it could be raised. To add immeasurably to the intricacy of this undertaking, there was the need of carrying his life-line and air-hose through all that entanglement and obscurity. Three times in that horror of thick darkness like wool the line tangled in the web of machinery, and three times he had, by tedious endeavor, to follow it up, find the knot and release it. Then the door of the little state-room, the throat of exit, was shut to, and around and around the dense chamber he groped as if in a dream, and could find no vent. All was alike—a smooth, slimy wall, glutinous with that gelatinous liquid, the sea-water. The tangled line became a blind guide and fruitful source of error; the hours were ebbing away, drowning life and vital air in that horrible watery pit;
Aut hoc inclusi ligno occultantur Achivi,
or, a worse enemy than the subtle Greek's, death from the suspended air-current. Speed, nimbleness, strength and activity were worthless: with tedious fingers he must follow the life-line, find its entanglements and slowly loosen them, carefully taking up the slack, and so follow the straightened cord to the door. Then the chest: he must not forget that. Slowly he heaves and pushes, now at this, now at the life-line hitching on knob, handle, lever or projecting peg—on anything or nothing in that maze of machinery; by involution and evolution, like the unknown quantity in a cubic equation, through all the twists, turns, assumptions and substitutions, and always with that unmanageable, indivisible coefficient the box, until he reaches the upper air.
In Aesop's fable, when the crane claimed the reward of the wolf for using his long neck and bill as a forceps in extracting a bone from the latter's oesophagus, Lupus suggests that for the crane to have had his head down in the lupine throat and not get it snapped off was reward enough for any reasonable fowl. The petty officer was sufficiently learned in the Lyceum to administer a like return. The stipulated salvage was never paid or offered.6
The monitors had small square hatches or man-ports let into the deck, admitting one person conveniently.
Hinc via, Tartanii quae fert Acherontis ad undas.
A swinging ladder, whose foot was clear of the floor, led down into the recesses. A diver, having completed his task, ascended the treacherous staircase to escape, and found the hatch blocked up. A floating chest or box had drifted into the opening, and, fitting closely, had firmly corked the man up in that dungeon, tight as a fly in a bottle. From his doubtful perch on the ladder he endeavored to push the obstacle from its insertion. Two or more equal difficulties made this impossible. The box had no handle, and it was slippery with the ooze and mucus of the sea. The leverage of pushing only wedged it faster in the orifice. The inconstant ladder swayed from it as a fulcrum. Again and again by art and endeavor and angle of push he essayed, and the ladder made sport of it. It was deadly sport, that swing and seesaw on the slippery rungs in the immeasurable loneliness of the silent, shrouded cabin. It was no rush of air, sending life tingling in the blood made brilliant with carmine of oxidation, but the dense, mephitic sough of the thick wool of water. He descended and sat upon the floor to think. Feasible methods had failed, and the sands of his life were running out like the old physician's. Now to try the impracticable. There are heaps of wisdom in the wrong way sometimes, which, I suppose, is the reason some of us like it. The box was out of his reach, choked in the gullet of that life-hole. No spring or leap from floor or ladder could reach its slippery side or bear it from its fixture. The sea had caught him prowling in its mysteries, and blocked him up, as cruel lords of ancient days walled up the intruder on their domestic privacy. Wit after brute force: man and Nature were pitted against each other in the uncongenial gloom—life the stake.
He groped about his prison, glutinous with infusoriae and the oily consistence of the sea. Here a nail, there a block or lever, shaped out mentally by the touch, theorized, studied upon and thrown down. Now a hatchet, monkey-wrench, monkey's-tail, or gliding fish or wriggling eel, companions of his imprisonment. At last the cold touch of iron: the hand encloses and lifts it; its weight betrays its length; he feels it to the end—blunt, square, useless. He tries the other end—an edge or spike. That will do. Standing under the hatch, guided by the ladder to the position, and with a strong swinging, upward blow, the new tool is driven into the soft, fibrous and adhesive pine bottom of the box. On the principle on which your butler's practiced elbow draws the twisted screw sunk into the cobwebbed seal of your '48 port, he uncorks himself. The box pulled out of the hatch, the sea-gods threw up the sponge, that zoophyte being handy.
These few incidents, strung together at random, and embracing only limited experiences out of many in one enterprise, are illustrative, in their variety and character, of this hardy pursuit, and the fascination of danger which is the school of native hardihood. But they give the reader a very imperfect idea of the nature and appearance of the new element into which man has pushed his industry. The havoc and spoil, the continued danger and contention, darken the gloom of the submarine world as a flash of lightning leaves blacker the shadow of the night and storm.
The first invention to promote subaqueous search was the diving-bell, a clumsy vessel which isolates the diver. It is embarrassing, if not dangerous, where there is a strong current or if it rests upon a slant deck. It limits the vision, and in one instance it is supposed the wretched diver was taken from the bell by a shark. It permits an assistant, however, and a bold diver will plunge from the deck above and ascend in the vessel, to the invariable surprise of his companion. An example of one of its perils, settling in the mud, occurred, I think, in the port of New York. A party of amateurs, supported by champagne flasks and a reporter, went down. The bell settled and stuck like a boy's sucker. One of the party proposed shaking or rocking the bell, and doing so, the water was forced under and the bell lifted from the ooze.
But a descent in submarine armor is the true way to visit the world under water. The first sensation in descending is the sudden bursting roar of furious, Niagarac cascades in the ears. It thunders and booms upon the startled nerve with the rush and storm of an avalanche. The sense quivers with it. But it is not air shaken by reflected blows: it is the cascades driven into the enclosing helmet by the force-pump. As the flexile hose has to be stiffly distended to bear an aqueous gravity of twenty-five to fifty pounds to the square inch, the force of the current can be estimated. The tympanum of the ear yields to the fierce external pressure. The brain feels and multiplies the intolerable tension as if the interior was clamped in a vice, and that tumultuous, thunderous torrent pours on. Involuntarily the mouth opens: the air rushes in the Eustachian tube, and with sudden velocity strikes the intruded tension of the drum, which snaps back to its normal state with a sharp, pistol-like crack. The strain is momently relieved to be renewed again, and again relieved by the same attending salutes.
In your curious dress you must appear monstrous, even to that marine world, familiar with abnormal creations. The whale looks from eyes on the top of his head; the flat-fish, sole, halibut have both eyes on the same side; and certain Crustacea place the organ on a foot-stalk, as if one were to hold up his eye in his hand to include a wider horizon. But the monster which the fish now sees differs from all these. It has four great goggle eyes arranged symmetrically around its head. Peering through these plate-glass optics, the diver sees the curious, strange beauty of the world around him, not as the bather sees it, blurred and indistinct, but in the calm splendor of its own thallassphere. The first thought is one of unspeakable admiration of the miraculous beauty of everything around him—a glory and a splendor of refraction, interference and reflection that puts to shame the Arabian story of the kingdom of the Blue Fish. Above him is that pure golden canopy with its rare glimmering lustrousness—something like the soft, dewy effulgence that comes with sun-breaks through showery afternoons. The soft delicacy of that pure straw-yellow that prevails everywhere is crossed and lighted by tints and glimmering hues of accidental and complementary color indescribably elegant. The floor of the sea rises like a golden carpet in gentle incline to the surface; but this incline, experience soon teaches, is an ocular deception, the effect of refraction, such as a tumbler of water and a spoon can exhibit in petty. It is perhaps the first observable warning that you are in a new medium, and that your familiar friend, the light, comes to you altered in its nature; and it is as well to remember this and "make a note on it."
Raising your eyes to the horizontal and looking straight forward, a new and beautiful wealth of color is developed. It is at first a delicate blue, as if an accidental color of the prevailing yellow. But soon it deepens into a rich violet. You feel as if you had never before appreciated the loveliness of that rich tint. As your eye dwells upon it the rich lustrous violet darkens to indigo, and sinking into deeper hues becomes a majestic threat of color. It is ominous, vivid blue-black—solid, adamantine, a crystal wall of amethyst. It is all around you. You are cased, dungeoned in the solid masonry of the waters. It is beauty indeed, but the sombre and awful beauty of the night and storm. The eye turns for relief and reassurance to the paly-golden lustrous roof, and watches that tender penciling which brightens every object it touches. The hull of the sunken ship, lying slant and open to the sun, has been long enough submerged to be crusted with barnacles, hydropores, crustacea and the labored constructions of the microscopic existences and vegetation that fill the sea. The song of Ariel becomes vivid and realistic in its rich word-power:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
The transfiguration of familiar objects is indeed curious and wonderful. The hulk, once gaudy with paint and gilding, has come under the skill of the lapidary and sea-artist. It is crusted with emerald and flossy mosses, and glimmers with diamond, jacinth, ruby, topaz, sapphire and gold. Every jewel-shape in leaf, spore, coral or plume, lying on a greenish crystalline ground, is fringed with a soft radiance of silver fire, and every point is tipped in minute ciliate flames of faint steely purple. It is spotted with soft velvety black wherever a shadow falls, that mingles and varies the wonderful display of color. It is brilliant, vivid, changeable with the interferences of light from the fluctuating surface above, which transmogrifies everything—touches the coarsest objects with its pencil, and they become radiant and spiritual. A pile of brick, dumped carelessly on the deck, has become a huge hill of crystal jewelry, lively with brilliant prismatic radiance. Where the light falls on the steps of the staircase it shows a ladder of silver crusted with emeralds. The round-house, spars, masts, every spot where a peak or angle catches the light, have flushed into liquid, jeweled beauty; and each point, a prism and mirror, catches, multiplies and reflects the other splendor. A rainbow, a fleecy mist over the lake, made prismal by the sunlight, a bunch of sub-aqueous moss, a soap-bubble, are all examples in our daily experience of that transforming power of water in the display of color. The prevailing tone is that soft, golden effulgence which, like the grace of a cheerful and loving heart, blends all into one harmonious whole.
But observation warns the spectator of the delusive character of all that splendor of color. He lifts a box from the ooze: he appears to have uncorked the world. The hold is a bottomless chasm. Every indentation, every acclivity that casts a shadow, gives the impression of that soundless depth. The bottom of the sea seems loopholed with cavities that pierce the solid globe and the dark abysses of space beyond. The diver is surrounded by pitfalls, real and imaginary. There is no graduation. The shallow concave of a hand-basin is as the shadow of the bottomless well.
If the exploration takes place in the delta of a great river, the light is affected by the various densities of the double refracting media. At the proper depth one can see clearly the line where these two meet, clean cut and as sharply defined as the bottom of a green glass tumbler through the pure water it contains. The salt brine or gelatinous sea-water sinks weighted to the bottom, and over it flows the fresh river-water. If the latter is darkened with sediment, it obscures the silent depths with a heavy, gloomy cloud. In seasons of freshet this becomes a total darkness.
But even on a bright, sunshiny day, under clear water, the shadow of any object in the sea is unlike any shade in the upper atmosphere. It draws a black curtain over everything under it, completely obscuring it. Nor is this peculiarity lost when the explorer enters the shadow; but, as one looking into a tunnel from without can see nothing therein, though the open country beyond is plainly visible, so, standing in that submarine shadow, all around is dark, though beyond the sable curtain of the shadow the view is clear. Apply this optical fact to the ghastly story of a diver's alleged experience in the cabin of a sunken ship. It is narrated that there was revealed to his appalled sight the spectacle of the drowned passengers in various attitudes of alarm or devotion when the dreadful suffocation came. The story is told with great effect and power, but unless a voltaic lantern is included in the stage furniture, the ghastly tableaux must sink into the limbo of incredibilities.
The cabin of a sunken vessel is dark beyond any supernal conception of darkness. Even a cabin window does not alter this law, though it may be itself visible, with objects on its surface, as in a child's magic-lantern. As the rays of light pass through an object flatwise, like the blade of a knife through the leaves of a book, and may be admitted through another of like character in the plane of the first, so a ray of light can penetrate with deflection through air and water. But becoming polarized, the interposition of a third medium ordinarily transparent will stop it altogether. Hence the plate-glass window under water admits no light into the interior of a cabin. The distrust of sight grows with the diver's experience. The eye brings its habit of estimating proportion and distance from an attenuated atmosphere into another and denser medium, and the seer is continually deceived by the change. He hesitates, halts, and is observant of the pitfalls about him. A gang-plank slightly above the surface of the deck is bordered, where its shadow falls, by dismal trenches. There is a range of hills crossing the deck before him. As he approaches he estimates the difficulty of the ascent. At its apparent foot he reaches to clamber the steep sides, and the sierra is still a step beyond his reach. Drawing still nearer, he prepares to crawl up; his hand touches the top; it is less than shoulder-high.
But perhaps the strongest illustration of the differing densities of these two media is furnished by an attempt to drive a nail under water. By an absolute law such an effort, if guided by sight independent of calculation, must fail. Habit and experience, tested in atmospheric light, will control the muscles, and direct the blow at the very point where the nail-head is not. For this reason the ingenious expedient of a voltaic lantern under water has proved to be impracticable. It is not the light alone which is wanted, but that sweet familiar atmosphere through which we are habituated to look. The submarine diver learns to rely wholly on the truer sense of touch, and guided by that he engages in tasks requiring labor and skill with the easy assurance of a blind man in the crowded street.
The conveyance of sound through the inelastic medium of water is so difficult that it has been called the world of silence. This is only comparatively true. The fish has an auditory cavity, which, though simple in itself, certifies the ordinary conviction of sound, but it is dull and imperfect; and perhaps all marine creatures have other means of communication. There is an instance, however, of musical sounds produced by marine animals, which seems to show an appreciation of harmony. In one of the lakes of Ceylon, Sir Emerson Tennent heard soft musical sounds, like the first faint notes of the aeolian harp or the faint vibrations of a wineglass when its rim is rubbed by a wet finger. This curious harmony is supposed to be produced by a species of testaceous mollusk. A similar intonation is heard at times along the Florida coast.
Interesting as this may be, as indicating an appreciation of that systematic order in arrangement which in music is harmony, it does not alter the fact that to the ears of the diver, save the cascade of the air through the life-hose, it is a sea of silence. No shout or spoken word reaches him. Even a cannon-shot comes to him dull and muffled, or if distant it is unheard. But a sharp, quick sound, that appears to break the air, like ice, into sharp radii, can be heard, especially if struck against anything on the water. The sound of driving a nail on the ship above, for example, or a sharp tap on the diving-bell below, is distinctly and reciprocally audible. Conversation below the surface by ordinary methods is out of the question, but it can be sustained by placing the metal helmets of the interlocutors together, thus providing a medium of conveyance.
The effort to clothe with intelligence subaqueous life must have been greatly strengthened among primitive nations by the musical sounds to which I have referred. Those mysterious breathings were associated with a human will, and gave forebodings from their very sweetness. Everywhere they are associated with a passionate or pathetic mystery, and the widely-spread area over which their island home is portrayed as existing strengthens the conclusion that the strange music of the sea belongs not to Ceylon or Florida or the Mediterranean alone. It affords us another instance, by that common enjoyment of sweet sounds, of the chain of sympathy between all intelligent creatures, and better prepares us for familiar acquaintance with the beings which people the sea. We have prejudices and preconceived ideas to get rid of, whose strength has crystallized into aphorisms. "Cold as a fish" and "fish-eyed" are ordinary expressions. Then the touch of a fish, cold, slippery, serpent-like, causes an involuntary shrinking.
But the submarine diver has a new revelation of piscine character and beauty, and perhaps can better understand the enticings of a siren or fantastic Lurlei than the classical scholar. In the flush of aureal light tinging their pearly glimmering armor are the radiant, graceful, frolicsome inhabitants of the sea. The glutinous or oily exudation that covers them is a brilliant varnish. Their lustrous colors, variety of crystalline tints and beautiful markings and spots, attract the eye of the artist even in the fish-market; but when glowing with full life, lively, nimble, playful, surely the most graceful living creatures of earth, air or sea, the soul must be blind indeed that can look upon them unmoved.
The dull optic seen glazing in the death-throes upon the market-stall, with coarse vulgar surroundings, becomes, in its native element, full of intelligence and light. In even the smaller fry the round orb glitters like a diamond star. One cannot see the fish without seeing its eye. It is positive, persistent, prevalent, the whole animate existence expressed in it. As far as the fish can be seen its eye is visible. The glimmer of scales, the grace of perfect motion, the rare golden pavilion with its jeweled floor and heavy violet curtains, complete a scene whose harmony of color, radiance and animal life is perfect. The minnow and sun-perch are the pages of the tourney on the cloth of gold. There is a fearless familiarity in these playful little things, a social, frank intimacy with their novel visitor, that astonishes while it pleases. They crowd about him, curiously touch him, and regard all his movements with a frank, lively interest. Nor are the larger fish shy. The sheeps-head, red and black groper, sea-trout and other, familiar fish of the sportsman, receive him with frank bonhommie or fearless curiosity. In their large round beautiful eyes the diver reads evidence of intelligence and curious wonder that sometimes startles him with its entirely human expression. There is a look of interest mixed with curiosity, leading to the irresistible conclusion of a kindred nature. No faithful hound or pet doe could express a franker interest in its eyes. Curiosity, which I take to be expressly destructive of the now-exploded theory of instinct, is expressed not only by the eye, but by the movements. As in man there is an eager passion to handle that which is novel, so these curious denizens of the sea are persistent in their efforts to touch the diver. An instance of this occurred, attended with disagreeable results to one of the parties, and that not the fish. The Eve of this investigation was a large catfish. These fish are the true rovers of the water. They have a large round black eye, full of intelligence and fire: their warlike spines and gaff-topsails give them the true buccaneer build. One of these, while the diver was engaged, incited by its fearless curiosity, slipped up and touched him with its cold nose. The man involuntarily threw back his hand, and the soft palm striking the sharp gaff, it was driven into the flesh. There was an instant's struggle before the fish wrenched itself loose from the bleeding member, and then it only swung off a little, staring with its bold black eyes at the intruder, as if it wished to stay for further question. It is hard to translate the expression of that look of curious wonder and surprise without appearing to exaggerate, but the impression produced was that if the fish did not speak to him, it was from no lack of intelligent emotions to be expressed in language.
A prolonged stay in one place gave a diver an opportunity to test this intelligence further, and to observe the trustful familiarity of this variety of marine life. He was continually surrounded at his work by a school of gropers, averaging a foot in length. An accident having identified one of them, he observed it was a daily visitor. After the first curiosity the gropers apparently settled into the belief that the novel monster was harmless and clumsy, but useful in assisting them to their food. The species feed on Crustacea and marine worms, which shelter under rocks, mosses and sunken objects at the sea-bottom. In raising anything out of the ooze a dozen of these fish would thrust their heads into the hollow for their food before the diver's hand was removed. They would follow him about, eyeing his motions, dashing in advance or around in sport, and evidently with a liking for their new-found friend. Pleased with such an unexpected familiarity, the man would bring them food and feed them from his hand, as one feeds a flock of chickens. The resemblance, in their familiarity and some of their ways, to poultry was, in fact, very striking. As a little chick will sometimes seize a large crumb and scurry off, followed by the flock, so a fish would sometimes snatch a morsel and fly, followed by the school. If he dropped it or stopped to enjoy his bonne bouche, his mates would be upon him. Sometimes two would get the same morsel, and there would be a trial of strength, accompanied with much flash and glitter of shining scales. But no matter how called off, their interest and curiosity remained with the diver. They would return, pushing their noses about him, caressingly in appearance if not intent, and bob into the treasures of worm and shell-fish his labor exposed. He became convinced that they were sportive, indulging in dash and play for the fun of it, rather than for any grosser object to be attained.
This curious intimacy was continued for weeks: the fish, unless driven away by some rover of prey of their kind, were in regular attendance during his hours of work. Perhaps the solitude and silence of that curious submarine world strengthened the impression of recognition and intimacy, but by every criterion we usually accept in terrestrial creation these little creatures had an interest and a friendly feeling for one who furnished them food, and who was always careful to avoid injuring them or giving them any unnecessary alarm. He could not, of course, take up a fish in his hand, any more than a chicken will submit to handling; but as to the comparative tameness of the two, the fish is more approachable than the chicken. That they knew and expected the diver at the usual hour was a conclusion impossible to deny, as also that they grew into familiarity with him, and were actuated by an intelligent recognition of his service to them. It would be hard to convince this gentleman that a school of fish cannot be as readily and completely tamed as a flock of chickens.