Chapter 8 



RENAISSANCE 



THE STORY of the bathysphere dive of 1932 begins 

 at seven o'clock on the morning of August thirty- 

 first. At that time several craft converged toward 

 an ugly little shed of corrugated iron on a wharf to the 

 west of St. Georges, Bermuda. Little bumboats brought 

 engineers and carpenters, and toward the wharf steamed 

 a huge, open-decked tug, the Freedom, which was, this 

 year, to be the mother control boat. 



Finally we arrived in the New York Zoological Society's 

 launch Skink and tied up outside the fleet of varied vessels. 

 The shed was a dark, dismal affair which stood quite 

 isolated on this small wharf. I had looked in the week 

 before and it seemed as if all the great jumble of wire 

 and winches was too inert, too completely enslaved by 

 gravity for even man's power over the inorganic to be 

 effective. 



Now, suddenly, the middle part of the structure was 

 lifted off and the bright early morning sunlight poured in. 

 At this point an adventurer in speed or height or depth 

 usually tells how his wonderful mechanical friend — plane 

 or dirigible, speed-boat or racing auto — glistens in the 

 sunlight, every part polished or newly painted, every joint 



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