Chapter 1
Introductory
In which the motivation of the Commodore is explained . . . the purpose of the voyage . . . the reasons for sailing alone and underwater . . . the nautical experience of the Commodore
The Amsterdam bathysphere was a marvel of engineering and construction of its day, that being 1835. A rugby-ball-shaped riveted iron vessel, stout and hardy, designed to travel at depths of no more than 500 meters, untethered to any surface ships, and driven by manual pedals adaptable to either foot or hand-power to patented twin screws. A rudder connected by a heat-treated shaft through a water-tight bung, affixed to a steering mechanism inside the bathysphere, provided a most pleasurable and somewhat reliable steering experience. Portholes sealed with leaded glass fore, aft and starboard afforded unobstructed and enjoyable views of the surrounding sea. A pointed explanation of the engineering of the vessel waits, later in this chapter, in more excruciating detail.
The Commodore’s reasoning for using a bathysphere of his own design was that normal coal steamers – such as those used by Capt. Buchan in his ill-fated voyage at Spitzbergen in 1818; by Ross through Davis Strait in that same year; and by Franklin in the disastrous Coppermine expedition of 1820; and even later of the terrible and little-known Dickinson expedition of 1830 around the west coast of Greenland (when Capt. Dickinson himself panicked and succumbed to cannibalism prior to even being trapped in pack-ice, before any crew died or were even starving) were too prone to being locked in the pack-ice of the Arctic Circle, sometimes for years at a time due to their unhealthy fixation on surface vessels and their obstinate insistence on using them.
“Surface steamers are so 1818” Amsterdam was fond of uttering.
Amsterdam also was quite anxious to thumb his nose also at Captain James Ross, who two years previous returned from a difficult voyage of no more than 69 degrees latitude, where he failed to find the isthmus at Boothia or at Brentford Bay, returning home starved, freezing and disappointed, yet still receiving a medal of courage from the vice-provost of the Royal Navy Academy for his work at attempting to pinpoint the magnetic pole. Amsterdam frequently clashed with the temperamental Ross, and was anxious to show the dejected captain that he was more than capable in paddling circles him, when given ample opportunity.
While the underwater mode of travel utilized by the bathysphere rendered it immune to such travails suffered by the “bombers” of the day; those sturdy, above-water oak- and steel-plated crafts of previous (and expectantly failed) expeditions, the commodore imagined himself breezing uninhibitedly underneath the raging, impenetrable ice and pitiless, suffocating darkness, pedaling madly, free of distractions and weather-related obstructions, traversing the passage then emerging back to the surface north of the Alaska peninsula, where he would be greeted with rounds of huzzahs by the Alaskan and Kamchatkin Esquimauxs, his name forever enshrined and commemorated as the discoverer of the mythical north-west passage, in a robust bathysphere of his own design. . .
