Half mile down

by William Beebe

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Animals, Nature, Biology

Nook

First published August 12, 2015

About the author

Numerous expeditions of Charles William Beebe, American naturalist, explorer, and author, include a record oceanic descent in a bathysphere, which he helped to design in 1934.

William Beebe worked as a marine biologist and entomologist. For the zoological society of New York, he conducted his deep dives, and people remember his prolific scientific writing for both academic and popular audiences.

He also wrote under the names Charles William and C. William Beebe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...

Reviews

[Thomas Isham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pleasantly surprised by this book. Having no prior interest in diving or knowledge of the bathysphere prior to reading, I found myself enthralled by Beebe's enthusiasm for the underwater world.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Half Mile Down by William Beebe (Harcourt, Brace and Company 1934) (591.92)
(3855).

Here is a real-life first-rate first-person person account of exploration and adventure on the bottom of the ocean. Well before Jacques Cousteau invented SCUBA and scuba gear, William Beebe had already ventured into the ocean’s depths in a 1930’s-vintage submersible diving apparatus known as “the bathysphere.” This book is Beebe’s account of his adventures aboard the bathysphere into absolutely unknown, uncharted, and unexplored depths.

Beebe was a naturalist, an explorer, and a prolific author. He was the Director of Tropical Research of the New York Zoological Society. This account of his adventures aboard the bathysphere was on the cutting edge of scientific and technological advances of the day and was a must-read volume when it was originally published in the 1930s.

Beebe briefly recounts the historical developments in technology which allowed humans to visit the ocean depths. Beginning with the use of simple breathing tubes employed by ancient pearl divers through the development of diving helmets, technology had progressed to the point where a human could be sealed into a steel ball (the bathysphere) and then dropped by means of a tether to ocean depths never before visited by living humans.

And what a world Beebe found under the sea. Beebe reported that the seafloor is “A world where rocks are alive and plants are animals.” (Half Mile Down, p.72).

Half Mile Down includes a number of photographic plates of fish and other creatures Beebe saw and collected on his undersea trips. I could not help but note that many of the specimens Beebe photographed were terribly bedraggled-looking examples of marine life. The reason for this became clear as I read the text: many (or most) of Beebe’s prized specimens were collected with dynamite - literally by setting off dynamite! Fortunately the bathysphere was able to withstand these explosions, or this book would have been written by a different author.

My rating: 7/10, finished 8/25/23 (3855).

[Rafael Saporito · Rating 5 out of 5]

I decided to read the book after Sylvia Earle mentioned it in the documentary “Mission blue” as the catalyst that “got her in the water” and after reading it, i totally understand why. The book starts off slow with a very detailed history of diving, either with diving suits or proto-submarines, and then the story wraps you in by not only telling you the efforts in building, testing and maintaining the bathysphere, but also by describing the hardships and beauty of diving “half a mile down”.
The book is very descriptive and in some instances a bit fantastical, but I believe that is beneficial because it makes even the most boring cenarios, such as two men feeling claustrophobic inside of a steel ball, a daring and attention-grabbing feat. The listing and description of animals seen also add quite a lot to the story by enticing your imagination of not only what they saw, but also what other things they missed in the dives as well as what other creatures exist in the ocean right now, that we are not aware of.

[Thomas Fackler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A succinct and interesting recapitulation of diving history, helmet diving, and the bathysphere dives.

[Elexis Trinity · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enchanting.