BATHYSPHERE

[shipstamps]

In the late 1920s the New York Zoological Park and Society began a concentrated study of the ocean depths nine miles off the coast of Nonsuch Island, Bermuda in 32 12N 64 36W.
Dr Charles William Beebe (1877-1962) an employee of the New York Zoological Society was fascinated by deep sea diving, and he got in contact with Otis Barton a wealthy single guy also with a passion for exploration and diving.
Barton did have an engineering background, and he had designed a simple round deep sea sphere, and when Barton meet Beebe at the New York Zoological Park and Society on 28 December 1928, after seeing the design the two men made the decision to use Barton’s design.


1929 The BATHYSPHERE as it was named was built by Watson Stillman Hydraulic Machinery Co., Roselle, New Jersey, USA.
Barton was paying for the building of the BATHYSPHERE, while the expedition was founded by the New York Zoological Society and the National Geographic Society.
The BATHYSPHERE was made of cast iron and could hold two men.
The hull was 1.5 inch thick and had two observation portholes, they were 8 inch wide and the glass did have a thickness of 3 inch, and consisted of heavy duty fused-quartz.
The hull was painted white, and she would be lowered from a mother-ship by a single not twisting cable made by Roebling with a thickness of seven-eights of an inch, with a breaking strain of 29 tons.
Electricity for light and a telephone line were wrapped inside a rubber hose, which entered through a small hole at the top of the BATHYSPHERE.
Oxygen tanks with automatic valves were installed, and the carbon dioxide was absorbed by trays of soda lime.
Total cost including the 3.500 feet long cable was $ 12.000.

They chartered an old Royal Navy barge the READY, but the first BATHYSPHERE with a weight of 5 ton
was too heavy to handle by the derrick and winches of the barge.
A new BATHYSPHERE was built with a weight of 5.000 pounds and she was completed for the summer of 1930.
After loading the BATHYSPHERE on the barge, she was towed by the GLADISFEN, Beebe’s research vessel to the position for her first dive.

03 June 1930 the first unmanned dive took place, to a depth of about 600 feet, not a success dive, the current was pulling the sphere, and the steel cable had twisted the electric cable hundreds of times around, but the BATHYSPHERE was not leaking.
06 June 1930 an other unmanned test dive took place till a depth of 1.500 feet, and all was going well.
The same day a manned descent took place till a depth of 300 feet when the two occupants Beebe and Barton noticed some water was seeping in via the entrance, but they kept going till a depth of 800 feet, when they ordered the men on the READY to pull up the BATHYSPHERE, after breaking the surface about two buckets of water had seeped in. The leak was filled with white lead.

10 June an other unmanned test dive was carried out till a depth of 2.000 feet.
After a few more unmanned and manned dives in which all the problems were fixed many dives were made the summer season off Bermuda in search for unknown fishes and plants, most dives were not deep.

1933 The BATHYSPHERE was exhibited at the Century of Progress Exposition at Chicago.

She was then taken to her builder at Roselle for an overhaul, new and improved quartz windows were installed and her interior modernized.
05 July 1934 she arrived back at Nonsuch and other test dives or manned dives were carried out by Beebe and Barton.
15 August 1934 the made the deepest dive to a depth of 3.028 feet, after a few minutes on this depth she were winched up again by the READY.

The BATHYSPHERE you can see today at the New York Aquarium in Battery Park, New York.

On Bermuda 1976 5c sg 357 and sg 360.

Source: http://hometown.aol.com/chines6930/mw1/sphere.htm http://www.submarineonstamps.co.il/openhist.php?ID=114 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/ice/sfeature/beebe.html Ships on Stamps CD-Rom.

[aukepalmhof]

Monaco 1962 1f sg746, scott? (the diving bell on the left is King Alexander the Great diving bell.)

[Arturo]

Bathysphere

Micronesia 1997, S.G.?, Scott: 269b.