Pre-Modern Ocean Exploration
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Although the ocean was commonly presented as terrifying and unreachable, the necessity of exploiting its resources combined with its imaginative appeal ensured that ocean exploration continued to evolve.
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The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. |
The unfathomed depths of the world's oceans have captured man's imagination for centuries. As late as the 19th century, writers like Herman Melville and Jules Verne stated conflicting views about the future of man's relationship with the ocean.
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Melville, with his knowledge of commercial whaling, believed that man would never escape the surface, never fully perceiving the creatures of the deep.
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The Frenchman Jules Verne took the opposing view, describing in technical detail how such an exploration might succeed.
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The living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship... any way you may look at it, you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. |
You know as well as I do, Professor, that man can live under water, providing he carries with him a sufficient supply of breathable air. In submarine works, the workman, clad in an impervious dress, with his head in a metal helmet, receives air from above by means of forcing pumps and regulators. |
Regardless of Melville's views, old diving technology continued to be exchanged for new inventions and techniques.
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The Silent World (Huron Scuba), 1956
Obviously we had first to get rid of those hoses and lines that turned us into captive animals on leashes. |
