Sounding The Deeps OCEANS, LIKE PEOPLE, sometimes have false bottoms. What elementary sounding devices indicate is a depth of only a few hundred feet, may turn out, on closer scrutiny, to be abysses several times as profound, and in this respect, if in no other, an analogy between the sea and the personality seems indicated. Everyone has discovered that the presumed shallowness of a chance acquaintance occasionally drops off, under more thorough understanding of him, to wondrous and unfathomable profundity. In this materialistic and ofttimes shallow culture of ours, it seems necessary to exhibit to the sun of public opinion a scintillating, shimmering surface of no depth whatever, and like the sea, this surface is sometimes taken by superficial thinking to be the whole story. We need better devices for plumbing the depths. Who knows what wonders of Nature, what marvels of ingenuity and adaptation, what incalculable values exist in the innermost recesses of mind and sea alike! The story of the discovery and explanation of the false bottom of the ocean is a classic of modern science. Dan L. Thrapp It came about through use of the echo sounding device, conceived to give seamen and chart-makers an easy and rapid means of determining ocean depths. It is simple in conception. A sound impulse, or noise, is directed downward. The time lapse between emission of noise and the return of the echo, presumably from the bottom, made it simple to calculate how far distant the sea-bed lay, since the velocity of sound waves through water is known and con stant. This contraption, of course, was of immense value to navigators and map makers. Gone were the days when the only way to measure ocean depths was laboriously to lower a weight at the end of a cable and reel it in again after the desired fact was learned, an operation that oftentimes, in deep water, required hours. With an echo sounder, a ship could cruise at moderate speed and simultaneously make a continuous series of soundings. But during World War II it was discovered that sounding was not as simple as had been supposed. At depths of between 1,000 and 1,500 feet in all seas was discovered NOVEMBER 1953 a false bottom, but not a stable one. It rose and fell. During the night it came up to within a few hundred feet of the surface higher when there was no moon. As dawn broke, it fell away again, resuming its standard daylight depth. Had this discovery come before the age of science, it would doubtless soon have made its appearance in mythology and been attributed to all sorts of playful gods and godesses. But modern oceanographers turned a fishy eye, as it were, on the phenomenon arrived at with a more demontrable explanation. They learned, as they had suspected from the beginning, that it was a living bottom. creatures It is a 300-foot thick layer of superabundant lifeof some sort from whose bodies sound echoes are returned. Scientists calculate that there must be from ten to twenty of these organisms in each cubic meter of water. The real bottom was discovered beneath this false layer because special high fre quency sound waves pass right through it to the real ocean bed. The organisms evidently cannot endure. any but the faintest, filtered light and thus remain below the depth to which sunlight penetrates during the day, and below the night limit after dark. It is believed that the layer is com posed of tiny organisms, for the most part, such as plankton and largely made up of minute shrimps and scarcely larger fishes. That some larger types feed on the layer was indicated by evidence that animals twelve to eighteen inches in length had been revealed there by sounding devices. A way to trap this layer-life has not yet been worked out, but it is known to exist in all oceans, even the Antarctic; it occurs in huge rafts with patches of clear water between. This, like the discovery of World War II years that fish have voices, is only a newer finding in the science of the sea and of course it is but the beginning of man's ability to penetrate, by mechanical invention or in person, the abyss increases. In this, at least, oceanography and psychology have something in common. Each deals with profundities we can suspect but not entirely comprehend. Each science, despite its triumphs, is in its infancy. The development of each will be of immense value for mankind. And in each the scientists and leaders of thought are exploring new ground, feeling their way cautiously and occasionally bumblingly but withal making sound progress, too. Thus, as in so many other direc (Cont. on page 77) Visiting The Old World Atlantic Flight THE four-and-a-half-hour flight from New York to Gander only partially prepares you for the quick transition from one continent to another. Having made the plane trip before, I knew this. Nevertheless, the sensation remained unchanged: that of being borne, magic-carpet-like, from Times Square to Piccadilly with insufficient time to make a mental or emotional adjustment. Gander, a bare spot in a wilderness of firs and inland waters, looked scarcely more hospitable in June than it did covered with snow and beaten by cold winds in early April when I last landed there more than a year ago. One of the world's great airports, Gander is a complex of giant runways and wooden buildings. The narrow-guage Newfoundland Railway, which runs from Port aux Basques to St. Johns, Newfoundland's capital, marks Gander as midway point of its route. a Gander was born of World War II, a refuelling stop for the thousands of B-17's and B-24's we flew to Britain. You de-plane there, watching other air transports re-loading or Robert E. G. Harris temporarily discharging passengers from everywhere-planes and people going and coming from the cities of the United States, Canada, Western Europe and as far distant as the Middle East and India. The usual wait in Gander is fortyfive minutes to an hour, while your plane is being readied for the long hop of about 2,300 miles to London. There isn't much to do during this waiting period. You file into the large passenger waiting room and restaurant, have refreshments, then try to interest yourself in the maps and photo-murals around the walls. These depict the life and geography of Newfoundland, newest province of the Canadian Dominion. For fish, timber and mineral resourses, Newfoundland, you decide, is fine. Just how the total population of 350.000, concentrated chiefly along the big island's North Atlantic edge, manages to find an expanding economic base you wonder. The second lap of the journey begins as the plane rises from Gander after a long run, its wing-tanks heavy with fuel for the over-water crossing. NOVEMBER 1953 Soon Gander and its tree-girt lake and cluster of barracks-like structures disappears behind you and you are over the Atlantic-over the "iceberg country." In late June the bergs have mostly melted away; only the remnants of the bigger ones are left, blue-white, dazzling and appearing surprisingly large even from 10,000 feet. In April of 1952-on my previous trip I had seen the vast expanse of the ice islands reaching to the Labrador coast. The sight in June is less forbidding. But as our Constellation circled (courtesy of the captain) around one enormous berg, we were fascinated by the immense aimless voyager from the Polar ice cap and were reminded of the northerly course we were now on. Another reminder was the prolonged daylight. This was the longest day of the year. Darkness lasted only about two hours -if it could be called darkness, broken as it was by the fluorescent glow of the northern lights. A few hours after daybreak the sky opened up. Below us was the ocean over which we had been flying smoothly for nearly seven hours, the Constellation's four propellors churning tirelessly throughout the night. In another hour we rounded the coast of Northern Ireland. Its steep headlands dropped abruptly to the sea, supporting a rolling plateau of billiard-table green, dotted with farms and towns. But after one glimpse of Belfast, the clouds closed in again, and we flew through opaci. ty across the Irish Sea, viewing land again only as we began the descent to Heathrow, the London International Airport. At Heathrow everything is in or der, typically British order. They take you across the landing strip in one of those bright, shiny new busses, with its rear seats on a higher level than those up front to allow for a baggage deck beneath. The British immigration officials quickly check your passports, you declare the amount of money you are bringing in, then file into another room where a customs inspector, not bothering to open your luggage, accepts your word that you're not bringing in any contraband goods. Lloyd's Bank has a large branch at Heathrow. You cash your travelers cheques there and thus begin your struggle with the English money system. The biggest nuisance is distingishing a two-shilling piece from a half-crown; both coins are so nearly the same size. Also, if you're unlucky enough to get a five-pound note, you're stuck with something as large as a legal-size letterhead. NEW OUTLOOK The airport also has a travel desk where attractive young women assist you in booking hotel reservations, tours, etc. I bought an all-expense tour to Scotland via Scottish Omnibuses, Ltd., an Edinburgh concern, operating out of London. For five nights lodging, all meals and transportation, the charge for two persons came to about $80. Along the Great West Road the airport bus bounces you into London -a trip of about 16 miles and deposits you at Victoria Air Terminal. From there we taxied to our hotel, the May Fair, at Berkeley Square, two blocks from Piccadilly. In a total elapsed time of a little over 13 hours we had come from the heart of Manhattan to the heart of London. A Seedbed Of Genius It is difficult to sort out the incomparable stuff of which Florence is made. Other writers, past and present, have explained Florence far bet ter than I am able to do. Astride the muddy undistinguished Arno, the city sits now almost unchanged as in the days when Dante, crossing the bridge below the Ponte Vecchio, first encountered Beatrice. Modern Florence is medieval Florence; unlike most cities, it does not seem to rise out of layers of the past -it is the past and wears its age so becomingly and with so few modern alterations that you walk back through time there almost with as little effort of adjustment as you would be called upon to make strolling through a museum or art gallery. Indeed, Florence itself is one big museum and art gallery. In this paratively small city of 460,000, are 15 museums, a score of churches com housing priceless treasures and a library of over 4,000,000 volumes. The public squares of Florence are the most attractive facets of its personality. They aren't large, as are the squares and immense open areas of Paris and Rome. But because they conceal themselves and you come upon them unexpectedly, they have the compelling fascination of a beautiful or interesting face looming suddenly in the midst of a crowd. narrow Round the corner of a street, and there is the Galleria offering its beautiful statuary, while beside it, along the facade of the Uffizi Gallery, you are watched by the marble likenesses of the great Florentines. You count them and recite their names: Gallileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Americus Vespucius, Dante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Benvenuto Cellini, Boccacio, Della Robbia, Fra NOVEMBER 1953 |