Sealab

Sealab

Three hundred feet down, deeper than most divers were equipped to go, the World War II-era submarine Archerfish prepared to release two passengers into a dim sea with little more than the breath they held in their lungs. A spate of foul weather and strong currents had complicated some trial runs, but now, early on the first of October 1959, the sun came up with just a few wispy clouds on the horizon. In calm water, the sub set out from the U.S. Navy base at Key West, heading southwest into the Gulf of Mexico. .The mission’s unusual aim was to prove that a trapped submariner could reach the distant surface on his own—and live to tell about it. No escape quite like this had ever been made, and not everyone was convinced it was a good idea to try. But one of the passengers, Commander George Bond, a Navy doctor, had argued for attempting to make the escape. As was typical of him, he also argued that he should be the one to do it.

George Bond was forty-three, thought his soft features and jowls made him look older. He was a couple inches over six feet, barrel-chested and thickly built, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and owlish dark eyebrows. Bond had joined the Navy just a few years before but he already has a reputation fir being a maverick with a fondness for showboating. He preferred not to be photographed without his pipe. Daring, gregarious, kindhearted, even his detractors found him difficult not to like. He often lapsed into the disarming Appalachian brogue of the clients he had served not so long ago as a country doctor. His resonant baritone, noticeably seasoned somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, has the soothing, unhurried intonation of a storyteller sent from heaven. It was a voice that had served him well as a lay preacher back home in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Dr. Bond has recently become head of the Medical Research Laboratory at the U.S. Naval Submarine Base at New London, Connecticut. Most American submariners got their specialized schooling at the base, which was named for New London, but was actually in neighboring Groton, on the eastern bank of the Thames River. Scientists employed at the base’s medical lab concerned themselves with a variety physiological puzzles such as those related to submarine escape. In the early years of the U.S. submarine service, at the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no procedure, and virtually no hope, for submariners trapped in down subs, even in relatively shallow water. Safety features in the early boats were primitive at best, and gradual asphyxiation or drowning were often the survivors’ macabre options. But after three submarines sand in the 1920s, newer American subs were fitted with the equivalent of emergency exits, known as escape trunks.

Copyright © 2012 by Ben Hellwarth