American Experience

(rotor blades whirring) (machinery buzzing, indistinct chatter) (clanking)

NARRATOR

In the spring of 1964, Scott Carpenter was preparing for a new mission. The second American to orbit the earth, he had become one of the most famous men of his day. Now, he would be embarking on another equally dangerous undertaking.

MAN

Go! (loud splash)

NARRATOR

This time, Carpenter would not be an astronaut but an aquanaut, venturing into the deepest parts of the ocean, a vast and forbidding domain every bit as daunting as outer space. Divers who attempted to chart its depths faced barriers that had thwarted mankind for centuries-- near total blackness, bone-jarring cold, intense pressure that could disorient the mind and crush the body. Carpenter and his fellow pioneers would attempt to break through those barriers-- going deeper and staying longer underwater than anyone had done before, seeing if it was possible for humans to live on the bottom of the ocean. At first, their daring exploits captured the nation's attention, but tragedy would consign their groundbreaking work to the shadows and obscure the accomplishments of the men of SEALAB. (water gushing) On the first of October, 1959, the U.S.S. Archerfish glided to a stop 322 feet beneath the waves off the Florida coast.

MAN

603... 603...

NARRATOR

Two Navy divers were about to test whether it was possible to escape from a submarine at this depth-- something no one had ever tried before. The men took a single lungful of compressed air and stepped out of a hatch into the water. They were immediately lifted upwards by their inflated vests, traveling at six feet per second. As they rose and the water pressure decreased, the air in their lungs kept expanding, forcing them to exhale a continuous stream of bubbles. 53 seconds after leaving the Archerfish, the men burst onto the surface and took their first lungful of air. The daring test was known as a "blow and go," and at its center was a pioneering researcher named Dr. George Bond.

BEN HELLWARTH

George Bond was the kind of guy that when he walked into a room, big tall guy with a deep, resonant voice, and a kind of visionary air about him, people liked him. Even his... even people who didn't agree with him, couldn't help but kind of like him. And it made him the kind of leader people wanted to follow.

BOB BARTH

If he said, "Tomorrow we're going to go to the moon," all of us would have said, "Let's go." He was just that type of guy.

SYLVIA EARLE

George Bond was out there in the thick of things himself. He was a personal guinea pig. He'd try things out before he'd expose others to the risks.

NARRATOR

He was a broad-shouldered former doctor from Appalachia, whose backwoods brogue and southern courtliness masked a driving determination to save lives and change the world. Bond had grown up around the small town of Bat Cave, North Carolina, and returned there at the age of 31, as the region's only doctor. Within a few years, he had been named Doctor of the Year and was profiled in a film by the American Medical Association, honored for his tireless work serving 5,000 people scattered across 500 square miles of rugged back country. Bond was drafted into the Medical Corps near the end of the Korean War. In March of 1957, he was assigned to the Medical Research Laboratory at the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in New London, Connecticut. Ho ho ho, ho ho ho! The lab was a center for studying the effects of diving on the human body, and training submarine crews in escape techniques like the "blow and go." Bond fell in love with what he called "the diving game." Shortly after arriving in New London, he submitted a research proposal to the Navy, outlining his vision for man's future below the surface.

BOB BORNHOLDT

He was dreaming about people living on the ocean floor and farming and building houses and civilizations and actually feeding the population of the world from, you know, those activities. It was more of a vision than a sort of scientific paper. Bond was thinking of military, industrial, scientific possibilities, the whole world that might open up if only man could live in the ocean. (waves crashing)

NARRATOR

Covering 70% of the earth's surface, the ocean remained an alluring but forbidding realm that had fascinated humans for centuries. Breath-hold divers had long sought pearls on a single lungful of air but could only stay below the surface for minutes at a time. By the 1920s, treasure seekers, salvage operators, and Navy divers began to descend in so-called hardhats, breathing air pumped through hoses from the surface. The clumsy rigs allowed them to roam the sea floor, but their umbilical lines could easily become fouled on obstructions. Eventually, pressurized vessels extended man's reach into the depths. The first modern submarines were developed during the Civil War. By World War I, they had emerged as a terrifying new weapon. (explosion) Then, in the 1930s, the American naturalist and marine biologist William Beebe lowered his pressurized iron bell, known as a bathysphere, almost half a mile below the waves, glimpsing for the first time the strange lifeforms inhabiting the inky blackness. Twenty-five years later, a reinforced bathyscaphe called Trieste descended an astonishing 35,000 feet-- almost seven miles-- to the deepest part of the ocean. (water burbling) By the time George Bond arrived in New London, nuclear power had made it possible for submarines to remain submerged for weeks, cruising hundreds of feet down. But humans remained confined to airtight capsules, unable to swim freely at such depths. In the 1940s, a new system known as scuba allowed divers to breathe compressed air from tanks worn on their backs. But the further down a diver went, the more dangerous the undersea world became.