JULES VERNE OUTDONE!

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17877, 25 November 1929, Page 13

JULES VERNE OUTDONE!

The dream of Jules Verne in his worldknown book, “Twenty-thousand Leagues Under tho Sea,” has been realised. A one-man submarine which can search for wrecks on the bed of the ocean has been built at Milan For some 20 years Signor Francis Kalm, a naval architect, who is an authority on submarines and torpedoes, has been planning .he construction of a vessel that could dive to a depth of more than I,oooft and travel along just clear of tho floor of the ocean, throwing brilliant rays from a searchlight to seek the long-buried treasures of the deep. Romance long dead will be revived when this wonder craft sets out on her vc-yages of discovery. She is a torpedoshaped boat, 53ft. long and 10ft. wide. Her twin propellors are operated by electric motors capable of developing 400 horse-power. »

One-Man Crew. Her steel hull, welded together, . is thicker than that of an ordinary undersea vessel. It is needed to withstand tho great water-pressure to which she will be subjected. The secrets of tho deep can only be j probed by one man at a time, for that j is all the small craft is destined to carry. I The underwater detective sits in a steel ! chamber like a conning tower; a similar j chamber behind him contains oxygen in | sufficient quantity to allow undcr-surfaco ! investigation for 60 hours, j In the chamber are the machinery and steering controls, tho levers which operate the diving fins, the switches and operating wheel of the’under-water searchlight, a mechanically operated camera for ; taking photographs anJ a telephone to give the course and distance steered. Dial recorders lo give the depth and a

log to record tho mileage, and you havo a more perfect under-sea boat than the French author dreamed of, for the modern scientific instruments had not been invented at tbo time his book was written.

What can tho beds of the seven seas offer to the investigator in such a vessel? For years surface ships have been trailing chains and wires in vain to discover tho whereabouts of known wrecks. Divers have descended in armoured suits to the greatest possible depths, only to find that currents have swept them this way and that. They have gone down by ropes attached to heavy moorings to expemuce the sensation of being kept in a horizontal position by the under-tow.

Fortunes Lo3t in, Expeditions. Fortunes have been spent by diving companies in trying to locate the sunken liners, Egypt, Lusitania, Tubinia, and other treasure ships. Famous wrecks of eold-laden Indiainen off the Madagascar and South African coasts, including the Grosvenor Indiaman, have been the object of treasure-seekers for more than a century.

What can the treasure-seeking submarine do towards finding these elusive hoards of a Midas ? Has modern science found a way at last to make the sea give up its silver, ts gold, and its long-lost jewels ? If that is so it will be the greatest discovery of tho age.

The secret of what has been going on for years behind tho closed doors of a small factory nerr Milan has been carefully guarded. Only tho few oath-bound workers who welded the sections of the stout steel hull together know of its construction and wer’ left to guess for what object the vessel .was intended.