Speaker 1: Okay, are you the curious type? I mean, what motivates
Speaker 1: an explorer? Why would someone want to go to the
Speaker 1: deepest place on Earth? The Mariana Trench is almost seven
Speaker 1: miles down. Would you want to travel down in a
Speaker 1: vehicle that feels like a coffin into pitch blackness with
Speaker 1: water temperatures around thirty six degrees except where thermal vents
Speaker 1: rush out at seven hundred degrees, not knowing for sure
Speaker 1: you'll ever resurface, and what happens to you in those
Speaker 1: few moments if there's a catastrophic failure. Now imagine you're
Speaker 1: doing that sixty five years ago, when communications and safety
Speaker 1: measures were primitive at best. I'm Patty Steele surviving a
Speaker 1: trip toward the center of the Earth. Next on the backstory,
Speaker 1: The backstory is back. Really, what motivates someone to climb
Speaker 1: into a tiny metal tube? Just a thought of that
Speaker 1: gives me the creeps and just keep dropping underwater down
Speaker 1: to total darkness. The Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean,
Speaker 1: at its deepest point, is almost thirty six thousand feet
Speaker 1: or almost seven miles below the surface. That is deeper
Speaker 1: than Mount Everest is tall. Everest is the tallest mountain
Speaker 1: in the world above sea level at twenty seven thousand feet,
Speaker 1: over a mile less than the trench's depth. Now imagine
Speaker 1: you're the first person to actually descend to the very
Speaker 1: bottom of the trench, all thirty six thousand feet. You
Speaker 1: have no clue what you're going to see, and you're
Speaker 1: probably not even sure you'll ever resurface. I had a
Speaker 1: chance just a week ago or so to visit the
Speaker 1: Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Washington. It was a close
Speaker 1: up look at the development of submarines, and it honestly
Speaker 1: scared the heck out of me. The people going down
Speaker 1: in subs back in the beginning hundreds of years ago
Speaker 1: weren't going very deep, but it was dark, cold, and
Speaker 1: totally unfamiliar, and they frequently never made it back up.
Speaker 1: The Mariana Trench was actually discovered back in eighteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: The HMS Challenger was out in the middle of the
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean near the Marianna Islands doing a routine depth sounding.
Speaker 1: The scientists and sailors lowered a weighted rope into the
Speaker 1: water as usual, but this time the rope kept falling
Speaker 1: and falling and falling. It dropped to twenty seven thousand feet,
Speaker 1: not the deepest part of the trench, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: but crazy deep. And by the way, who knew these
Speaker 1: guys could carry five miles of rope on a boat
Speaker 1: back in those days. Well, anyway, that was the beginning
Speaker 1: of the fascination with this remote part of our planet.
Speaker 1: Now fast forward eighty five years. It's nineteen sixty, In fact,
Speaker 1: sixty five years ago this week that the great Swiss
Speaker 1: ocean explorer Jacques Picard, in twenty nine year old Navy
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Don Walsh became the first humans ever to take
Speaker 1: the plunge. They reached the deepest part of the Mariana
Speaker 1: trench called the Challenger Deep in a tube like submersible
Speaker 1: called the Trieste. Think about it. No one had ever
Speaker 1: been down there, and in fact, no vessel, even without people,
Speaker 1: had ever been down there. What's it like? While the
Speaker 1: water pressure is about eleven hundred times greater than at
Speaker 1: the surface, pretty much like an elephant standing on your
Speaker 1: thumb ouch and absolutely no light gets down there. Plus again,
Speaker 1: the water temperature is close to freezing except for those
Speaker 1: seven hundred degree thermal vents. Not a picnic. It took
Speaker 1: the card and Walsh almost five hours to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom, but at thirty thousand feet one of the
Speaker 1: outer plexiglass window panes cracked, making the treeste shake violently. Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm as curious as anybody, but no thanks anyway. The
Speaker 1: two spent only about twenty minutes on the seafloor, which
Speaker 1: they said was made of a thick, ouzy material, kind
Speaker 1: of mud like. They didn't see much with limited outside lighting,
Speaker 1: but they did see what were probably sea cucumbers. That's
Speaker 1: an eel like animal that looks a little bit like
Speaker 1: a sweet potato or a yellow cucumber. The trip back
Speaker 1: to the mother ship took them a little over three hours.
Speaker 1: And here's the interesting thing. That was January of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty and no one went back down to the bottom
Speaker 1: of the Mariana Trench until twenty twelve, fifty two years later,
Speaker 1: when Titanic director James Cameron went down by himself. Clearly
Speaker 1: his movie inspired his love of the deep ocean, and
Speaker 1: his movie money allowed him to build a crazy technology
Speaker 1: laden vessel for his trip. It was called the Deep
Speaker 1: Sea Challenger, a twenty four foot submersible with one nine
Speaker 1: and a half inch thick window so it could withstand
Speaker 1: the pressure of the deepest place on Earth. From it,
Speaker 1: Cameron took the first ever photos of the Challenger deep.
Speaker 1: He says, people ask me what were the differences between
Speaker 1: the Trieste back in nineteen sixty and the deep sea
Speaker 1: Challenger submersibles. That's like asking Orville Wright, what was the
Speaker 1: difference between your airplane and a seven forty seven. While
Speaker 1: the Trieste and the Challenger deep both do the same
Speaker 1: essential thing. They carry people to the deepest place in
Speaker 1: the ocean, they can withstand great pressure, but there most
Speaker 1: of the similarities end. Because you're talking about a half
Speaker 1: century of technology, and I would add a literal boatload
Speaker 1: more money. The lights and cameras alone that Cameron used
Speaker 1: didn't even exist in nineteen sixty. Walsh says, we didn't
Speaker 1: have very good stuff back then. Nothing existed. If you
Speaker 1: needed something, you had to design it and build it yourself.
Speaker 1: There were no catalogs or companies that specialized in providing
Speaker 1: components for deep submersibles. But he was there in twenty
Speaker 1: twelve to mentor Cameron for his eight hour round trip dive.
Speaker 1: Walsh says, just before he shut the hatch to make
Speaker 1: the dive, I said good luck and have fun. That
Speaker 1: was my advice. I said, just have fun. And when
Speaker 1: Cameron resurfaced, Walsh says, well, when he opened the hatch,
Speaker 1: I was there too. I shook his hand and I said,
Speaker 1: welcome to the club. There are only two of us. Cameron,
Speaker 1: who spent three hours at the bottom, says he felt
Speaker 1: completely disconnected from humanity, like he was on another planet.
Speaker 1: He collected samples, took photos, and reflected. He said, as
Speaker 1: you prepare for the dive over months and years, it's
Speaker 1: all science and technology and money. But when you finally
Speaker 1: dive to the bottom of the ocean, you have to
Speaker 1: face the fact that there are one hundred horrible ways
Speaker 1: to die. Since Cameron's March twenty six, twenty twelve trip,
Speaker 1: a few dozen others have made the dive, but the
Speaker 1: curiosity and guts it takes to make that kind of
Speaker 1: trip are really powerful. Hope you like the backstory with
Speaker 1: Patty Steele. I would love it if you would subscribe
Speaker 1: or follow for free to get new episodes delivered automatically,
Speaker 1: and feel free to DM me if you have a
Speaker 1: story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty
Speaker 1: Steele and on Instagram, Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.
Speaker 1: The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis
Speaker 1: Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser.
Speaker 1: Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday
Speaker 1: and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with
Speaker 1: comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty
Speaker 1: Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history
Speaker 1: you didn't know you needed to know.