Descent
Brad Matsen
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Pantheon Books
ISBN: 0375422587

The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss. First men under the sea.

In Descent, Brad Matsen breathes new life into the famous 20th century deep-sea expeditions of Otis Barton & William Beebe. At a time when no one had traveled deeper than a hundred foot or so, these two very different men, took the world to a half mile down.

In the darkest days of the Great Depression, Beebe & Barton plumbed the depths of the ocean off Nonsuch Island in the Caribbean, in a steel sphere. It was also the first time such a journey of discovery was broadcast live over the radio by NBC to America & across the Atlantic.

William Beebe was a naturalist of world repute when he became obsessed with the sea. He had an oceanographic research station off Bermuda, & a tug that could launch the craft. He also had the support of many of the day's financiers & industrialists, the ability to drum up publicity wherever he went, & connections at the New York Zoological Society & National Geographic.

Otis Barton, on the other hand, was half Beebe's age & as heir to a considerable fortune was considered a bit of a lightweight. While making his mark on the world as an adventurer, he too had long dreamed of deep-sea exploration. He had the engineering skill to design the craft to do it – the bathysphere - a cramped, 4.5-foot steel ball with quartz-glass thick portholes – & the wherewithal to build it.

Together, Beebe & Barton would achieve what no one had done before – direct observation of life in the abyss. While theorists predicted that there would be no colors in the deep, these two men brought back sightings about how the colors vanished one by one until only a pale, blueish luminescence existed before entering total blackness. They also brought back sightings of creatures that have never been seen again.

Beebe & Barton, from entirely different walks of life, were unlikely colleagues, forging their ill-fitting partnership around their passion for oceanography, yet even as they achieved their greatest success, they quarreled, leaving the two explorers on hostile speaking terms.

Descent a fascinating time capsule of the early beginnings of oceanographic exploration, as well as a detailed narrative of scientific vision & determination set against the 20th century era of great wealth & discovery, & the life & times of Barton & Beebe, their bathysphere & what they survived & discovered.

An absorbing tale of man, machine & nature.

Brad Matsen was a creative producer for the television series The Shape of Life. His articles on marine science & environmental topics have appeared in Mother Jones, Audubon, & Nature, among other publications.
(01/01/06)

Rebecca