Beebe, Charles William (1887-1962)

American explorer

Charles William Beebe (1877–1962), explorer, writer, ornithologist, and deep-sea pioneer, was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in East Orange, New Jersey. He is remembered today primarily for his record-breaking 1934 descent off the coast of Bermuda with American engineer Otis Barton. Barton and Beebe dove in a diving machine of their own invention, the bathysphere, to a depth of 3,028 feet (923 m).

Beebe's parents were fascinated by natural history, and so in childhood he was a frequent visitor to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. As a teenager, Beebe taught himself taxidermy and became friends with the president of the museum, Henry Osborn. Osborn helped him gain admittance to Columbia University in 1896. In 1899, Beebe left college (without receiving a degree) to work as an assistant curator of ornithology (the study of birds) at the zoo then being opened by the New York Zoological Society. He was soon promoted to full curator.

In 1902, Beebe married Mary Rice, whom he was to divorce in 1913. The Beebes made ornithological expeditions to Mexico, Trinidad, and Venezuela and published popular accounts of their experiences. In 1909–1911 they traveled to the Far East on a 17-month expedition sponsored by the New York Zoological Society having the sole purpose of studying pheasants. After years of further labor Beebe published the results of this expedition in a magisterial four-volume work entitled A Monograph of the Pheasants, (1918), still in print. While preparing his monograph Beebe also made expeditions to Asia, Central and South America, the Galapagos Islands, and other regions. In 1916 he established a research station on the coast of British Guiana (today Guyana) on behalf of the New York Zoological Society, and in 1919 was made director of the Society's Department of Tropical Research.

In the mid 1920s Beebe's main interest turned from birds to deep-sea life, which he studied by trawling for specimens and by diving in pressure suits. However, the suits were limited in depth range and the creatures brought to the surface by Beebe's nets were invariably dead. Wishing to observe undamaged specimens alive in their natural habitat, Beebe publicized his need for a practical deep-sea vessel design.

In 1928, Beebe was approached by Otis Barton with his design for the bathysphere (derived from the Greek word for deep, báthys), a steel ball filled with breathable air that would be lowered on a cable from a barge. The bathysphere was equipped with two quartz portholes 8 inches (0.2 m) wide and with an umbilical hose providing telephone and power. Oxygen was supplied from on-board tanks and carbon dioxide was removed from the air by trays of soda lime. The bathy-sphere was a tiny craft—only four feet, nine inches (1.5 m) across (outside diameter), with walls several inches thick. Its interior would have been a tight squeeze for a single person, but Barton and Beebe occupied it along with the oxygen tanks, soda lime trays, and other gear.

Barton and Beebe made a number of bathysphere descents starting in 1930. The pre-bathysphere dive record was 525 feet (160 m); on August 15, 1934, Barton and Beebe dove to 3,028 feet (923 m)—over half a mile. Beebe described the descent in a book published later that year, Half Mile Down. Barton and Beebe's bathyspheric dives were the first diving expeditions to penetrate to depths beyond the effective reach of sunlight; below 2,000 feet (610 m), they observed, the ocean was lightless even with a brilliant tropical sun shining on calm seas above. The dives were widely popularized by the National Geographic magazine, in Beebe's own colorful writings, and for one dive in 1932 by live radio broadcast in the United States and United Kingdom. Even before their record dive in 1934, Barton and Beebe were international celebrities.

Despite its successes, the bathysphere was inherently dangerous. Surface waves could easily subject the suspension cable to breaking strain. Later generations of deep-sea vessels have therefore been built as self-propelled submarines.

Barton and Beebe's 1934 diving record remained unbroken until 1949, when Barton descended to 4,500 feet (1,370 m) in another vessel of his own design, the Benthoscope. Beebe retired from the directorship of the New York Zoological Society's Department of Tropical Research in 1952 and died of natural causes in Bermuda in 1962.

The original bathysphere resides in the New York Aquarium in New York City.

See also Deep sea exploration; History of exploration III (Modern era); Oceanography