The Grey NATO – 242 – A Deep Dive With Don Walsh (The First Man to the Deepest Spot on Earth)
Published on Thu, 08 Jun 2023 06:00:00 -0400
Synopsis
This episode features an extended interview with Don Walsh, the U.S. Navy officer who copiloted the bathyscaphe Trieste to the deepest point in the world's oceans - the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench - in 1960. Walsh recounts how he was selected for the historic dive, details of the dive itself, his career in submarines beforehand, and his life and oceanographic pursuits since then. He also discusses the role of watches like Rolex and his personal Aquastar watch during the Trieste dive.
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Transcript
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| Unknown | Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Graynado. It's a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 242. And it's proudly brought to you by the ever growing TGN supporter crew. We thank you all so much for your continued support. And if you're listening and interested in supporting the show, please visit thegraynado.com for more details. Hey, Jason, how we doing? |
| James | I'm doing great. I'm really excited about this episode. It's like I'm kind of chomping at the bit to like, get to it. You know, it's, uh, we, we did kind of the, the, the meat of the recording yesterday. And now today we're doing the front and back, but, uh, I'm eager for people to, to listen to this one. |
| Unknown | Yeah. I couldn't be more excited. I mean, we'll, we'll get to the main topic and then obviously you've seen the title. So we have like the heaviest hitter of heaviest hitter guests easily. And like, if you asked us a list of 10 people from like the legacy of post-war awesomeness, that we would like to have on the show. This fellow's name would have been on that list. It's a really long chat. It's super fun, and I really hope people love it. But how's the last little while been for you? |
| James | Yeah, I mean, things are going well here. We've had such hot weather. I've just been, you know, kind of leaning into summer with everything that comes with that, you know, just spending almost every waking minute and the long daylight hours sitting out on the patio or tinkering with a Land Rover or gardening or on a bike or whatever. So it's, uh, yeah, nothing, nothing, uh, earth shattering here. Just, uh, just enjoying the fading memory of a very long winter and just, uh, just having a, having a good time in the good weather. So, yeah. How about you? You were up at the cottage again, right? |
| Unknown | We were, yep. Went up this weekend to do a little bit of work on one of the bedrooms. Uh, my wife had a plan and executed it beautifully. So we have a much more useful, livable kind of clean and tidy space for one of the spare bedrooms. Upstairs in the cabin and then other than that we installed some internet So it gives me a little bit of flexibility that I didn't have previously to work up there I think we're gonna try and spend it like a good piece of July and August Just up there full-time. It should be nice You know, we got a comment in the TGN slack saying like that's awesome that you have internet But do you feel like it limits your ability to disconnect? Oh yeah, and I guess I hadn't really even considered it, because especially since the the role kind of changed with Hodinke recently, for those who aren't aware, I went to a lead editor role. I'm basically just always doing something. It's like it's I thought I was busy a year ago. Of course, I've joked that I always thought I was busy when I lived in Vancouver and barely worked 40 hours a week, but it's just there's always something to kind of think about or consider or check or it's little details. It's 1000 little details a day to keep keep the site running with Danny. Yeah. And this, this I think actually helps me dip in and out more effectively and not feel like I have to have my phone and the ringer on knowing I can walk up from the beach, you know, check that a story went up correctly. That sort of thing is all, all kind of helps. But I definitely agree that it's, it's not going to be the same level of disconnection, but the truth is that I've been, you know, pairing to my phone for essentially wifi for the last couple of summers. Yeah. And the only difference is now that it'll be a little bit more stable. So theoretically, I should be able to get the work done a little bit faster. It also means that if I go up for two weeks, I can do a TGN recording, or at least we think. Yeah. Yeah. I saw as high as like 150 down and like 30 up, which is comparable to what I have here in Toronto. Um, but we'll see what the, so far the zoom calls have been really smooth and easy. So that's a, that's a plus we went with star link, which is like a space X derivative. And, uh, I mean like 10 minutes set up maybe. Maybe 10. Plug the two things in, the dish kind of spins around and orients itself, and as long as there aren't trees in the way, you get a connection. And the uptime over the weekend was fantastic. The speeds were good. We were able to watch Formula One Sunday morning without any interruptions, which the cell phone could never do. that reliably. It was that kind of thing. You remember back in the days of like antennas where you'd be pointing them towards a window or kind of if one of your friends touched the antenna and kind of grounded it, suddenly you got a picture. So you had to take turns holding the antenna. I think I might be like just old enough to remember that kind of stuff from buying like black and white TVs from garage sales as a kid. But it's not dissimilar with the cell phone. If you're trying to stream video at the cottage, you're just picking a window and then don't sit in that chair. You're blocking the signal. Maybe we don't know. That sort of thing. So yeah, it's it's it was nice. It was a really nice weekend aside from the mosquitoes, which we talked about like it's just they're crazy and they don't it's it's not like they come out at dusk. They're just there all day. Yeah, so I'm just covered in bug spray. We're definitely going to learn what bug spray and sunscreen and the rest of it does to a rubber strap for a pelagos 39 because I'm not taking it off and I'm, you know, coding myself in these probably not great chemicals. I'm not sure but Yeah, it was it was really nice to get up to the cottage. The weather was excellent. Most of Saturday, there was enough breeze to like limit the bugs, which is super nice. And then we'll be back up again this weekend. Just going to try and invest and get as much time up there as possible. It's just such a nice little break from the kind of bustle of the Monday to Friday sort of thing these days. So yeah, yeah. And then before we move on, because we have some news about wind up Chicago, some stuff has come together and we're really excited about that. But before we move on, I do want to make a huge Giant, massive shout out to Justin Soters, good friend of the show. Met at Chicago last year. Justin does these incredible paintings of all sorts of things, including watches, and he surprised me. One showed up, I heard something get delivered while I was on the phone and then went to my foyer here at the house, and it was a huge box. And my wife already knew about it, but he had kind of so graciously, so kindly painted this beautiful painting of my 16 570 Explorer, which I now have hanging in my living room. I'll put a shot up of it on Instagram sometime this week. So everybody can kind of see just how cool it is. But I just wanted to make like kind of a public thank you. Uh, it's, it's incredible to have something like this to have in an office when, when I moved to the new spot later in the summer and that sort of thing. So be sure to follow Justin underscore Sauders that's S O W D E R S underscore art. |
| James | justin underscore sowders underscore art on instagram to see more of his work he's painted a ton of different stuff but it's super cool it was such a huge surprise as well yeah he's uh he's super talented that's uh that's really cool you sent me a photo of of it when you got it and it's uh yeah that's really that's really amazing and as you mentioned um we have some news about wind up chicago i know people have been asking uh it's coming up in in just over a month now uh in chicago and we hope to see plenty of you there. And hopefully what we're about to say, uh, is a bit more of an enticement to come. Uh, we will be there. Um, as we have mentioned in various capacities, uh, on July 15th and 16th, that's the Saturday and Sunday. I'm unsure whether I or James or both of us will, we'll be arriving early for the 14th. Um, but for sure we'll be there Saturday and Sunday. And, uh, we're really excited to say that we're, we're going to be camped out for, Uh, some periods of time at the citizen booth, they're a lead sponsor of wind up Chicago, and we're going to be holding some, I guess what we're calling office hours at their booth, most likely on Saturday afternoon. And then we'll be recording a live podcast, um, in collaboration with the folks from worn and wound kind of like what we did last year, most likely early on Sunday. So we're, we're, we're kind of putting a big TBD on all the times here, but just wanted to let people know that we will be, uh, certainly there for, for both of those days of the show. |
| Unknown | Yeah, I'm looking forward to both of those things. It's a nice little kind of connection with the team from Citizen because we're not going to be running a booth. I think we talked about this on a previous episode, but the booth last year required some oversight and some, you know, selling products and the rest of it. And the main goal, as we learned from last year, is really just to hang out. And then kind of the main event is also a little party with Citizen. And that's going to be held at Great Central Brewing on the evening of Saturday, the 15th, after Windup closes. So official timing and all that kind of stuff to follow. But if you want to come and hang out for the evening of the 15th, it won't be super early or super late. It'll be kind of in the sweet spot. So if you have dinner plans or that other kind of stuff later in the evening, you'll still be able to get to that. But you can come and have a beer and actually hang out. And we've got a few little goodies for that experience as well. So should be really good again. That's the 15th and the 16th of July. So coming up in a little more than five weeks when you're listening to this and thanks to some support from Citizen and of course the folks at Wind Up and Worn and Wound. We've got a pretty full slate of some fun stuff to do including a little bit of show hanging out and then some recording and then of course this kind of hangout and beer drinking event at Great Central Brewing in Chicago. So please stay tuned for more details on that. I actually think we'll probably, once we get everything shored up, we'll also send an email to everybody who's on the sub stack just in case. I don't think that's out of line. So if you're waiting for quote unquote hard copy, that'll come in that way. And beyond that, if you want to get into the chat and see what other people are up to, if you're not already a member of the Slack thing, we'll probably make a Chicago wind up channel and kind of move a lot of the details and stuff like that in there. So Jason, it's been a lift for you to find a spot that worked, but I think this one's going to work. It looks good. |
| James | I think so. Yeah. I mean, it's just, just the challenge of getting replies has been, um, and not knowing how many people will come. Yeah, that too. And that will, we'll probably won't know right up until the day, but I'm, I'm excited. Things are really kind of falling into shape and I'm really excited that it's at great central brewing, which is literally like a block or two from venue West where wind up Chicago is being held. So very convenient for folks to just wander over afterwards for the meetup. And, um, it, it looks like a promising place. We've got a couple of recommendations, including from our buddy Clark Maxwell, a Chicago resident who introduced us to the, The wonderful thing that is malort last year. Um, we will not, I will not, I refuse to drink that this year. Oh, I'll have some. It's all right. Oh, no way. Maybe with a very strong beer chaser. |
| Unknown | I don't know, but yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Or yeah, all the water you've got. Yeah, right, right. But, uh, but no, it's always great to have some local knowledge on these sorts of things. And that really came through for this and yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm pumped. It's going to be such a nice little kind of event, middle event for the summer. And if you can't be up at the cottage, might as well be in Chicago hanging out with all of you guys. So looking forward to that for sure. |
| James | Yeah. Well, I think without further ado, we need to jump into this episode. But before we do that, let's do a quick risk check. What do you have on? |
| Unknown | Yeah, for sure. So in honor of the episode, I saw that I saw what you put in the notes, so I didn't want to wear the identical watch, but I wanted something was like loosely in the same vibe. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| Unknown | So think, you know, 60s dive watch. So I went with the Doxa Sub Sea Rambler 50th, and I'm actually rocking it on a new strap. So Artem straps, who we've talked about in the past, they make these kind of higher end, good quality sailcloth straps. They recently sent a package both to you and to me, including a couple of new straps. And so I've got the new green model. It's a green sailcloth, nice and thin with the deployant style buckle. I've got that on the SeaRambler. And I really like the combo between the silver dial, the orange accents, and then this kind of khaki green color. Really nice stuff. I mean, it's all the same stuff we said about Artem. what maybe not quite a year ago, when we first got a chance at their just standard black sailcloth straps, they're just really nicely made, they feel really comfortable. I would say this feels like a bit of an evolution, Jason, if you might agree, where it doesn't feel like I need to break it in quite as much, like I've had it on for hours at this point, and it's super comfortable, it fits nicely. I think the difference is here when I had the previous one, I went with the pin buckle, because I'm not usually like a fold over clasp, sort of guy, but I think this works really well. It's nice and low profile. It suits it nicely, and I'm looking forward to kind of moving it between a few different watches. And they sent a black one in 21 millimeter that'll also suit the Pelagos, which I think could be really fun. |
| James | Yeah, I got the green like you, and then also a navy blue, both in 20 millimeters, and I've put the green one on my Super Seawolf Zodiac, and it has some orange accents as well on the watch, and so it does It is a nice pairing. And, and I totally agree. This does feel like an evolution of their straps. Um, they're, they're, uh, much more kind of pliable than, than the, the stiffer earlier ones that I've tried, which, you know, the earlier ones have broken in, uh, the one that I've worn most often, but this one right out of the box, it just kind of wraps around the wrist. And, and, you know, I usually haven't been a fold over deployant clasp kind of guy, but, um, I don't know, there's something about it on this kind of strap that sort of straddles that luxury sporty, Uh, and they're so easy to just click on. Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm liking it so far. |
| Unknown | All right. Solid straps for sure. But I'm seeing something else in the notes, something that's very kind of pinned to today's main topic. What, what, what have you got on wrist? |
| James | Yeah. I mean, I, you know, given, given our chat with, uh, with Don Walsh, um, a Rolex might've been a very fitting choice. Uh, certainly would have been. Um, but I'm kind of going with the deeper cut, uh, when it comes to Don. I'm going with the Aquastar Model 60, the watch that was recently released that we both got a chance to try out and do reviews of. And so, yeah, that's what I decided to wear today. |
| Unknown | All right. So we're going to dive into this. It's an extended chat with Don Walsh. It's a really long, fun chat. He has a ton of detail in here. And don't worry, we do get to watches kind of in the latter half of our time together. Two kind of fun things. First is this episode comes out on World Oceans Day, which is pretty cool for a guy who is basically dedicated a huge portion of his life to ocean preservation and research and conservation. And two, there's a little bit of bad language in this. And when I say a little bit, I mean just a little bit, but it's Don Walsh. I'm not going to edit the guy. So I would say just live with it. Um, it's nothing that I would feel really bad about my kids hearing if they happen to walk through the room or, or if you had it on in the car. And I think you'll kind of agree that it suits his personality. So, Jason, do you want to give a little bio and then we'll jump right in just in case someone doesn't recognize the name? |
| James | Yeah, sure. Don Walsh graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1954 and then went on to become a submarine officer in the late fifties before being selected to pilot the, uh, the Bathyscaphe Trieste, uh, in the Navy's deep ocean trials. And then on January 23rd, 1960, he and, uh, the Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard descended to, uh, drum roll, please. 35,798 feet. Uh, at challenger deep in the Marianas Trench, which is the deepest spot on the planet. And then after that, Don went on to earn a PhD. He rose to the rank of captain in the Navy before he retired. As you'll find out, retired is a really relative term when it comes to Don. He continues at age 91 to consult and speak and write. Um, and he said he still loves to go to sea, uh, where he, he does some lectures on, on cruises through the Northwest passage with a Viking cruises. And, you know, I mean, the guy's just an inspiration, uh, and a true ocean legend. And, and before we jump into the chat, I just want to give a shout out to, uh, our former guest and friend of the show, David Concanon, who, um, you know, in, in some email exchanges said, Hey, you guys should have Don Walsh on, on TGN and kind of facilitated our, our chat with, uh, with Don. So thanks. Thanks to David for, um, the idea and for the connection, you know, without further ado, I think we just jump in and sit back and enjoy Don Walsh. All right, well, we're honored to have you on The Gray NATO today. Don Walsh, thank you for joining us. |
| Don Walsh | My pleasure. |
| James | As I mentioned before we kind of started recording, we have a number of questions about your historic feet back in 1960, which I'm sure everyone's aware of, but I'd love to get in a little more about that. And then kind of what you've been up to since and recently, uh, as well as, um, you know, you're, you've got an interesting collection and history with watches as well. So, so we'd love to talk about all of that. Let's kind of kick things off. I, I have a question about, you'd mentioned when you were getting your cup of coffee that you were out in the barn today. And I'm curious, I know you're based in Oregon. Uh, what, what, How did you land in Oregon, being a former Navy guy? |
| Don Walsh | Well, I retired from the Navy in 75, and there wasn't much in the way in the job market for former submarine captains in the civilian world. It's kind of a rare qualification in civil life. So while I was in the Navy, I got my union card at Texas A&M. I got my PhD, and so I won a beauty contest at USC, University of Southern California, to come there as a professor of ocean engineering and dean of marine programs. I did that for about 10 years and never really cared for LA, but that's where the university is, so you go where the work is. One night my wife and I were in our hot tub, part of LA we lived in, it was required by city ordinance, everybody had to have a hot tub. It was pretty nice. We lived in an area, we could see Hawaii from our hot tub. It was, it was out there. And my wife turns to me, she says, we got to get out of here. And I always get in the last word with my wife. Yes, dear. And, uh, uh, I was working on a ship off Panama for a couple of months and she sends me a fax and says, congratulations. You are an owner of a hundred acre ranch in Southwest Oregon, and you're free to join me if you wish. So that's, that's how I knew we were leaving LA. So that's, that's how I got here. It's a very nice place. Uh, we, uh, you know, my nearest neighbor is a mile away and we're only 10 people in our town. So it was a bit of a cultural adjustment going from 6 million people in the greater LA area to 10 here in Dora, Oregon. That's how I got here. Uh, we've been here 32 years now and wish we'd done it 10 years earlier. It's, it's all you hear at night is wind in the trees and the river and, uh, Maybe if more than a dozen cars go by in one day, my wife starts whining about the heavy traffic. I think the 30 years I've been here has probably added another 10 years to my life because very low stress. Yeah, it's a good life. And it's not that hard to get around. I mean, just add in extra days to get to and from airports. And because in 2019, just before the COVID, I was in 15 countries. So I stopped moving around, but I just, when I go out, I stay out and then allow each end of the trip, you know, travel time between the airport and my home. It works out. So it's three decades I've done it. And I got a few more trips this year. If everything works out. |
| Unknown | Where are you hoping to go this year? |
| Don Walsh | Well, something that I started doing in about 50 years ago is working on cruise ships as a lecturer. Because the Navy, the Navy, you tend not to live overseas. If you're in the Air Force or the Army or Marines, you get stationed in Germany or Japan, something like that. So I wanted to show my wife the world. She loves to travel. I've taken her to the Antarctic 14 times, for example, and once to the North pole. Oh my gosh. And so, uh, I got a gig, uh, consulting for a new startup cruise ship company called Royal Viking line. And because I was in the Pentagon at the time, still in active duty with the Navy, I don't believe in moonlighting. So when they asked me what I wanted a consulting fee, I said, I can't accept anything. And the president said, well, you get holidays, don't you? I said, yeah. He says, well, come out with us. So I get a couple of weeks of leave and we got on a cruise ship. They apparently liked what they heard because 160 cruises later, we're still doing it and worked to all kinds of the companies. So that's a lot of the traveling. And so answering your question, in late September, I'll be going with a French company, Ponant Cruises, on their new ship, Le Commandant Charcot, from Reykjavik, Iceland, to Nome, Alaska, through the Northwest Passage. Oh my gosh. And I've spent a lot of time in polar regions, about 40 Antarctic trips and 40 polar Arctic trips. And I've tried to do the Northwest Passage twice. First time the ship fetched up on the rocks, and that was the end of that trip. And the second time we ran into ice, it was so heavy, even though we were the Canadian icebreaker at the time, we just couldn't make it. So I hope the third time now that I'll get through it. It's kind of a bucket list thing, because it's not that scenic, not compared to the Northeast passage across the top of Siberia, which I've done once, and it was more interesting to me. I know we haven't even gotten on your list of questions. That's okay. But you know, you ask short, you get short questions, you get long answers. My wife accuses me of, if somebody asks you what time it is, you tell them how to make a watch. |
| James | Well, we like long answers. That's great. Yeah. Well, let's, uh, let's rewind the tape a little bit. When you joined the Navy, how did you end up being in submarines? That was your gig before you, you even got, uh, got on the Trieste. |
| Don Walsh | Well, I enlisted in the Navy in 1948. in Naval Air Reserve. I was still in high school in Oakland, California. We had a Naval Air Station Reserve Air Station. And I've always been keen on airplanes since I can remember what that noise was up in the sky. And so here's a chance to fly around in some airplanes just like those. And so I enlisted as an air crewman in torpedo bombers. And once a month, we'd stand up the squadron go aviating, and most of our pilots were on GI Bill at Stanford or Cal Berkeley, but most of them had flown at Midway or Coral City in torpedo bombers. So for a high school kid, I didn't have a driver's license. My mother used to take me to the air station, drop me off, and I was a plane captain. I made sure it was all checked out before the flights, filled it with fluids and unfold the wings and fold them back up. You go, you know, I had a big thing we call a yellow sheet was a checkoff list, make sure the plane was ready to fly. And then of course I knew I was going to get in that one and fly. So I was pretty careful. Yeah. That really inspired me. I want to go to naval aviation. I mean, my dream was to be a tailhook aviator off carriers. They used to have a program where you could go directly to flight school. They give you two years of college and then flight school. And then you spent four years in the fleet with a squadron. And then if you sign over. uh, reenlist, if you will, as an officer, uh, they give you the other two years of college. Well, my education officer, my squadron said that you don't want to do that, uh, because we don't have enough money right now in the Navy to really take care of all of us. That is, you know, it's this last hired first fired kind of thing. But if you go to the Naval Academy, you always have a job and you always have a seat in a cockpit because you know, your regular Navy. So I said, okay, I have to go to college somewhere. And so I, uh, applied for the Naval Academy and had to take some examinations. I placed high enough in the exams to get an appointment at the Academy. So I went in the class of 1954. I went in 1950. It was fortuitous because I got sworn in, I think, on the 1st of July or 2nd of July 1950. The next day, my squadron was called up for the Korean War. So I spent the Korean War warm and dry in the Bancroft Hall dormitory at the Naval Academy. But in my senior year, my eyes weren't good enough to fly. It was a great disappointment. A kid spent all of his life, here I am, 22 years old, and my life dream has been evaporated. So I went into the fleet for two years on a cargo ship, as we're all required to spend two years in the fleet before you could go into submarines or aviation. And that was, you know, mainly make sure you were a good watch standard and all that. They didn't want to do that in Pensacola or sub-school. And so after two years, I couldn't fly. I knew that. I applied for Frogman. We didn't have SEAL teams then, UDT, underwater demolition team. My captain wouldn't sign my request. So I was locked out of that. So I applied for sub-school. He thought that was okay. So off I went. I went into sub-school in 66, and I stayed in submarines until A 56, I'm sorry. And it had command in 68 of a submarine Pacific fleet. It was a good life. Those are some of the finest people you'll ever meet. |
| James | Yeah. And I guess eyesight isn't quite. |
| Don Walsh | No, they got a little thing on the periscope and it knew exactly my standing. Periscope discipline, periscope discipline is very important because we were taught that you never made a periscope observation more than about six seconds. Cause that way the radar on the enemy ships. might not even see it if they could see it just a little bit second up and so you take a quick obstacle so as that periscope went up uh you're dialing that thing in so that when it's at eye level you're ready to go and you sweep around and then focus on your object of interest the target if you will because as you know there are only two kinds of ships in the world they're submarines and targets and so uh i really enjoyed it they The silent service is very much that. You don't know what the... I'd never been aboard a submarine at the academy. I mean, the aviators are always throwing airplanes at us. The Marines wanted us to do this and that. They're all recruiting. So when you graduated, you asked to go in that. And also the Air Force didn't have an Air Force Academy, so they stripped off about 200 of our Navy graduates. They all volunteered, of course, but I didn't want to do any of that. But the sub people never showed up. You know, at least could bring a submarine down to Annapolis, we could walk through it. And they just, you know, if you want us, you know where to find us. And that kind of appealed to me. And as I say, the finest people you ever want to work with, just superb. And we got, you know, a great tradition of World War II, the submarine force was 3% of the total armed forces in terms of people, sank 50% of the Japanese merchant marine and had the highest casualties of any of the armed forces. one in four didn't come back. And so it's a very, very proud tradition. And I was glad to be part of it all in the mid fifties. The war stuff was all gone, but it was, I'm glad I did it. It just worked out and I just backed into it. And I was very glad of it. I didn't get into nuclear subs by the way. I was in smoke boats, diesels. When I came in to sub school, there was only, two nuclear submarines in the Navy. By the time I got command, there were only about two diesel boats left in the Navy that had all been replaced by nukes. But because I didn't have a stellar academic record at the Academy, I was never selected for nuclear power. In fact, I was told point blank I was officially stupid. So I never had a chance to play with them. I made one trip on a nuke sub that was an orientation cruise When I was in sub school, I was on the Nautilus, the first sub. Oh yeah. Yeah. It all worked out because I was officially stupid. They kind of left me alone and I got to do other things like the Trieste. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | Going to graduate school, a lot of stuff that may not have come my way. |
| James | Well, let's, uh, that's a good segue. Let's, let's talk about how you were selected for participating in the, in, in, it was called Project Nekton, if I'm getting my facts right. And the Trieste dive, how did that come about? How were you chosen? |
| Don Walsh | The first submarine I was on, the USS Rasher, which was the second highest scoring submarine in World War II in terms of Japanese ships sunk, because it had a grand tradition. And, uh, it was, it was a great boat. It's like your first girlfriend, you know, or your first kiss. You never forget that first submarine where you, you convert from a know nothing to adequately prepared person to take your place in the wardroom. And so we would just come back from seven months, the Western Pacific to San Diego. I was a bachelor, I was a lieutenant, and I just qualified days before we left Japan and got my gold dolphins. Took nearly two years to do that. So just to guarantee that I wouldn't be noticed, I was back aft all the way by the stern line. That's, of course, the exhaust of the engines are ahead of us. So I'm kind of wreathed in steam and smoke. And through the smoke comes this Navy captain, four striper, you know, and in white uniform. And he says, you're all Don Walsh. I said, yes, sir. Captain. Okay. What the hell? Yeah. Why does he want to talk to me? And I haven't been town more than an hour and I haven't been ashore yet. And already this guy wants to know who I am. He said, I want you to come see me this afternoon when you get in. And what he wanted was that the Commodore of our submarine flotilla wanted to get an aid. Uh, that is, uh, we used to call them horse holders, you know, the guy that come to aid the camp and the army just to assist him with various things. Usually that's a, would be a Lieutenant, uh, and a qualified submariner. They reach in and grab a Lieutenant with dolphins, bachelor, and put him on the staff. It would be about six weeks to two months. next sub come back they put you back in your original sub and grab another guy it's called shanghai and you know i got shanghai so after we had done that greeting returning submarines every six weeks or so i went to see this captain was the chief staff officer the deputy to the commodore i said captain you know I thought this was only six weeks and you're going to let me go back. I've been out with you three times to greet other submarines coming back. I don't see no Lieutenant coming up to relieve me. And he said, I was doing such a fine job and all of that. We're going to write to the Navy personnel people and make it a permanent job and tell them we've got an incumbent. And I thought, oh crap, they're talking about me. I'm a sailor. I love going to sea, still do. And I didn't want to be piloting a desk. Okay, that's the background. Why am I on the staff of a submarine thing? On the submarine tender, big mothership instead of back on my sub. And one day, a guy comes into my office and he said, my name is Andy Rechnitzer. I'm the scientist in charge of the bathyscaphe triest program. And I said, Dr. Rechnitzer, you know, this is overload. Your name is hard enough to pronounce. I have no idea what a bathyscaphe or a triest is. I know it's a city in Italy. He said, well, it's a new underwater man research platform the Navy just bought. There are only two of them in the world. The French Navy's got one and we've got one. And since it is a sort of a submarine, we just, as a courtesy, like to come out and brief the Commodore on this new device in San Diego. It's going to be at the Navy Laboratory here, the Navy Electronics Laboratory, just down the road from where we are in submarines. And I said, fine. I talked to the commenter. He said, yeah, it'd be interesting. Invite him to lunch. You come too. And he set a good table. So I thought, well, at least I'll get a good lunch out of this. So I go to this thing and he's there and he's got this tall, dour guy with him. And that's Jacques Piccard, the son of the inventor of the bathyscaphe. And he's been hired by our office of Naval Research to be a consultant to show the U.S. Navy how to maintain and operate the Bathyscaph. He didn't have any ownership position in it at all because he and his father had sold it to the Navy a year earlier. So at the end of the Commodore being a fine old Tennessee gentleman said, well, that's very nice, very interesting. How can we help you, Dr. Rechnitzer? And he was loaded for that one. He said, the only job description in the Navy for a Bathyscaph pilot would be maybe a submarine officer. There's nothing in the Navy that really fits this. That's as close as we can get. So I'd like to have a couple of lieutenants be assigned to the Navy lab, laboratory to maintain and operate. We on the science side of the lab will decide the missions and who's going to dive in it as, as, um, you know, mission participants, onboard scientists, holds two people, pilot plus one. And so, uh, Commodore said, well, yeah, I think we can do that. And, uh, I was directed by the chief staff officer, my the captain I mentioned earlier, to send out a radio message to the rest of the submarine flotilla, all the subs that were in the Eastern Pacific that had been on the West Coast and others just operating on the West Coast, none of the ones that are deployed to the Western Pacific. So I figured they end there, then the number of lieutenants that would be eligible was about 70. I just kind of counted it up. There'd be about 70 lieutenants out of all these submarines that could apply. So I sent out the message, waited, waited, waited. And so, well, went down to see the chief staff officer. I said, Captain, he said, how's it going? I said, well, we've got that many volunteers. Exactly zero. And he said, that's not good news. I say, yeah, we can't embarrass the Commodore by saying we couldn't get anybody. We didn't want to cooperate with the Navy research guys. I said, look, as much as I love it here and really love piling my desk around on this submarine tender, I'll be the first volunteer. And the captain was conflicted there because he's going to lose me, but he's also going to make his boss happy. And that's how I got there. I passed the Navy's high standards for a bathyscaphe operator because no one else applied. It was some super, like an astronaut, you know, they beat on me, pound me, test me, whip me around in a centrifuge and all that. Nope. We just, no one put their hand up and I did it just so I get back to sea. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | And that's how I got there. And I was ordered in as the officer in charge. In the Navy, non-commissioned ships of all kinds, from little tugboats to small warships that are not commissioned in the Navy, are just Xori craft, if you will, the captain's called an officer in charge. So I was the officer in charge of the Trieste. Figuratively speaking, I was the captain. And then I had to get one other guy to help me, but I had a friend in the same wardroom on the Rasher, who was a classmate of mine. And I asked if he'd like to come over to this project. It was Larry Shoemaker, Lieutenant Larry Shoemaker. And Larry said, sure. So I arranged for him to join me. That's our first team, two officers. And then we got four or five enlisted men from the submarine force. That was our core group to maintain and operate the baths. So Larry and I would pilot it. and Andy, the chief scientist and program manager, decided what kind of missions we'd undertake. So we were kind of a troika team of three. |
| James | Did you have a sense of the magnitude of the project or the, you know, the big things were ahead for Trieste and for this project that you were potentially going to be making history with this? Or at the time, was it just another project? |
| Don Walsh | Hell no. Both Larry and I, But we're never going to go to nuclear power. I already told you about that. And why not have an interesting tour of the Navy? Let's look at something that wasn't routine, new and different. No one's ever done this stuff before. We had no idea what this stuff meant because the sub I served in, the Rasher, its maximum depth, we call test depth, permitted for maximum depth dives, not where it's going to collapse. But just by Navy regulations, don't go deeper in this test step was 312 feet. So, uh, we did that in November of, uh, 59, 58. And I joined Trieste in January of at the Navy lab in January of 59. So I've been all the way at 312 feet. So in April 59, I made my first dive in the Trieste to 4,000 feet off of San Diego. Wow. Now that's a big deal, 300 feet to 4,000 feet, this is pretty good. Then Andy happened to mention to me, oh, by the way, we're going to take this thing out and dive in the deepest place in the ocean. I said, how deep? I had no idea. I mean, I knew how to navigate. In fact, my first ship in the Navy, I was a navigator. You only worry about having enough water under your hull to not run into the side of a continent or something. So on the charts, if you had a good 100 feet underneath your hull, you're in good shape. But these, on the charts, if you've ever seen them, you got four digits, like 4026, I don't know, Fathoms or Rasputinics, I didn't know what it meant. I was never gonna go there. All of a sudden, Andy's talking about 11,000 meters. And I think, holy cow, that's, and that's gonna be me, because I'm the captain of the thing. And so they're talking from 312 feet to almost 36,000 feet in a year. That was a sporty course, I'll tell you, because from the time I joined in January 59 until the time I went to Challenger Deep in January of 60, 12, 13 months. That was a quick adjustment in terms of depth scope. |
| James | Yeah. Before we get into the dive itself, the historic dive in January of 60, what was the Navy's interest in Trieste? I mean, obviously, you know, setting a record's all well and good, but the Navy usually doesn't go in for that sort of thing. So what was the, kind of the, the brief for the mission for, for going to the deepest point in the ocean? |
| Don Walsh | Well, the Office of Naval Research, which is remarkably prescient about the scientific frontiers that the Navy's encountering and where to go. They were responsible for buying the Trieste from the Picards. Andy was responsible, Recknitzer was responsible for seeing it as delivered to the Navy lab in San Diego, because we have a lot of 11 laboratories in the Navy, and most of them are on waterfronts. But the only one that has deep water offshore is the one in San Diego. So Andy made a good case for why it ought to be home base there. But ONR, in talking to the Picards, figured, you know, this thing, manned submersible, would be a very good platform to take scientists into the ocean to do useful work. We call that in situ observations, meaning at the place. If you consider for a moment how we used to do, I would still do marine science, you float on top of the interface between the atmosphere and the ocean and you lower artificial eyes and artificial hands and so on into the ocean and then take samples, physical samples or with instruments to try and determine what's going on. It's still a very strong technique. But think about when you can take the trained mind and the trained eye through the site, particularly powerful in biology, because you can see the critters living in their natural environment and how they interact with each other. Then take your samples, take your measurements, grab one of the critters if you want. Or in geology, just the landforms, if you will, the seafloor and the rocks and so on. You don't do those two sciences on land by remote you know, sending a graduate student out in the Jeeps and go get something and bring it back here. And yes, professor, and we'll figure out what it is. You go in the field and make direct conservation. Why shouldn't she be able to do that in the ocean? So this is how O&R looked at this whole thing. This is a scientific platform. If it was feasible, if it proved out to be reliable, safe and productive, what a deal. And as I said, there are only two in the world. The French Navy had a bathyscaphe also designed by the Picards. and then the Trieste, which was really their second bathyscaphe. So our job at the lab was just to prove it out. Not particularly to do science. It's just to make sure that you test it to the ultimate test and that it was proved and thought to be safe and reliable and so on. So that was our job. I was a test pilot. I wasn't a scientist. At the Naval Academy, I was trained as an engineer. Sure, in submarines, I knew about going underwater and all that, but I'm not an oceanographer. But during the time I was there, three and a half years with the Trieste, it was kind of an apprenticeship because almost every dive I made with the Trieste was with a different scientist. I'd have a physicist or a biologist or geologist, and it's just two of you in the thing. So you kind of got to learn what he wants to measure and why it's important and all that. and set up his instrumentation, you know, to configure the bathyscaphe with his equipment and make sure everything works right so we're not wasting his time or our time. So I learned oceanography that way, literally an apprenticeship, working with people, but I didn't have the formal schooling. So the way ONR saw it was this man-scientific platform. Now take it out and test it. So the deal, when they bought it from the Picards, ONR, a year before I got the project, was that ONR would provide the extra money to upgrade it to go to the deepest depth in the ocean. Because as we purchased it from the Picards, it was only capable of going to 20,000 feet, and we wanted to go to 36,000 feet. So we had to get a bigger cabin, stronger, thicker walls, and because it's an underwater balloon, we had to increase the capacity of the balloon to get to such greater depths, another 33% more if you went in depth. And so we We did quite a bit of reconstruction of it, keeping the same basic operating principles. That was our first sort of six months in San Diego after it arrived there, was just upgrading it to a greater capability. You mentioned the word records, and of course that's been attributed to this thing all the time, because we seem to live, swim in a sea of records. Everybody's record, you know, did this or that. ate more goldfish than anybody else in Sacramento, California. So he got the record in Sacramento and Guinness cheerfully puts you in their book. It was never a record. It was to take this new platform and wring it out like a new airplane. And then when we thought it was safe and my bosses thought it was safe, hand it over to the scientists. We would still operate it, but I mean, we'd fight the scientists. There's one thing oceanographers don't like, or any scientist's adventure, we don't want to wear a little red stocking caps and a suit of lights with patches and all that American flag here. They just want to get in there, do their work and go home. And, uh, you know, we get back in a port and take the data and work it up. So we kept it low key. And, uh, if you look at the pictures that were done at the time, press photography and all of that, you just see two Naval officers, uh, with submarine dolphins add on That was the worst kind of protective gear when you're getting a saltwater enema about every other minute, because the freeboard of the bathyscaphe was so low that you just got soaked to the skin. But I wanted, and I, Larry, I told Larry this, that every time a camera's pointed in our direction, they were going to see a United States Naval officer because we're planning, executing, and paying for this program. And I want that to be very clear to the viewer. And I had worked up the operation plan for the deep dive at Guam. By the way, Andy gave it the name Nekton. Nekton wasn't the whole program. It was just the bathyscaphe triage program, period. But the one operation we had, project on Guam was Nekton. I typed up in my office, myself, an operating plan, what we go out to Guam, what we're going to do and all that, what it would cost, blah, blah, blah, timing. And I presented that to my boss at the lab, Andy, of course, and signed off on it. and went up the chains, the Navy Lab, and then they told me to take it back to Washington and sell it at the Office of Naval Research. So I went there. I remember you got where the research side of the Navy and the operating side of the Navy, two different kingdoms. So I went right up through the Chief of Naval Research, who was an admiral, and he said, well, that's all very interesting, Walsh, now take it over to the Navy Department in Naval Operations. So I went over there, and the thing is the commanders passed me the captains, the captains passed me the rear admirals. Rear admirals passed me to the vice admirals, three stars, knowing to make a decision. And then finally, after a couple of days of that, I find myself outside the door of the chief of naval operations, the number one admiral in the Navy. And I said, well, Walsh, you're at least going to get a decision here. And so I went in, it was Admiral Arnie Burke, who is legendary and a real sailor. but he was in charge, beloved by the troops. And so I went in to see him and he said, he said, well, Lieutenant Walsh, what is it? I hear something about diving. So I told him and he said, Jesus Christ, what? The deepest place in the ocean with a Navy? Come on. I said, yes, it's all works out Admiral and we're ready to go. And he said, okay, I'll approve it. But here's the deal. You are not going to speak of it. There'll be no press, no publicity. If it's successful, we'll tell people about it. If you're not successful, we're not going to tell anybody. And he said, furthermore, I have a message for you to give to Lieutenant Shoemaker, because he and everyone asked me, well, who's going to be in the Trieste? And I said, well, I'll be the pilot. And Dr. Recknitzer, who is a qualified marine biologist, will be the scientist on board. That's what I thought. And so he said, fine. What about Shoemaker? He said, well, he'll be running topside for us, coordinating everything. And so as I was getting ready to leave, he said, Lieutenant Walsh, I got a message for Shoemaker. I said, yes, sir. He said, you tell Shoemaker that if you, Walsh, don't come back up, I'll have his balls. I said, aye, aye, sir. And so off we went. But you talk about records, you know, setting records and all that, we were prohibited for talking about. What happened is somehow leaked strategically leaked this to the London Daily Mail, National Geographic and Life Magazine. And of course, they're saying the catbird seat because they just asked the Navy information people, we've heard this rumor, can you confirm or deny? And Navy said, no comment, we don't know anything about such a thing. They said, we don't mind if we publish what we know and say, come on in and shut the door. So they got scoops And of course, they're not going to divulge any of that because they have exclusive scoops. London Daily Mail, Life Magazine is a cover story, cover story and National Geographic. So those three guys, reps were out there and they were good shipmates. It was good. And I was happy that we weren't going to have a lot of press around because there's just 14 of us. We're a small team, combined Navy civilian personnel and military personnel and uniformed personnel. So 14 people to do this whole project wasn't many. And the last thing you need is a lot of people wandering around with cameras stuck in your face asking you questions. So the three guys that did show up were really good, and they just became part of the team. So that was it. We were on Guam from probably late summer, early fall of 59 through January of 60 when we did the dive. We came home for a couple of months, then we went back out to Guam and had Nekton 2, which is largely unknown. And we did a few more dives and then brought it all home later in 1960. |
| Unknown | And, you know, I'm pretty curious, looking back, like with your history as a submarine operator and then also as a trained engineer, when you first kind of laid eyes and started to, you know, dig into the details of Trieste, was it a cutting edge sort of vessel or kind of something else? |
| Don Walsh | Well, yes and no. It was very, uh, very basic in construction and in concept. I mean, it was certainly new and different, but it's just essentially an underwater balloon compared to the complexity, even of a world war two submarine, a smoke boat, diesel sub. It was very, very simple, but different. So we had to learn basically what the differences were, but no, there was no, uh, I guess it was not high tech different. And it was ingenious, very ingenious. I mean, Professor Picard, who dreamt up the concept of the bathyscaphe, was a real expert in doing complex things in the simplest possible way. And so I have great admiration for what he did. And at the time, that was the best way we could get into the deep ocean. In fact, the U.S. Navy continued to operate bathyscaphes for about 25 years. That was the best way we had to get into the deepest part of the ocean. We've got different technologies today and much easier to get deep, but at those days, that's what we had. |
| Unknown | And what was it like to pilot the Trieste? |
| Don Walsh | Well, I guess, and I said earlier, basically, it's an underwater balloon. And like a balloon that floats through the atmosphere, you got two basic elements. You got the balloon itself that provides the buoyancy. It's filled with helium or hydrogen. and then you have a cabin hanging beneath the balloon for the fragile humans. It's the same thing in the ocean, except we couldn't use a gas such as helium and hydrogen, so we used a lighter than water fluid. Petroleum floats on water, so we used aviation gasoline, which we would maybe have lots of all over the world. And so that balloon, which was made out of steel rather than fabric, very thin steel, still very thin. very light structure to make it go down. You made it heavy to bring it back up. You've made it light. And you had ways of adding weight and getting rid of weight as you descended. And then the cabin, you need to have a window. You have to be able to look out. So we had a couple of viewports. The cabin walls were seven inches thick because the total pressure on the cabin on the seafloor, the deepest dive was about 200,000 tons. per square inch is about eight tons per square inch was the, the maximum pressure. |
| James | Wow. How did, how did Jacques Piccard end up, you mentioned Shoemaker, um, potentially was, was going to be in there with you, but how did, how did Jacques Piccard end up being your, your partner for the dive? |
| Don Walsh | Well, it turned out that he, uh, in negotiations with the Office of Naval Research had stipulated that, um, he would be involved in any dive. in the triage that presented new and different circumstances. Hell, every dive in the triage was new and different. We were unaware of it. Andy and I were not aware of it, or Larry Shoemaker. And so at the 11th hour at Guam, we were getting ready to dive. Picard produced this agreement and The Navy decided that he had to go for his agreement with, even though he had no ownership stake or anything, he did have a contract as a consultant. And that since I was the captain, I would go. I offered to stand aside for Andy, who had a longer history with the Trieste than I did. I mean, he, Andy, when the ONR was considering buying the Trieste, went over to Italy and they, the Navy, the Office of Naval Research chartered it for a series of test dives. I think they did 14 or 20 test dives at Capri. And what they would do is they put different oceanographers in at different disciplines. You'd have a couple of dives for an acoustics guy and a biologist. The idea at the end of this test series, they would advise ONR, is this something the Navy ought to buy? And he was part of that team. So he went well back. with the project and he was responsible for it coming to San Diego. And he was a Naval Reserve Commander. So I put him on active duty. You got a scientist and you got a naval officer, you know, make sure he wears his uniform. And that would fulfill everything. But it went right up to Admiral Burke. And we just got a very sterile telegram about Picard and Walsh will make the dive. And that was that. So it was not fair. You know, I parachuted into the program. I was just there for 12 months. And I got all the gravy. |
| James | On the dive itself, on the day from what I've read and watched some, some videos, um, the sea conditions were fairly rough and, and Picard was a little hesitant to, to go ahead with, with the dive that day. Um, you were, you were ready to do it once you were in the cabin, you know, hanging below this, this giant balloon full of gasoline. Did you have a sense of apprehension or fear or were you, or was it mostly excitement or, or what did you feel? |
| Don Walsh | excitement because we had worked basically seven days a week dawn to dusk for several months to get this damn thing ready because we just had that small team of 14 people and we worked hard and you know a lot of stuff didn't work very well. The whole like what we were doing at Guam by the way over that period of time was making progressively deeper test dives. I mean we start out in the harbor at Guam a couple hundred feet and just worked our way offshore going increasingly deeper basically to figure out what works what doesn't work and fine-tuning the whole thing and getting used to it. And so that was the whole idea of the several months at Guam was a progressively deeper test dive program so that in January 1960 our last dive in that series was I think to 20,000 some odd feet and that seemed everything seemed to be a go so two weeks later we went out and did the deepest dive. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | It was a considered test program, and people ask you, were you afraid? Were you scared? Well, no, of course not. Any more than a test pilot on a new airplane, you're on your game, but you spend a lot of time eliminating all the variables. What could go wrong? What was that noise? And we're testing program, fix it, find out what it is, or that's normal. We know what it is. And so you get down to the point where the unexpected should be a fairly small domain. the things you just don't know. And so you're on your game. You're very alert. And of course, yes, we were very excited. We worked so hard to get to this point. I mean, and you know, people didn't trust us. You got two lieutenants and he's only a couple of years older than I am. So you got these people running this multimillion dollar program, which is a lot of money in those days. In fact, it still is. We wanted to deliver on behalf, not of the people who said you can't do it. It won't work. But on behalf of our team, it worked so hard. only one of us could be in the thing to represent the team, but we're all working towards the same goal. So when we began that dive, this was the culmination of all, you know, it's either going to work or it's not, and let's get on with it. And also it's not very comfortable at the surface because you're, you're wallowing around it. It's like a pendulum on a clock. You got this heavy 16 ton cabin underneath this balloon. It's rolling completely. I mean, it's not a ship haul. It's a, it's also around. And so we just get away from the surface and get quiet and have a better ride. |
| Unknown | I'm hoping you'll allow me to ask a series of possibly really kind of dumb questions, like maybe quick, but maybe something I should know if I had ever spent more time on a boat. But when you're diving into a space that nobody has dove before, you don't really necessarily know where the bottom is. How do you know when to say slow down or whether there's something perilous right below you as you're going down? |
| Don Walsh | A very good question. First of all, there weren't really any good charts, if you will, maps or whatever you want to call it, of the topography of the deep ocean in those days. In fact, the machines that measure that depth were few and far between. I don't know if there are more than a handful in the world. We didn't have one. And so the only we have is the fathometer on our mothership, which as I get back to my original concept that you only care about having 100 feet under your hull of your ship as a navigator. So a surface ship doesn't need much more than that. It doesn't have enough power to radiate a beam to the seafloor and hear the return. So we couldn't use that. We didn't have any charts of the seafloor topography. Would we have mountain spikes down there or what that we could land on and crash? |
| Unknown | Yeah, that's what I was wondering. |
| Don Walsh | And so what we did It was a used one-pound bricks of TNT. And on the mothership, the trash was being pulled out from Guam on a tugboat at a stately five knots. We went out on our mothership as a destroyer escort, which is sort of like a miniature destroyer warship. And we took these one-pound blocks of TNT, put the igniter in them, lighted the fuse, threw them over the side, start the stopwatch when it went bang. You could hear that bang. on the fathometer hydrophone. Now, all you have to do is figure out when there's enough energy put in the water by that one-pound brick to get a return from the seafloor. Wow. So then you could hear the return click echo. And so, you know, seven seconds is shallower than 12 seconds. And we just went back and forth, mapping out where we thought the Challenger Deep was, but it was all in terms of time. |
| Unknown | So it's like a very rudimentary ping of sorts. |
| Don Walsh | Yeah. Okay. Wow. So we could hear the return echo on the ship's fathometer hydrophone because we put enough energy in the water. |
| Jason Heaton | Wow. |
| Don Walsh | And that's the same thing Scripps did, by the way, a couple of years before how they measured the deepest place. Challenger Deep was confirmed by the Soviets, the Brits, and the Americans. All agreed it was the deepest place. And that would have been about the mid to late 50s. So we were out there in the beginning of the 60s. So it was very recent. None of them really had what we call precision depth recorder, which would put enough energy in the water. And none of them had really mapped the contour of the deep ocean. Okay, well, how do we avoid problems while we're submerging? You go very slowly. We had on board a small fathometer, actually a fish finder that you could buy in a marina for your boat, your private boat, that probably gives you 100 feet. beneath the keel of your boat. It's a little thing, a commercial product. Of course, we had to harden up the hydrophone for the immense pressure, the external hydrophone, if you will, the microphone that's listening. But inside, it was just this little, it was a Furuno, it was a Japanese thing, and we bought it at a local yacht supplier in San Diego. And we configured it to go on the trip. So that gave us, you could see, it did a paper trace, moving paper. So you could see if the seafloor is coming up or some seam out, something like that, you'd be able to see this thing come up and then just slow down, slow down as much as you can. And you knew where you're getting close to it. You could, you know, really, you could see yourself landing. And, uh, so we just look at the window and turn on one of the lights and, and have a look. And that never happened during the dive, but when that's what we use to land on the seafloor. |
| Unknown | In my mind, I figure where you leave the surface. you're drifting the whole way, right? Like you're not moving like an elevator straight down. |
| Don Walsh | That's correct. |
| Unknown | So then you're accounting for that drift to get to the point that you want to get to? |
| Don Walsh | No one's made those measurements. How do you know what it is? Yeah. The ocean is like a cake. Wow. You got currents going in different directions depending on depth. And between the surface and the seafloor, there can be many layers that are moving in different directions, but it's very subtle, very slow. And so over the period of, let's see, it took us, five hours and some change to get to the seafloor. Over a period of five hours, you don't displace that much. Probably your biggest worry in that area is the ships on the surface because of wind and waves. The mothership is drifting away, so you come back up and nobody's there. That's a very uncomfortable feeling, which happened to us. They were there, but our height of eye above the water, we're only about 10 feet above the water surface, the horizon is in pretty close, and we couldn't see any ships when we got back to the surface. But we had the air rescue airplanes, U.S. Air Force, big base at Guam, Anderson Air Force Base, and I went out to see them, and I told them what we were going to be doing, and they gave me a little sort of cigarette package-sized beacon that I could turn on, and their airplane specializes in air-sea rescue. One of the bombers went down, they dropped a lifeboat and all that. So they were right on top of us. The feeling of being all alone lasted about five minutes because they're right on top of us. I hit the beacon, they were there. |
| Unknown | Over the course of, you said, five hours and change to go down, I'm assuming it takes some time to come back up as well. What memories kind of stand out for you from the experience of that dive? What's the stuff that's remained with you over the years? |
| Don Walsh | that we did it successfully. |
| James | Was there a lot to do while you were while you were descending? Yeah. I mean, monitoring instruments and things the whole way, or was there any time to sort of just sit and absorb what you were doing? |
| Don Walsh | I think a little of all of that, but mostly it's just monitoring the progress of the dive, listening for any unusual noises that were not familiar to us, communicating with the surface. We would do that. How did you do that? We had an underwater telephone, wireless. It is what we call voice-modulated sonar. Think about sonar, how you're detecting other things. Well, you can impress on that energy, if you will, pulse information, voice. And so you basically use that, you're modulating the sonar so that the pings are not a single tone, if you will, but modulated so that on the receiving end, on the surface, mothership, it converts to words. Very slow, because sound in the ocean, you know, is three-dimensional. It's not just for me to you, like we had a wire or something. But it's wire, we didn't have any connection to the surface. A lot of people said we were dangling below the surface. Well, if you've ever tried to pick up six miles of cable, it has a signal. And furthermore, you put six miles of cable in the ocean, it'll pull apart from its own weight. |
| Jason Heaton | Wow. |
| Don Walsh | Because that's a lot of, you know. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | And so that was That was a non-starter. You never had any, we were free balloon, independent of the surface. And so that's why we had the telephone, underwater telephone, but it was wireless. It was a voice modulated sonar and it worked. I mean, when I got on the bottom, I was able to call Larry Topside. They're very economic transmissions. Trust on the bottom, 6,000 fathoms or I forget what the message was. |
| Unknown | And that was it. And were there any especially like tense moments throughout the, the, the mission? |
| Don Walsh | Uh, well, yeah. |
| James | Uh-huh. There was a loud bang that's, that's well-documented, right? How deep did that happen? It was a window that cracked? |
| Don Walsh | Yeah. 30,000 feet. It was not a pressure boundary. If it had been a pressure boundary, we'd just been converted to red mush before we were even aware we were dead. Yeah. That kind of, kind of pressure. But, um, Yeah, it was not a pressure boundary. It would be inconvenient because it was associated with the trunk tube that we used to get from the top of the bathyscaphe down to the cabin. The very bottom there is this window that allows you to look through a viewport in the hatch, the entrance hatch, aft to the back end. Just general condition looking at if everything was, the lights are on and the sea floor, no encumbrance is going to back into something that was going to Trappist, that was that window that was at the back of that tube. And it, um, it just, it developed a strain on it and then it just cracked. It didn't break per se. From an engineering standpoint, it broke, but it didn't fail. And so our concern was when he got back to the surface and we use compressed air to blow the water out of that tube. So we could let ourselves out of the cabin. Uh, if that window had failed. Then as soon as we blew the water out, it'd come right back in again. We couldn't get out of the cabin. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | We had been in there for several days. |
| James | Yeah. Well, I mean, speaking of things that didn't fail at that depth, I mean, we would be remiss to not talk a little bit about two specific watches related to the Trieste dive. And one of course is the Rolex that was strapped to the outside or attached to the outside to prove it's metal, so to speak. How did that relationship come about? That doesn't seem like a particularly U.S. Navy sort of thing to do. Did that come via Picard? |
| Don Walsh | Yeah, the Picards had an arrangement with Rolex from the past with operations in the Mediterranean and such to test out some of the Rolex watches at considerable depths. And so I don't know who proposed it to Rolex. It was the Picards or Rolex proposed to the Picard to do it or what, but to engineer a special watch that would be tied off to the rungs of the ladder in that entrance tube. Because the entrance tube was feeding full depth pressure, but it's also protected from wave slapping and all of that. So mechanically it was safe, but it was exposed to full pressure. And when we made the dive, I went down first into the cabin when we first boarded the Trieste. and start checking stuff out. And then when Jacques came down, either he or our Italian mechanic, Giuseppe Buono, tied off the watch to the rung in the ladder. And then when we went up topside and came back up, either Giuseppe or Jacques took the watch off there. I was unaware of it because the United States government does not endorse any private products. But I didn't know about it for, I think, a couple of years. There was one of these cartoon strip things about, do you know about science? And it was like a Sunday paper, comics pages. And it was a strip, The World's Deepest Watch. Hey, that's me. But, you know, nothing could be done. I didn't know about it. I got in trouble with National Geographic, for example, because And they asked me to take one of their flags down. And that was the reason I said, I just can't do this. It's not my sub. It belongs to the taxpayers, the Navy. And we just can't endorse anything, even a not-for-profit prestigious organization like National Geographic. And they weren't happy about that. So I was pretty Calvinist or ecumenical, I should say, about the whole thing. that it's strictly the United States government, the United States Navy, that's it. But again, if you don't know about something, and it doesn't show up in his book, by the way, Jacques wrote a book called Seven Miles Down. It's a hell of a story, but he didn't put it in his book, so I guess he knew he was doing wrong. |
| James | Well, and speaking of watches that you did know about, I mean, you and I had exchanged emails a while back about the Aquastar model 60 watch that you had, I think you said you bought it at a dive shop in San Diego. Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | Um, the three of us, because that most of the operating equipment on the trash is underwater. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | So we had to use scuba diving to maintain and inspect and all of that. So we're doing a lot of diving. I had to go through Navy, uh, underwater swimmer school equivalent, which included blowing stuff up. I, you know, there's a, there's a, in the, the, uh, syllabus, training syllabus, how to use PrimaCore and plastic explosives. Didn't exactly fit somebody who's got 54,000 gallons of AFGAS. |
| James | Oh my gosh, yeah. |
| Don Walsh | But, you know, I mean, what kid doesn't like to blow shit up, right? So we went out the desert behind San Diego and cut railroad tracks with PrimaCore. It was fun. I enjoyed it. And I know how to cut fuse and time it and how to put the detonator in and pinch it off and all that, but it was a skill I really didn't need in the Navy, but it was fun. But I went through because they wouldn't let us dive. The Navy wouldn't let us dive unless we had qualified as underwater swimmers, which is a specific dive designation. It's not hard hat. It's just there used to be a school in Florida, I believe, that you could send guys to because most ships ought to have one or two scuba divers on board. He wants somebody to jump in the water and check a propeller. Did I hit something or all that? So it's a good skill to have on every ship. Yeah. And, uh, so that's, you know, Larry, Andy, myself all went through that project, but the blowing stuff up thing was kind of fun part. |
| James | Yeah. And, and, and so that led you to, you needed a good watch that would kind of last underwater and that was affordable and you, yeah. |
| Don Walsh | I mean, like any diver likes to be able to time their dive and make sure they're The last thing you want to do is start sucking hard on the air and realize you don't have much left. But if you can check your watch, then if you're smart, you can keep ahead of that. So yeah, we just, we got a purchase order from the Navy Lab and went out into town to a dive shop and no idea what watches what. I knew nothing, by the way, of Rolex in those days. You know, that was just foreign to me. And it's not even, I'd even heard about it. You know, I've heard of Rolls-Royce and Bentley, never owned one, never ridden in one. I knew what they were. Rolex, nothing, no idea. And of course, you know, I've had an excellent relationship with Rolex for six decades now. They've been a wonderful partner. I can't, partner's a bit pretentious, but association with them. And I'm now a, what they call a testimony, which is not quite a brand ambassador, but they've got a bunch of people they use for helping promote their programs and engineering. I backed into that whole thing because I would not have permitted Picard to do that if I'd known about it. But now here I am, beneficiary of all of that. And they've just been a wonderful company to work with. And I really enjoy being with them and they've treated me very well over the years. |
| James | I think too, um, you know, when it comes to Rolex, I think one thing that, that I know our listeners appreciate and we appreciate and people that are into the kind of the watch culture is, is Rolex has this amazing history with exploits. Like, you know, we just had the, what was it? The 70th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest and Rolex was involved with that. And, and, um, the Trieste in 1960 and Rolex has been involved in so many of those things. And I think even today you mentioned you just, um, recently got the new, um, the deep sea, the challenge, the deepest diving watch. Yeah. I mean, I'm guessing you don't wear that watch much, but it certainly must be a really honor to have that. |
| Don Walsh | I mean, well, on the back, it has the, the two dates, Jim Cameron and myself, cause I was on Jim's expedition. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | I was the last person to see him before he made the dive. The first person agreed to him after he came back up and that was, um, sponsored by National Geographic and Rolex, and Rolex developed a special watch 50 years later than mine. So it shows that continuity of engineering between what the engineer, because you've seen pictures, we call it the old lady, this huge wart on top of the acrylic crystal, and the one that was designed as a deep sea challenger with absolutely flat crystal, eight tons per square inch. Now that's engineering. Excellent. So I actually went to the factory, uh, sometime after Jim made his dive, that was what, 2011. I think I met the guys that had designed and built that watch. And we had a good visit. I said, you know, this is pretty smart stuff. You guys, the watchmakers, they did it very fast, which is not very Swiss. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | The Swiss are very deliberate, take their time, get it right. Test, test, test. And these guys did it in quick time. They locked them up. I guess they just shoved food under the door and these guys built his watch. So I had a nice visit with him. It was a good time. Yeah. Yeah. It's all good. Yeah. And, um, I, uh, I'm glad it worked out the way it did. It's not their fault that the, uh, what, what, uh, how their watch got on board the Trieste. |
| James | Um, it's legend. I mean, I'm glad they did because, uh, it makes for a great story. Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | Um, well, you know, I'm, I've, uh, I've worked with Explorers Club for a long time, uh, I've been honorary president for 15 years. No, not now, but, and on the board and I've got about all the awards they give out to explorers. And, uh, uh, the, uh, Rolex has been the oldest sponsor of Explorers board, uh, club. Uh, and, uh, you know, they are committed to frontier stuff. I mean, they have some pretty high visibility things like Lizzy Vaughn and, uh, uh, Federer. and people like that, they do an awful, and of course, Sylvia Earle, who you've probably had on your program, but that kind of thing, I think is very commendable. The interesting thing about Rolex is they don't, it's not a private company. Well, it is a private company, but it has no board of directors per se, as we think of it. All of revenue from Rolex activities goes to the foundation, which is named after the founder of Rolex. And so it's a bit opaque how much money they earn and all of that. But they use it strategically, their funds, and I think to good causes. That was the thing that attracted me to Rolex is that while they're using, they are supporting high visibility things. I mean, the U.S. Open golf, Rolex signs all over the place. Right now, the French Open tennis thing, Rolex signs all around the inside, Formula One, I think they're one of the two major owners of Formula One, and so on. And that's all good for the brand, but they also do some very solid work in supporting global exploration of all our environments, the jungles, the mountains, the deep sea. And I like that. |
| James | You mentioned, we'll wrap up here shortly, but I'm curious, you mentioned earlier that you're doing some consulting or speaking. engagements on cruises. And then you mentioned today you had a few other interviews lined up. It sounds like you're keeping very busy. What is your life like these days? What kind of a week to week basis? |
| Don Walsh | Well, I can't remember if I mentioned this or not. You've got the scissors. 2019 I was in 15 countries and in 2020 it was going to be eight or nine. And of course COVID came and then now I'm beginning to stir. And you know, I had some health problems earlier this year. Well, I broke a hip a year ago, and so I've been trying to learn how to walk again. I didn't realize it takes so long. I mean, just for mere mortals, you could break a hip just to get fully agile again. And it was just about getting there, and then I started having shortness of breath, and to the extent that I couldn't walk more than a few feet without having to sit down. They thought it was asthma. That was wrong. Turns out that I need another aortic valve for my heart, I got replaced in 2005 with a pig valve, especially growing pig. That's why I don't eat ham or bacon, out of respect. And on average, these valves last 10 to 15 years. Mine's been in there for 17. So I'm not surprised. So it's not because of me. It's on average, an average guy, good health, going to have to have it repaired or replaced. And so that's what I'm in for. some procedure. It's, you know, we're in the middle of it right now deciding what to do. Yeah. And once I get that done, then I hope by September I'll be in full fettle to do the expedition trip across Northwest Passage. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | Because I have a good arrangement with a couple of cruise ship companies, Viking for one, and done trips with them. And my son, by the way, is now a regular lecturer on Viking. And the uh so right you know here he just lives 100 feet from where I am so we got two guys that going to Challenger Deep and we're both he's inheriting the family business yeah he's going to see three times in the next 12 months and fantastic and it's a really great company and they've treated me very well but I haven't able to go out because I was kind of crippled up with my hip and then now with this heart thing but as soon as they fix that valve I'll should be right right back up to uh Pull speed. You know, you're 91 years old. Things move more slowly. |
| Unknown | It doesn't sound like it from our end. Sounds like you're keeping plenty busy. |
| James | You're quite the inspiration. And I think you're continuing to push the boundaries of technology with your 17-year-old aortic valve. |
| Don Walsh | Yeah. Well, the thing today, of course, is I spent an awful lot of time doing this. This is the third Zoom call on camera today. |
| James | Amazing. |
| Don Walsh | And then I've got one, I think I told you one more tonight with a lad that wants to go to the academy. So, and I'm doing a lot of writing, cause I have things to say, or write if you will. But I sure like going to sea. And I hope I can just, third time's the charm on Northwest Passage. And I'd like to get across there. And I went, you know, I had some pretty nice trips lined up with Viking, which I had to take a pass on because of help things. I hope I can get back out there. |
| James | Oh, that's great. Well, we, you know, we really, um, really appreciate your taking the time in, in, in your busy day, your busy week to speak with us. We certainly want to let you get back to your day here and, and thank you so much for, for speaking with us. It was such an honor. We're curious, I guess, one before we go, I mean, do you still have the watch that you wore, uh, in, in the, in Trieste in 1960? |
| Don Walsh | Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? I have. And if anybody would like to have it, let me know. I've got a very nice letter of provenance. It's been to Challenger Deep, by the way. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| Don Walsh | More than once, because Victor Vescovo, who I hope you'll interview. Yeah, would love to. When my son went down with Victor to Challenger Deep, he took all the watches he had, including my Aquastar, his Omega, the Doxa that Clive gave me, all of those went with Kelly to the Challenger Deep. Mine's been Challenger Deep three times. Oh my gosh. On an earlier dive, I was on Victor's first dive program when he went to Challenger Deep. That was in 2019. And so one of the guys that was with him took my Aquastar down, so twice to Challenger Deep. Then my son took it down, so it's been three times to Challenger Deep. So it's got a very interesting provenance. Yeah, it does. And of course, it's the only artifact from the dive that's in play because Jacques Piccard had his own personal Rolex. Nobody seems to know where it is. And, you know, I'm, I'm very close to the family for Bertrand Piccard and, uh, the family just don't know where that watch went. And then the, the one that was outside the Trieste is in the national, uh, in Smithsonian. I've seen it. I've held it in my hand, but it's in their archives, the back room stored. Yeah. And so the only one that's owned by an individual is an off-brand, if you will. I don't consider Aquastar off-brand, but it's not a member of the cult, the Rolex cult. And so it's the only one. Yeah. So it's kind of special. |
| James | Yeah. Oh, that's great. I mean, I love that the legacy lives on in your watch, in your sun, in all of these modern explorers that are going to deep places in the oceans. It's really neat to see that. continuity from what you were doing back in the late 50s and the 1960s to what folks are doing nowadays. Don Walsh, let's close this out just by saying for James and myself, it's just been a real privilege and an honor to speak with you and we appreciate your time. Thank you so much. |
| Don Walsh | Well, thank you for inviting me and I hope that this is in some way useful to your series. |
| Unknown | Very much so. It's going to be fantastic. Yeah, we can't thank you enough. This has been a real treat from our end. |
| Don Walsh | Which of you is the editor? That's me. I think I've given you a big job. We've talked for almost an hour and a half. Oh, you should. |
| Unknown | Jason and I love to chitchat. That's what the show's about. |
| Don Walsh | This has been incredible. |
| Unknown | Very easy to edit as well. I hope that your other chats go kind of this smoothly and that you enjoy them and that the day doesn't end up being too long. But we really appreciate these few minutes on tape for us. OK. |
| Don Walsh | Well, thanks a lot again. And it was good. I enjoyed it. And now back to the I've got about two hours before the next on camera thing. All right. Suck down another cup of coffee. Yeah. All right. OK. Thanks. Take care. |
| Unknown | And thank you so much. |
| Don Walsh | Thank you. Bye bye. |
| Unknown | All right. Talk about a pinch yourself moment in audio for Jason and I. Just to meet a legend, I mean, it's just so cool. A true professional, both now and then. I love the kind of take he has on continuing to work, both at his age and just, you know, his level of interest doesn't seem to have waned in any way, despite spending so many years in and around the ocean. The guy I found on to be a complete inspiration. It's such a treat to have had him on. Much like with David Concanon, I would love to have them on again to go deeper into specific stories. As you can see, Don likes to tell a story and I think he just did a beautiful job on this recording. So Don, if you're listening, thank you so, so much for your time and from Jason and I, it was a real, real treat to have you on and I hope everybody loved it. |
| James | Want to get into some final notes? Yeah, good idea. I mean, how do you follow up Don Walsh? I do have a pretty apropos one, but you've got two, so why don't you take the first one? |
| Unknown | I've got two. So the first one is time sensitive. I apologize that it slipped my mind when we recorded last week. But the day this comes out, so June 8th, Fleet Foxes is doing a live stream. I've put the link in there. I think it was like 22 bucks Canadian. So it's probably like 15 or 16 bucks US if that's your currency. So this is going on the evening of June 8th. Again, that's the day this episode comes out. So if you hit it later, my apologies, maybe you could still buy and just watch the stream. I would assume that you can, but I don't know that for certain, but I'm very much looking forward to kind of celebrating World Oceans Day and chilling out on the evening of the 8th with this live stream. The last one they did was excellent, and I know that I rambled on about it in a previous episode when they did the winter solstice ones. So that would be my first pick. That's a live stream from Fleet Foxes. If you're listening on the 8th, you might still have time to watch it live. So hit the link in the show notes and carry on. Very cool. |
| James | Yeah, I've got one that relates to Don Walsh, and it was a documentary that was produced or supported by Rolex back in 2012. So it was before the more recent deep ocean forays by guys like Victor Vescovo. But it gives a, it's a great sort of background summary overview with some amazing footage about, um, the, the dive that the Trieste did with, with Don and Jacques Picard in 1960. Uh, and it's called the deepest dive and it's about 22 minutes long. Um, you know, there's some interviews with some, some well-known ocean explorers, uh, as well as with Don and, and you just kind of get to see what they were up to. I mean, I mean, to me, this is like watching, you know, Mercury space program footage or total Apollo space space program footage. I mean, this is, it's that level of groundbreaking and, and you know, unfortunately it comes in final notes. Maybe I should have put it at, uh, at the beginning of the episode. So you could watch it to get a little background before you listen to Don, but I think you can still appreciate it after listening to him talk. |
| Unknown | Yeah, that's a great pick. Definitely. I love these ones as Rolex is doing more of this. They actually just put out a ton of new stuff onto their channel. So it's exciting to see them continue to do these sorts of documentaries and that sort of thing. And at 20 minutes, it's such a light lift. You get it done on your lunch break and get some additional context with some of the stuff that Don talked about in this episode. Yeah. For my final pick and to close out the show, because I know so many of you, us, all of us are James Bond nerds. The Rewatchables finally did Casino Royale. They've done Skyfall in the past. The Skyfall episode was excellent and a lot of fun. But this one kind of takes us to the kind of origin story for James Bond as an extension of Daniel Craig. And so for those of you who don't know the Rewatchables, it's a podcast that's put out by The Ringer with Bill Simmons. And this episode has Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins, and they kind of dig into the whole scope of the film, their favorite scenes. They have these several kind of qualifiers. If you don't know the show, it can seem a little bit inside baseball, but I highly recommend going through their feed. They've been doing this show for years and years and years and pick out movies you love. I'll go back and listen. They've done three episodes about heat. So they did heat, reheat and then the three heat and three heat had Michael Mann on it as well. And you could tell that he was like half of like, what are these guys talking about? And it's really, really fun. It's super specific. And they get into a bunch of stuff about Casino Royale, some of which I didn't even know. It's super fun. It's very like a lighthearted take. It's not like necessarily like deep cinema critique. They know James Bond and love James Bond and that kind of thing and huge Daniel Craig fans. So I think it was a great episode. When I saw it pop up on my feed, I think on Friday, maybe of last week, I would just I was like, Oh, I'm going to save this for when I'm sitting at the cottage, you know, with a whiskey staring at the lake. And that's what I did. And it was, it was really nice. So I'm a huge fan of this episode, especially when they hit a movie. I know really well, sometimes I have to go back and rewatch the movie. Um, or, or it's one where I just kind of vaguely remember it. But in this case, you know, obviously we, we know casino Royal pretty well. So it's, it's, I think it might be right in the aisle and a good option for people to, um, get into the show as well. |
| James | Yeah, I'll definitely do that. That's a, that sounds amazing. |
| Unknown | Well, look, Thank you so much for listening. I think this has been, like, one of my favorite episodes. What an incredible opportunity. Again, a big thank you to David Concanon for connecting us with Don. I hope we can do more stuff like this and with more people from this sort of arc of ocean exploration and that sort of thing, but it was an absolute treat. If you'd like to subscribe to the show notes, get into the comments for each episode, or consider supporting the show directly, and maybe even score yourself a brand new TGN signed NATO, please visit TheGreyNATO.com. |
| James | And we leave you with this quote from Andre Gide who said, Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. |