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Deep Sea Race

M

Makemakean

Mr Makemean
Pronouns
Logical, unlike those in German
Calling on @Usili, @AndyC, and @kratostatic in particular on account of an idea I’ve had for some time, that I wanted to discuss a little with some people I know are more knowledeable about engineering than me!

So, as I mentioned to Phil yesterday, in my original draft on the Swedish Strangerverse, I had in mind a Victorian Steampunk Space Race between the British and the French, very much inspired by Jules Verne. Of course, as you gentlemen might well imagine, it didn’t take long for me to recognize that that was utterly impossible, at least not if I didn’t want to throw science entirely out the window.

But then I figured, well, they were doing submarines in the late 19th century, they were doing naval races… how about instead of a space race, we were to have a deep sea race? Who can first get a man to the bottom of the Mariana Trench?

What do you think?
 
Makemakean said:
Calling on @Usili, @AndyC, and @kratostatic in particular on account of an idea I’ve had for some time, that I wanted to discuss a little with some people I know are more knowledeable about engineering than me!

So, as I mentioned to Phil yesterday, in my original draft on the Swedish Strangerverse, I had in mind a Victorian Steampunk Space Race between the British and the French, very much inspired by Jules Verne. Of course, as you gentlemen might well imagine, it didn’t take long for me to recognize that that was utterly impossible, at least not if I didn’t want to throw science entirely out the window.

But then I figured, well, they were doing submarines in the late 19th century, they were doing naval races… how about instead of a space race, we were to have a deep sea race? Who can first get a man to the bottom of the Mariana Trench?

What do you think?
Click to expand...

I have to admit that looking at the title, I thought this was about a population of humans somehow living in
the deep sea.
Regardless, there was a thread here about this back in February, read http://forum.sealionpress.co.uk/index.php?threads/ahc-ocean-travel-instead-of-space-travel.3673/ and @Alex Richards concluded it wasn't possible.
 
Makemakean said:
Calling on @Usili, @AndyC, and @kratostatic in particular on account of an idea I’ve had for some time, that I wanted to discuss a little with some people I know are more knowledeable about engineering than me!

So, as I mentioned to Phil yesterday, in my original draft on the Swedish Strangerverse, I had in mind a Victorian Steampunk Space Race between the British and the French, very much inspired by Jules Verne. Of course, as you gentlemen might well imagine, it didn’t take long for me to recognize that that was utterly impossible, at least not if I didn’t want to throw science entirely out the window.

But then I figured, well, they were doing submarines in the late 19th century, they were doing naval races… how about instead of a space race, we were to have a deep sea race? Who can first get a man to the bottom of the Mariana Trench?

What do you think?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure whether you'd necessarily get deep deep sea exploration initially, but I can absolutely see a situation where it gets going in the 19th Century and, in similar vein to mountaineering, you don't actually get anyone at the bottom of the Mariana Trench until the 1950s.

Though equally combining it with equivalents to early air-exploration. Efforts to push ever further on underwater travel. First entirely subsurface crossing of the Atlantic. Large-scale mapping efforts of the seabed for nothing more than the prestige of 'filling the blanks' and the like.

EDIT: I have to note I've not changed my mind from the other thread. Trying to supplant space travel in the mid 20th Century with essentially OTL tech, no that's not really feasible if you're trying to realistic.

Actually steampunky settings however are much more *handwave* in nature.
 
Alex Richards said:
I'm not sure whether you'd necessarily get deep deep sea exploration initially, but I can absolutely see a situation where it gets going in the 19th Century and, in similar vein to mountaineering, you don't actually get anyone at the bottom of the Mariana Trench until the 1950s.

Though equally combining it with equivalents to early air-exploration. Efforts to push ever further on underwater travel. First entirely subsurface crossing of the Atlantic. Large-scale mapping efforts of the seabed for nothing more than the prestige of 'filling the blanks' and the like.

EDIT: I have to note I've not changed my mind from the other thread. Trying to supplant space travel in the mid 20th Century with essentially OTL tech, no that's not really feasible if you're trying to realistic.

Actually steampunky settings however are much more *handwave* in nature.
Click to expand...

The Mariana Trench in particular was just ripped out of thin air.

But Deep Sea Exploration per se, that was what I was curious about, because unlike, say, mountaineering, deep sea stuff, there are military applications to that, which was why the Americans got so up in the arms about Sputnik, because the Soviets had demonstrated their supremacy in a field of engineering that could deeply threaten America.

Hence why my mind went to deep sea exploration: submarines. One side demonstates their superiority there, it scares the shit out of the other, etc.

As for the steampunk aspect... the attitude I'm taking, and have always taken, since reading The Difference Engine, is one on a level of "if you can come up with a sufficiently amusing story for why a particular scientific breakthrough would occur, I'm in favour of it". What I like about steampunk, personally, is that it allows for a forum to explore the development of ideas and how we think about scientific constructs and the like. I have no love for technobabble or just "cogwheels attached to everything". That is also why I've always loved Look to the West, because Thande explores that.
 
You keep saying submarines but the vehicles which are used in deep sea exploration are almost all submersibles- engineering constraints being what they are, they aren't meant to return to port under their own power.

Ultimately I think it is very hard to get a deep sea exploration race that early, but I do think deep sea exploration could have ended up being as "sexy" as space exploration IOTL.
 
Charles EP M. said:
How technically advanced could a 'sea race' have got in the 19th century?
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Properly not very just because of how much pressure at depth compounds- you need to be able to make materials with very low tolerances for defects and with a lot of compressive strength and that just really doesn't exist in the 19th century or pre-WW2, really.
 
Charles EP M. said:
How technically advanced could a 'sea race' have got in the 19th century?
Click to expand...

They wouldn't have efficient batteries or nuclear power so they wouldn't be able to operate for very long underwater. If they could somehow manage to reach a significant depth they wouldn't be able to observe much because they wouldn't have sufficient power for arc lighting and won't have sonar.

Mumby said:
Possible Military applications of a deep sea race - getting a submarine deep enough it can't be detected but also capable of launching some kind of weapon at coastal cities?
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Military submarines only want to go deep to avoid detection and escape attack. There isn't any advantage in going deeper than that and quite a few disadvantages such as increased hull stress, reduced weapon range, and difficulty in detecting targets. Thermocline layers work both ways, so if a ship or aircraft can't detect a submarine beneath it a submarine can't detect whatever is above it.
 
Makemakean said:
Batteries?!

Wait! How did submarines propel themselves in the 19th century?

EDIT: Nuclear power?! What nonsense is this?!
Click to expand...

Some submarines used human power, while others used compressed air. Others used steam engines or combustion engines. Prior to the mid-1900s or so many combustion engine powered submarines used gasoline fuel instead of diesel, which often led to on board fires. Imperial Germany was actually a straggler in submarine technology and was content to let other countries such as France spend money and lives figuring out how to make the technology more practical.

Even with more mature diesel-electric technology World War I and World War II submarines couldn't do much more than ambush other ships, particularly commercial ships. A warship at full speed or even cruising speed could easily outrun a submarine. Submarines could also do little to fight each other as they lacked guided torpedoes, and there has only been one case in the entire history of naval warfare in which a submerged submarine sank another submerged submarine (source).

It wasn't until the nuclear powered USS Nautilus came along that submarines could achieve submerged speeds and endurance sufficient enough to make them truly viable against proper warships. Nuclear power also makes submarines ideal for use as nuclear missile platforms. That's because nuclear power is a very energy dense fuel source that doesn't need oxidizer (because it isn't a combustion source) and can use the ocean itself as a coolant source.

The USS Nautilus received its name in honor of the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In the novel it uses advanced electric batteries, but in the 1950s people liked to portray it as actually being nuclear powered. Nautilus even fit with United States Navy submarine naming conventions of the time as they were usually named after ocean animals.
 
I feel like an underwater race would need to capture the public imagination but that something like landing in the Marianas Trench wouldn't do the job. Too far away, can't be visualized. It's a featureless patch of ocean somewhere.

On the other hand, particularly if it's Britain and France, the English Channel is right there between them. The stakes remain high, the location is visible, but the technical challenges, compared to a place like the Trench, are much reduced.

What if France decided that the way to threaten the British Isles was - rather than go through or around the Royal Navy - to go under it? What if some dude wrote an article espousing the merits of a sous-marin de débarquement, infanterie and the government, "Whoa..."?

What if a British author wrote one of those turn-of-the-century invasion-scare novels with the premise being that dastardly French invaders suddenly emerged just offshore of some unsuspecting Channel town while the RN is still anchored at Portsmouth? And the newspapers hyped it up until HM government decided maybe it needed to look like it was taking this all very seriously?
 
Delta Force said:
Submarines could also do little to fight each other as they lacked guided torpedoes, and there has only been one case in the entire history of naval warfare in which a submerged submarine sank another submerged submarine (source).
Click to expand...
In the early Post War era, Britain planned to use its submarines to fire salvoes of straight or pattern-running torpedoes at submerged Soviet submarines.
 
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