Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1912-05-03
Miseellaneuus .8eaaing.
BOTTOM OF OCEAN.
Objects That Sink Keep On Going
Down.

Il
Down.
In the abysmal depths Of the At.
lantic Ocean, beneath two miles OF
salt water, lie the dead that went
down last week with the Titanic
Their bodies reduced to the smallnes.
of a mans wrist by the crushing pres.
sure Of the water, are sunk in a bed
of Shiny red ooze. and strange. fantas.
tic, mud-eating creatures, the like OF
which the sun never shone on, swim
and crawl about them.
At that depth great calm reigns
and no ray of sunlight ever pierces
The storms which churn the upper
waters into tumultous fury are unfelt
the blackness is profound and 1t is
always freezing cold.
Down in the dark, the utter dark,
where the blind white sea snakes
are"
The great steel hulk Of the Titanic
rests in this black calm Of ooze, sunk
partially into 1t, perhaps wholly sunk
into It, for no one has ever sounded
the depths Of the layer Of soft mud
upon the bottom Of the deep sea.
1t Is a belief common among sailors
and landsmen that a wreck never
goes to the bottom; that 1t sinks un-
til the pressure of water holds 1t fast,
and there, rocking about in the shad-
owy depths, It slowly dissolves. What
food for the imagination lies in this
fleet Of lost ships of the world, still
floating up and down in the deep,
meeting and passing in silence. no
voice ever calling through the dark,
no sail ever raising to a breeze.
But the scientists know that what
Sir John Murray. the great explorer
of the sea floor, said Is true:
Anything that will sink in glass
of water" wrote Sir John Murray,
will sink to the bottom cf the deep
est sea-"
Scientists point out that water is one
of the most incompressible of substan-
ces. 1t can be compressed only one
twenty-thousandth Of its bulk, and,
although the pressure may be enor-
nous at the ocean bottom, the water
Is only little more dense than at its
surface. And yet the compression is
sufficient so that IL 1t were suddenly
released, say by the suspension Of the
attraction Of gravitation, and all the
water over all the globe should ex-
pand until 1t was Of the same pressure
and density everywhere as at the sur
face, the ocean would Instantly rise
some 500 feet, covering nearly all the
inhabited land Of the world.
Practically every part Of the oceans
beds without the Arctic and Antarctic
circles has been sounded and explor-
ed. Sounding wires and leaden
weights and travis Of wire netting
have been lowered to the bottom of
the sea at its greatest depths, even to
eight miles, and mud and the crea-
lures that live there have been
brought up. And the lead sinks as
quickly through the last mile as 1t did
through the first.
A recent bulletin Of the United
States photographic office contains
the following positive statement:
"Once an object sinks by its own
weight to a point where no part Of 1t
remains above the surface, it is bound
to sink to the bottom, no matter how
far the bottom may be below the sur
1face"
So II Is definitely settled, beyond the
question of doubt, that all wrecks and
all bodies and all objects with weight
enough to sink below the surface will
60 to the bottom, and the myth Of the
wrecks and drowned men suspended
in the middle depths was exploded
long ago.
It is probable that not all the bodies
of those drowned from the Titanic
went down with her. Many put on
life preservers and these would float.
It Is we'll known that a stout man Of
ten floats like a cork. But all Of those
who were sucked down in the vortex
caused by the sinking hull would go
far enough to reach the tremendous
water pressure that would squeeze out
all buoyant gases and air within the
body, and 1t would keep on sinking
and be compressed into a solid as hard
as a stone before 1t had dropped to
the depth Of half a mile. And the
body would never come up again. 1t
would lie upon the sea floor until the
last vestige of 1t was dissolved. Ages
from now only the teeth, the hardest
substance in the human body, would
be all remaining Of the body, and even
these would dissolve in time. Deep
sea dredges often bring up the teeth
of sharks from depths Of five and six
miles, all that remains Of the monsters
that died maybe millions of years ago.
| Bodies arise to the surface from
shallow depths and float, but that Is
because they become buoyant from
the internal gases created by decom-
position. But there can be no decay
lin the depths where the temperature
is always low enough to freeze fresh
water. On the decks Of the Challen-
ger and other seasounding vessels the
sailors cooled their drinking water In
the ice-cold mud brought up from
miles below.
Sir John Murray tells in one Of his
books what happens to the body OF a
man that sinks into the ocean abyss
He explains the crushing pressure OF
the water; how one by one the bones
would be broken in-implosion,
science calls it-how the flesh would
be crushed into the interstices Of the
bones and the clothing fiattened over
them, until on reaching a depth of
two miles the body would probably
not be larger than a mans wrist.
So it is likely that If the bodies of
the Titanic's dead could, by any pos
sible means, be raised, they would
be unrecognizable. Even the watches
in their pockets, being air-tight,
would be crushed to solid Jumps OF
1 \ ortt al hot