
Unfathomable: The Invention of Modern Deep-Sea Diving - Thevet
http://unfathomable.epicmagazine.com
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orthecreedence
I normally hate this format of webpage, but now that I'm seeing it used to
tell a story, it makes so much sense. It's a very frustrating thing to go to
the marketing page of some company who you want information on and be
bombarded by animations and scroll hijacking. In the case of this story
though, it was immersive and made it easier to read.

I guess my point is, I wish people would use the right tool for the job, like
the author(s) of this page, rather than always reaching for the coolest,
flashiest thing around.

Very well done, in this case.

~~~
godshatter
As a (presumably) unintended side-effect, I can't view the page at all on Pale
Moon. Perhaps my ad-blocker is nuking it. Yet another reason not to get too
fancy.

~~~
5555624
I don't think it's Pale Moon, since it displays fine for me. What are you
using as an ad-blocker? (I'm using uBlock Origin.)

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Animats
The officer in charge when the Royal George sank, Lt. Philip Charles Durham,
not only survived the sinking, but his naval career survived and he went on to
become a full Admiral. "He came from a wealthy landed family", says Wikipedia.
In most navies, if you sink your ship in harbor, your career is over.

Good reading on this topic: "Marine Salvage - the unforgiving business of no
cure, no pay".[1] There's an amusing chapter on the salvage of the _Maine_ in
Havana harbor. The Corps of Engineers did it the hard way, by building a dam
around the wreck site and pumping the water out.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Marine-salvage-unforgiving-
business-c...](https://www.amazon.com/Marine-salvage-unforgiving-business-
cure/dp/B0006C0KU2)

~~~
Someone
Google gave me
[http://www.spanamwar.com/mainsalv.htm](http://www.spanamwar.com/mainsalv.htm)
on that salvage.

It's remarkably similar to this summer's recovery of a British World War Two
bomber: [http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/08/missing-
world-...](http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/08/missing-world-war-ii-
bomber-is-being-freed-from-its-watery-dutch-grave/), but technology, of
course, has progressed.

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tonyarkles
Beautiful article!

This stuck out at me:

> Physicians of the era were ignorant of the cause and often did more harm
> than good, administering remedies like leeches or turpentine enemas. Some
> doctors recommended divers might take “some therapeutic Cognac” upon
> resurfacing, a stiff drink being a common treatment for misunderstood
> maladies.

Ok, leaches, I kind of get. "Therapeutic Cognac", ok, I've had my share of
therapeutic whisky after hurting myself. But... turpentine enema? Really? I
just can't imagine an illness that would be cured by squirting turpentine up
someone's butt.

~~~
ethbro
Two points are relevant.

One, against what alternatives was a turpentine enema competing. A man was
dying. What are you going to do, if you don't _know_ what to do?

Two, this was still the turmoil of technological advances created by the
Industrial Revolution being applied to medicine. One could say the
Enlightenment (18th century) was the catalyst, but it took time for those
changes to wash over all fields, particularly with reference to an ever
increasing technological state of the art.

 _The Nick_ is an interesting show, albeit set a bit later at the dawn of the
20th century, that grapples with the same themes. _' If the best training we
have suggests one course of action, but technology enables another that seems
it would be better, which do I choose?'_

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knick](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knick)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Miasma theory still had its adherents 100 years ago.

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hood_syntax
Very interesting read. I was particularly surprised by John's role in the
Crimean war; I had no idea something like that occurred

~~~
dasil003
Yeah, the whole beginning and middle of the story were already fascinating,
especially with the earlier family legacy. But then to actually be submerged
in a naval battle with a pair of wire cutters at age 54 and be the last best
hope against the humiliation of the greatest navy the world had ever seen? I
mean you couldn't invent a more dramatic story.

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rch
Amazing article - informative and well written. Thank you for posting.

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dasil003
This is the antithesis of the click-bait title: academic, almost pedestrian
sounding title with a mind-blowing story attached.

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based2
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1659619/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1659619/)

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buthow
What did they use to make this site? All I can see in the page source is JS.
Is it just a parallax backbone site?

Awesome job by the way, looks fantastic!

