The Homemade Submarine
Posted By Craig Williams on 27 February 1999
At 350 feet down in a two-man, homemade submarine on our way to 700 feet, the pilot quietly whispered, "Oh, no!" under his breath. It was just loud enough for me to hear from my perch in the aft tower. I paused to gather my composure, which seemingly took several minutes after comprehending the consequences of what he had just said.
"What's wrong?" I asked within just a few seconds.
"We lost an engine," the sub's pilot, designer and builder, Karl Stanley, responded from the front tower.
With a calmness that seemed inappropriate given the circumstances and Stanley's 24 years, he practically bubbled with the exuberance that can come only from an inventor. "We don't need both propellers - or even one - to rise to the surface," he explained. That reassurance reminded me of his pre-dive lecture and the "eight ways to the surface" segment. One method included flooding the sub and swimming to the surface. This was not my idea of fun from 350 feet below the ocean surface. For that matter, it was not an option as we continued well on the way to depths deeper than the existing free-diving and scuba world depth records. Especially in a sub that was less than two years old and had not yet completed even 70 dives, and only one dive to our intended depth, at that.
A half an hour later, we reached 700 feet in this bright yellow submarine just off the coast of Roatan, Honduras. At that point, the clear blue Carribean turquoise light from the surface practically disappeared into the black nothingness of the deep. We looked out the two-inch thick Lexan starboard porthole (one of seven) into the darkness. We spotted three, motionless pale white crinoid fans (relatives of ancient atars) that inhabit these lonely depths. These five-foot tall plants anchored themselves to the floor with five legs and stood alone in the dingy sand, their stems hoisting thin, lacy fans off the sea floor. The strange-looking sea plants were the only life visible, in stark contrast to the abundant life just under the surface waves. Not much life could be seen this deep.
On the way down, visible life lessened. The teeming Carribean schools of fish disappeared after the first thirty feet or so. Then the multitudes of brightly colored red, orange, green and yellow sponges hanging from the wall through the next sixty feet gradually disappeared, practically at the same rate as the light diminished. At 400 feet, we spotted a fifteen-foot grey bull shark, shockingly longer than our small, two-man submarine. Without any lights outside (or inside) the sub, my eyes adjusted rapidly. At the bottom, we saw bioluminescent fish blinking their lights, looking for mates and food.
Before I got my ride, Stanley had completed just seven dives in the Carribean. He is based out of a new location at the aptly named "Last Chance Resort" in the west end of the island of Roatan, Honduras. Stanley had first started to build his five-and one-half foot wide, 12-foot long sub at age fifteen. Eight years and $18,000 later, Stanley had fulfilled his childhood dream of gliding down through the depths in a submarine. Somehow not surprisingly, he first conceived the idea at age nine while reading a book about Scottish children who saved their town from the Loch Ness monster by chasing the serpent away, using a submarine built out of parts scavenged from a junkyard.
A child prodigy, Stanley built his steel sub without the benefit of math, engineering or physics classes, let alone formal training in welding. "I'd go to bed dreaming of gliding under the surface of the water," he said. "Being there is magical, even though it's cold and dark." He took only three casual lessons in welding from the supplier of the steel used in the construction of the sub. Other than that, Stanley has no formal education related to construction, or for that matter, design of the sub. Nonetheless, he controls the yaw, pitch and roll of his sub by moving air in and out of six ballast tanks through 18 different valves. He came up with his design after inspecting about 20 other submarines. Stanley has dubbed his sub the "C-Bug," which is short for "Controlled Buoyancy Underwater Glider."
His degree in American Studies from Eckerd College in Saint Petersburg, Florida has no practical relationship to his dream. His only "formal" training came from scuba courses - he is a certified PADI advanced open water diver. Stanley has only had extensive conversations with other sub designers. Otherwise, he is entirely self-taught. Throughout the eight years of his life it took him to build the sub, which he has done entirely by himself, he has painstakingly researched every single aspect of his sub. He carried his devotion so far as to find the brightest color available (to allow rescuers to find him, if necessary). He settled on "sun miracle yellow," a mixture of five parts epoxy to one part yellow, over a primer white, which he effusively tells anyone who will listen.
Stanley finished building his dream in mid-1997 in St. Petersburg, Florida, and took the first few dives alone, true to his entrepreneurial style. When we dove, he had completed just 69 dives overall. Most of his previous dives came after enduring an hour long, five-mile tow on the top of the water off the Florida coast, just to reach the depths his sub could handle. Tired of these long trips on the surface, Stanley found his own paradise in Roatan's famous undersea walls. These walls reach depths greater than 2,000 feet less than 100 yards off the tropical beaches.
Stanley reports that scientists who have examined his sub estimate that the its "crush depth" is 1,500 feet deep. Will Forman, who designed and tested submersibles for the Navy, thinks Stanley is the first ever to build a gliding sub. "I think it's a great thing, especially if he survives," said Forman. Forman speaks from experience as a member of the Deep Submersible Pilots Association in San Diego, California. According to Forman, the sub has military applications because it is silent. In addition, Stanley's depth achievements earned a nod from Forman. "That's a significant depth," Forman said. "He must be doing something right."
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