"In 1927, an unknown air mail pilot from rural Minnesota enters a race against the best aviators in the world." "He will fly from New York to Paris, alone across the empty sea." "Charles Lindbergh is a dark horse in a deadly competition." "He risks his life on the longest flight ever flown and he lands as the most famous man on earth." "The story is an American legend:" "Lindbergh's dream to prove aviation's future." "A Lone Eagle, who inspires the world to look to the skies." "Early in the 20th century, the airplane is a deadly innovation." "Few people dare to fly-and those who do often pay with their lives." "The heavens beckon, and then destroy." "The most lethal challenge is to fly across the Atlantic Ocean." "A feat so hazardous that, in 1919, a New York millionaire offers 25,000 dollars to the firrst plane to fly non-stop between New York and Paris." "No one dares." "Planes are too slow, too primitive and the ocean, too wide." "Three years pass." "Then, at a remote airfireld in Nebraska, a twenty-year old from rural Minnesota begins his apprenticeship in the uncertain world of flight." "Charles Lindbergh has dropped out of college after just one year to pursue his dream." "Lindbergh wants to be a pilot." "When a daredevil named Erold Bahl brings his aerial act to town, the young Lindbergh sees a way to fiinally get off the ground." "Bahl admires the newcomer's enthusiasm, and decides to take him on as a protege." "Lindbergh is self-reliant, calm, and driven." "He is shy and modest, but determined." "Lindbergh knows aviation is his future." "He is electrifired by the perils and the freedom of flight." ""Trees become bushes; barns, toys;" "cows turn into rabbits as we climb." "I lose all conscious connection with the past." "I live only in the moment in this strange space, crowded with beauty, pierced with danger."" "In the air, Lindbergh shows no fear, perfecting the most perilous barnstorming stunts." "Wingwalking..." "Then skydiving, with a primitive silk parachute." "He makes hundreds of jumps." "With each leap, he risks his life, and enriches his spirit." ""Of course there's danger;" "but a certain amount of danger is essential to the quality of life." "I don't believe in taking foolish chances;" "but nothing can be accomplished without taking any chance at all." "What civilization was not founded on adventure, and how long could one exist without it?" "What justifires the risk of life?"" "Lindbergh masters the single-engine bi-planes of the day." "Over the next year, he hops from town to town, performing stunts across the rural mid-West." "Then, Charles Lindbergh decides to make a serious commitment to his flying infatuation." "In 1924, he enlists in the US Army flying school in San Antonio, Texas." "Lindbergh wants to hone his skills as a pilot, and the Air Corps owns some of the fastest planes in the world." "Flying in formation teaches him precision and about the dangers of carelessness." "On a routine flight, Lindbergh collides with another plane." "Both pilots narrowly escape with their lives." "Lindbergh is back in the air within the hour." "Nothing can keep him out of the skies." "Of the hundred and four men who join the Air Corps with Lindbergh, only nineteen pass." "Lindbergh, once a firrst-year college failure, now graduates at the top of his class." "When his one-year army tour is over," "Lieutenant Lindbergh goes to one of the capitals of the burgeoning aviation industry - Lambert Field, St. Louis, Missouri." "St. Louis has ambitions to be an aviation hub." "Lindbergh's experience earns him the best, but most dangerous job on the fireld:" "chief pilot of the Air Mail run to Chicago." "Air mail pilots live short lives." "Thirty one of forty are killed in crashes in the firrst firve years of service." "The planes are World War One surplus." "Pilots call them "flaming coffiins."" "But Lindbergh ignores the terrifying record of the air mail service." "He believes the skies must be tamed." "What a future aviation has;" "yet how few people realize it!" "Somehow they must be made to understand the possibilities of flight." "It is 1926." "Seven years have passed since the 25,000 dollar prize was offered for a New York-Paris flight." "Not one aviator has stepped forward." "But Charles Lindbergh has not yet heard of the challenge." "Throughout the year," "Lindbergh carries the mail through the Midwest's worst weather." "With little more than a compass and courage, he gets the letters through." "Twice, in the dead of the night, he is forced to parachute from his crippled aircraft." "He dutifully runs his fuel tanks dry to prevent letters from being consumed by flames." "He breaks the nation's record for death-defying leaps, and earns a new nickname from his fellow air mail pilots: "Lucky."" "The crashes shake the public's opinion of air mail's safety." "Charles Lindbergh makes it his mission to change their minds." ""Whether the mail compartment contains ten letters or ten thousand is beside the point." "We have faith in the future." "Some day we know the sacks will fiill."" "Lindbergh can only dream of aviation's future, while another pilot flies to fame." "On May 9, 1926, US Navy Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd flies his three-engined Fokker over the North Pole." "The achievement sums up Byrd himself:" "part science, part adventure, part self-promotion." "Richard Byrd is acclaimed as America's king of the skies." "With the Arctic defeated, Byrd now sets his sights on the Atlantic, and the seven-year-old challenge to reach Paris." "Byrd plans a mission for a crew of four in one of the largest, most expensive planes ever built." "But another pilot beats him to the airfireld." "On September 15, 1926," "French war ace Renee Fonck sets off from New York for Paris." "But Fonck's huge, overloaded plane does not even lift off the ground." "Two crewmen are killed in the wreck." "Fonck survives-his dream in ruins." "But Charles Lindbergh takes inspiration from the tragic headlines." "It is the firrst time he has heard of the New York-Paris prize." "Lindbergh decides to enter the race." "But his plan is different." "He will fly with just one engine." "And, he will do it alone." "It would be a thirty-six hour, sleepless ordeal." "But firrst, he needs a decent plane." "Lindbergh approaches eight of the wealthiest men in St. Louis." "Inspired by the young man's boldness, they stake Lindbergh with 15,000 dollars, gambling that the publicity will make St. Louis the aviation hub of the Midwest." "Lindbergh offers his own life savings, 2,000 dollars." "In February, 1927, he makes his way toward the only manufacturer that will build a plane on his meager budget." "His destination is San Diego, California, and a company he has never heard of Ryan Aircraft." "But no one has ever heard of Charles Lindbergh, either." "On February 25th, 1927, Lindbergh arrives at Ryan Aircraft in San Diego." "First impressions are discouraging:" "a dilapidated hangar, with no runway, and a staff of just a dozen." "Ryan's owner is barely a year older than Lindbergh..." "Benjamin Franklin Mahoney, a former bond salesman who bought the company after taking a few flying lessons." "He shares Lindbergh's passion for aviation and his desire to win the trans-Atlantic race." "Donald Hall is Ryan's only engineer." "He's also young, just twenty-seven." "Hall is astounded by Lindbergh's vision of a solitary, sleepless flight to Paris." "But a crew of one would mean more room for gasoline." "He begins sketches at once for a small aircraft, a flying fuel tank." "Lindbergh wires his sponsors in St. Louis." ""Believe Ryan capable of building plane with suffircient performance." "Delivery within sixty days." "Recommend closing deal." "Lindbergh."" "Lindbergh has his team." "Now, it's time to get to work." "The aircraft will be an extension of Charles Lindbergh himself." ""Every part of it can be designed for a single purpose every line fashioned to the Paris flight." "I can inspect each detail before it's covered with fabric and fairings." "I can build my own experience into the plane's structure."" "The young men who plan a leap across the Atlantic need to know precisely how far it is to Paris." "Lindbergh has a primitive solution." "The bit of white grocery string under my fiingers stretches taut along the coast of North America, bends down over a faded blue ocean, and strikes the land mass of Europe." "It's 3600 statute miles." "It will be twenty-eight hours to Ireland and thirty-six to Paris." "Lindbergh will use a simple compass to guide him from New York to Newfoundland, then across two thousand miles of open sea, with no hope of surviving if anything goes wrong." "As Lindbergh's work gets under way, the competition heats up." "On March 2, in New York," "Richard Byrd announces that his plan to reach Paris is almost complete." "Byrd has built a 100,000 dollar, gigantic aircraft named "America," and will be ready by May." "Just two weeks later, in Virginia," "American Navy pilots Noel Davis and Stanton Wooster unveil their own contender:" "a tri-motor called "American Legion."" "But Lindbergh holds to his plan to build a small aircraft." "He is certain that the bigger the plane, the bigger the chance of a fatal accident." "Then, on March 26, a new challenger emerges in Paris." "Ace Charles Nungesser and his one-eyed navigator Francois Coli are ready for a westbound crossing in their plane, the "White Bird."" "The Ryan team works around the clock, a race against the world's most famous aviators all for a twenty-firve year old with a dream, and determination." "Then comes a stunning blow." "In mid-April, American pilot Clarence Chamberlin announces that he has stayed aloft for a record-smashing firfty-one hours in skies over New York." "His powerful plane Columbia is now ready for Paris." "Four planes are ready to go, waiting only for clear skies over the Atlantic, while Charles Lindbergh is on the Pacifirc coast, still waiting for his aircraft to be built." "Suddenly, the odds begin to change." "A test flight of Byrd's America on April 16 ends in a twisted wreck." "Byrd and two of his crewmen are seriously injured and the America needs weeks of repairs." "Eight days later," "Clarence Chamberlin takes off from the same New York runway." "He crash lands the Columbia." "Chamberlin walks away, but his landing gear is destroyed." "Noel Davis and Stanton Wooster are not as fortunate." "On April 26, both men are killed when their overloaded plane stalls and crashes in Virginia." "Lindbergh's prediction has come tragically true." "Loaded down multi engine giants are too unreliable for transatlantic flight." "Two Americans and four Frenchmen have given their lives in the race to link their nations." "April 28, 1927." "Two months after Charles Lindbergh arrived in San Diego, his dream plane is born the Spirit of St. Louis." "Named in honor of his backers in St. Louis, the Spirit is just over twenty-seven feet long, with a forty-six foot wing span." "The plane is trucked to a local airfireld, for its maiden voyage." "For Lindbergh, Mahoney, and Hall, the moment of truth has come." "The Spirit of St. Louis is all Lindbergh dreamed it would be." ""I've never felt a plane accelerate so fast before." "There's a huge reserve of power."" "There are no front windows." "A gas tank blocks Lindbergh's forward view." "Visibility and comfort have been sacrifirced for endurance." "Weighing just over a ton empty, the Spirit is a tiny challenger to Richard Byrd's eight-ton America." "The firrst test is a stunning success." "Every possible ounce of weight has been eliminated." "Lindbergh will confront the Atlantic without a radio, without navigational instruments, without a parachute." "He has thought through everything and carries nothing." "He makes two dozen test flights, and declares the Spirit ready." "The time has come to leave for New York, and the starting line." "But he may be too late." "On May 8, French aviators Nungesser and Coli take off from Paris." "The next day, newspapers report the French aces have been spotted over Nova Scotia." "So close to fulfiilling his dream." "Lindbergh despairs he has lost the race." "But Nungesser and Coli never arrive in New York." "Their aircraft mysteriously disappear." "It is never found." "Six Men have now been sacrifirced." "But Lindbergh has been granted one more chance." "May 10, 1927." "Lindbergh says good-bye to Benjamin Franklin Mahoney," "Donald Hall, and the Ryan factory workers." "They have built the Spirit, it is now up to Charles Lindbergh to fly to New York, before any other pilot attempts the Atlantic." "But firrst, he must stop in St. Louis to meet his backers." "He flies all night, testing the Spirit, and his own stamina." "He calculates fuel consumption at 100 miles per hour, his planned airspeed over the Atlantic." "And he practices holding his course on a dead heading for St. Louis." "It is dry run, over land, for his Atlantic journey." "Fourteen hours and twenty-firve minutes after lifting off from California," "Charles Lindbergh lands the Spirit of St. Louis in the city of her name." "He has broken the world speed record on his flight." ""No man has ever traveled so fast from the Pacifirc coast before."" "Lindbergh's sponsors want to show off their investment, but the great race to Paris will not wait for a Missouri parade." "They urge him on to New Youk." "Seven and a half hours later, Lindbergh reaches New York." ""Manhattan Island lies below me millions of people, each one surrounded by a little aura of his problems and his thoughts, hardly conscious of earth's expanse beyond." "What a contrast to the western spaces I have crossed." "I feel cooped up just looking at it"" "At 4:31PM, on May 12, 1927, the tiny Spirit of St. Louis touches down at Curtiss Field, Long Island." "Charles Lindbergh has crossed the North American continent more quickly than any man in history." "Suddenly, the race to Paris has a new contender." "A young daredevil from the American heartland, with the fastest plane in the sky." "In the Spring of 1927, three aircraft and their impatient pilots are lined up in the race to be the firrst to Paris." "Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis," "Richard Byrd's rebuilt America, and Clarence Chamberlin's repaired Columbia." "All three are ready to go, but bad weather keeps them on the ground." "The fliers maintain a link of friendship and respect." "The national hero Byrd is courteous to Chamberlin and the young outsider Lindbergh." "Each understands that the best man and the best machine will win." "And that any, or all of them may die trying." "Charles Lindbergh gives the press the story they've been waiting for." "The underdog, the farm boy," "the Flyin' Fool." "Lindbergh is besieged." "On one day alone, 30,000 people come to catch a glimpse of the gallant young American pilot." "Publicity is good for the cause of aviation, so Lindbergh complies." ""The journalistic atmosphere has reached fever heat." "The moment I step outside the hangar I'm surrounded." "The attention of the entire country is centered on the flight and me." "We've helped focus everybody's eyes on aviation and its future."" "His mother arrives in New York to see her son off." "Cameras turn as the two pose stiffly together, a moment they both know may be their fiinal good-bye." "Commander Byrd admires Lindbergh, and praises his undeniable courage." "But he is certain that a single engine, and a single filer, cannot possibly endure a 3,600 mile flight." "Seven days pass and the weather holds the frustrated pilots down." ""The sky is overcast." "Rain is falling." "It may be another week or two before I can take off." "I feel depressed at the thought"." "May 19, 1927." "Bored and restless, Lindbergh accepts an invitation to a Broadway musical." "Before reaching the show, he receives a forecast of clearing skies over the Atlantic." "He races back to his hotel, hoping to catch a few hour's sleep before dawn." "But Lindbergh is far too excited to rest." "At 2:30 AM, already awake for twenty hours, he begins preparing for the 36-hour flight ahead." "At dawn, the Spirit of St. Louis is towed out to the runway." "Five hundred soaked spectators gather, eager to be witnesses to history, or tragedy." ""My plane lurches backward through a depression in the ground." "It looks awkward and clumsy." "It appears completely incapable of flight-shrouded, lashed and dripping." "It's more like a funeral procession than the beginnin g of a flight to Paris."" "7:30 AM, May 20, 1927." "Fully fueled, the plane weighs two and a half tons." "Lindbergh has never attempted a takeoff at this maximum load." "The commotion has awakened Commander Byrd." "Byrd himself would not dare attempt a takeoff in this wretched weather." "But the pilot nicknamed "Lucky" is willing to take the gamble." "A reporter asks Lindbergh if he has brought enough supplies to live on for nearly two days in the air." "He has packed just firve sandwiches and a gallon of water." "He answers with a grim joke." ""If I get to Paris I won't need anymore, and if I don't get to Paris I won't need anymore either."" "Loaded with explosive fuel, on a 5,000 foot runway of clinging mud, the Spirit lumbers into position." "It is a vital moment in the history of human technology, and human courage." "A tiny silver plane, straining and roaring a lone pilot who has passed the point of aborting his flight." "He will take off, or he will crash." "Lindbergh clears wires at the end of the runway by just twenty feet." "And Lindbergh is gone." "As the Spirit of St. Louis disappears into the clouds," "Commander Richard Byrd estimates soberly that the odds against Lindbergh's survival are three to one." "As his thirty-six hour odyssey begins, Lindbergh sets his course." "50-cent highway maps guide him over the New England coast." "He alternates fuel tanks every hour to balance his load, and keeps a careful log of speed, altitude, and course." "The Spirit's engine is the most powerful ever built for flight:" "223 horsepower of aluminum and steel." "It must perform perfectly for almost two days nonstop, fourteen million explosions in its nine cylinders." "As he leaves Massachusetts behind," "Lindbergh heads over open ocean for the firrst time in his life." "250 miles from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, a preview of the 2,000 mile ordeal across the Atlantic ocean." "He flies low, and faces the sea." ""I come down to meet the ocean, asking its favor the right to pass for thousands of miles across its realm." "The earth released me on Long Island;" "now I need approval from the sea."" "The skies clear." "But in the sun, Lindbergh begins to suffer the tortures of fatigue." "He already regrets staying awake all night before departure." "New York is just firve hours behind him." "As he soars over Nova Scotia, the journey has barely begun." "Navigating by a simple compass heading, he is only six miles off his planned course." "But as each hour passes, the drone of the engine, and the monotony of the waves, dull his consciousness." "Urging surrender, demanding sleep." "Twelve hours after takeoff, still a day away from a seemingly impossible touchdown, he is over Newfoundland." "One quick wingover, and the vast Atlantic awaits." ""North America and its islands are behind." "Ireland is two thousand miles ahead."" "Now, Lindbergh has only his compass and his courage to guide him." "Caught between sky and sea, no traveler in history has ever been so alone." "The firrst night of his journey begins." ""I've given up a continent and taken on an ocean in its place-irrevocably."" "Over the North Atlantic, not far from where the Titanic sank just firfteen years before," "Lindbergh spots icebergs." "He dreams of landing and sleeping." "If he drifts off, even for a few seconds, he will tumble into the waves and die." ""Sleep is winning."" "At this moment, at Yankee Stadium in New York City, 40,000 people gather at a heavyweight boxing match." "The announcer asks the audience for a moment of silence for Lindbergh." "All 40,000 join as one." "Over the Atlantic, Lindbergh flies into dense clouds." "He climbs above them for better visibility." "But at ten thousand feet, the air is colder." "He has made a dangerous mistake." ""I pull the flashlight from my pocket and throw its beam onto a strut." "Ice!"" "His only hope is to dive for warmer air" "and pray the ice clears before the Spirit falls from the sky." "After ten perilous minutes, he triumphs." "A nation flies with him, sleepless and anxious." "The New York Times receives 10,000 telephone calls, asking for updates." "But there is no news to print." "Lindbergh flies alone, without a radio, over the desolate ocean." "Nineteen hours out, he estimates that he is halfway to Paris." "But his body is numb, beyond hunger and thirst." ""My greatest goal now is to stay alive and pointed eastward until I reach the sunrise."" "He abandons his log book, too weary to care." "In New York, the newspapers can only repeat stale bulletins from Newfoundland." "No one on earth knows where Lindbergh is, or the agony he endures." ""This is the hour I've been dreading." "I know it's the beginnin g of my greatest test." "This early hour of the second morning the third since I've slept"." "Just before dawn, Lindbergh believes he is visited by ghosts." ""These phantoms speak with human voices vaporlike shapes, without substance." "The feeling of flesh is gone." "Am I now more man or spirit?"" "On the verge of defeat and death, he fiinds the fortitude to fly on." ""I'm gaining strength, I'm crawling upward." "I've fiinally broken the spell of sleep." "The sight of death has drawn out the last reserves of strength."" "His ghosts, and his fears, dissolve in the sunrise." "Suddenly he sees something moving below." "The world has come alive again." "Porpoises." "Then a seagull." "A certain sign that land must be near." "Soon, a tiny dot that can only be a mirage." "Fishing boats." "Where is he?" "Where are they from?" "Within half an hour, another apparition." "He refuses to believe his eyes." "Land." "He looks at the chart, and at the mass below." "It is Ireland." "He is just three miles off his plotted course, and over two hours earlier than he expected." "When he is spotted over Dingle Bay, the world rejoices." "For Charles Lindbergh has not been flying alone." "Only the British Isles remain, then the Channel." "Then, France." "Lindbergh will be the firrst man in history to be in New York one day, and Paris the next." ""Yesterday I walked on Roosevelt fireld, today I'll walk on Le Bourget."" "Five hours after reaching Ireland, at 9:52 PM" "Lindbergh is fiinally over Paris." "But at this moment of triumph, strange lights below disorient him." "He circles lower." "He fiinally locates Le Bourget Airfireld, obscured by bright lights." "Below him, a public hysteria unlike any in history is about to erupt." "One hundred and firfty thousand people have come to witness his arrival." "The lights are their automobiles." "At 10:24 PM, after thirty-three and a half hours in the air, the Spirit of St. Louis returns Charles Lindbergh to the earth." "But his feet do not even touch French soil." "The mob surges forward, carrying the exhausted Lindbergh like a rag doll." "They claw at the Spirit of St. Louis, tearing off pieces of history." "A group of French aviators fiinally rescue Lindbergh, and carry him off to a waiting car." "He is taken to the American embassy, where he sleeps for nine hours." "And awakens the most famous man of the century." "Lindbergh's shy grace wins the heart of Paris." "The crowds hail not only the pilot, but the dawn of a new age of unity between Europe and America." "Paris is in a Lindbergh frenzy for a week." "Then he flies on to Brussels and London and is greeted with explosive hero worship." "But Lindbergh is more than a hero." "He is a 20th Century phenomenon, the firrst international superstar." "After two weeks of European adoration," "President Calvin Coolidge orders Lindbergh home." "A Navy cruiser brings the nation's most popular hero and his now-famous plane back to American soil." "When he arrives in Washington, 250,000 people are there to greet him." "An innocent twenty-firve-year-old from the mid-West has become a living legend." "His next stop is New York, where four million people line the streets for the largest ticker-tape parade in the city's history." "The public's rapture exhausts the quiet Lindbergh." "But he seizes the opportunity to promote aviation's future." "And now, people will listen." "For the summer of 1927, he crisscrosses America in the Spirit of St. Louis, on a crusade to convince the public to take to the skies." "30 million Americans in 82 cities throng to hear his message, new converts to the aviation revolution." "Lindbergh heralds the dawn of a new era." "By 1928, the air mail service triples its load and the passenger business carries four times as many people than before Lindbergh's Paris flight." "His dream is fulfiilled." "Those who once soared above Lindbergh now fade in his shadow." "On June 29, Richard Byrd and his crew of three fiinally take off for France in their 100,000 dollar plane." "Byrd force-lands off the Normandy coast." "Few take notice of his clumsy flight." "The contest to unite the continents has already been won, by the graceful Lone Eagle." "Charles Lindbergh spends the rest of his life in the air, promoting the cause of aviation." "At the age of 27, Lindbergh marries." "With his wife, author Anne Morrow, he maps new flight routes across the Atlantic and Pacifirc." "The young couple opens the skies for air travelers of today." "Lindbergh would also endure agonizing personal tragedy." "The kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh's baby son in 1932." "And outrage following his speeches opposing war with Nazi Germany." "But Charles Lindbergh's legacy is not controversy." "It is courage." "The daring of a twenty-firve-year old air mail pilot who believed he could change the world, and did." ""When the Spirit of St. Louis flew to Paris, aviation was shouldering its way from the stage of invention to the stage of usefulness." "I believed that aviation had a brilliant future." "Technically, we have accomplished our objectives, passed beyond them." "We actually live today in our dreams of yesterday" "and living those dreams, we dream again."" "From the firrst dawn of creation to the end of time" "our world, our lives, and every living thing are attuned to a cosmic song" "a celestial cadence of light and dark" "of ebb and flow" "of heat and cold all set into motion by the epic dance of the sun, moon, and earth." "These are the rhythms of life itself." "Before there could be day or night before there was a spring or fall a star, our sun, had to flare into life." "From the seething stuff of stars, over time, the planets of our solar system took shape." "Four billion years ago, or more, one such place was born the planet called, Earth, our home." "But for nearly a billion years, it would be a home inhospitable to any form of life" "a red and angry globe a churning mass of firre, poison gas, and molten rock" "At the core of the planet raged an inferno." "For thousands upon thousands of centuries, this infant planet suffered the violent pains of growth and change, as it formed and reformed itself." "From the very beginning g, the earth knew night and day." "But a night and day not like any we know now." "Fueled by the forces of creation, the earth raced through its daily cycle, spinning firve times as fast as it does today." "A few brief hours of starlight." "A few brief hours of sun." "Day followed night at a dizzying pace." "Earth and sun were not alone in their orbits." "But cosmic visitors rarely came to stay until one cataclysmic encounter transformed the heavens and earth forever." "One theory tells of a cosmic accident a huge asteroid on a collision course." "It may have been the birth of the moon and so many of the rhythms of life." "But firrst, the moon would have been a cloud of fragments, circling the planet like the rings of Saturn before coming together into a huge, barren satellite." "Too small to hold a protective atmosphere, the moon itself has long been bombarded by debris ever since." "Without wind or rain to smooth the scars, its face bears everlasting witness to the violent nature of outer space." "On the earth below, an atmosphere was brewing from endless clouds of poison gasses and water vapor, expelled from beneath the crust." "Closer to the sun, the precious water might have boiled away." "On a colder planet it would be locked into eternal ice." "But on the earth, water vapor condensed falling back as rain upon the land." "And so the firrst oceans were born." "Over millions of years, the seas rose to flood the earth." "But these were not the cool, life-giving waters we know today." "The primal atmosphere provided little protection." "It had no blanket of ozone to fiilter out lethal radiation." "Virtually unobstructed, the sun's unforgiving rays seared whatever they touched." "Much closer than now, the moon also played a violent part... tugging at the seas with a force countless times greater than today." "The firrst tides were mountains of water, miles high." "Torn by sun and moon, the surface waters offered no hope for life." "Still, there was sanctuary below." "In the ocean, the firrst building blocks of life amino acids emerged." "They incubated in water heated by the planet's internal firres and fed on a bubbling broth of nutrients straight from the heart of the earth." "But even the ocean's depths were not safe-from a cataclysmic universe." "In a galaxy still littered with the debris of genesis, asteroid strikes may have vaporized the oceans, laying the seabed bare." "More than once, life on earth may have been snuffed out." "Yet the firre and rains of creation kept their hold on earth, and the oceans rose again." "Life has proven stubborn here." "Some three billion years ago, as the earth cooled and calmed once again, new forms appeared, the heralds of life as we understand it." "In quiet, sheltered pools, algae spread." "Colonies of single-celled organisms, they thrived off abundant sunlight and carbon dioxide." "And in their waste they left behind oxygen, the precious breath of life." "This was the birth of photosynthesis... a new, life-giving cycle that transformed the earth." "For countless millennia, algae flourished in the brief days so bright with sun." "And now the cosmic rhythms were changing." "Gradually, the moon and its tides slowed the earth's mad spinning... and the forces that bound planet and satellite together loosened their hold." "The moon retreated to where she stands today, still slipping imperceptibly away over time." "With the moon more distant, the tides fell." "Calmer waters bred more algae and more oxygen." "And with the oxygen came ozone, protection from the sun's most lethal rays." "At last, the stage was set for the next phase of creation." "Like the firre of a new sun, the spark of new life appeared in the waters." "Still just single-celled plants, but organisms far more complex than any that had come before." "Within each was a genetic code that reflected the rhythms of earth and heaven, a biological clock to guide their lives." "Daytime would be the time to feed on the power of the sun." "Reproduction would be saved for the shelter of night." "Millions of years later, this clock still synchronizes almost all life to the very spin of the planet." "From the depths of a steep-walled lagoon in the South Pacifirc island of Palau, a herd of underwater farmers rises to meet the dawn." "A swarm of jellyfirsh, tens of thousands strong." "Without eyes, the jellyfirsh do not use the light to see." "They need it to grow their food gardens of brown algae that flourish within their transparent bodies." "Denied sunshine, they would starve." "As the sun arcs overhead, shadows of the surrounding walls darken the surface of the lagoon." "Just below, the jellyfirsh ferry their microscopic passengers, keeping them always in the light." "When the sun sinks, so do the jellyfirsh, dropping down to the ocean floor where the algae can fiind their own nourishment." "Even without sight, the jellyfirsh will know when the sun returns again." "In the surface waters of the oceans most creatures take their cue to feed or rest from the rhythm of light and dark." "Now, members of the night shift hurry to take the stage." "Roused by light-sensitive cells that announce the return of darkness, these prickly browsers set out to graze." "Sea urchins fiind their prey and their way around by touch and by taste." "Each night clouds of plankton rise from the deep to feed drawing out the coral who firsh the waters with feathery nets." "A few, sharp-eyed firsh operate by sight in the dim light before dawn." "Like a cat in the dark, the lionfirsh can pick out its prey." "The lionfirsh will slip into a crevice to hide from the daytime;" "eyes sensitive enough for half light may be too delicate for bright sun." "Daybreak brings the morning rush hour to the reef." "Far more complex than jellyfirsh or sea urchins, most firsh depend on sight to survive." "Without the sun they are virtually blind to navigate their world, to fiind their food, or signal to their kind." "A kaleidoscope of colors enhances the play of daylight on the reef." "For the firsh, stripe and hue holds clues and communications... helping them to identify mates, predators, and prey in the busy rainbow of the reef." "Trailing twilight in its wake, a manta ray flies in, to harvest plankton when again they rise with evening." "Sunlight fades, taking with it the world of color, and the day shift streams off the reef for the safety of deeper water." "And once again, the great earth wheels round." "The line between light and darkness divides those that live by land as well as the creatures of the sea." "And even the land and sea themselves breathe with the rhythms of day and night." "Given off by day, water vapor now rises, cools, and condenses in the night air." "From earth, through plants, into the air, and back to the earth again the endless cycles of replenishment and renewal." "The plants of this Australian rain forest have been in tune with the rhythms of the sun for eons." "Here, an acacia tree wakes up and stretches for the dawn." "Like a sundial in the trees, the play of light and shadow across the forest floor marks the turning of the planet." "A shifting pool of light holds treasure for plants and animals alike." "Sunbathers under the leafy canopy, many plants collect much of their energy during brief interludes of light." "A boastful bird takes this spotlight for a stage." "In the dark, his fiinery is invisible, meaningless." "Only by day can the male riflebird capitalize on his gaudy attire." "His appearance, like a feathered, black-and-white rose, has been calculated by evolution to entice females to his side." "A vibrant, sunlit display, all about sex, as crisp as the snapping of a fan." "The last hours before sunset often inspire a flurry of movement." "Once the sun fails, most birds will lose their powers of sight and of flight." "They gorge in preparation for the fast to come." "Color and flair are an advertisement for plants too." "Their brightly hued fruit attracts birds, and with the feast the cycle of life and rebirth will continue." "For after eating, the birds will spread the seeds of new plants far and wide." "While most creatures of the air depend on the bright of day, others like fruit bats, are tuned to more nocturnal rhythms." "All day they had been invisible, sleeping in the shadows, saving their energy against the hot sun." "Now twilight signals to them, a silent summons." "The bats scramble and take control of the air the birds have left behind." "Millions crowd the sky, ever graceful, never colliding." "Foraging in darkness, the bats have turned to senses other than sight to fiind their way." "They navigate the night by sound, until they fiind a likely spot for a meal." "By moonlight, plants need a different lure to attract visitors... perfume." "Little is more savory to these bats than the scent of ripe blossoms and fruit." "And once they take their fiill, like birds, they carry seeds everywhere they fly... assuring the future of their favorite foods." "The rising moon offers a gentle promise... cooling relief from the heat of the day." "And many creatures bide their time until the evening hours." "Other mammals have also learned to maneuver through the midnight air..." "like Australia's sugar gliders." "With their built-in parachute, a sugar glider can span the length of a football fireld." "It may seem a bold leap of faith, but they're only following family footsteps." "By smearing their scent upon the branches, they blaze invisible trails for their kin to follow." "Their search for insects, sap, and nectars carries the gliders into the night." "Like bats, they survey the dark with sensitive noses." "This evening harvest keeps these squirrel-like creatures safe from the predators of day." "Instinct warns them to be back in their nests by dawn, before sharp-eyed hawks and eagles take to the skies." "For millions of years, mammals were the masters of the night." "In prehistoric days dominated by dinosaurs, smaller, warm-blooded animals took advantage of the relative safety of the darker hours." "But the days when mammals were forced to hide from the coning of the light are long since over." "Now, in rain forests round the world, near the top of the evolutionary ladder, you'll fiind agile tree-toppers ready and willing to celebrate their place in the sun." "These proud primates, central American howler monkeys, inaugurate each day with a morning chorus, staking their claim to the trees and life at the top." "Higher still cling their smaller cousins, the spider monkeys." "With few natural enemies they rule the roost." "Grasping hands and feet give them confirdence to live life out on a limb." "And evolution has given them a whole new point of view stereoscopic vision." "It gives them the ability to judge distance preciselyan." "And invaluable skill when hurtling through the treetops 80 feet above the ground." "Somewhere deep in the prehistoric past, the human line diverged from that of monkeys and apes." "And even if we no longer get to work vine to vine, we still share common genes and heritage... and an attachment to the daytime hours." "It's programming g imprinted on us both by the ever circling sun and its cold celestial partner." "Lunar rhythms cast long shadows over daily life on earth." "Though the mile-high tides of creation have shrunk to swells of mere feet, the rise and fall of the oceans still exerts a powerful force." "From 240,000 miles away, the moon's pull wields power enough to carve the coastline and buoy up the polar ice." "Four times a day, the sea scours the coast... always retreating, always returning." "It's a force both destructive and life-giving." "Many creatures thrive here, on the shifting boundary between sea and land." "On gentler shorelines, each time the tide retreats, it leaves behind a feeding ground replenished by the sea." "The lull between high tides sees a race for survival... a race against the lunar clock." "These scavengers must feed their fiill now." "Sand-bubbler crabs pick food from the net of the sand, sorting out trapped particles of seaweed and other plants." "They leave behind delicate spheres of sand." "It's a temporary testament to their labors." "Combing the territory around their burrow, they scar the sand with their tracks... each lone scavenger attending to its own hunting ground." "Other creatures march boldly forward with the strength of numbers." "Soldier crabs sweeping the shore in battalions." "Mostly males, they work together by the hundreds, exhausting each plot of land before moving on." "An army of crabs..." "a living tide of hungry hunters." "But no army can defend against the moon... and they know it." "The crabs' parade grounds will be deserted by the time the tide marches back to claim it." "As water replaces land, those that can... take to the air." "Here the moon is mistress." "She sets the rhythm of life at all hours... low tide is time to eat;" "high tide, the time to rest." "Wading birds make the best of life at the shore." "Stilts for legs let them follow the waters' edge as it ebbs and flows." "Beyond the sandy shore, the tide floods up through the clutching fiingers, the roots, of mangrove trees." "Here in the muddy flats, the firddlers dig their wells, preparing for the tide's return." "For these engineers, the last act before the flood is to batten down the hatches with a fresh cut plug of mud." "They'll wait out the flood submerged in underground burrows." "Like wading birds, the mangroves will weather the waves on stilts." "The rhythm of the tides beats both night and day." "For whenever the tide is low, the shore's inhabitants will come out to feed, by sunlight, moonlight, or in the glimm er of the stars." "Behind this constant ebb and flow beats a second, slower tidal rhythm... a cadence that for many, spurs the times of mating and of birth." "This is the lunar cycle, the month-long dance of earth, satellite, and sun that paints the changing faces of the moon." "Twice each month, the sun and moon conspire to raise the level of the tides." "At the new moon and at the full, the gravity of both our star and our satellite align... lifting the tide to its greatest height." "In between, the tides are at their weakest." "This monthly cycle of tides touches creatures of the sea in a place deeper then the daily rhythms of feeding and rest." "A pair of male parrot firsh swirl around each other, jockeying for supremacy." "Their competition is a sure sign that the full moon is on the rise." "This dance heralds the spawning season." "When the full-moon tide begins to ebb, the females will release their eggs." "With the tug of the ebb tide, the mating frenzy begins." "Thousands of firsh, male and female, dash through each others' wakes, casting clouds of eggs and sperm together into the tide." "One breed's spawn is another's feast." "Predators join the tumult, to feed their fiill on eggs." "But the spawning firsh know how to play the odds." "They have fertilized tens of millions of eggs." "Millions will escape... pulled out to deeper waters by the outgoing tide." "At high water, the surf storms back over the reef, sweeping schools of tiny firsh into the lagoon." "A silvery cloud flashing on a watery wind." "For many, this will be the last moment in the sun." "Trapped in quiet, shallow waters, they make easy prey for hunters circling above the surface." "Moon, firsh, and birds all whirling in their own perfect harmony." "This black-naped tern lives a life scored to the music of the tides." "On the shore, females have laid claim to nesting sites and some have already begun to lay eggs as well." "While one bird minds the nest, its mate firshes the shallows." "These seabirds time their breeding cycle to coincide with the easy prey washed into the lagoon by the full-moon tides." "Now is the time to eat heartily." "Soon the chicks will hatch." "And soon the moon will come full circle... the tides again fiilling the shallows with tiny firsh." "All in time to feed newly-hatched chicks." "Although barren herself, the moon prompts the sexual life of many animals... both above and below the surface." "Just after the full moon, the corals of the Great Barrier Reef begin to spawn." "In a week, the tides will reach their slackest point." "And over 200 different species of coral will launch their seed into a galaxy of eggs and sperm." "In the still water, there is time to drift and mix, time for eggs and sperm of the same species to mingle and create a new generation." "Sea worms, who live imbedded in the coral, cast off their tails, adding to the blizzard." "Writhing bags of sex cells, the castoffs dance among a veritable Milky Way of new life." "These celebrations are orchestrated by the music of the spheres, the distant dance of the solar system." "Like the moon, the sun also sings to us in rhythms slower than the everyday of rise and set." "Around this star journeys the earth at a stately, year-long pace, initiating the cycle of the seasons, ferrying winter and summer from south to north, and back again." "Even at the poles, the sun makes her mark with the shimm ering aurora, the wake of the solar wind." "In the Antarctic, the cycle of the seasons becomes one with the rhythms of the day and night." "Here six months of sunlight are followed by six months of dark and dusk... summer followed by winter." "Even in the extremes of Antarctica, life is tenacious." "Throughout the dark of the polar night, each male emperor penguin guards a single precious egg." "Hardly moving, never hunting, they've not eaten since autumn." "In temperatures reaching 70 below, winds up to 50 miles an hour, they huddle together for warmth and protection, and wait for the sun." "In a land where evening lasts for six months, dawn can seem to take forever." "Finally the penguin chicks will hatch, and like their fathers, they will be desperate for food." "Males can lose nearly half their body weight during this incubation time." "But help is on the way." "Mother's coming." "For months, they have been feeding on the bounty of winter seas." "Nature's biological clock is at work here, too." "The females seem to sense the exact time to leave for the nesting grounds, for they have a huge trek across the ice to get here." "Even tired and hungry, the males may be slow to give up their chicks." "Temperatures on the ice can be killing." "Babies left exposed too long will die." "The guard successfully changed, males are free, at last, to head to the sea..." "and to feed." "The chicks will be fed by mother and kept warm until the sun climbs high into the sky." "Ever and always, the coming of summer depends on the swing of the earth as it circles the sun... and as it reels on its tilted axis." "As the earth spins through the year, the sun's strongest rays sweep across the globe, bringing change in its wake." "Near the equator, the angle of the sun's rays varies little through the year." "Still, it's enough to give the tropical regions their own seasonal rhythm... the cycle of drought and flood, the wet and the dry." "September in Australia." "The air above the baking northern plains rises with the heat." "With it comes cloud banks full of moisture, pulled inland from the coast." "The wheeling clouds bring drama, but no relief to a thirsty land." "They are not rainmakers, but sky painters." "The monsoons are still months away." "Even so, deep in their nature, plants and animals seem to feel the rains coming." "A new cloud stirs... plant suckers rising with the rhythms of the spring." "What looks like the bark of a tree breathes with life... a frill-necked lizard, waiting out the drought." "For months it rations energy, moving little, feeding less." "Wallabies are rainy day lovers." "While they wait for the wet season, males joust for the chance to mate." "Now even the plants take a chance that the drought is on the wane, greening with fresh leaves." "Soon, all their preparations will be rewarded." "The wet, the season of the rains is coming at last." "From deep in their shadowy castles, colonies of termites rouse to the reveille." "One storm brings another..." "a rain of flying termites." "They take to the air by the millions, in the quest to found new colonies in rain-softened soil." "And as always, the rhythms of one life mesh and turn with others." "Wide-eyed possums in the trees, and bandicoots on the ground below, end the fasting of the dry months with a welcome late-night feast." "At the end of their migration, termites shed their now useless wings." "Many will fail to ever fiind a mate and burrow safely underground." "With the coming of daylight, there will be others to join the feast." "Conservative no more, the frill-necked lizard becomes a glutton, storing up protein for the breeding time to come." "But it may face competition for the spoils." "Undaunted, the lizard takes his fiill..." "working alone." "The green ants do it differently, working together in groups." "Both species tend to the harvest with a persistence that is single minded." "Little disturbs the teamwork of ants." "They scavenge night and day, dry or wet." "At the peak of the rainy season, the storms are now more than most animals might care to see." "But their only choice is to wait the cycle out." "Like the rhythm of the tides, the rolling seasons of wet and dry shape life for every plant and animal on this land." "Not one of them can stop the rain, or light the black of night, no more than the firsh command the seas to rise and fall." "One creature only dares to firght the night" "the bold and restless dreamer hunter, builder, man." "But even in our cars and castles, we submit to the rhythms of the earth." "Dawn and the sun summons us to work." "We swarm like schools of firsh to the cities, flashing to feed and mingle on the reef." "Beneath the canopy of urban forests, we hunt and gather what we need to live." "And dusk still calls us home again a flock of birds returning to the roost." "But over the millennia, we have learned how to firght the darkness with firres of our own design." "We strain against the boundaries, reshaping the border between night and day." "We create our own complex orbits, drawn to the sky and the distant heavens." "Yet fiinally, for all our powers and wisdom man is still just a player on a vast stage." "Hour by hour, year by year, the cosmic clock marks our time on earth." "Seasons turn." "Tides rise and fall." "One generation passes on to the next." "Nothing lasts forever, not even the stars themselves." "Night by night, over countless years, the earth will slow on its axis." "The moon will drift yet further away." "Days will lengthen, the tides grow quiet." "Billions of years from now, the seemingly endless cycles will come to a close as the firres of creation at last consume the sun." "Yet ours is but one small star, in one tiny galaxy, in a universe beyond measure." "Perhaps there are other rhythms of life, unseen by our eyes, yet as grand and majestic as our own." "By the beginnin g of the Twentieth Century, human explorers have navigated the earth and soared through the skies." "Yet one earthly realm remains silent and hostile." "The deep." "Its crushing pressures kill all who attempt to invade its forbidden darkness." "Then, in 1930, an adventurous scientist and a wealthy dreamer undertake a daring voyage in a tiny steel capsule, to a place no living man has ever gone." "Success will make them ocean science pioneers." "Failure will end in death." "Awaiting them... beckoning them..." "is a fantastic unexplored universe." "This is the story of these firrst intrepid descents into the abyss." "Earth is an ocean planet." "Water covers over seventy percent at an average depth of two miles." "Yet at the beginnin g of the twentieth century, almost nothing is known about the deep ocean." "Then, in 1925, a charismatic explorer and scientist turns his attention to the sea." "His name is William Beebe." "And his quest begins with a shallow dive in a crude copper helmet." "At 48, Beebe has spent his life bringing tales of jungle adventures home to the American public." "Now he is re-born into a new world." ""As I peered down I realized that I was looking toward a world of life almost as unknown as that of Mars or Venus." "William Beebe believes that the only way to study the sea is to explore it himself." "To date, few other scientists have ventured into the ocean and witnessed its wonders." "Modern oceanographic knowledge of deep-sea firsh is comparable to the information of a student of African animals, who has trapped a small collection of rats and mice, but is still wholly unaware of antelope, elephants, lions and rhinos."" "Beebe is tantalized by the unknown world in the depths below... and the unseen creatures which live there." "Beebe is already a celebrity scientist." "He was the 25-year old prodigy named curator of Birds at the Bronx Zoo, today's Wildlife Conservation Society." "He is a gifted writer, and a restless traveler, popularizing scientifirc observation with a healthy dose of exotic adventure." "His friends include former President Theodore Roosevelt." "In what is believed to be his last letter before his death in 1919," "Roosevelt praises Beebe's work." "At age forty, he turns his attention and energy to the First World War and volunteers as a pilot, serving in skies over Europe." "When the war is over, William Beebe returns to his explorations... and in 1925, sets out on the ocean journey that will change his life." "Beebe's ship is Arcturus, donated to him by a wealthy patron." "A tireless promoter, Beebe knows how to use adventure to sell science." "Several Manhattan millionaires sponsor his expedition." "Beebe steers Arcturus for the Sargasso Sea, in search of the teeming aquatic life amidst the rafts of floating sargassum weed." "His team of firfteen scientists labor tirelessly, gathering firsh and ocean animals, recording and cataloguing their fiindings, and preserving specimens for more detailed study at the Bronx Zoo." "For 25 years, Beebe has scoured the continents." "Now, he opens his eyes to a new world, the living sea." "But does life exist in the deeper ocean?" "And if so, is it different?" "Arcturus is specially equipped to dredge the deep." "Beebe orders nets to be sent down over half a mile" "They return with hundreds of creatures, most are dead, many are alive, and most importantly, many species are completely unknown to science." "Beebe is astounded." ""When we realize the possibilities of deep-sea life still unknown to us, every haul of the dredge should be welcomed by an enthusiasm equaled only by the possible hope of communication with our sister planets."" "Beebe longs to know about life in this sunless place, where plants cannot grow." "How do creatures thrive in an animal world of total darkness?" "Beebe wants to see this alien ecosystem at work, with his own eyes." "Ocean life becomes Beebe's obsession." "He makes hundreds of descents, pushing his copper helmet... and his body... to its maximum depth." "At just over sixty feet, he reaches his limit." "Even obsession can take him no deeper." "Below him are chasms deeper than the Grand Canyon." "Barely beneath the surface, the reach of human exploration ends." "To dive much deeper is foolish, and deadly." ""I made my way to a steep precipice, balanced on the brink, and looked down, down into the green depths." "It would have been exceedingly unwise to go much farther." "At double the depth I had reached" "I would probably become insensible and unable to ascend."" "Ocean pressure can crush the unprotected human body at just three hundred feet." "Even submarines in Beebe's day can descend no deeper than four hundred." "Beebe is determined to descend into the darkness... and just as determined to return alive." "He needs radical new technology." "Beebe's well-publicized shallow dives make him an underwater icon... the brave explorer in the copper helmet is the Jacques Cousteau of the Roaring Twenties." "Back at the Bronx Zoo, Beebe sets his sights on the ocean depths... for two years, he draws up plan after plan for a deep-sea diving device." "He abandons them all as impractical." "In 1928, Beebe decides to move to the ocean to pursue his obsession." "His choice is Bermuda." "The Bermuda government donates a hospital on the outlying Island of Nonsuch." "Beebe knows that Bermuda is the perfect base for exploration of the deep Atlantic, one of the few places in the world where the sea floor plummets more than a mile deep, just off shore." "Attracted by the new science of oceanography, and by the dynamism of Beebe's character, the lab at Nonsuch draws young, talented researchers." "John Tee-Van, a New Yorker, has been Beebe's assistant since Teevan was nineteen..." "Teevan is Beebe's personal planner... harness for Beebe's unstoppable energy." "Twenty-seven year old New Yorker Gloria Hollister joins Beebe's team." "Hollister is typical of the young, fashionable, and brilliant group." "The research team works long hours at varying jobs, but Bermuda life is comfortable, and the climate ideal for a mid-ocean outpost." "Beebe's boundless energy inspires the group in discovery after discovery." "Gloria Hollister experiments with Beebe's copper helmet, continuing research in the shallows, following Beebe's footsteps down into the living sea." "But William Beebe cannot shed his dreams of the deep waters just off shore... fiilled with creatures that he has only seen in nets." "He is three years into his quest, and he still has no idea how to reach the living deep." "The answer will come from a rich stranger." "His name is Otis Barton." "Barton is 29, the high-spirited heir of a New England retailer." "He has read about William Beebe's deep ocean dream in New York papers, and he has the money to make it come true." "He offers to fiinance the design and construction of a device that can be lowered to at least 3000 feet, on one condition:" "that he gets to ride along." "1929, In a New Jersey machine shop," "Barton's hopes and dreams for the world's firrst working deep- diving capsule start to take shape." "It is a hollow sphere of inch-and-a-half thick steel." "Its strength lies in its round design... withstanding the relentless ocean pressure by equalizing its assault." "No glass is strong enough for portholes." "Barton orders panes of fused quartz, three inches thick." "These tiny windows might allow man's firrst glimpse of the living deep... but they too, must withstand the pressure." "The factory work takes more than a year." "Beebe is within reach of his dream." "Word comes from New York." "The diving globe is ready." "For Otis Barton, the price tag of 12,000 dollars proves to be a sizeable chunk of his fortune." "In May, 1930, Barton arrives in Bermuda." "He has come with the vessel that, if it works, will transport two men to the unknown deep... making history, and changing science." "On the docks of Bermuda," "William Beebe inspects the bizarre deep... sea capsule." "He calls the invention a bathysphere..." "meaning "deep sea ball"." "Barton's plan is simple." "The bathysphere will descend on a 3500-foot steel cable." "The hatch is just 14 inches wide, sealed from the outside with a 400-pound steel door." "The bathysphere is unwieldy and untested, but it is Beebe's best and only prospect to get to the deep alive." "June 3, 1930." "The journey to deep waters begins." "Beebe and Barton hire a retired British warship, the Ready, to serve as mother ship for the bathysphere." "The Ready isn't ready for much." "The tired old hulk must be towed to the deep water site so Beebe can make his firrst descent." "Beebe cannibalizes the winch from his old research vessel Arcturus and bolts it to the Ready's deck." "It will have to support the bathysphere's two-and-a-half ton weight, plus two tons of steel cable." "If the cable snaps or snags, the bathysphere, and the men, will plummet to the ocean floor, with no hope of rescue." "Beebe chooses a place a few miles off shore, where waters are a mile and a half deep." "The Ready is halted." "First... an unmanned test... to see if the bathysphere performs as planned." "As the power winch lets out the steel cable, an additional rubber-coated electric line is deployed by hand." "This line will allow them to use a searchlight, and more importantly, to communicate with the mother ship." "In just forty minutes the steel ball dangles 2000 feet below the surface." "The simple test ends in disaster." "The vital electrical conduit has snaked itself around the top of the capsule no fewer than forty-firve times." "Beebe fears that his adventure may be over, before it has even begun." "It looked as if we were to pay penalty at the very start for daring to attempt to delve into the forbidden depths." "Beebe has learned his firrst lesson in deep-ocean exploration." "Every attention must be paid to mechanical matters." "The ocean is not forgiving... the slightest miscalculation could kill." "It takes a full day to unravel the cable." "No damage is found." "Three days later, on June 6," "Beebe tries another unmanned test." "This time, the cables do not tangle." "But upon inspection," "Beebe and Barton discover a small pool of water in the sealed capsule." "All things considered, Beebe declares the test a success." "He'll risk his life... and Barton's..." "and attempt the decent." "Beebe and Barton outfirt the capsule with oxygen tanks and purifying chemical trays:" "soda lime for clearing carbon monoxide, and calcium chloride for absorbing moisture." "Beebe hasn't forgotten his firrst lesson... he will concentrate solely on the mechanics of his mission... dive one is not for science, but survival." "At the moment Beebe has waited for and dreamed of... he fiinds himself at a loss for words." ""I looked around at the sea and sky, the boats and my friends, and not being able to think of any pithy saying which might echo down the ages," "I said nothing, crawled painfully over the steel bolts, fell inside and curled up on the cold, hard bottom of the sphere."" "On deck, John Teevan supervises the mission." "He has served William Beebe for half his life." "Now Beebe's life is in his hands." "Beebe and Barton are big men..." "both of them, six feet tall, crammed into a sphere less than firve feet across." "Heavy hammers pound steel bolts tight, a deafening experience inside the sphere." "Gloria Hollister will communicate with Beebe by telephone... the firrst to record his observations, or to hear his fiinal words in the event of a catastrophe." "The fiinal bolt." "On deck, the team is tense, each person concentrating, hoping for the best, imagining the worst." "Nothing has been left to chance, yet no one has ever attempted anything like this before." "At one PM, on June 6, 1930, the bathysphere is swung over the side." "In less than a minute, they are sixty feet down, the range of Beebe's old copper helmet." "They are suspended by a thread of steel, with a mile and a half of ocean beneath them... and no hope of rescue if their equipment fails." "150 feet." "200, 250." "Barton closely monitors the oxygen supply." "Too little, and they will slowly suffocate." "Too much, and they can become disoriented." "At 600 feet, Beebe speaks from a place no living man has ever been." ""Only dead men have sunk below this."" "Beyond the tiny windows, the two ocean pioneers witness an eerie twilight." ""We were the firrst living men to look out at the strange illumination:" "an indefiinable translucent blue."" "Then, at 800 feet, with all going well, Beebe suddenly calls off the descent." "His instincts tell him, stop." ""Some hunch... some mental warning which I have had at half a dozen critical times in my life, spelled bottom for this trip."" "At this depth, Beebe knows that the ocean pressure would kill them in a way much more terrifying than drowning." ""There was no possible chance of being drowned, for the firrst few drops would have shot through flesh and bone like steel bullets."" "He orders Teevan to haul them home." "Two strangers in a strange device have dived deeper than any living men in history." "Consumed by the operation of the sphere itself," "Beebe has paid little attention to the world of the deep... but he has proven that humans can descend into the abyss and return alive." "His team greets him with congratulations, elation, and relief." "William Beebe and Otis Barton will descend again, deeper... not just for adventure, but for science." "Their journey has only begun." "The unlikely partnership of William Beebe and Otis Barton has created an entirely new fireld of science..." "manned exploration of the deep ocean." "They know they can get there..." "but what's down there?" "Now the real work of scientifirc observation begins." "On June 11, 1930, they are lowered again into the Bermuda chasm... more than three thousand tons of water pressure assaults the steel hull, but again it holds firrm... and offers Beebe and Barton a firrst look at the creatures of the ocean abyss." "Beyond the windows, the strange animals that had perished in the nets of Arcturus now move majestically in the deep darkness." ""When I came again to examine the deep-sea treasures in my nets," "I would feel as an astronomer might who looks through his telescope after having rocketed to Mars and back, or like a paleontologist who could suddenly annihilate time and see his fossils alive."" "The animals Beebe describes, such as shimm ering jellyfirsh, appear fragile... yet they are superbly adapted to the pressure, the cold, and the darkness." "It is a scientifirc revelation in a realm of constant peril." "Each square inch of the quartz windows holds back 650 pounds of water ...stresses that no submarine or diving suit has ever withstood." "They reach a depth of 1426 feet..." "and come home alive." "On June 13, 1930, in a telegram to the NY Times, the scientist and the inventor announce to the world that they have joined the ranks of history's great explorers." "Armed with confirdence in the bathysphere's safety," "Beebe permits John Tee-Van and Gloria Hollister to dive to 400 feet." "Hollister sets a new depth record for women." "In the weeks to come, the bathysphere is taken on repeated dives, testing its capabilities." "The impressionable Barton, in an act of generosity, grants William Beebe ownership of the bathysphere, on the condition that he be called back for future dives." "In October, the coming winter puts an end to fireld work off Bermuda." "The bathysphere is put in storage." "It is time for Beebe to return to the Bronx Zoo and write his reports." "But Beebe knows that writing reports is not the way to keep the public informed and the money flowing." "In newspaper interviews, magazine articles and a lecture tour," "William Beebe promotes oceanography in a popular and accessible way." "He likens his dives to visiting outer space... without leaving the Earth." "Beebe enlists an artist, Else Bostelmann, to illustrate the haunting images of the creatures seen from the bathysphere." "Bizarre marine animals that, at the time, no one but William Beebe has seen alive in the deep." "Beebe joins the ranks of the great explorers of his era, household names such as Charles Lindbergh and Richard Byrd, heroes of the skies." "Beebe believes his ocean exploration is of greater value." "The concrete intellectual returns from aviation are most superfircial... but adventuring under sea is an unearthly experience, and we are actually entering a new world."" "In the press, it is 'Beebe and his Bathysphere." "The man who built it... and paid for it..." "Otis Barton... is rarely mentioned." "Barton is stung." "In Spring, 1931, despite the devastation of the Great Depression, the resourceful Beebe raises enough funding for a scaled-down year of ocean research off Bermuda." "He returns to methods perfected on Arcturus six years earlier... deep-ocean dragging with nets." "As before, specimens are retrieved... creatures Beebe has seen alive from the bathysphere." "Nonsuch Island hums with activity." "But the bathysphere remains in storage, while Beebe writes another book to further promote his ocean science." "The year passes into another." "Then, Beebe makes a decision that makes headlines." "He and Otis Barton will attempt to descend to a depth of half a mile... and his communication with Gloria Hollister will be broadcast live on NBC Radio and on affiiliate stations around the world." "Beebe is determined that his bathysphere adventure not to go down in history as a stunt." "He must go back, and deeper, seeking a major discovery in the name of science... even if it means risking his own life." "September, 1932." "Storms lash Bermuda." "A bad omen for events to come." "Otis Barton decides to install a new window in the diving ball to permit better photography, despite Beebe's fears that any modifircation to the quartz ports would be dangerous." "The decrepit barge, Ready has been replaced by a tugboat called Freedom." "But the new mother-ship leaks and wallows under its heavy load, and on one occasion almost sinks." "Waiting for weather to clear, they make an unmanned test of the new design, sending it down to 3000 feet." "But the bathysphere is unusually heavy, straining at its fragile lifeline." "When the capsule surfaces, it is fiilled with an explosive cocktail of hyper-pressurized water and air." "Anyone in the bolt's path would have been decapitated." "Anyone inside would have been pulverized into a liquid." "It is a sober reminder of the brutal power of the deep." "For two weeks, Atlantic storms ground the world's firrst deep sea explorers." "Beebe and Barton remove the leaking window of the bathysphere and firt the hole with a heavy steel plug." "For the journalists Beebe has invited to witness his historic dive, there's nothing to report." "On September 22, Beebe decides to give the press their story." "He will risk his life, and Otis Barton's, on a perilous dive." "These are the worst conditions in which they have ever attempted a descent..." "Again, Beebe and Barton endure the painful climb across the steel bolts, squeeze through the narrow hatchway, and tumble onto the capsule's hard steel floor." "Beebe has set a goal of half a mile... almost twice as deep as they have gone before." "He is willing to dive dangerously deep to give the press what he's promised... the discovery of new forms of life, broadcast live." "Beebe and Barton pass 1400 feet, shattering their previous record, and continue down." "At 1700 feet, they are enveloped in eternal darkness... a new milestone." "Beebe has reached a realm where no light has ever shone." ""I was beyond sunlight as far as the human eye could tell, and from here down, for two billion years there had been no day or night, no summer or winter, no passing of time until we came to record it."" "He is rewarded for the risk he has taken." "At 2200 feet, thousands of pinpoints of light appear out of the blackness." "Strange creatures, thriving in the black, cold ocean depths." "Beebe witnesses these amazing animals in a flood of bioluminescence." "The number of creatures illumined, and the strength and color of these lights... all these have been far beyond all my expectations." "He broadcasts his fantastic discovery to the radio audience." "The world listens to this firrst-hand account of life at 2200 feet below." "But on the surface, the Freedom pitches and rolls, threatening to sever the capsule's lifeline." "Beebe calls off the dive, short of his half-mile goal." "On the return to the surface," "Beebe announces the most extraordinary sight of all... a 6-foot-long predator with vicious, glowing fangs... he names it the "Untouchable bathysphere firsh."" "Beebe's sighting remains, to this day, the one and only." "In a lifetime of well-publicized adventures, this is Beebe's fiinest hour." "He has broken his own depth record... described creatures never seen before... and broadcast the entire event to the world." "The achievement and William Beebe make front-page news... a triumph Beebe hopes will translate into dollars." "At the age of 55, Beebe's energy is inexhaustible, and his ambition unfettered." "He decides to make one more expedition to smash the half-mile barrier which has eluded him." "But the Great Depression has made private money scarce." "Beebe works for over a year, seeking funding." "Finally, the National Geographic Society agrees to fiinance a series of dives in summer, 1934." "Otis Barton has not been as fortunate." "A victim of hard times, he is scrambling to make a living for the firrst time in his life." "Barton launches a career as a movie producer, and spends 1933 fiilming an underwater adventure." "The fiilm is a flop." "But William Beebe has not forgotten the man who has helped make him an international luminary." "In 1934, he remembers his pledge to include Barton on his bathysphere dives, and invites Barton to join him." "For four years," "Barton has slipped into the shadows as Beebe's star has risen." "Despite his grievances, Barton agrees to join Beebe once again." "John Tee-Van and Gloria Hollister also return for what is to be the bathysphere's most dangerous descent." "After countless hours at deep-ocean pressures, the capsule needs an costly overhaul." "The price tag includes new quartz windows, a new oxygen purifirer, and improved communication lines." "On August 7, 1934, an unmanned test reaches 3,020 feet." "The refirtted capsule performs perfectly." "Satisfired, Beebe and Barton squirm into the steel chamber." "While Beebe's personal goal is to break the half-mile barrier, he will continues to relay his observations, convinced that the deeper he goes the more he'll discover." "And Beebe delivers." "He announces his discovery of three more new creatures... and gives them fanciful names." "Pallid Sailfiin" "Three-Starred Anglerfirsh" "Five Lined-Constellation Fish" "And once again, no one since has seen these firsh." "Barton attempts to document the sights outside the sphere, but his movie fiilm shows only faint, blurred images." "Only Beebe's descriptions endure." "The dive drops Beebe and Barton to 2,510 feet, shattering all old records, but still short of the half-mile goal." "Then, eight days later on August 15," "Beebe pushes the ball to its absolute limit." "It comes to a rest at a depth of 3,028 feet." "The spool of cable has nearly run out." "One more revolution could send the capsule in an unstoppable death plunge to the ocean floor." "At this depth, the bathysphere's steel and quartz withstands more than a thousand pounds per square inch of pressure." "Steel and quartz hold firrm." "William Beebe and Otis Barton pause at a depth no explorer before them has ever reached, for a moment of contemplation." ""The only other place comparable to these marvelous nether regions, must surely be naked space itself, where the blackness of space must really be closely akin to the world of life as it appears to the eyes of an awed human being," "in the open ocean, one half mile down."" "Even after his record-breaking descent," "William Beebe remains obsessed with the deep ocean." "But by the mid-30's the Depression has claimed too many victims, and privately funded exploration fades into memory." "Beebe must abandon his Bermuda headquarters in 1937." "Beebe returns to jungle research for the Bronx Zoo, now known as the Wildlife Conservation Society." "He spends the last years of his life in Trinidad, and never loses the love for action that once made him a household name." "But his fame slips away as years pass, and Beebe dies quietly, far from the limelight, in 1962, aged 85." "Otis Barton leaps from one scheme to another." "In 1948, he returns to the ocean in an improved bathysphere... and breaks his own record by descending alone to 4,500 feet." "But the world takes little notice..." "Barton dies in 1992, aged 93, and firve people attend his funeral." "Barton's record endures until 1960, when the US Navy submersible Trieste descends to 35,000 feet... more than six miles." "That record stands." "Today, most of Beebe's discoveries have been verifired." "The risks he took opened up a new era of exploration." "His gift to us is a new way of looking at the ocean, that thrives today as the modern science of oceanography." "In a crude copper helmet..." "in a primitive steel ball..." "William Beebe dared to challenge the ignorance of the ages, to search for life in a dark and hostile world." "His legacy is one of adventure and knowledge... a pioneer and a wanderer in the living sea." "A lonely outpost of coral and sand." "A thousand miles from anywhere." "Yet here, on a blue morning in June, 1942," "America and Japan fought for control of the Pacifirc and changed the history of the world." "It was one of the greatest Naval battles of all time, a turning point in the Second World War in the Pacifirc" "Midway." "Here in a few bloody hours, thousands of young men sacrifirced their lives." "Now to the shadowy waters off Midway comes Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the Titanic." "Ballard's quest is to fiind the American and Japanese aircraft carriers that were sunk in the battle, including the U.S.S. Yorktown." "But the ships are lost more than three miles down unseen, untouched on the ocean floor" "the fiinal resting place of many young men." "A story of martyrs and heroes, admirals and airmen... of secret codes and lucky hunches of lost chances and the painful cost of victory all in one monumental day." "Tragedy and Triumph." "The battle for Midway." "Midway." "It is hard to ignore the archaeology of war in this place." "Nearly a lifetime after the clash at Midway, four former soldiers walk the island's white coral sands." "Two Americans, Bill Surgi and Harry Ferrier, and two Japanese, Haruo Yoshino and Yuji Akamatsu all veterans of the battle." "The last time the veterans were here, they came as enemies." "Now, as respectful comrades, they will explore the meaning of their ordeal." "I met the two Japanese gentlemen, aviators, and, so I've made my peace." "And I have no animosity toward them." "They were warriors, like we were, just doing their job." "Welcome aboard." "All in their 70s now, the survivors have traveled thousands of miles to join undersea explorer Robert Ballard in the search for the firve aircraft carriers lost at Midway." "Ballard's quest, sponsored by National Geographic, is to fiind Bill Surgi's ship, the Yorktown, and Yuji and Haruo's carrier, the Kaga" "It will be the voyage of a lifetime for the vets." "May, 1942." "The United States and Japan are at war" "It is firve months since the devastating sneak attack on the Pacifirc fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii." "Now Japan is poised for total domination of East Asia and the Pacifirc." "Pearl Harbor." "In a dingy basement beneath command headquarters," "Navy code breakers have pulled off the greatest intelligence coup of the Pacifirc War." "Out of coded enemy radio transmissions they have teased out the secret plans for the next major Japanese attack." "A huge Japanese task force is preparing to strike a crippling blow against the already weakened U.S. Navy." "It will happen at Midway, as early as June 3rd-less than a month away." "Yet now the U.S. knows what's coming." "And the Americans will lie in wait, hoping to ambush the Japanese fleet." "Day one of the Ballard expedition." "To begin their exploration of the past the veterans travel with Ballard 180 miles from Midway to the place where Ballard thinks the Yorktown went down." "There is no X to mark this spot, just blue water and the occasional gooney bird." "But below the waves, Ballard believes he will discover history." "For here, young men came to firght and to die." "I mean, to be at the very spot, you know, this is where the battle took place." "This is like going to Gettysburg, this is like going to Bull Run, this is like going to Normandy." "This is where a great chapter in human history, tragic in many ways, was played out on the stage, and we're on the stage right now." "While Ballard studies the terrain, the veterans explore their own landscape of memory and loss." "This is what I looked like back then." "This was taken before the Pearl Harbor attack." "I think this is what saved my life." "This is the hat I was wearing at the time." "Very brave, very brave." "A little older, a little wiser." "Pearl Harbor, 1942." "Yorktown sailor Bill Surgi hears they are headed for a place called Midway." "The word Midway was a mystique, mystery, an awesome word to banter about." "We were not fully aware of what actually was going on there." "So all we knew was that we needed help at Midway." "Yorktown will rendezvous with her sister ships," "Hornet and Enterprise, at a point approximately 325 miles northeast of Midway." "Their mission: to ambush the Japanese." "At the same time, four japanese carriers," "Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, under the command of Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, are steaming for Midway." "These are the same machines and men who bombed Pearl Harbor." "The Japanese know nothing of the American trap awaiting them." "Many of the American airmen and sailors headed toward Midway have never faced enemy firre including Yorktown radioman and gunner Lloyd Childers." "Childers was attached to a torpedo bomber squadron." "He can't forget an intelligence briefiing he attended with other crews." "They said, if a 15-plane squadron of TBD's makes torpedo runs against a determined Japanese fleet if three of you get through to deliver torpedoes, you will have considered that you have accomplished your mission." "I immediately became alarmed, because the odds were not good." "Lloyd Childers will soon fiind out just how bad the odds really are." "It's the seventh day of the expedition" "Time to part the waves and take the firrst glimpse of the bottom three miles down." "Ballard's eyes will be the U.S. Navy's remotely operated robot explorer called ATV equipped with lights and video cameras" "Will Ballard fiinally, after years of planning and enormous effort, be able to fiind the downed Yorktown?" "For the veterans, the ATV is a time machine carrying them back to a distant world of fury and firre." "All stations, deploying the vehicle into the water now." "I remember walking up and down those decks and 56 years after the fact," "I'm gonna look at those decks again." "And it'll bring back memories." "The ATV has now traveled over two miles and almost firve decades." "The ocean bottom is getting close." "Twelve thousand feet The depth Ballard found Titanic." "All stations..." "past the one-firve-thousand feet." "Passing one-firve thousand feet, aye." "Approaching 16,000, the depth Ballard found the battleship Bismarck." "Nearing the sea floor, deeper than Ballard has ever gone before." "Under the relentless pressure of the ocean depths, key equipment on the ATV has imploded." "It has collapsed into itself, reducing metal and glass to rubble." "The ATV is crippled." "Just how badly no one yet knows." "It's a disaster that may mean the end of the expedition." "June 3, 1942" "The white sands of Midway are now heavily defended by hundreds of young American servicemen" "and dozens of bombers, firghters, torpedo planes." "The battle is less than 24 hours away." "Among those waiting is a small six-plane torpedo bomber squadron." "Both the planes and their young crews are untested in combat, but the young pilots are eager to face the Japanese." "Seventeen-year-old Harry Ferrier served as a radioman and gunner." "You don't think about the fact that people do get killed, you know, as a teenager, which I really was." "You think you're immortal." "And we had what we thought were the best airplanes that the Navy had come up with and we would really give the Japanese the hell," "I guess you'd say, and come back." "And it didn't work that way." "Dawn, June 4th nearly six months to the day since Pearl Harbor." "Two hundred-forty miles from Midway," "Admiral Chuichi Nagumo readies his attack." "He is supremely confirdent of the fiinal outcome and utterly unaware of the American aircraft carriers slowly closing in." "My spirits were, well, up to then, we had won ever battle we fought, so we thought we would win again." "Now is the moment of attack." "Six a.m." "With Japanese aircraft bearing down, the American planes on Midway scramble into the air." "With them is the torpedo bomber carrying Harry Ferrier," "Bert Earnest and the third member of their crew," "Jay Manning, the turret gunner." "They're going after the Japanese carriers." "Earnest, Ferrier and Manning clear the island just minutes before enemy planes hit Midway." "The Americans firght back with everything they've got." "Less than half an hour later, the firrst Japanese strike is over." "But if the enemy aircraft carriers are not stopped soon, Midway may fall." "Six-firfty a.m. June 4, 1942." "A hundred-and-sixty miles from a battle-torn Midway, the torpedo bomber carrying Ferrier," "Earnest and Manning head straight at the Japanese fleet." "As they near the carriers, the Japanese firghter attack becomes more intense." "And tragically effective." "But very shortly, Manning had stopped firring, and so I looked back over my shoulder to see what was going on, and he was just hanging down in his harness in the turret and obviously had been killed." "And then, really, the next thing I remember was waking up with my head hanging down and blood pouring off my head." "Their plane is shot up." "Their controls and compass out of commission." "Their comrade Jay Manning is dead." "But Ferrier and Earnest are still alive and now they have to fiind their way home." "I decided to climb up above the clouds and see if I could see anything, and I did." "And when I got up there," "I saw a great big plume of smoke over to the east." "...and realized that probably was Midway, which had been attacked." "They manage to land safely in a plane that is literally shot to pieces." "After getting patched up at a fireld hospital," "Harry Ferrier waits for the return of the other firve planes in his squadron." "He waits in vain." "But it was afternoon, you know, early afternoon, and it became obvious that our airplane was the only one that had come back, that the other firve did not, and we eventually just had to accept the fact that they" "all firve were shot down." "It is day eight of the expedition." "Ballard's robot explorer, the ATV, is still crippled." "And the Navy doesn't know if they can get it up and fully running g again." "They need more time, the one thing Ballard can't spare." "Fortunately, the sonar is still going strong." "Instead of just waiting," "Ballard leaves the phantom Yorktown behind to look for Japanese carriers at a site 170 miles away." "The Japanese veterans have not seen these waters in 56 years not since the death of their ship, the Kaga." "Yet here, time is erased." "My heart is racing in anticipation of seeing the ship." "I keep remembering the image of the sinking carrier." "I hope it is found soon." "After all the frustration and delay, the ATV makes it to the bottom of the sea." "But all too soon, Ballard realizes the bottom is barren" "no carrier, no planes just rocks and mud." "No excuses." "I just didn't fiind it." "Period." "Round one." "To Kaga." "I'll get to Yorktown." "I really want the Yorktown." "That's where I'm headed." "But one unspoken question is inescapable." "If the sonar was wrong about fiinding the Kaga, is it also wrong about the location of the Yorktown?" "Seven a.m. The waters off Midway." "Japanese commander, Admiral Nagumo, is still completely in the dark about the trap awaiting him." "Eight-twenty a.m." "Admiral Nagumo receives truly startling news." "His scout planes sight the one thing they never expected to see an American carrier." "Nagumo is shocked to discover he has a real firght on his hands." "Now he must decide on his next step." "Should he launch a limited strike immediately?" "Or regroup, refuel, and rearm all of his forces and then obliterate what he believes to be the one American carrier?" "He decides to wait." "It is a decision that will change the course of the entire war." "While Nagumo waits, the American pilots wing their way towards his carriers." "Yet very quickly, many of the American squadrons get separated from each other." "Most of the torpedo bombers fiind themselves on their own without firghter protection from the fast, lethal Japanese Zeros." "One after another, the young torpedo bomber crews attack just as they have been taught stead on low, straight at the target" "directly into murderous enemy firre." "And one after another, they are blown out of the sky." "The Enterprise torpedo squadron 18 out of 28 men killed." "The Yorktown's 21 out of 24." "And of the 30 from Hornet's torpedo squad, only one man makes it back." "Yet not a single torpedo makes a single successful strike against any of the Japanese carriers." "Despite all the sacrifirce, the Americans are losing the battle." "America is facing defeat at Midway." "And the enemy commander, Admiral Nagumo, is set to launch a massive attack against the American carriers." "Nagumo's crews work feverishly to get nearly a hundred warplanes into the air." "Abandoning all caution, they leave explosives and gasoline strewn everywhere." "The decks are a disaster waiting to happen." "Less than a hundred miles away, 19,000 feet up, is the last American hope, the dive bombers." "But none of them can fiind the enemy." "The Japanese have taken a 90 degree turn northward to engage the U.S. ships." "Then Enterprise's dive bombing squadron plays a hunch and changes course." "And in their sights appear the four Japanese carriers" "Kaga, Akagi, Soryu and Hiryu." "And there is not a Japanese firghter anywhere to be seen." "The enemy firghters are still too busy defending their carriers against the last of the American torpedo planes to stop the dive bombers high above." "It's a sight Lt. Dick Best has been longing for." "I was amazed to see that a, the deck was a bright yellow, because our decks had been stained a north Pacifirc blue ever since the start of the war." "And in addition to the deck being a bright yellow, the big rising sun up forward of the elevator, it was glowing red, like a tremendous advertisement." "Here we are, we are the Japanese Navy." "He dives toward the rising sun." "And releases his bomb as does the rest of his group onto Japanese decks now crowded with torpedoes, bombs, gasoline, planes-and men." "She was a mass of flames from bow to stern, with tremendous eruptions coming up every four to firve seconds as a bomb must've hit." "Japanese survivors float hour after hour in the water, in silence with the dead and dying as Kaga burns." "Most are rescued by other Japanese ships but not all." "We were fortunate to have been rescued so quickly." "But there were still men left swimming g and they committed suicide." "In firve short minutes Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu have been devastated scores of planes destroyed, many hundreds of young men killed." "Many of the Japanese airmen are caught in the sky above their burning ships with nowhere to land." "In just firve minutes, the cream of the Japanese Navy is fimished." "But the battle is far from over." "At firrst, I would like to read a letter to my friends here." "Ballard's search for the Japanese carriers has failed." "And the two Japanese veterans will soon leave the Laney Chouest." "But the voyage to Midway allows Haruo and Yuji the opportunity to bid their fallen comrades one last farewell and to remember all the young men who died in battle." "We believe that the innumerable spirits who sacrifirced their lives for their country should be forever honored for their distinguished service." "We are honored to have fought alongside you in battle." "Veterans from both countries have overcome past animosities and have pledged a renewed peace." "Spirits, please rest in peace." "Yes, I was thinking, as Haruo and Yuji were paying homage to their shipmates, that I, too, lost 45 shipmates at this very spot." "As all the planes in my squadron, except the one I was in, were actually shot down here among the Japanese battle force, so this was a very solemn moment for me as well as for them." "Eleven a.m. on June 4th." "Admiral Nagumo regroups his surviving planes on the deck of Hiryu the only carrier to escape American bombs." "There is still a chance to emerge victorious." "The Japanese pilots take off, heading for the closest American carrier" "Yorktown." "The enemy dive bombers score three hits killing more than a dozen men." "But, unlike the Japanese carriers, there are no bombs, torpedoes or fuel on deck, waiting to explode." "For all the smoke and firre, Yorktown is still afloat." "Two hours later, as the Yorktown continues to patch herself up, a second wave of enemy planes target the carrier." "Yorktown's firghter pilots scramble eager to engage the enemy." "Down goes one Japanese torpedo bomber after another." "But still the enemy comes." "I look out there and here's this torpedo coming, and it looks like a brand new nickel just come shining through the water, right beneath us." "And I said, Oh, my God, this is it." "And it goes off." "One American carrier is down." "The Japanese carrier Hiryu must be stopped-fast." "When they fiind it, Lt. Dick Best is right there, once again." "And I did look back when I was far enough out to the west to turn, and she was aflame, and burning just the way the ones in the morning had been." "I felt myself to be the Lord of creation at the time, the sense of accomplishment, and fulfiillment of revenge is so sweet that" "I don't think I ever felt anything as intensely again in all my life." "Caught in the inferno on the Hiryu is Taisuke Maruyama, one of the torpedo pilots who had just crippled the Yorktown." "The maintenance crews and emergency crews who had tried to extinguish the firre were injured by the explosion, and many lost their legs and hands." "The military doctor was operating on them on the deck, soaked in blood." "The troops were burnt black, dead bodies strewn across the deck." "Hiryu, Soryu, Akagi, Kaga." "By the end of the day, all four Japanese carriers have been destroyed." "Hundreds of young men dead, maimed, burned, or left to drown." "Twenty-four hours later, the injured Yorktown is still afloat and headed home escorted by the destroyer Hammann." "What nobody sees is the enemy submarine below the surface with two sitting ducks in her sights." "Japanese torpedoes split the Hammann in two, taking 81 men to the bottom." "And mortally wound Yorktown." "For nearly a day, the carrier lingers on the surface, refusing to die." "Yorktown Radioman Lloyd Childers is in sick bay, on a nearby ship, with serious wounds to both legs." "He watches his carrier go down." "This huge ship slowly sank below the water, the waves, until it disappeared and we watched it until it was completely gone." "It's very brutal business." "My other thoughts were that it's a terrible thing that so called civilized nations could do things like that to each other," "convincing me that we're not really civilized yet." "It is Day 19 of the expedition." "It has been hours since Robert Ballard sent a robot vehicle down nearly 17,000 feet to fiind the USS Yorktown." "And half a century since Bill Surgi has seen his carrier." "Ballard has only a left to fiind the Yorktown." "After six long hours, the ATV fiinally reaches bottom, over three miles deep." "All they see are rocks that have probably rested here undisturbed for a thousand years." "I wanna keep looking to the left." "Yet within a few moments of touching down, they see something something that shouldn't be there." "A smooth patch of ground clear of rock as though something had swept across the bottom." "Something unnatural, something man-made." "They follow the trail." "Bingo, bingo, bingo." "Suddenly a glint a shiny metallic glint catches the video eye." "Dead ahead, range 150 feet." "Keep it nice and high." "I want him to look down and away." "And now the sonar on the ATV itself is announcing something big and oddly beautiful dead ahead." "There it is." "Stop, stop, stop, stop." "Contact." "It's defimitely Yorktown." "There's no question about that." "The Yorktown at last exactly where Ballard thought it would be." "Hold that, hold that still." "Try to hold that." "I'm lookin' up my ready room right now this under the bridge on the island, on the flight deck." "Too much, too much, all the people that did their jobs." "I can see them doin' them now." "Keep coming up." "Oh, Yorktown, you're beautiful." "Okay, now I want to pivot to the right to zero-nine-zero." "The Yorktown-1,100 miles form Hawaii, 3,000 from Japan, over 3 miles below the surface." "Her 19,000 tons sunk halfway into the mud; her bow crushed." "Yet Yorktown is still intact." "The bridge." "The flight deck." "The pilot house." "She is nearly untouched by time, her guns still pointing skyward, to fend off the fiinal attack." "I walked across the deck and I still got it." "Thanks again for fiinding it." "My pleasure." "And on behalf of the crew, I'm glad to be here." "Me too." "That's the boat." "I got to see my ready room." "Maybe next time I'll get to see where I got all this banging at." "Well, we'll be back." "That's right." "It ain't gettin' away now" "Thank you." "How does it feel, Bill?" "I'm here, they're not." "So I'm representing the crew and I did my job." "June 4th, 1942." "America has won the battle for Midway and stopped Japan cold." "The Japanese Navy would never recover from its losses." "For the Japanese pilots, the defeat at Midway and the death of their comrades is just the firrst agony." "They will return home to fiind themselves kept in isolation, in silence." "They treated us like prisoners of war." "We were shut away from outside contact since they were afraid we might leak information." "You see the veterans who've come back, whether they're Japanese and Americans" "And we brought them here to this spot, and it spoke to them." "Every one of them cried." "They didn't laugh." "They didn't celebrate." "They all cried." "They're hurting." "And this is a half a century later." "So it's their story and what they're telling us is, don't do this." "This is not fun." "It's not wonderful." "Comrades in arms who sleep in darkness at the bottom of the ocean for 50 years after the end of the war, thank you for your sacrifirce." "I've brought a tribute, flowers from Japan, chrysanthemums, which I've placed on your grave." "My heart is full!" "Thank you." "It's diffircult, you think how many people gave up their lives that day and they call George Gay and they call eventually Bert and I, you know, you're heroes, but you know, I've said" "and I'll always go to my grave believing that the real heroes died that day." "They earned a victory." "1914." "The Panama Canal is completed." "The Atlantic and the Pacifirc are joined." "The most ambitious construction project since the great pyramids of Egypt." "The work has spanned nearly half a century, and claimed the lives of 25 thousand men and women." "Now it is fimished and the world is suddenly smaller." "But behind this epic tale, there is another story of two unsung heroes." "One is an engineer from the Rockies with the vision to move mountains." "The other, a soft-spoken Alabama physician whose enemies are ignorance, disease and death." "Together, they take on a wilderness that had defeated the best engineers in the world." "Without either one, the Panama Canal could not be built." "And yet, one of these visionaries will suddenly and mysteriously walk away before the canal is fimished." "And take the secret of his departure to his grave." "The Republic of Panama, Central America." "A barricade between two oceans." "With a blanket of jungle." "And a spine of mountains." "Today, 14,000 ships sail through these peaks and forests each year." "Their miracle highway is the Panama Canal." "50 miles long." "One of the wonders of the modern world." "A miracle that, on a rain-soaked day in July, 1905, no one in Panama would have believed possible." "At the port of Colon, a new American fireld boss has arrived to take control of a dying dream." "At age 52, John Stevens has built more miles of railroad than any other engineer in the world." "The Rocky Mountains have been his home." "And spanning them his greatest challenge... until now." "In Panama, yellow fever has killed hundreds of workers, most of them from the West Indies, and terrifired the rest." "The men call it The Great Scare." "But his orders come directly from the President of the United States." "In his firrst address to Congress" "Roosevelt vows to chop the Isthmus of Panama in half and complete The Big Ditch." ""We must build the Isthmian Canal..." "No single great material work which remains to be undertaken on this continent is of such consequence to the American people."" "Roosevelt's motives are patriotic, economic and military." "A canal would trim nearly a month from the travel time between New York and San Francisco." "Making the shortest path between the oceans a superhighway of American commerce and the lifeline of the nation's burgeoning two-ocean Navy." "Roosevelt inspires thousands of young American laborers to set off for Panama." "But they disembark in a steaming hell." "Soaring heat... punishing rains... ancient jungles." "Temperatures top 130° and it can rain daily for eight months." "In the unbroken forests, lethal predators await the innocent arrivals." "But the most mortal dangers are too small to see" "Confused, chaotic, and deadly." "Teddy Roosevelt's Big Ditch Project is a quagmire sucking up millions of dollars, and hundreds of lives." "To slice through the bureaucratic nightmare," "Roosevelt authorizes John Stevens to ignore any orders that do not come directly from the White House." "Stevens agrees." "And he advises the much younger president to keep his promise." "I'm to have a free hand." "I'm not to be hampered or handicapped by anyone high or low." "And I'm to stay on the Isthmus only until success is assured." "It is no accident that Stevens has been recruited." "For the Canal to succeed, it must fiind a way through the mountains of the Continental Divide, the backbone connecting North and South America." "Roosevelt hopes America's greatest railway man can save his Canal ...and ensure his political future." "Stevens is a railroad man, not a Washington insider." "Day after day he tramps through the construction zone, focused on every detail of the job." "His cigars are so enormous that the men call him "The Big Smoke."" "But they respect him immediately." "Finally, they have a boss who will listen." ""Mr. Stevens did not talk much but asked questions and could that man ask questions!" "He found out everything I knew." "He turned me inside out and shook out the last drop of information."" "Frank Maltby, Division Head" "After decades of back-breaking labor, workers have slashed a route through the jungle that the canal is to follow." "By 1905, excavation is concentrated in a mountainous area of the Continental Divide." "Stevens is appalled at what he fiinds." "Trains lie rusting off their tracks." "Steam shovels lay idle." "Workers have no blueprints, no guidance, no hope." ""I believe I faced about as discouraging a proposition as was ever presented to a construction engineer." "I found no organization..." "no answerable heads..." "Nobody was working but the ants and the typists."" "In Panama, it has been this way for more than 30 years." "For the Americans now;" "for the French in the 1880s." "Having succeeded at linking Europe and the Orient by building the great Suez canal in Egypt, the French try to repeat their success in Central America." "They believe that slender Panama should be an easy target." "It is a fatal miscalculation." "Disease, accidents, and exhaustion take the lives of 22,000 laborers." "One man must succeed where the world's best have failed." "Workers tell The Big Smoke that their greatest worry is the treacherous Culebra Cut, the mountain pass where the French lost the most men." "At Culebra, they must dig out a man-made Grand Canyon." "A twisting, nine mile, water-fiilled chasm as deep as a 25 story building." "Like the French, the Americans don't know what to do with the staggering amount of dirt that is being dug out of Culebra." "It is simply dumped wherever space can be found." "Creating unstable mountains of debris that crumble in the continual rains." "At Culebra, the Spanish word for snake," "John Stevens, the great American engineer is stymied." "Here, the French fiinally surrendered." "Here, John Stevens must fiind a way through." "Topography is only half the problem." "In the work camps, where three quarters of the work force are impoverished West Indians, the human toll is appalling." "Even Roosevelt's eager American volunteers, in their segregated barracks, are barely surviving on rations of crackers and sardines." "Crammed into hovels with no toilets or runnin g water." "Tormented by dysentery, parasites and fear of yellow fever ...The Great Scare." "Desperate to defeat The Great Scare - to restore the spirits of his frightened workers " "Stevens visits Dr. William Gorgas, chief medical offircer of the canal." "In the yellow fever ward of the Ancon hospital," "Dr. Gorgas introduces the victims of this horrible plague." "Like Stevens, Gorgas has been hand-picked by the President." "At 49 years-old, he is a light-hearted Southerner plunged into a nightmare of tropical sickness." "In Cuba, newly freed from Spanish rule by Roosevelt and his Rough Riders," "Gorgas has succeeded in virtually eliminating yellow fever." "Panama has proved to be a far more diffircult assignment." ""When the United States took possession in 1904 the Isthmus was generally looked on as ...the most unhealthy spot in the world" "Probably it would not be extreme to say that there is no other place that has as bad a reputation."" "He has been in Panama for more than 13 months when John Stevens joins him." "For Dr. William Crawford Gorgas, it has been a year of anguish." "At Ancon, he relates the toll - 47 men dead of yellow fever in the past few months." "Hundreds of other lives claimed by malaria, pneumonia, chronic dysentery, and, even, Bubonic plague." "John Stevens knows that his canal cannot be built without human labor." "Stevens has to act quickly." "He has come to build a canal but must flix a disaster." "In Panama less than a week, ." "he knows what he must do." "It is a decision that will shock everyone." "With undiminished energy despite the heat and rain," "John Stevens spends seven grueling days inspecting every inch of the biggest excavation in human history." "The men expect Stevens to order them to speed up their work on the President's Big Ditch." "Instead, he commands them to lay down their tools." "Hundreds of workers and technicians are shipped home to America." "John Stevens tells them that the Panama Canal is unfirt for further labor." "In Washington, the new President waits anxiously for progress reports from his new chief engineer." "But the news from Panama is stunning." "The project has been shut down!" ""Regardless of the clamor of criticism... as long as I am in charge of the work... and I am confirdent that if this policy is adhered to, the future will show its absolute wisdom."" "Stevens understands that the canal's fatal problem is not the mountains, but the men." "Disease and fear sap their souls before they raise a shovel." "Stevens turns to Dr. William Gorgas for help." "Like the French before them, the Americans live in morbid terror of catching the disease they call Yellow Eyes, Yellow Jack, or The Great Scare." "A horrifying disease." "Delirium and death can follow within eight hours of infection." "Yellow fever patients firrst complain of crippling muscle pain." "As the aches intensify, body temperature rises steeply." "The skin and eyes turn yellow, thirst becomes unquenchable" "and patients lose consciousness." "Spasms of black vomit signal the fiinal crisis." "Fewer than 50 percent of patients survive." "Gorgas believes in a new theory that explains the cause of yellow fever-mosquitoes." "In 1901, scientists have discovered that the Stegomyia mosquito carries the yellow fever virus from person to person." "In Panama, only Gorgas understands the mosquito's deadly secret." "Dr. Gorgas fiinds that yellow fever mosquitoes live in towns, not jungles." "To destroy them, he will need to fumigate every puddle and rain barrel on the Isthmus." "He envisions the largest, most costly public sanitation campaign the world has ever seen." "It is not a vision shared by the canal bureaucracy." "For eighteen months, offircials scoff at the mosquito theory and turn down all of Dr. Gorgas's requests for funds and supplies." "But John Stevens listens." "Only a healthy work force can rescue Teddy Roosevelt's dream." "He will withdraw his men from the mountains, and send them to war against the mosquito." "But Stevens does not ignore the other war he faces." "The battle against Panama's impassable geography." "Somehow, he must fiind a route beyond Culebra." "Through the jagged jungles to the sea." "He studies the French plans and realizes that the millions of tons of dirt and rock must be not only excavated, but removed entirely." "Simply piling the spoil at the side of the cut is an invitation to landslides and disaster." ""Effircient transportation is nearly always the key to success in construction." "If dirt is to fly, there must be a smooth and uninterrupted movement of trains."" "Stevens conceives a radical new plan for disposing of the dirt." "He draws on his experience with railways in the Rockies." "Instead of hauling men, in Panama, the trains will be used to cart the dirt away." "But to do it, the entire rail system must be revamped to handle such a heavy load - exactly the kind of thing Stevens does best." ""There is no element of mystery involved." "The most important stage in any great undertaking is the prepatory stage." "The digging is the least thing of all."" "While Stevens attacks the Continental Divide," "Dr. Gorgas sends out his own battalions." "Fumigation brigades burn sulfur, clean up sewage, and seal windows." ""It would be impossible to fumigate more extensively than we did... in 1905." "We had about 400 men engaged in this work, and they went over the whole town three times, fumigating every house in the town, besides fumigating every block each time a case of yellow fever occurred in that block."" "Screens are installed and water barrels are covered." "Ditches where mosquitoes breed are drained." "Quarantined clinics treat 900 patients a day and keep them in mandatory isolation." "Stylish, sleepless and impervious to the heat," "Gorgas works around the clock." "He stretches Roosevelt's promise of an unlimi ted budget to the breaking point, importing 120 tons of insect powder," "America's entire output for a year." "He orders $90,000 dollars worth of copper screening in a single shipment." "Nearly double his previous yearly budget." "It is the largest and most expensive-war ever waged against tropical disease." "Meanwhile, John Stevens firghts his own battle." "He dismisses the existing rail line as" ""two streaks of rust and a right of way."" "Using his legendary status as a drawing card," "Stevens lures the best railroad men in America to the Isthmus." "Within six months of his arrival, he triples the work force to 24,000." "Stevens constructs the most durable railway in history." "Double-sided tracks of the heaviest rails on earth allow the world's heaviest freight cars to travel in both directions," "24 hours a day." "Track-shifting machinery moves huge sections of rail line faster and easier." "A telegraph system, new bridges and massive locomotive sheds take shape." "Stevens thinks big, and buys big." "He has decided that the French suffered because their machinery was too small." "He will not repeat their mistake." "Every weapon in his arsenal is enormous." "His coal-burning steam shovels weigh 45 tons each." "Mechanical dinosaurs." "Three times larger than anything used by the Parisians." ""Now I would liken that [French] plant to a modern one as baby carriages to automobiles." "This is no reflection of the French, but I cannot conceive how they did the work they did with the plant they had."" "But Stevens has learned another lesson on the railroads." "That morale is more valuable than machines." "And the best way to restore morale is to keep workers clean and dry." "There are three diseases in Panama." "They are yellow fever, malaria, and cold feet;" "and the greatest of these is cold feet." "The labor camps built during the French regime have tumbled into misery." "Unpaved streets are ankle-deep in mud." "Waste is emptied onto passerby from second story windows." "Stevens wades in like a Wild West sheriff." "Closing brothels, demolishing decrepit barracks, building a new city of paved streets and sanitary dwellings." "The Canal line begins to look like a continuous city under construction from one end of the zone to the other." "As 1906 begins, firve months after being in Panama, he feels he has made Panama livable." "He is ready to begin digging at Culebra again." "A few months later," "Dr. William Gorgas declares victory over The Great Scare." ""Take a good look at this man, boys." "For it's the last case of yellow fever you will ever see." "There will never be any more deaths from this cause in Panama."" "Panama is busy again ...healthy... and fearless." "Along the entire length of the Canal corridor, the racket of hammers and saws and the roar of engines can be heard." "President Roosevelt's dream of splitting a continent is being brought to life again." "As a new railway is pushed through the jungles of Panama," "John Stevens rarely rests." "It is the summer of 1906, Stevens drives himself to exhaustion- and expects his men to do the same." ""I gauge everybody by myself." "I work from 14 to 18 hours." "You may make mistakes but there is only one mistake you can make that will be fatal with me, and that is to do nothing."" "Stevens believes his workers are safe from the Great Scare." "But yellow fever has been relatively easy to eradicate." "Now a far more formidable enemy must be confronted... malaria." ""If we can control malaria," "I feel very little anxiety about other diseases." "If we do not control malaria our mortality is going to be heavy."" "The Anopheles mosquito that transmits malaria is not the same insect that carries yellow fever." "It is an entirely different species and far more diffircult to control." "She lives longer, flies further, and thrives in the stagnant waters of the Panamanian forests." "Right where John Stevens's new railway is being built." "The latest arrivals from North America and the West Indies are in gravest danger from being bitten." "Most Panamanians, as Gorgas knows, develop a natural immunity to malaria in childhood." "But nearly every new comer-including Dr. Gorgas and his entire medical staff- become infected within months- enduring recurring episodes of fever, chills, depression, and intense pain." "Gorgas warns Stevens that the new settlements he is building along his railway are placing thousands of American workers at risk." ""I suppose it is no exaggeration to say that any man who spends a night in one of these villages will contract malaria."" "John Stevens knows the danger of malaria." "But also knows that work must continue if the canal is to be built." "All along the line, the pace of construction intensifires." "Laborers from North America, Europe, the Orient and the West Indies arrive." "Many bring their families, building a new life in a new country." "Feeding the masses is an enormous job." "Bakeries turn out 40,000 loaves of bread a day." "Stevens builds laundries, and recreation halls for the men and their families." "An amazing ice house brings the loudest cheers." "The very idea of ice-cream in the jungle delights the crews." "Music fiills the air." "They begin to call Culebra "Stevens City."" "But the deadly plague of malaria is never far away." "Dr. Gorgas and his fumigation brigades keep ahead of the track gangs." "Cleansing the new villages." "Pushing deep into the wilderness." "They drain swamps and spray oil on cesspools to prevent eggs from hatching." "Stagnant water is routinely tested for the presence of larvae." "A modern running g-water system as good as in an American city is installed and acres of brush are burned." "Daily doses of quinine- made from the bark of a tropical tree - are part of each man's diet." "They call the bitter-tasting drink a "Panama cocktail."" "As Dr. Gorgas battles the mosquito, John Stevens battles the mountain." "This is the ultimate roadblock- the Continental Divide." "Stevens calculates that he must dig a channel nine miles long and 272 feet deep through solid volcanic rock." "It will require that man and machines move enough dirt to build the Great Pyramids of Cheops 63 times." "John Stevens has been given command of the grandest construction project in four thousand years." ""Even with the fiinances of the most powerful nation on earth, we are contending with Nature's forces." "When we speak of a hundred million yards of a single cut not to exceed nine miles in length, we are facing a proposition greater than was ever undertaken in the engineering history of the world."" "Making a sea-level canal from the Atlantic to the Pacifirc means cutting deep into the mountain range." "The French spent nine years trying, and failed." "Now Stevens wonders how he will conquer Culebra." "The problem is water." "The tropical rainy season arrives in April." "Massive flooding, daily down pours and the constant risk of deadly landslides." "Stevens has never faced anything like this in the Rocky Mountains." "He realizes that to build a sea-level canal here will be a deadly undertaking that could take twice as long as anticipated." "And there is another enemy." "When the rain comes, the placid Chagres River swells with anger, rising 20 feet in just one day." "The floods will inundate any canal Stevens tries to dig through it." "Even if he moves the mountains, he cannot stop the rains." ""The one great problem in the construction of [the] canal is the control of the Chagres River." "That overshadows everything else."" "Stevens now realizes that a sea-level canal is not possible." "The mountain is too big." "To dig it all the way down to sea-level and transport it away is beyond their current technological capabilities." "There is, however, another way, one that will use the geography of Panama rather than conquer it." "It is a plan that will change the course of history." "But firrst he needs to convince the President." "To sell his revolutionary new plan to the President of the United States," "John Stevens must sail to Washington." "For a man who is chronically sea-sick, the voyage is as forbidding as the destination." "At the White House, Stevens unveils his amazing new blueprint." "He intends to lift the world's largest ships up one side of the Continental Divide, then down the other." "He will dam the Chagres River to create a huge artifircial lake." "And build a series of mammoth locks to conquer the steep spine of Panama." "In essence, the mountain won't be cut down to sea-level." "The ships will be floated up to the mountain and sailed across a bridge of water." "It is an audacious plan." "A clear statement that Stevens believes that the French struggled for nine years and lost the lives of 16,000 men to a doomed dream." "But in 1906 no-one knows if Stevens's plan will work either." "Theodore Roosevelt has promised Stevens his unconditional support." "Now he proves it." "In February of 1906, Roosevelt signs a Presidential sanction authorizing the construction of Stevens' new high-lake lock plan." "Fifteen months after taking charge of Panama," "Stevens is fiinally ready to build the President his dream." "Roosevelt must convince Americans that John Stevens and William Gorgas can conquer nature and geography." "Convince skeptics that a canal can be built." "To prove his faith, the President decides to stage one of the 20th century's firrst media events." "He and the First Lady will visit the Big Ditch themselves." "It is a decision that captivates the nation." "No American president has ever visited foreign soil while in offirce." "To grasp firrst-hand the diffirculties of the project," "Roosevelt insists on being in Panama during the rainy season." "On the second day of his visit, three inches of rain fall in two hours." "One inch falling in 15 minutes." "It is the worst downpour in Panama in firfteen years." "With photographers never far away, the young President strolls through construction camps, dines in a mess hall with the men and shares meals with John Stevens." "He visits the Culebra Cut, and delivers stirring prep talks in the jungle, telling workers that they are soldiers firghting a glorious war for America's destiny." "The laborers are impressed and honored." "Their applause rivals the thunder in the tropical skies." ""You, here, who do your work well in bringing to completion this great enterprise, will stand exactly as the soldiers of a few, and only a few, of the most famous armies of all the nations stand in history."" "With his signature showmanship, the President, in his famous white suit and Panama hat, leaps aboard one of the mighty 95- ton Bucyrus shovels." "The men cheer this icon of American know-how, a reminder that, for Americans, there is no obstacle too formidable." "But another war is being won, far from the spotlight." "On the second day of his tour, Roosevelt quietly slips away from the cameras and the secret service to pay Dr. Gorgas an unannounced visit." "The two men walk through an almost deserted ward." "It is a quiet moment of proud victory." "Stunning evidence that the Alabama doctor has brought health and sanitation to deadly Panama." "The Great Scare is over." "Roosevelt reciprocates with the public praise Gorgas has hungered for since he firrst arrived in Panama." "When Roosevelt praises the miracle in Panama and cites Stevens and Gorgas by name, they become celebrities across America." ""They are doing something which will redound immeasurable to the credit of America, which will benefirt all the world, and which will last for ages to come." "Under Mr. Stevens and Dr. Gorgas this work has started with every omen of good fortune."" "While the President boasts and bellows, the mountains of Panama remain unconquered." "Stevens has devised an ambitious plan, but it remains no more than a blueprint." "To make the plan a reality," "Stevens will begin with the damming g of the Chagres River, creating the largest man-made lake in the world." "Dozens of villages must be evacuated, their residents relocated to higher ground." "A new city, called Gatun, must be built from scratch." "Surveying parties outline the contours of a body of water that will cover 164 square miles." "The entire region must be clear-cut by hand." "This job alone will take almost firve years to complete." "And with this new plan will come massive concrete and electrical work- unlike anything the world has ever seen." "Things that John Stevens has little experience working with." "Such a massive construction project will also invite bureaucratic red-tape, and increased political interference from Washingt" "The very things that John Stevens has fought against all his life." "Meanwhile dynamite crews risk their lives and begin blasting into Culebra to loosen the mountain from its ancient domain." "Stevens continues his daily routine of surveying the work in Culebra for himself." "96 million cubic yards of dirt will be moved by train, along hundreds of miles of new track." "Enough dirt to filll enough hopper cars to circle the globe four times." "The work force healthy and excavation well under way," "Gorgas and Stevens have fiinally set in motion a plan to bring down the mountain." "It is a plan that will prove Stevens right - and fiinally get the Canal built." "But there is one more surprise." "One of these men will walk away." "Less than three months after President Roosevelt's confirdence-boosting visit," "John Stevens quits the project and leaves Panama." "It is a mysterious gesture." "He offers no reason to his workers, to Dr. Gorgas, or his own family." "Not even the President." "Theodore Roosevelt is deeply angered." "Publicly, he conceals his anger, telling friends that Stevens is unable to withstand the punishing Panamanian climate - that he has become ill and sleepless." "But privately the president feels betrayed." "Others believe that the solitary mountain man could not endure the massive bureaucracy of the canal commission or the contract system that was forced upon him." "It is a secret he takes to his grave." ""The reasons for the resignation were purely personal." "I have never declared these reasons and probably never will, as they are private."" "Nearly a century later, no one knows why the greatest civil engineer of his era abandoned the most important project of his lifetime." "Suddenly and without warning." "Perhaps he sensed that the hardest work was already behind him." "That history had anointed him to plan the canal, then move on while others built it." "In eighteen months, John Stevens succeeded where others had labored in vain for generations." "He provided decent housing and food for his loyal workers." "And pushed through a jungle railroad network to move huge quantities of earth." "Perhaps most important of all, he cast the weight of his prestige behind Dr. Gorgas." "Understanding that fear, not mountains, blocked the path between the seas." "In 1914, seven years after Stevens's departure," "Dr. Gorgas silently paddles a small wooden canoe through the freshly-cut canal." "He is the firrst to travel voyage through the Canal." "The offircial opening of the canal won't happen for three more months." "All around him is evidence of John Stevens' vision." "A magnifircent bridge of water that lifts ships out of the ocean and sails them smoothly across the Isthmus of Panama." "After 30 years and the loss of thousands of lives, the dream of Columbus, has been achieved." "The union of the oceans." "And the shrinking of the world." "It has taken seven years to complete the Canal." "The President asks the Army to fimish the job." "And though it would be wider and deeper, it would resemble almost perfectly the lock system that John Stevens had convinced" "Teddy Roosevelt to build across the Isthmus." "And it is a spectacular vision." "The locks at both ends are the largest in the world." "Over 80 feet high, they are firve blocks long and stand as tall as a six story building." "Monstrous T-shaped cantilever cranes that can be seen from miles away float plates of steel through the air." "More concrete- four and a half million barrels- than has ever been used in history is poured into the locks." "Six million rivets are needed to build the lock gates." "Gatun Lake, at 164 square miles, would be the largest man-made lake in the world." "And Gatun dam, made from the spoil of the Culebra Cut, is the largest in the world to be made of earth." "It is a mile and a half long and half a mile wide at its base." "The Canal is the work of more than 100,000 laborers from 97 different countries." "Most would not live to sail through it." "The fiinal bill." "Over $600 million dollars." "In an age when a worker was fortunate to earn a dollar a day." "The single greatest engineering undertaking in American history." "Teddy Roosevelt never returns to the Big Ditch to see his dream brought to life." "He leaves offirce in 1909 and dies in 1919, seven months before America's Pacifirc Fleet firrst passes through the Canal." "John Stevens fiinds another mountain and another railway." "In 1917 he is sent to Russia by President Woodrow Wilson to reorganize the Trans-Siberian Railway." "Not until 1937, at age 83, does he return to Panama to gaze upon his masterpiece." "He dies in North Carolina six years later at age 90." "Only Dr. William Crawford Gorgas sees America's work in Panama through from start to end." "By the time he returns to the United States, he has completely eradicated Yellow Fever from the Canal Zone and reduced malarial infection to rates lower than most American cities at the time." "The physician's work in Panama brings him great public acclaim." "He is appointed Surgeon General, a supreme honor for a country doctor from Alabama." "He leads the American Medical Services Corps to Europe during the First World War." "In 1920 he dies a hero and is given a state funeral." "One man battled mountains." "The other, the tiny bearers of death." "This is their monument." "The bridging of a continent." "The union of the seas."