Throckmorton's "The Lost Ships"

Boyhood reading revisited.

Honor Frost: The Practical Diver

I've written about my hero Honor Frost recently here, and I'd like to share a bit more from her non-fiction Under the Mediterranean. Here are two passages of worthy practical import, and which feature nail polish in particular:

Light in diving is somehow illustrated by a cathedral: for the first few metres where the windows are there is colour, but the floor below is in shade, though there is still quite enough light and one can read if one wants. The explanation of the gradual disappearance of colour underwater is, of course, that as the sun's rays diminish with increasing depth, so the world goes into monochrome. Red disappears first, after about 15 metres, yellow is the last to go at about 30. I discovered this for myself when I cut my finger at 50 metres. My blood oozed out black as ink, and when I looked at my nail varnish it was black too. I can now gauge the depth at which I happen to be swimming by the colour of my nails. (7)

and

Curiously enough, I had less difficulty in equipping myself for underwater drawing than John had had on land. Lead pencils work underwater and so do india-rubbers. Any sheet of light-coloured metal, such as aluminium, makes a serviceable tablet. Notes and drawing made in the water are traced on to paper later, so that a tablet can be re-used. When I do not have to improvise, my standard equipment consists of a portable metal drawing-board with a spring clamp down one side, such as architects use in the field. Sheets of plastic "paper", cut to size, are inserted in the spring to form a block; they can be detached after use. The only modification that had to be made to this portable board was the addition of a second clamp, held by bolts, on the opposite side of the board. Without this, the sheets tended to slip out of the spring when submerged. Plastic or metal rulers are equally serviceable in water, but for longer measurements I find that an arrow from my fish-gun (graduated in units of 10 centimetres in nail varnish) is handier. It is also less likely to be mislaid on a boat, where fish-guns are always carefully stowed. (172)

I'm always trying to match books and readers, and I do like to share the books I value, but I have yet to find another proper reader for Frost's semi-autobiographical study of the essential problems in the proper approach to understanding archaeologically marine sites and remains. The level of expertise may have been superseded, particularly with the advent of more refined technology and diving experience being embraced by serious scientists, but the comprehension of and the appreciation for the underlying issues remain timeless.

Annotations: Honor Frost's "Under the Mediterranean"

As part of a research project back in Fall 2008, I produced an annotated bibliography of 129 nonfiction texts, all associated with aquatic subjects. I read far further in water-related fiction and nonfiction in the last eight months, but I decided on the specific bibliography in relation to teaching my courses, English 1A, English 93, and the prospective elective "Literature and the (Aquatic) Environment." Of course, not all 129 books on my list would suit our courses, but I had to read (or reread) to discover such fitness or lack of fitness. I share my findings for each one itself and for the critical model at work.

Here is one of my favorite books in the bibliography:

Frost, Honor. Under the Mediterranean: Marine Antiquities. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1963. Print.

I love this book by Honor Frost. I would place it in my personal top 10 for non-fiction, though I haven't yet found another reader who will appreciate this text as much as I do. Still, I think certain chapters would work well in the right combination for English 1A, mostly because Frost has that elusive, yet vital quality of being able to ask the right questions. To my mind, asking the right questions is the key to any situation or endeavor, whether intellectual, ethical, emotional, or physical.

Here Frost exhibits her wonderful questioning in a volume half-memoir and half-analysis. Alongside Cousteau, Dumas, and Dugan, Frost was one of that first generation of divers in the Mediterranean who ushered in the dawn of scuba and the practical applications of such diving in the fields of archeology and history. Frost was the first female in such illustrious company, a friend and freelance underwater draftsperson and artist, an essential component for transforming underwater archeology from mere scavenging to an accurate, methodical, fully scientific discipline. Frost begins with her own introduction to diving (in a well in England), but most of the book is organized around types of wrecks, sites, or underwater problems, and the autobiographical material is used to illuminate as needed. Frost focuses her narrative via the problems and the questions that need or needed to be asked; this approach raised the book from the mere record of what-happened to a much more valuable and conscious model of the methodological.
For taste, I want to quote her description of a shipwreck (pictured above). After emphasizing particularly how, if understood properly, a shipwreck may be a time capsule of it's historical present far more than a building or site on land, Frost clarifies the essential and necessary differences between an excavation of a wreck on the sea floor and a building on land, with the essential differences in attitudes necessary for proper handling of either site. Here are Frost's words:

A ship is a mobile, integral mechanism: it reaches the sea-bed only by accident. As a wreck it undergoes a sea change before it becomes stabilized within the local geographical environment. Buildings, by contrast, are imposed on the ground by man's will; even in decay they maintain this direct relationship with the earth. These are differences that must be taken in account in marine excavation. A collapsed machine can be reconstructed if, first, we understand the way in which its parts have been redistributed, and second, we examine its remains in their entirety as a once functional unit. The excavator's approach to architectural remains is quite different, for the size and character of a ruined building can be assessed by trenching through its foundations at strategic points. (Frost, xxi)

Note how Frost moves in this quotation from clarifying the intellectual significance of a shipwreck to the necessary understanding of the underwater archaeologist, the excavator who must imagine the trajectory of the wreckage from the remains on the sea floor and who must have faith --no-- who must have the confidence in that wreckage as the residue of a fully functional, and thus understandable, machine, the ship. In short, when you keep the intact puzzle in mind, you may discern the relationships and placement of the pieces of the puzzle, scrambled though they may be, so much more readily and successfully. Frost says all that so much more succinctly, don't you think?

I've found this passage regarding the ship as "mobile, integral mechanism" useful as a reader and teacher of literary texts and literary lives. I've also approached most people and situations, I realized after reading this passage, as if they were "shipwrecks," if I may say that. We, all of us, reach where we are, become who we are, partially by will and largely by circumstance. And yet the direction of our original voyaging, say, may help others (and ourselves) to better understand the present self. Lord Byron, to use a convenient example, was an obvious "shipwreck" of sorts, and you can chart much more accurately his life, his work, and his effects on others if you keep the "mobile, integral mechanism" in mind even as you approach, say, the "collapsed machine" of 1816 in the wake of scandal, separation, and exile. Byron, as a model, kept afloat far longer than his critics would have credited; Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage III and IV being wondrous monuments to his swimming ability and survival.

As a historical note, "free diver" in Under the Mediterranean and in Cousteau's books refers to a scuba diver, not to a snorkeler as the term is used nowadays; in context, the scuba diver was so much more free than the brass-helmeted diver, trapped upright in lead boots, that he (and she) superseded.

Additionally, Honor Frost, though English, learned to dive in the French style, which arose from breath-hold spearfishing for food during World War II and after, so she brings the swimmer's and the snorkeler's prejudices and judgments to matters underwater. She began as a true free diver, one who begins with the human mechanism and organic considerations rather than with technology and the mechanical imposition of will onto recalcitrant matter and problems. As a swimmer, she's very attuned to the power and effects of gravity and flow, and I like that, whether physical or intellectual. I want to leave this entry with one last quotation:

The law of gravity becomes complex under water, but it is not beyond our comprehension.

I salute Honor Frost and her book as worthy models. And, rereading her book always makes me want to get in the water, the ocean, and to look around for myself.

Annotations: Delgado, Doubilet, and Drumm

As part of Fall 2008's research project, I have produced an annotated bibliography of 129 nonfiction texts, all associated with aquatic subjects. I read far further in water-related fiction and nonfiction in the last eight months, but I decided on the specific bibliography in relation to teaching my courses, English 1A, English 93, and the prospective elective "Literature and the (Aquatic) Environment." Of course, not all 129 books on my list would suit our courses, but I had to read (or reread) to discover such fitness or lack of fitness. I share my findings for each one itself and for the critical model at work.

Here are the next three books in the bibliography:

Delgado, James P. Adventures of a Sea Hunter: In Search of Famous Shipwrecks. Vancouver: Douglass & McIntyre, 2004.

This book is solid and informative, but finding shipwrecks just seems too technical and less fun than in the days of Mel Fisher. (Reminder: see Daley's Treasure.) I need to reread this book; maybe it's more fun than I recall (since I read it on an airplane to Hawaii, restless with anticipation of the diving ahead).

Doubilet, David. Water Light Time. New York: Phaidon, 2006.

Excellent book of photographs, particularly underwater photographs and just-at-the-surface photographs, much less common (and much less sought after, I guess). I put this book next to the 3-D photos when I want to give someone the best sense of being in the water without spraying them with a hose or tossing them off a dock. In other words, visually effective and engaging.

Drumm, Russell. In the Slick of the Cricket: A Shark Odyssey. New York: Penguin, 1997.

If you have ever seen Jaws, well, you've met the main figure of this book through the crusty, obsessive shark-killing character played by Robert Shaw, though the Frank Mundus of Drumm's book is a bit smoother than the film's Quint. Mundus is the star of the show, though Drumm's descriptions are the key to the book's effectiveness. I have been tempted to use this book in English 93 or 96, both for the obvious attraction of any shark-story and for the portrayal of psychology in action. I felt salty after reading this book, though also a bit depressed. In this world, there are too many shark-killers and too many dead sharks, but that's the subject of a different book.