Deep Briny

There are many kinds of anchorages; but it is safe to say that there is one place where a vessel will never anchor. Some SO miles from the coast of Japan, the Nipponese man-of-war Manchu dropped its sounding lead. The sounding wire rattled from the drum. Ten fathoms of it ran off into the depths, 20 fathoms, 30 fathoms, 100 fathoms. The drum rolled and rolled and rolled--a mile of wire sank into the briny deep. Two miles, three miles, four miles. Still no bottom. Five miles, and the drum still paid out the wire. Down, down, six miles. The wire was not much longer. Still the lead went down. At last, the drum stopped rolling. Nearly six and a quarter miles of wire had been paid out-- 32,644 ft.--the end of the wire; and still the lead dangled clear of the bottom far, far down in the absolute dark of the cold sea; and little fishes, strange little monsters with radio-light spots, wandered around it in the deep.

The lead was at the end of its tether, so it was hauled in. A greater ocean depth than ever before discovered had been found. The greatest ocean depth previously discovered was 32,113 ft.--found by a German vessel off the coast of Mindanao (Philippines) in 1912. How much deeper the hole off Japan may be, none can tell. At any rate, it is a great deal deeper than the deepest part of the Atlantic yet found-- 27,922 ft. just east of Haiti.