The Sunken Submersibles of Coney Island

I can’t believe it’s taken me ten days to think of this post, but on the other, prior to this was perhaps too soon and too close, and tempers were flying oddly high. For the post is obviously inspired by the recent implosion of the Titan submersible. Like everything of late, this event seemed to tear everyone on social media in two; I found myself in both camps. On the one hand, I am a huge Titanic buff (Travalanche even has a special section with a dozen Titanic related posts). And I’m also an enormous “exploration” buff. I get genuinely excited when contemporary people manage to expand the boundaries of our known universe through whatever means. Back in the classic era, some explorers even played vaudeville — people love to live through the courageous exploits of others. On the other hand…21st century “extreme tourism”, as some kind of anarchists’ playground for rich billionaires (whose asses may need to be saved on the public dime), not so much. We were very sorry to hear about the loss of life…yet glad that it was quick…yet angry because it was unnecessary, both because of the recklessness of booking passengers on a craft made of experimental materials, and because…we have robots for that! I’m an alum of the University of Rhode Island: oceanography and robotics are the only things they’re good at!

But we’ll let sleeping dogfish lie. As we say, in recent days we recalled two Coney Island stories involving submersibles, and we thought it would be fun to share.

Neptune Diving Bells

The photo above is from the Astroland Archives and is taken from the Images of America book Coney Island and Astroland by Charles Denson, which everyone should own. When it first opened in 1962, Astroland was a much more exciting park than it was when it closed four decades later. One of the reasons was this attraction, the Neptune Diving Bells. Each bell could take 15 riders into a 50,000 gallon tank, down to a depth of 30 feet, where they could look out the portholes and see fish and even dolphins! The diving bells weren’t unique to Coney. Several other American parks had them, such as Playland in San Francisco. As an educated guess, I can imagine that ultimately the attraction wasn’t cost effective. A ride like this is spectacular but costly to maintain, and insurance costs for a contraption where you literally have to supply oxygen to amusement park visitors must be through the roof (or the overhead hatch, as the case may be). I shudder to imagine the shenanigans that Brooklyn show-offs might try on a ride like this. “Hey, Ethel! Get this! The sign says ‘Don’t pull out the stopper”! I wonder what happens if you pull out the stopper-?” For a color image and more info, see the Coney Island History Project, also a project of Denson’s.

The Yellow Submarine

In 1967 a local shipyard worker named Jerry Bianco got the idea to build a submarine out of scrap metal for the purposes of salvage excursions to the wreck of the Andria Doria, off Nantucket Sound. Named Quester 1, it was painted yellow as in the Beatles song (the movie wouldn’t be released for several months). Accounts differ as to the nature of the accident, but the fact remains that when it was launched in Coney Island creek…something happened. A hatch had been left open or something due to a miscommunication and it sank to the bottom. Coney Island Creek is not very deep though, and so most of the time the top portion of it is visible. Oh, yes, it is still there! Where would it go? Bianco couldn’t afford to move it, and there is certainly no submarine removal item in any government budget. It now lies amongst the ship graveyard in Coney Island Creek to this day. I took this photo out there in 2017 without knowing what I was looking at. (It’s that thing with the yellow protuberance, just to the right of that decaying square wooden structure in the water):

Henceforth let it be said that, just as all roads lead to Coney Island, so too, do all waterways.