Edward Ellsberg (1891–1983)

Written over 90 years ago, the volume I checked out from the library is 89 years old, torn, stained, missing picture, rebound at least a couple of times and sporting 5 punctures that go 40 pages in from the title page. This doesn't read quite like fiction, as it really isn't, but is sort of an incident by incident short story retelling of how the S-51 submarine was raised from 160+ feet of water in stormy seas. What is mostly absent in this narrative is anything above the level of what was going on at the scene. Since the impetus for this mission was almost entirely political and the initial urge was to contract out the inevitable failure, there must have been a fair deal of second guessing going on when the winter called a halt and new divers had to be trained, not to mention when a storm wrecked the first effort at raising the S-51. Clearly, the S-51 was raised, and much was learned and new technologies established.… (mehr)

A solid tale solidly told of bringing up gold from a sunken treasure chest. Front loaded with a great deal of technical information about the bends and deep sea diving equipment extant in the 1920s, the meat of this book is retelling of barely survivable diving mishaps/disasters, spiced with how to get drunk 30 fathoms deep and a battle with pirates.

Written by my great uncle, the son of late 19th century Jewish emigrants turned Episcopalian, this illustrates the difference between the early 20th century notion of blending pot and our current notion of diversity. The named good guys are relentlessly anglo-norman, the bad guys include the Spaniard Pedro and the pirate crew is a motley scum of the earth. The cook valet Fritz is so stereotypical 'darky' it just plain hurts. As for character development, it would be hard because there is hardly a whiff of character to begin with. A bit of banter among the 4 divers is about it.… (mehr)