Mr. J. E. Williamson

              LEE KEEDICK presents
MR. J. E. WILLIAMSON
Distinguished Explorer
AND
Originator of Undersea Photography and Motion Pictures

Figure


LECTURE SUBJECT:
BEAUTY and TRAGEDY UNDER the SEA
Illustrated by A Marvelous New Array of Submarine Motion Pictures

Exclusive Management of LEE KEEDICK, 475 Fifth Avenue, New York
Manager of the World's Most Celebrated Lecturers




Actual undersea combat between man and shark

INTO A NEW WORLD
Under the Sea
with J. E. WILLIAMSON

Queer fish discovered in the depths by Williamson


THE mighty deep has ever held a fascination for man.  Beneath its great expanse of 148,000,000 square miles, the ocean is literally one vast teeming foment of life, and in its eerie depths are strewn the wrecks of treasure laden ships.  We conjure up visions of rotting hulks bathed in soft filtered sunlight, while myriads of gaily colored fish keep watch in the shadows of the coral forests; we picture wrecks gripped in the perpetual darkness of the vast silent depths, jealously guarded by strange, weird monsters; we read of sunken cities, a continent engulfed—the lost Atlantis.  But again and again has the grip of the deep refused to surrender to the puny efforts of man the secrets of this undersea world of mystery.

And now comes a fascinating young man laying open these secrets that the great sea has been treasuring up for ages.  With the use of a marvelous invention he has been able to descend to the floor of the ocean and with the aid of his cameras, both still and motion picture, Mr. J. E. Williamson is giving the world a remarkable record of his adventures under the sea.  Only the imaginings of Jules Verne can suggest the rugged beauty, the strange terrors and the really valuable scientific revelations of Mr. Williamson's films.  And the interest which the pictures arouse is heightened by his lecture, Beauty and Tragedy Under the Sea, in which he explains the submarine mysteries and relates his experiences.


Originator of Undersea Photography and Motion Pictures
Mr. Williamson is the originator of undersea photography and motion pictures.  While a cartoonist on the Virginian Pilot of Norfolk, Virginia, some fourteen years ago, young Williamson conceived the idea of utilizing, for photographic purposes, the flexible metallic tube invented by his father, Charles Williamson, for deep sea salvage and submarine engineering.  This tube, which formed an open pathway to the floor of the sea where it terminated in a steel chamber, was operated through a surface vessel above.

Young Williamson went quietly to work designing and modeling a special chamber which he believed would enable him to take actual photographs beneath the surface of the sea.

Imagine the excitement a few weeks later when he produced the results of his thought and labor.  His newspaper devoted an entire page to an account of his enterprise.  His pictures—the first ever made under the sea—and the story of his plans to make motion pictures in the clear waters of the West Indies, created such a sensation that the story, with its illustrations, was reprinted in all parts of the world and in every civilized language.  The Scientific American acclaimed Mr. Williamson's achievement in originating submarine photography, the creation of A New Art.


The first photograph ever made under the sea



The photographic chamber designed by Mr. Williamson for his famous work



Nature has fashioned a fairyland in the gardens of the sea






Trees of living coral growth, the fantastic work of the Polyp


Beauty amid the tangled wreckage of a lost ship


Alexander Graham Bell descending into the Williamson Tube to view the wonders of the deep

First Motion Pictures Under the Sea
The Williamson Submarine Expedition to the Bahama Islands, West Indies, followed and within a year undersea motion pictures, the first in history, reached the screen, revealing the beauties of the marvelous sea gardens in a panoramic journey over thirty leagues of ocean floor, and proving of greatest value to scientists the world over and a source of keen delight to millions of people.  Next, through the medium of the Williamson photographic invention came the realization of the dreams of Jules Verne with the picturization of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea which was followed by many of Mr. Williamson's productions, reaching a peak in photographic perfection when he recently produced the first undersea motion pictures in natural colors.



The Williamson Deep Sea Apparatus
Picture a ship fitted with a powerful bending tube forming an open pathway for you to the floor of the sea hundreds of feet below, and you have a portable hole in the sea.  Here is an open air shaft, through which anyone can descend and remain indefinitely under normal atmospheric pressure in comfort in the observation chamber below, viewing and photographing the illuminated sea or sea-bottom.

The Williamson Tube is not a stiff iron pipe or a telescope arrangement; it is a flexible tube three of four feet in diameter, made of steel and drop-forgings, and can be lengthened or shortened within the construction of its folding walls in much the same way as an accordian, reminding one of a huge Chinese lantern.  The fact that it is flexible, bending and giving with the wave motion and currents, makes it a safe and adaptable means for man's entry into the world beneath the sea.

The tube terminates in a massive globular steel chamber with a huge glass window designed especially for photographing in the depths.

Lowered into the sea from the ship above are banks of powerful lamps of Mr. Williamson's own design, which flood the scene with light, illuminating great areas of the sea bottom.



The Tragedy of the S-4
In view of recent submarine disasters, perhaps the most sensational part of Mr. Williamson's lecture and pictures is that reacting the trapping of men in a sunken submarine, the horror of chloride gas forming to add to their terror and suspense, while divers outside tap their words of encouragement, receiving the brave answers of the imprisoned men as they tap back their gradually weakening cries for help.

And then—to show a way that these trapped men might have escaped, Mr. Williamson's films reveal some startling scenes, which have been viewed and approved by high United States Naval authorities, showing how men can pass in and out of a sunken submarine boat.  The airlock and the self-contained diving suit are the lock and key to this escape method.

The pictures show with startling forcefulness the operation of the airlock, which is a compressed air chamber adjacent to the torpedo room.  A valve controls a manhole in the bottom of the submarine.  When this hole is open the air pressure is adjusted sufficiently to keep out the water, and divers can enter and leave as they wish.  Members of the crew are shown donning the self-contained diving suits and leaving the submarine by way of the airlock, reaching the surface in safety.  The self-contained diving suit consists of a helmet and a suit covering the upper portion of the body and is chemically equipped to provide pure air for the diver for one hour.



Tapping a message to trapped men in a sunken submarine



Like characters in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, divers walk on ocean's floor



One of the terrors of the deep—a man eating shark


But even in the case of submarines not equipped with the airlock, there are other possible means of escape, one of which is depicted.

Mr. Williamson also shows, in a graphic way, how, by the use of the Williamson Tube, an open pathway is established permitting officers to descend to the actual scene of operations.  Great banks of undersea lights illuminate the scene, fascilitating the work of rescue.

Thus, instead of divers being lowered into the pressure and darkness in an effort to locate the sunken submarine and gain first hand knowledge while the Navy Department and the whole world stand helplessly by, the officers themselves can descend to the actual scene of a disaster and plan and direct the work of rescue and salvage from their position of advantage at the floor of the sea.



A Submarine Fairyland
With the magic of color photography under the sea, Mr. Williamson shows in his films a group of amazing scenes as beautiful as a visioned fairyland.

The noted Oceanographer, Dr. Roy W. Miner, of The American Museum of Natural History, with whom Mr. Williamson recently joined forces in an expedition to the great barrier reef at Andros Island in the Bahamas, who descended through the Williamson Tube to obtain his first look into this fairyland from the unique position in the observation chamber at the floor of the sea, gave his impressions in Natural History as follows:

I shall never forget my first view of the barrier reef as seen through the window of the tube.  Great trees of the reef-forming coral rose from the reef platform constituting a veritable stone forest with closely interlacing branches, a marble jungle which melted into the pearly blue haze of the watery atmosphere.  Multitudinous schools of reef fishes were swimming in and out through forest aisles in stately procession, each species keeping much to itself in exclusive fashion.  Jacks, yellowtails, black angels, blue angels, blue parrot fishes, groupers, red snappers, and countless smaller brilliantly colored species were visible in great numbers.  Once an enormous jewfish came slowly into view around a coral tree trunk, its huge mouth gaping as it swam slowly toward the tube and gazed at us with bleary eyes.  As the tube was moved slowly back and forth by the men above, an ever-changing panorama revealed itself to our view.

Suddenly into the midst of the strange beauty of the submarine jungle Mr. Williamson came floating down equipped with diving helmet.  Now he advanced like some strange monster with slow half-gliding strides, grotesquely peering at us through the goggle-eye windows of the helmet.  A long crowbar was lowered to him, and placing it like a lance in rest, he assailed a large branching coral, which fell at a touch from the point, and fastened to a lowered rope, was quickly hauled to the surface.

From the Andros barrier reef went forty tons of coral up to the surface in this way and these rare specimens—one of them weighing two tons—are now in the new Hall of Ocean Life at The American Museum, for Mr. Williamson in his work of exploration has often left the security of his tube and donned a diver's helmet and suit to reach the sea floor.

His thrilling experiences—his encounters in the ocean currents with sharks, morays and other denizens of the deep are some of the rare treats of his lecture on Beauty and Tragedy Under the Sea.





Mr. J. E. Williamson about to descend into the sea to gather corals for the American Museum of Natural History.

Mr. Williamson A Delightful Speaker
Mr. Williamson has a charming personality, a fine stage presence, a pleasing speaking voice, and a fascinating story, unmarred by any suspicion of boastfulness in the narration of exploits as thrilling as any ever recorded.  Indeed, not even that other daring explorer of another element, Colonel Charles Lindbergh, speaks of his achievements with more modesty.  He treats his subject objectively, rather than personally; he might be speaking of someone else.  And yet his story loses none of its charm, none of its absorbing interest, none of its thrill, through this manner of treatment.

He divests the purely scientific of its technical phraseology; and, on the other hand, in the narration of submarine perils that eclipse the wildest dreams of fiction, he modestly refrains from superlatives.  He becomes the newspaper man again, the recorder of an interesting bit of contemporary history; and the fact that he has been the principal in it is, to him, merely incidental.


Mr. Williamson in a coral forest selecting specimens for the new Hall of Ocean Life in the American Museum of Natural History






Figure