their fronds about their barnacle-encrusted timbers and the creatures of
the deep playing in and about the decks and rotted rigging, lie hundreds
of wrecks. Many a splendid ship with a valuable cargo has gone down off
a dangerous coast; many a hoard of gold or silver, gathered with
infinite pains from the far corners of the earth, lies intact in
decaying strong boxes on the bottom of the sea.

To recover the treasures of the deep, expeditions have been organised,
ships have sailed, divers have descended, and crews have braved great
dangers. Many great wrecking companies have been formed which accomplish
wonders in the saving of wrecked vessels and cargoes. But in certain
places all the time and at others part of the time, wreckers have had to
leave valuable wrecks a prey to the merciless sea because the ocean is
too angry and the waves too high to permit of the safe handling of the
air-hose and life-line of the divers who are depended upon to do all
the under-water work, rigging of hoisting-tackle, placing of buoys, etc.
Indeed, it is often impossible for a vessel to stay in one place long
enough to accomplish anything, or, in fact, to venture to the spot at
all.

It was an American boy who, after reading Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea," said to himself, "Why not?" and from that time
set out to put into practice what the French writer had imagined.

Simon Lake set to work to invent a way by which a wrecked vessel or a
precious cargo could be got at from below the surface. Though the waves
may be tossing their whitecaps high in air and the strong wind may turn
the watery plain into rolling hills of angry seas, the water twenty or
thirty feet below hardly feels any surface motion. So he set to work to
build a vessel that should be able to sail on the surface or travel on