Volume I: Narrative History

Chapter 7 (1914): In the Briny Deep

At long last, on July 22, 1914, a paying audience saw The Terrors of the Deep for the first time, as part of a three-day public showing of the film at the North Avenue Theatre in New Rochelle. At the same movie house approximately 300 people came on August 6th as the invited guests of Charles Hite to view the five-reel Note offering edited from 20,000 feet of underwater photography taken in the Bahamas by Carl Louis Gregory. Earlier the feature had been screened privately at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Press Club in Washington.

Gregory had sailed to Nassau in the Bahama Islands, arriving there aboard the Ward line steamship Vigilanta on April 7th. Remaining until June 9th, Gregory descended into the ocean depths in the Williamson Submarine Tube, an air-filled iron tube with a spherical viewing chamber at the end, which was dropped into the sea from a barge. The device had been tested for nearly a year before Gregory's arrival.

The Moving Picture World, July 11, 1914, carried a detailed article: "Motion pictures made at the bottom of the sea are the very latest thing in the film industry. The first release of this kind is to be made coincident with the opening of the Broadway Rose Gardens in the form of a five-reel feature entitled The Terrors of the Deep. The submarine movies are being made by the Submarine Film Corporation, the strange operations of which are made possible by an invention called the Williamson Submarine Tube, named for Captain C. Williamson, who has spent approximately 30 years bringing it to its present state of perfection. J. Ernest Williamson is general manager of the company and George M. Williamson treasurer; both these officers are sons of the inventor of the tube.

George M. Williamson, of the company, personally posed for the first six scenes of the big submarine feature 45 feet under the surface of the ocean, at the bottom of Nassau Harbor, Bahamas Islands, May 1 of the current year. He was engaged in trying to pick up "pieces of eight" Note from an old Civil War blockade runner, and the film shows him sending aloft cannon balls and salvage from the sunken wreck.

Carl L. Gregory staged the production safely guarded in the nine-foot chamber of the Williamson Submarine Tube at the bottom of the Jules Verne, the floating stage of the Submarine Company. Williamson was in a diving suit and was given signals from above on command of Gregory. While at that depth Williamson could have worked from three to five minutes. His work admitted of no rehearsals under the water; he had never had a diving suit on before.

In an interview with John William Kellette, the scenario writer, sometime after he had undergone his novel experiences as the first man to act before the motion picture camera at the bottom of the ocean, Mr. Williamson had a number of interesting things to say. "The extreme peace which seemed to pervade in the fish was the most impressive thing about the experience," he said. "I was a little nervous lest I should forget the code of signals which had been arranged and upon which my life depended, but, fortunately, no trouble resulted. My brother Ernest worked the air pump, so I knew that I was in careful hands at that point, but I wasn't so sure about the natives that had charge of the haul up rope. And, believe me, 45 feet down is just as good as 100,000 feet down if anything goes wrong. But nothing went wrong from above. The only disagreeable thing, besides the enormous pressure from the outside, which seemed to make an effort to get my backbone acquainted with my breastbone, was the continual suction sound in my ears. I really felt like I was walking on air. Anything I touched, however slightly, sent me away as if by repulsion or recoil, and I was bobbing about like a cork even if I had 50 additional pounds of lead strapped to my feet. The helmet weighed considerable, and before I got into the water that weight was depressing on my shoulders, but once underneath the pressure seemed to depart and I was as comfortable, so far as weight is concerned, as if I had on my best Sunday clothing.

"Because of my father's experience in the Williamson Submarine Tube, which makes these under-the-sea pictures possible, I naturally wanted to be the first man in the world to go down for the experience and to be in a position to know conditions beneath the surface, as it is our intention to do underwater stuff for the movies that has never been approached."

Mr. Williamson said that the expedition which has resulted in the production of the first five-reel feature cost approximately $30,000. Twenty thousand feet of negative were exposed and from this 5,000 feet, embodying the most striking and interesting scenes, have been selected as a first release.

The company intends to use the 3,060 islands and islets of the Bahamas as their working field, taking a camera and scenario bureau to Nassau, and an acceptable cast, and staging dramas of the sea, near the sea, on the sea and under the sea, that have never before been approachable. Eighteen basic claims on the submarine tube alone are controlled by the company.

Readers of the August 8th issue of The Moving Picture World learned more details:

Residents of New Rochelle were accorded the first public exhibition Thursday [sic; actually this was a later showing; on July 22, 1914 a showing advertised and open to the general public was held] of the underwater pictures taken by the expedition to the Bahamas in April, recently shown to the Smithsonian Institution and the National Press Club at Washington. More than 300 prominent people of Westchester County responded to the invitation extended to them by Charles J. Hite, president of the Thanhouser Company, and the man who financed the Williamson Tube and brought this wonderful invention into practical use for science. The pictures were shown at the North Avenue Theatre, in New Rochelle, the thrilling underwater scenes - man battling with sharks, and sharks battling among themselves - bringing rounds of applause from those privileged to be present at this first public exhibition. These pictures will be first shown at the Broadway Rose Gardens.

Mr. Hite has received recognition from the Smithsonian Institution and the commendation of its scientific members for the expedition he sent to the Bahamas, which obtained the only motion pictures extant of life under the sea. Mr. Hite took the pictures to Washington and had offered to the Smithsonian Institution the first view of them. The result was that many of the scientists went to the National Press Club, where Mr. Hite, accompanied by J.E. and George Williamson, and Carl Gregory, expert cameraman, explained to the Washington correspondents the dangers of robbing the sea of its long-held secrets.

Mr. Hite, in commenting on the exhibition to the Smithsonian scientists, said: "Except from the lips of the divers who had descended to the shallow depth of 100 feet, the world has lived in total ignorance of the life beneath the sea. Science has evolved little thus far beyond tilling soil and sounding the depths. No man, until the Williamson invention was made practicable, could tell of the life below. The new invention brings to science the sea's actualities of life, the long lost ships, the imperators of other days, the hidden reefs, the variegated corals, the moving things. It has spelled success and proved a real step in scientific progress." A complete log of the expedition is to be presented to the Smithsonian Institution to remain in its archives.

It was not until September that The Terrors of the Deep was finally screened for patrons of the Broadway Rose Gardens, the intended location of its postponed June 27th premiere.