Don Walsh, a pioneering US Navy explorer, died on Nov. 12 at his home in Myrtle Point, Ore. He was 92. On Jan. 23, 1960, Walsh was a Navy lieutenant in command of the bathyscaphe Trieste, when he and Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard dove to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, reaching and measuring the deepest point in the world’s oceans.
Walsh and Piccard spent 20 minutes at the ocean floor, taking measurements and peering through the super-fortified viewing holes in the Trieste. What they saw opened new frontiers in deep-sea marine biology. They reported spotting fish, shrimp, and jellyfish at depths below 30,000 feet. The observations were the first eyewitness clues to the range of life that could survive in the most extreme depths.
Donald Walsh was born on Nov. 2, 1931, in Berkeley, Calif. His parents divorced when he was young, and he was raised by his mother, who did a variety of jobs including working at the local telephone company.
He enlisted in the Navy in 1948 and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1954. He became a submarine officer, commanding the USS Bashaw. After the Challenger Deep mission, he was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
He retired from the Navy in 1975 with a master’s degree in political science from San Diego State University, where he studied while in military service. He then earned a doctorate in physical oceanography from Texas A&M University and taught the subject at the University of Southern California from 1975 to 1983.
Here is a short video from the Naval Heritage and History Command with Don Walsh commenting on the legacy of his dive in the bathyscaphe Trieste.
Don Walsh: The Legacy of Trieste
Thanks to Alaric Bond for contributing to this post.
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite into orbit and the international space race was on. Meanwhile, a race to explore inner space was happening. In 1958 the U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus – the world’s first nuclear submarine – voyaged nearly 1,000 miles under the Arctic ice to the North Pole. On January 23, 1960, less than three years after the first Sputnik launch, Lieutenant Don Walsh of the U.S. Navy and Swiss citizen Jacques Piccard, piloted a first-of-its-kind deep submersible vehicle to the Pacific Ocean floor…
– from my review of Opening the Great Depths; the Bathyscaph Trieste and Pioneers of Undersea Explorations by Norman Polmar and Lee J. Mathers. Naval Institute Press; 2021. The review was published in Le Marin du Nord/The Northern Mariner in 2021. Vol. 31, no. 4