OF eccentrics, Bermuda has many of its own. Of those who came and went, few can perhaps match the genius and oddity of passion of Charles William Beebe, Sc.D, LL.D. This doctor of science was the original Startreker, determined "to go where no man has gone before".

His was not to sail into the bright glory of the heavens in the latest space technology, but to be dropped like a stone in a small steel ball into the blackness of the ocean.

To plumb the depths of human exploration of the undersea world, Dr. Beebe chose Bermuda and its apt "Nonsuch Island", for no such experiment had ever been attempted. His boat was Ready, though at 60 years that aged gunboat was more than ready to fire its last salvo. Its bones rot still in St. George's Harbour.

It was the early 1930s, when travel in Bermuda was restricted to boats, footwork, horse, and carriage. A sketch of "Man's Greatest Ups and Downs" in Popular Science Monthly, charted exploration records.

A balloon had risen 72,177 feet into the stratosphere, an aeroplane to 47,572 feet. Intrepid climbers had scaled to 28,200 feet, but had failed to reach the summit of Mount Everest. A gold mine in South Africa dug 8,500 feet below ground level, about the distance from Crow Lane Bakery to the Birdcage, yet divers had not been more than a few hundred feet under the sea.

Dr. Beebe would break all maritime and scientific records with his submersions at Bermuda. He lived to write the tale in his best-seller, Half Mile Down.

William Beebe was born in Brooklyn in 1877. By the age of 22, he was the Curator of Ornithology for the famed New York Zoological Society (Bronx Zoo), for whom he worked for the extraordinary period of 53 years.

Naturally, his first book in 1905 was called Two Bird-Lovers in Mexico, written with his new wife, Mary Blair Rice. He was made Director of the Department of Tropical Research in 1919 and at his direction, the first overseas research station of the Society was established at Kalacoon, Guyana.

WHILE Beebe spent a few years at Columbia University, his degrees were all honorary and he was self-taught. His genius came to the fore on a 22-country world tour for the study of a much-hunted bird. His four volume A Monograph on Pheasants, published after the First World War, remains an ornithological classic.

In 1927, he married Elswyth Thane Ricker, the famous author of The Young Mr. Disraeli. It was a marriage of convenience, for she preferred writing on the farm in Vermont and he was addicted to travel and expeditions.

In 1928, Beebe had met Otis Barton, a wealthy engineer and both were interested in deep-sea research. Barton had designed a submersible that Beebe christened "bathysphere", from the Greek bathos, for depth. By 1930, they were ready to try out the steel ball, a mere five feet in diameter, in deep water off the south coast of Bermuda.

Nonsuch Island, a former quarantine hospice, was chosen for the base station. The tug Gladisfen was to tow HMS Ready, which was rented for the research from W.H. Meyer of St. George's. The Ready was a barge at the end of its long life and had no engine. Beebe had it fitted out with a crane and winch, by which means on a steel cable almost an inch thick, the bathysphere was lowered into the abyss.

Dives, or submersions, were carried out in 1930, 1932 and 1934 under the flags of the Explorers Club of New York, the New York Zoological Society and the National Geographic Society. The 1932 dives were memorable for Beebe broadcast the descent to the entire world via the original ZFB-1 radio station.

He was an outstanding publicist, who today would probably have his own TV show, invigorating the public with the wonders of the natural world. Most of his expeditions were immediately published as books, two of which were about his Bermuda research.

On August 15, 1934, Barton and Beebe descended to the staggering depth of 3,028 feet below sea level. The pressure on their underwater home was in excess of 7,000 tons at a little over half a mile under the sea.

Beebe reported seeing many forms of sea life, some of which were later ascribed by others as possible hallucinations brought on by pressures of the deep. At the depth of 3,000 feet, in the chapter "A Descent into Perpetual Night" of Half Mile Down, Beebe described the darkness "as if all future nights in the upper world must be considered only relative degrees of twilight".

BEEBE had used some of his book royalties to purchase land in Bermuda, which was appropriated as part of construction of Fort Bell and Kindley Field in 1941. This was a great disappointment, but he used the compensation to buy 220 acres of wilderness in Trinidad, which he called "Simla", after the city in northern India.

Aged 85, Dr. Beebe died and was buried there in 1962. While best remembered for his Bermuda dives, his Simla, now part of the Asa Wright Nature Centre, is his most enduring contribution to the science and preservation of the natural world.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The views expressed here are his opinion, not necessarily those of the trustees or staff of the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm, to PO Box MA 133, Sandys MABX, or by telephone at 799-5480.