Going Deep Into the World of D.I.Y. Submarine Builders
SUBMERSED: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines, by Matthew Gavin Frank
Matthew Gavin Frank begins 'Submersed,' his book about the amateur submersible community, with a confession: 'For as long as I can remember, I've been afraid of the ocean.'
The fear of drowning may be one of those inherited atavistic survival instincts — all other primates sink like stones. Perhaps that's why the world's attention was seized by the disappearance of the private submersible Titan while it was touring the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023. We imagined the final moments of the five passengers, shuddered and tried to think about something else.
Frank, an accomplished author of narrative nonfiction, uses his terror as inspiration for this exploration of personal submersibles — or 'p-subs' — and the eccentrics that make, descend and sometimes die in them. The result, though, is not the tale of how he triumphed over his nightmare, although he does eventually submerge in one of these tiny homemade metal air bubbles. Nor is it solely a portrait of the mostly self-taught engineers who spend their days in garages or backyards welding steel and fiddling with control panels.
It is in large part the story, told in excruciating detail, of one particular death on a submarine: the 2017 murder of the Swedish journalist Kim Wall by the Danish amateur submariner Peter Madsen.
Madsen was a world-famous private sub-builder, sometimes compared to Elon Musk, whose mini-sub Nautilus was a legend before it became a crime scene. In his preface, Frank asks: Could there be a link between the kind of obsessive drive and egotism necessary to devote one's life to building a submarine by hand and the dark compulsion to take a stranger's life?
There are hints along these lines: Almost all the amateur submariners are men, most have trouble forging lasting connections, and there is a dark strain of bigotry and hatred among some of them; admiration for Nazi efficiency seems uncomfortably common.
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