BATHYSCAPHE TRIESTE’S DEEPEST DIVE
200 miles off the Pacific island of Guam, two men clamber aboard the US Navy’s bathyscaphe Trieste, a strange undersea vehicle modified for an extreme mission. It is January 23, 1960.

Bathyscaphe Trieste's objective is the ocean’s deepest chasm – the Marianas Trench, 35,813 feet below. As the men prepare to descend, they notice their sub has been buffeted by rough seas. Hull sensors and other equipment have been ripped away.

For pilot Jacques Piccard, this dive will be the defining event of his life. Member of a celebrated Swiss family of explorers and scientists, his father is enigmatic genius, Auguste Piccard, famed inventor of the bathyscaphe. If Jacques makes it back from today’s dive, he will have secured his own place in history.

Bathyscaphe Trieste’s other pilot, Don Walsh, is a young US Navy Lieutenant, a submarine officer by training. Two years earlier he volunteered for the Navy’s special deep-diving Project Nekton and was selected to lead it. Early in the project he gained permission from the Navy brass to attempt the ‘Deepest Dive’. As Officer-in-Charge of the bathyscaphe Trieste’s deep-diving mission, the Navy selects Walsh to co-pilot the bathyscaphe into the Marianas Trench.

As the submariners are sealed into the bathyscaphe’s mighty pressure-resistant cabin, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh know the stakes are high. Can bathyscaphe Trieste - and its crew - handle the pressure?