Inventor Graham Hawkes's professional career began in Britain in the mid-1970s, when he developed the one-man submersibles Wasp and Mantis for the offshore oil and gas industry. In 1981, he moved to the United States and founded Deep Ocean Engineering, whose first product was the Bandit, a huge tethered unmanned vehicle for servicing seafloor wellheads at depths up to 1,000 feet. Nine were built.
In 1983, Deep Ocean Engineering began work on a manned submersible for a commercial diving company in Canada. This was the one-person Deep Rover, which could dive to 3,300 feet. Her most remarkable feature was a pressure hull made of massive cast acrylic plastic—essentially one large window in the sea. Delivered at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1984, she still is operated by the original owner.
In the late 1980s, Hawkes decided he could build a small tethered unmanned vehicle that would cost significantly less than existing remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). There are two general classes of ROVs: work and inspection. Work vehicles are complex, relatively massive, and can easily cost more than a million dollars. Inspection ROVs primarily are swimming television cameras with very modest ancillary work capabilities (such as a manipulator or sampling devices). At that time, the average inspection vehicle cost about $150,000. Deep Ocean Engineering built the first Phantom ROV in a matter of weeks; its initial price was $24,000. Since then, nearly 500 Phantom derivatives have been delivered to 30 nations and 11 navies.
In 1993-94, Deep Ocean Engineering built two improved Deep Rover manned submersibles for a French television production company. While they had the same depth capability as the first one, these could carry a crew of two. Intended for an around-the-world expedition to do a series of ocean-related television programs, the project failed. Today, they are owned and operated jointly by filmmaker James Cameron and a partner.
Hawkes Ocean Technologies was founded in 1996. Its first products were two Deep Flight I manned submersibles. These one-person vehicles embodied a radical new approach for submersibles. They could fly underwater like airplanes.
Using conventional-looking wings and tail surfaces, the Deep Flight Is were the first submersibles to dispense with ballast tanks or similar forms of buoyancy management common to other underwater craft. The pilot lies prone inside the cylindrical glass-wound hull with head and shoulders projecting into a transparent conical acrylic nose cone. Twin propellers move the sub at a maximum speed of ten knots to a maximum depth of 3,300 feet. "Hydrobatics" such as loops and rolls were thought possible but not attempted at this time.
The first Deep Flight I was officially launched at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California in October 1996. Her underwater flight performance exceeded all expectations. Subsequently, she was used for filming several television documentaries before going into semiretirement. The second Deep Flight I never was completed and eventually was donated to a museum.
Hawkes's real goal for the Deep Flight program was to develop a second submersible capable of diving to the greatest depth in the ocean, roughly 36,000 feet. The design was completed in 1997, but there have been difficulties in finding sponsors for this $ 10-million project. In all of his submersible developments, Hawkes has stayed clear of government funding, preferring to find private sponsors for his projects.
In 2000, Hawkes got the idea of sharing the excitement of underwater flight by training people as vehicle pilots through a program analogous to a flight school for aviators. First, he had to develop the trainer submersible. With a small group of funding partners, Hawkes built the Deep Flight Aviator, which was launched in May 2002.
The Deep Flight Aviator is a tandem, two-place submersible. The pilot and trainee sit under individual bubble canopies and each cockpit has dual controls. As with the company's other submersibles, this one also flies underwater. The first training program was held in the Bahamas in February 2003. Ten pilots were trained and certified by Hawkes. A second training session is being planned for Baja California, Mexico, in November 2003. Tuition is $15,000.
Inventor, engineer, and deep submersible pilot Graham Hawkes has had more than 50 manned and 500 unmanned submersibles built from his designs. His ten U.S. patents attest to the originality of his inventions over the past three decades. At age 55 he still has his eye on the oceans' deepest spot and hopes some day to pilot his Deep Flight II to that place. Appropriately, his code name for this adventure is "Ocean Everest."