Willard
Bascom has been described as an ocean engineer, diver, and ocean adventurer. He
had wide-ranging interests, demonstrated extreme independence, had impatience
with orthodox viewpoints. He has been described as a maverick innovator,
passionate about art and science. He studied poetry, music, painting (an avid
oil painter, with an affinity for seascapes and landscapes), photography,
cinematography, and underwater archaeology.
Willard
Bascom was born in New York City (Bronxville) in 1916 by a single mother. In
his teens worked as a ‘mucker’ on the Delaware Aqueduct tunnel during the Great
Depression. He studied mining at the Colorado School of Mines, where a
disagreement with the school president prompted him to leave before graduating.
He worked as an engineer in mines in Arizona, Idaho, and Colorado.
Willard
Bascom’s career in ocean science began in 1945 when he joined John Isaacs to
work as a research engineer, conducting studies of waves and beaches first at
Berkeley and later at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO). He lived in
Monterey after the war, friends included John Steinbeck (who he had befriended
while at UC Berkeley) and Ed Ricketts. He was a member of John Isaacs’
scientific party during the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb test. Willard Bascom
joined SIO in 1951, and was chief scientist on two ships of Capricorn
Expedition, an eight-month geophysical exploration of the bottom of the
equatorial Pacific. This study yielded information about the thickness of the earth’s
crust which led to the plate theory of tectonics. He pioneered use of SCUBA for
scientific diving on SIO’s Capricorn Expedition.
During
the expedition, Willard was diagnosed with bone cancer. As a result, he took
unreasonable risks as the ships dredged the seafloor. Subjecting himself to the
largest amount of radiation ever given a person, he completely recovered after
about four years.
In
1954, Willard joined the staff at the National Science Foundation, where he
organized and directed the first phase of Project Mohole (involving SIO and
other institutions), the first effort to drill in deep water through the
earth’s crust. Drilling was conducted in 1961 at depths of 11,700 ft near
Guadalupe I., Mex. (the previous depth record was 400 ft). It collected samples
of earth’s ‘second layer’ and measured the temperature increase 600 ft below
the bottom of the seafloor. His involvement in this project resulted in book
(see below) and Steinbeck wrote an article about it for Life magazine.
The project was abandoned in 1966 because the ever-increasing costs failed to
gain congressional approval. However, the Mohole Project laid the foundations
for the Deep-sea Drilling Project, which incorporated Project Mohole’s ship
positioning and design as well as its drilling technology.
In
1962, Willard Bascom founded Ocean Science and Engineering, Inc., and became
its president. He pioneered undersea exploration for diamonds, discovering
about 20 million carats of gem diamonds for De Beers diamond company in
underwater areas off the coasts of South Africa and Namibia. He also found lost
objects and ships on the seafloor. His company developed an arm attached to a
ship Alcoa Seaprobe which could retrieve sunken vessels to 1000 ft
beneath the sea, developed a manned-underwater dredge to replace beach sand,
and developed a ship with on-board mechanical processing of scallops for
commercial use. It also salvaged airplane parts and bodies from depths of the
ocean from two jet plane crashes off Los Angeles in the early 1970s.
While
at Ocean Science and Engineering, Willard Bascom founded Seafinders, Inc., in 1972 and discovered an long lost wreck of
a Spanish galleon, Nuestra Señora de la Maravillas.
Willard
Bascom was the director of the Southern California Coastal Water Research
Project (SCCWRP) from 1973-1984. During this period he helped establish SCCWRP
as an ocean research organization, with a focus on marine pollution problems of
southern California. He added photographic and cinematographic technology to
SCCWRP’s capabilities and used this for exploring the southern California
marine environment and assessing pollution problems. He also initiated special
scientific studies to study marine pollution problems and sponsored early
regional assessments of the southern California marine environment. He started
the SCCWRP Annual Report, an annual/biennial series with articles and papers
describing the results of SCCWRP research projects.
In
1980 he received the Explorer’s Club (New York) Medal for his work in deep
water archaeology and ocean geophysics. He was also an adjunct professor at
SIO.
After
leaving SCCWRP in 1985, Willard resumed his undersea search ventures in Greece,
finding a wreck off Cape Artemision which yielded three high-quality bronze
statues for the Greek National Museum. In 1992 was awarded an honorary
doctorate by the University of Genoa on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’
first landing in the America’s. In 1996, he was involved in the successful
search and recovery of gold treasure from Brother Jonathan, a Civil-war
era side-wheel paddle-wheel steamer that sank off the northern California coast
more than 134 years ago
Willard
Bascom was the author of several books and many scientific papers (including
many in Scientific American). Some of his books include Waves and
beaches, A hole in the bottom of the sea (1961) (describing the
Mohole Project he directed), Great sea poetry (included works by
Rudyard Kipling and others), Deepsea archaeology, Deepsea salvaging,
The crest of the wave (1988), The gold of Brother Jonathan (about
his recovery of gold from a Civil-war era sidepaddle steamer which sunk off
northern California.
Sources
SIO. 2000. In memoriam. SIO Log, 37(38), Sept. 29
Williams, Jack. 2000. Willard Bascom, 83; maverick oceanographer, deep-sea explorer. San Diego Tribune, Sep. 21(?), 2000.
Additional information from SCCWRP staff recollections