Into the Labyrinth: The Making of a Modern-Day Theseus

By Bruce Butler

Project Spinnaker was a joint Canada-US defence project conceived in the waning days of the Cold War. Spinnaker's secret purpose was to reassert Canada's Arctic sovereignty by providing the capability to monitor submarine traffic in Canadian Arctic waters. The star of Project Spinnaker was Theseus, a massive Canadian-made autonomous underwater v

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bigfoot Press
• Release date: Oct 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9780994953827

Bruce Butler

BRUCE BUTLER is a semi-retired professional engineer who writes about his passions: engineering, cycling, and science fiction. He has worked in the high-technology field for thirty-five years in marine navigation, autonomous vehicles (land, underwater), vessel surveillance, telecommunications, mining automation, and remote control of construction equipment. He is a bona fide nerd/trekkie who also enjoys trail running, cycling, swimming and doing Ironman triathlons. When not writing or exercising he likes to do home renovations. He lives in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia and is currently working on his third book, a hard science fiction novel.

Book preview

Foreword

Into the Labyrinth documents a virtually unknown Cold War project that played an important role not only in Canada’s effort to re-assert sovereignty over its Arctic waters but also in advancing the development of Canadian-made autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).

Following a fulfilling career in the Canadian Navy, I started International Submarine Engineering Ltd. (ISE) in 1974 to develop remotely-operated vehicles for the offshore oil and gas industry. By the early 1980s, computer technology had advanced to the point where it was possible to build intelligence into subsea vehicles, and the AUV industry was born.

I first met Bruce Butler in the summer of 1985 when he joined ISE as a software engineer. He demonstrated an aptitude for vehicle operations and navigation, and soon took on the role of systems engineer. When scientists from the Canadian Department of National Defence approached us in 1989 for assistance in developing a cable-laying vehicle for Project Spinnaker, Bruce was assigned to our small but talented engineering team. Four years later the team produced Theseus, the largest AUV of its time and purpose-built for laying fibre-optic cable in ice-covered waters. It was a proud moment for me when I got a phone call from CFS Alert in April of 1996 and learned that Theseus had successfully completed its mission.

Following the end of the Cold War, Canada’s interest in its Arctic waters rose and fell in step with political and geopolitical tides. Recently, Canada’s attention is once again turning towards the Arctic as a result of climate change, resource exploitation, and sovereignty issues. The technological seeds planted by the development of Theseus have allowed ISE to develop a new generation of Canadian AUVs that now ply Arctic and Antarctic waters.

Into the Labyrinth represents a significant effort by the author to document an important slice of Canadian history, from a historical, military, engineering and human interest perspective. The story of this modern-day Theseus needed to be told, and I thank Bruce Butler for writing it.

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Dr. James R. McFarlane, OC, CD, P.Eng., FCAE

Founder and President

International Submarine Engineering Ltd.

Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada

May 2018

Preface

Into the Labyrinth tells the story of Theseus, the Canadian-made autonomous underwater vehicle that completed a record-breaking under-ice mission off the northern coast of Ellesmere Island in the spring of 1996.

In 1989, I was working at International Submarine Engineering (ISE), a Port Coquitlam, BC-based subsea engineering company, when scientists from the Canadian Department of National Defence came to us for help. They’d been tasked with implementing a joint Canada-US defence project codenamed Spinnaker and needed to lay several hundred kilometres of communications cable on the seafloor in Canada’s ice-covered Arctic waters. I was fortunate to have been included in those exploratory meetings and assigned a key role in the vehicle’s development.

My involvement in Project Spinnaker lasted seven exciting years. Early on, I had a feeling it would be the most interesting work I’d ever do, so I made detailed notes, kept diaries for my five Arctic trips, and took thousands of photographs and countless hours of video.

Into the Labyrinth was twenty years in the making. Soon after returning from the 1996 Arctic mission, I convinced my colleague Dr. Ron Verrall that we should write a book about what we’d just accomplished. We spent a year fleshing out ideas, trying to tell the story in the third person, but never got far and shelved it. In 2005 I restarted the book on my own, deciding to write it as a first-person, insider’s account. Then life got in the way; it took me another thirteen years to finish what you’re now reading.

Spinnaker was a defence research project, but this book is not an official account and contains no classified material. It was not commissioned by, approved by, nor does it represent the policies or opinions of the Canadian Department of National Defence or any private company. It is my work, my interpretation of the events, and my opinions, so any errors or omissions are mine. Even though the events chronicled took place over twenty years ago, most of the conversations documented come from notes I made during the project and from interviews with project participants. That said, I’ve used representative dialogue to fill in gaps during certain scenes.

Every engineer hopes that sometime in their career, they’ll get to be part of a dream project that starts off with, No one’s ever done that before – how do we do it? A project that pushes back the boundaries of engineering and technology and, hopefully, ends with, Wow, we did it! All of my ISE colleagues agree that building the robotic submarine Theseus — named for the hero of Greek mythology — and taking part in its historic mission, was their dream project. It was, without a doubt, the most challenging, exciting, and noteworthy project in our respective careers.

Please join me on this journey of our modern-day Theseus.

Bruce Butler, P.Eng.

Pitt Meadows, BC

May 2018

Acknowledgements

Hundreds of people from numerous Canadian and US companies and government agencies were involved in Project Spinnaker (see Appendix 1). This book would not have been possible without their help and input.

First, a special thanks to Vince den Hertog, Darryl Gittins, Dave Hopkin, and Ken Ho for being my beta readers and ensuring historical and technical accuracy.

Next, I would like to acknowledge current and former employees of International Submarine Engineering Ltd. who took the time to go through their logbooks, photo albums, and fading memories to answer my many questions. Some jumped at the opportunity to help; others, however, required a little more persuasion. In no particular order, they are: Jean-Marc Laframboise, John Usborne, Mike Denis, Jesse Houle, Phil Hartley, Jen Chitty, Clinton Thomas, Steve Maryka, Dale Mernett, Robert (Bob) Thomas, Eric Jackson, Mike Borghardt, Xichi Zheng, Darrin Wolter, James Ferguson, Ian Monteith, Dave Yartez, Paul Watkins, and Dave Eddy. I also received support from several engineers and scientists from the Canadian defence research lab formerly known as DREP: Ron Verrall, Jon Thorleifson, Tudor Davies, Merv Black, Peter Lenk, and Jim Kennedy.

Others who were peripherally involved in the project but filled in some historical gaps include Dr. Jim Bellingham from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute; Dr. John Bird from the Underwater Research Laboratory at Simon Fraser University; and Russ Light and Pete Sabin from the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

During my research for this book, I had the privilege of interviewing several of the pioneers of Canada’s subsea industry: Al Trice, Jim McFarlane, Mike MacDonald, Willy Wilhelmsen, and Helmut Lanziner. Their insights into the early days of the business provided useful background information.

Project Spinnaker would not have been possible without the efforts of many talented men and women from the Canadian Department of National Defence. Personnel from Canadian Forces Station Alert housed us and provided ground transportation during the annual Project Iceshelf deployments. 435 Chinthe Transport and Rescue Squadron provided the CC-130 Hercules heavy-lift aircraft used for transporting project equipment and personnel to and from Alert. 440 Vampire Transport Squadron provided their CC-138 Twin Otters, which we used for transport to and from the remote ice camps. Thanks to all of you for putting up with us crazy civilians!

I would also like to thank past and present members of the Port Moody Writers’ Group, an eclectic group of established and upcoming writers, for their comments and suggestions during our weekly critique sessions.

This book’s title "Into the Labyrinth first appeared as a sub-heading in an article written by Ron Verrall and me for the May 1999 issue of GPS World magazine. Ron was sure it came from the magazine’s Managing Associate Editor Michele Osterhoudt, so she gets the credit. The book’s subtitle was inspired by Gary Dorsey’s book The Fullness of Wings: The Making of a New Daedalus," the story of an MIT engineering team’s efforts to recreate another Greek myth.

Many thanks to Julie Ferguson, who helped coach me towards publication, and to Joyce Gram for her initial editing.

And last, but definitely not least, family. Thanks to my partner Lorna for her support and being a sounding board for my ideas. Thanks to my dad for continuing to ask, When is your book going to be done? and to my brother/author Dave for his encouragement.

To everyone listed above, and any others I’ve missed, thanks for helping document this significant slice of Canadian history, a modern-day recreation of the mythical journey of Theseus.

Dedications

To the memory of Cedric Edward Butler, who first got me interested in the undersea world.

To the memory of Ron Verrall, the smartest man I ever met.

To Stan Stone, who once told me, There’s always a market for an engineer who refuses to go into management.

Part I

The Adventure Begins

Chapter 1 - Hide and Seek

April 16, 1992

83° 54’N, 61° 34’W (360 nautical miles from the North Pole)

The rotor blades spun just overhead as we emptied the helicopter’s rear compartment, hurriedly building a pile of equipment on the ice. My colleague Bob slammed the door closed then banged on it twice with his gloved hand. The pilot applied power; we draped ourselves over our gear as the downwash assaulted our senses and a white tornado of arctic air engulfed us. I was instantly deaf, blind, and chilled to the bone from the icy blast. The helicopter lifted away, our parka-clad bodies taking a pummeling but successful in preventing our gear from being blown away or up into the rotors.

The pilot, now up and clear, brought the nose down and circled us once to confirm all was well before turning west towards a distant ice camp where a warm tent and a hot bowl of soup awaited. With the helicopter-induced tornado now abated, I stood up, dusted a layer of ice off my parka, and took in my surroundings. The air sparkled from the cloud of ice crystals floating around me.

The helicopter disappeared over the icy horizon, and the first thing I noticed was the silence. It was deafening, punctuated only by occasional crack and groan emanating from the ice beneath my feet. I looked down at my arctic-grade mukluks; I shifted my weight and the thin layer of snow gave off a hollow, styrofoam-like crunch. The ice here was six metres (20 feet) thick, and below that was the Arctic Ocean and the seafloor a further five hundred metres down. I’d only been on the ice for a few minutes, but the small thermometer clipped to the front of my parka had already dropped to -30°C. I looked around, and all I could see was shades of white interrupted by the odd vivid blue chunk of broken ice. The sun, low on the southern horizon, glowed faintly behind the clouds. Buzz Aldrin’s famous quote, uttered when he first stepped onto the surface of the moon, came to mind: a magnificent desolation. I felt like I was on another planet.

In geographical terms, I was almost halfway between the northern tip of Ellesmere Island (Canada’s northernmost land mass) and the North Pole. The nearest civilization was Canadian Forces Station Alert, 180 kilometres to the south. Eight kilometres to the west was a small ice camp with a few heated tents manned by a handful of scientists. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for the Arctic explorers in the late 1800s, man-hauling sledges across similar terrain in search of the North Pole.

No matter how many times I do this, it never gets dull. Bob grinned, rousing me from my thoughts.

Yup, was all I could muster for a reply, my exhalation turning into a cloud of ice crystals.

Time to get to work, he said, pointing to our equipment, now covered in ice and snow from the helicopter’s departure. We hauled our gear to a nearby re-frozen lead, a long, flat depression that only days ago had been open water, my movements slowed by the many layers of arctic clothing. Our task today was to drill a small hole in the ice and lower an acoustic transponder into the icy depths. Another member of our team, back at the ice camp to the west, would try to receive the transponder’s signal with some high-tech acoustic gear.

While we set up our equipment, I couldn’t help but grin, marvelling at the chain of global and personal events that brought me to this inhospitable, yet stunningly beautiful place.

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Throughout the 1980s, the Cold War between NATO and Soviet-bloc countries dominated international defence issues. In June 1987, the Canadian government published a long-awaited White Paper on Defence, reaffirming its obligation to NATO and the defence of North America. There was a perceived gap between Canada’s current defence capabilities and its international commitments, and the white paper proposed various programs to close that gap. One of the central themes of the white paper was a promise to assert (or re-assert) Canada’s sovereignty over its Arctic waters. Concerned that in periods of tension or war, Soviet submarines could use the deep channels of the Canadian Archipelago to reach the North Atlantic, the Canadian Navy needed to know what was happening under its ice-covered waters:

"Greater emphasis will be placed on underwater detection by . . . developing fixed sonar systems in the Canadian Arctic." [1]

Fixed sonar systems referred to the practice of installing acoustic listening posts on the seafloor at strategic locations,[2] which allowed real-time monitoring of submarine traffic from shore-based processing centres.

This desire for increased Arctic surveillance came to the attention of the Senior National Naval Representatives Committee (SNNR), a group of high-ranking Canadian and US naval personnel who met regularly to discuss areas of mutual interest. Recognizing that both countries would benefit from cooperative work in this area, the SNNR directed that Canada and the US hold regular meetings to talk about past and future Arctic acoustic research. The first of these meetings, known as CAN/US Arctic Research Coordination (ARC), was held in July 1987 and resulted in a series of classified, joint acoustics experiments in the Lincoln Sea that began in April 1988.[3] Following the success of these tests, the SNNR instructed both countries to look into the feasibility of installing a prototype listening post on the seafloor in Canada’s Arctic waters.

The Canadian effort would be led by the Defence Research Establishment Pacific (DREP), a Department of National Defence (DND) research laboratory at Esquimalt, British Columbia. DREP was involved in defence-related research in underwater acoustics, electromagnetics, mine countermeasures, fluid dynamics, and materials research.[4] Their Arctic Acoustics group had maintained a scientific presence in Canada’s High Arctic for decades, its scientists and engineers recognized worldwide for their significant contributions to Arctic research. The American effort would be led by NRaD,[5] a US Navy research lab.

A draft plan, finalized at the July 1988 ARC meeting, called for a multi-year project with the goal of installing a listening post on the ocean floor in the waters north of Ellesmere Island. Both countries would share the work and costs, and the listening post would be used to collect acoustic and environmental data for several years. The communications cable from the listening post would terminate at Canadian Forces Station Alert, a top-secret military listening post on the northeastern tip of Ellesmere Island.[6]

Alert was the ideal choice; it was far away from prying eyes, had a heavy-airlift capability, was situated on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, and had a secure data communications link with DND headquarters in Ottawa. DREP scientists had been using Alert for decades as a base for many of their arctic field experiments and had a good working relationship with base personnel.

Installing a listening post on the seafloor in waters with a thick, permanent ice cover presented several formidable technical challenges, not only in its design and installation but also in the laying of the communications cable (called the trunk cable) to shore. For the listening post to be useful, acoustically speaking, it had to be in deep water near the edge of the Continental Shelf, more than one hundred kilometres from shore. The consensus amongst the project participants was that laying the trunk cable was the most difficult and riskiest challenge.

Drilling a long series of holes in the ice pack and feeding the cable from one hole to the next was discarded as a logistical nightmare, given the distance, the sub-zero temperatures, and the constant motion of the ice. Using an icebreaker with cable-laying capabilities was out of the question, as Canada did not have a vessel capable of navigating through the expected two- to ten-metre-thick ice cover.[7] DREP’s scientists, reasoning that some type of underwater vehicle might be the solution, decided to consult with International Submarine Engineering Ltd., a small Canadian subsea engineering company but a world leader in the field.

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International Submarine Engineering (ISE) was founded in 1974 by James (Jim) McFarlane, a former lieutenant commander in the Royal Canadian Navy. Jim had been the Navy’s senior structural engineer and was involved in the design and construction of Canada’s Oberon-class diesel-electrical submarines. After leaving the Navy, Jim started building remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) for the offshore oil and gas industry.

By the early 1980s, ISE, situated in Port Moody, BC, was a world leader in ROV development and had spawned a subsidiary company to develop autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). ISE Research, in nearby Port Coquitlam, was helmed by James Ferguson, a former RCN submarine commander nicknamed the Pink Panther for his ability to bring his sub up underneath ships undetected and photograph their hulls and propellers.[8] Rounding out the senior staff were Al Trice and Mike MacDonald. Al was ISE’s lead designer and a founder of International Hydrodynamics (Hyco), the company that developed the Pisces-class submersibles in the 1960s.[9] When it came to putting something on or under the water, there was nothing that Al hadn’t done or couldn’t figure out in short order. Mike had worked at Hyco as a submersible pilot and played a crucial role in the rescue of the Pisces III submersible and its crew when it sank off the coast of Ireland in 1973.[10]

Although a fledgling company, ISE Research had an impressive portfolio. DOLPHIN was a diesel-powered, remote-controlled, snorkelling semi-submersible used by the Canadian Hydrographic Service to expand their surveying capability on Canada’s coastal waters.[11] DOLPHIN’s main hull rode two metres below the surface and provided a stable sonar platform in seas up to sea state 5 (four-metre breaking waves). Its snorkel-mast also acted as an antenna platform, allowing for a command/control radio link, radio positioning, and real-time transfer of survey data to a mothership.

ISE Research’s other masterpiece was ARCS,[12] a true autonomous underwater vehicle built for the Canadian Hydrographic Service to survey the seafloor in Canada’s ice-covered Arctic waters. With a seven-metre-long torpedo-shaped hull, electric thruster motor and custom under-ice navigation system, ARCS had successfully completed sea trials in BC waters by the summer of 1986. However, funding cuts at CHS halted the project and prevented ARCS from going to the Arctic. ARCS was the main reason that DREP scientists were interested in ISE.

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It’s going to be called Project Spinnaker, said Jon Thorleifson, leader of DREP’s Arctic Acoustics group, to a small, excited group of ISE engineers (myself included) in early 1989.[13] Canada needs the capability to track Soviet submarines under the ice — that’s not a secret. The government has initiated a program to acquire nuclear-powered subs, but that’s years, if not decades, away. In the meantime, we need some ears underwater.

Jon proceeded with some technical details. The experimental, seafloor-mounted listening post (called a hydrophone array) would be battery powered with a lifespan of several years, so its communications trunk cable only had to carry data. Near shore, the trunk cable would be connected to a cross-shore cable — pre-drilled underground to avoid the ice/land interface — that surfaced inland at a small unmanned station. From there, the array’s data would be transmitted to CFS Alert via a secure microwave radio link for processing and transmission to DND headquarters in Ottawa.

Here’s our problem, Jon said. We need to lay roughly one hundred kilometres of cable on the seafloor from shore out to the edge of the Continental Shelf, under a permanent ice cover. We’re familiar with your ARCS and DOLPHIN vehicles. We think an ARCS-like vehicle might do the trick.

What type of trunk cable are we talking about? Al Trice asked.

Since it only has to handle data, it can be quite small, Jon replied. "On the order of two to four millimetres in diameter, with a single fibre-optic thread. It would have to be negatively buoyant so it remains on the seafloor. We have colleagues at NOSC Hawaii[14] who have experience putting small fibre-optic cables on the seafloor. We’ll be working with them to identify candidate cables."

Some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations provided a reality check on how big one hundred kilometres of small fibre-optic cable would be: if wound in cylindrical reels, roughly the size of two oil drums laid end-to-end. This was encouraging — an underwater vehicle could be used to lay the cable; a vehicle bigger than ARCS, but not a lot bigger. Using a vehicle to lay cable also meant that the array could be further from shore and in deeper waters, not to mention that the cable laying could be done in relative secrecy. We brainstormed, identifying the technologies needed to develop such a vehicle: navigation, reliability, fault tolerance and obstacle avoidance, to name but a few.

Hmm…, Al said. Deploying a hundred kilometres of that cable will make the vehicle lighter. We’ll need to compensate for that.

Good point, Jon said. We’ll add that to the list. If we move forward with the vehicle concept, we’re going to need a reliable platform to evaluate these new technologies.

ARCS is the obvious choice, James Ferguson suggested, thrilled at the prospect of some new work. It’s available but has been collecting dust in the shop since 1986. It will need some work to get it functional.

Send us a proposal so we can get things going. Oh, and keep in mind the sensitive nature of Project Spinnaker. If anyone asks, the purpose of the array is to collect environmental and acoustic data.

Immediately after the meeting, James gathered us together to start on a proposal. By April, DREP had awarded ISE a contract for ARCS refurbishment trials, and I was thrilled to be assigned a key role in that work.

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Growing up in the 1960s, I was fascinated with the undersea world, watching episodes of Flipper, Sea Hunt and National Geographic’s Jacques Cousteau specials on our family’s black and white television set. I wanted to work onboard the Calypso alongside Captain Cousteau, travelling the world, exploring the oceans and seeing wondrous things. My uncle, Cedric Butler, fostered this dream.

Uncle Ced loved the ocean. At age fourteen he quit school, joined the Royal Canadian Navy and served on several Canadian warships during the Second World War. After the war, he settled in Vancouver, BC and took up skin diving (what we now call scuba diving). In 1962, he and his close friends Fred Rogers and Al Seaton recovered parts of the wreck of the paddle wheeler S.S. Beaver in the waters off Vancouver’s Stanley Park.[15] I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to follow in Uncle Ced’s footsteps.

My dream of becoming one of Cousteau’s marine biologists died by the time I’d entered high school and taken my first biology course; I was drawn more to the physical sciences. In 1983, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a double major in physics and computer science. The high-tech industry in BC was booming; UBC science and engineering graduates had their choice of jobs and I remained in the Vancouver area, writing software for a local telecommunications company. With a good job and a steady income, I could finally fulfil a childhood dream — my first paycheque went towards scuba diving lessons, and soon I was exploring the same BC waters and shipwrecks that Uncle Ced had in his younger days.

Writing telecommunications software was challenging, but it wasn’t exciting, so after two years, I started watching the careers section of the Vancouver Sun newspaper. Before long, a job ad leapt off the page:

"Software Engineers. International Submarine Engineering (ISE), a world leader in the manufacture of unmanned, remotely controlled submersibles for commercial and government organizations has the immediate requirements for software engineers to support its expanding untethered autonomous vehicle program."

Now, this was interesting. It wasn’t Jacques Cousteau and the Calypso, but it was a step in the right direction. As a bonus, ISE had headquarters in nearby Port Moody, a suburb of Vancouver. A well-crafted resumé got me an interview; the combination of my technical qualifications, interest in the marine world, and willingness to work on a ship impressed the interviewers enough to land me the job. I became ISE employee #31, tasked with writing software for DOLPHIN’s onboard control system at ISE’s brand-new Port Coquitlam facilities.

ISE provided its employees with state-of-the-art technology (circa 1985). We wrote software on IBM PCs that had 640 kilobytes of memory and dual floppy disk drives (no hard disks), passed files back and forth on 5¼-inch floppy disks, and networked our computers to a printer using a manual patch panel. The software I wrote was burned into computer chips called EPROMs that had to be manually inserted into a memory card in DOLPHIN’s onboard computer. There was no Internet; if we needed product information from a manufacturer, we phoned them or filled out a card torn out of a magazine. We didn’t have email; we talked to people on the phone, sent faxes, and wrote intra-office memos on paper. It was inefficient and primitive by today’s standards, but it worked.

Working at ISE was one great adventure, and I looked forward to going to work every day. It wasn’t like a typical high-tech company — we geeks were expected to lend a hand out in the shop, learning how the submarine’s electrical, mechanical, and hydraulic systems functioned. When the DOLPHIN was complete and our software ready, we moved out to the shop for a long series of shop testing. Then it was time for sea trials.

ISE had recently acquired the MV Researcher, an 85 foot-long, 120-tonne vessel custom-built for testing submarines in local waters. Moored at Reed Point Marina in nearby Port Moody, it had a large foredeck, a 10-ton deck crane, lighted workshop and upper deck complete with galley, bridge and mess area. Even though Researcher was brand new, it was underpowered and its engine legs prone to failure. It wasn’t uncommon to have a leg fail at the most inopportune moment, such as when returning to the dock on a blustery day and passing uncomfortably close to expensive yachts moored nearby.

Getting a submarine ready for sea trials was, to use the subsea industry lingo, called mobilizing (or mob-ing for short). DOLPHIN and all its support equipment were trucked down to Rocky Point Marina in Port Moody where Researcher was waiting, its bow ramp down and resting on the concrete boat ramp. Then it was off to our trials area in nearby Indian Arm, a fjord northeast of the Vancouver harbour.

Sea trials were especially interesting for me. Although everyone onboard had their own primary duties, we were all expected to pitch in. I learned how to start Researcher’s engines in the morning and how to operate the deck crane to launch and recover DOLPHIN. I was taught how to figure-eight a cable when coiling it up so it didn’t get twisted. We had to take turns making lunch. And I got to drive a submarine around.

I was engrossed in my work, and the time flew by. Only one year after I’d started at ISE, we’d built and sea-trialled three DOLPHIN vehicles for the Canadian Hydrographic Service. I was asked to participate in their commissioning and spent a week at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax, Nova Scotia, training their staff and performing sea trials in the clear, cold Atlantic waters.

DOLPHIN, with its long endurance and stability in rough seas, became attractive to the Canadian and US navies. ISE began a partnership with engineers from Rockwell International’s Marine Autonetics Division, and we converted DOLPHIN into a mine-hunting vehicle for the US Navy. Our efforts bore fruit and we sold them two vehicles as technology demonstrators.

For someone interested in the ocean, ISE was a stimulating place to work and offered some exciting opportunities. An avid power boater, I occasionally got to helm Researcher (under the watchful eye of our skipper) when we transited between the marina and our sea trials range.

When Jacques Cousteau’s newest ship — the wind-powered Alcyone — made a stopover in Vancouver during Expo 86, Cousteau held a private seminar for the local maritime community. I sat in the second row, rapt as I listened to The Captain speak for over an hour about how important the ocean was to every living creature on the planet. His melodious voice coupled with his French accent captivated me, transporting me back to the days when I watched him on TV. When Cousteau finished his presentation, the seminar host announced that we’d have the opportunity to meet him; I was third in the rapidly-forming line. When it was my turn, I nervously approached and shook his hand. He was a slight man but had the strong handshake of someone who’s worked on boats his whole life. Even though I towered over him, I felt small. I introduced myself and thanked him for being such an inspiration. He said he’d heard many interesting things about ISE and wished he could come to visit if he’d had more time. I left the seminar with my head abuzz, thrilled to have met my childhood hero.

ISE also hosted a film crew from the television series MacGyver. For several days ISE became Shark Submarines Incorporated, and DOLPHIN played a starring role as the prototype stealth submarine that a South American drug cartel was trying to steal. By the end of the show, MacGyver had escaped a watery grave, saved the girl, recovered the stolen sub, and put the bad guys behind bars. We all pretended to work those days but hung out behind the scenes, snagging gourmet food from the catering van and hoping to catch a glimpse of the star Richard Dean Anderson or get discovered and assigned a bit part in the show. Alas…

Jim McFarlane also had an altruistic streak. In early 1987, he offered to assist the local RCMP in a search for stolen cars abandoned in the nearby Pitt River. Jim enlisted me and three other willing employees; we operated an ROV from the river’s shore and soon found several of the missing vehicles on the riverbed. Jim also asked me to provide software support for a visiting MIT graduate named Jim Bellingham, who was developing his own small AUV called Sea Squirt.[16] Jim B. and I remain in touch to this day.

I’d been at ISE for two years when McFarlane decided I was an employee worth investing in. He expected his engineers to be knowledgeable in all aspects of marine engineering — not just their own discipline — and began tutoring me in such areas as metallurgy, fluid dynamics and fleet maneuvering.

I have fond memories of those tutorials. Jim already had a long and distinguished career in the subsea industry and was a fountain of information, so I took copious notes and did my best to soak up everything he said. When we covered metallurgy, I learned that the root cause of the sinking of the Titanic was that the steel in its hull had a ductile-to-brittle transition temperature higher than that of the cold waters off Canada’s east coast. When it struck an iceberg that fateful night in April 1912, the Titanic’s hull plates fractured and shattered rather than just deforming.

When we discussed hydrodynamics, Jim had me memorize and understand the Drag Equation, The most important equation in a marine engineer’s toolbox! he declared.a

Jim would occasionally wander off topic but always in a thought-provoking direction, his bulldog-like appearance and occasional gruff manner hiding the mind of a brilliant engineer and a heart of gold. One spring day we were in his office discussing navigation sensors, and something outside the window caught his attention. He was watching a sparrow sitting on the chain-link fence at the edge of ISE’s property.

See that bird? It has the brain the size of a pea, yet it can fly through an opening just slightly larger than its body. Think of the sensory and control processing required! Why can’t we get a submarine to maneuver like that?

I pondered this. Well, I guess that sparrow’s control system has been evolving over millions of years, while we’re trying to build ours from scratch? He shrugged. Point made.

Jim believed AUVs were the way of the future. He envisioned a day when fleets of autonomous vehicles would cruise our oceans, doing everything from surveying to fishing to protecting naval fleets. One of his tutorials dealt with naval fleet maneuvering.

Autonomous vehicles will need to be able to maneuver individually and in groups, he stated.

Or maybe like a flock of birds? I suggested, thinking about the sparrow on the fence.

He stared at me for a moment. Good point.

Finishing up another tutorial, Jim dropped a surprise in my lap. You should seriously think about becoming a professional engineer. You’ve shown an aptitude for systems engineering and getting your P.Eng. would definitely help your career.

But I don’t have an engineering degree. Computer science —

"Computer science and physics. I know what your degree is in. The APEG[17] bylaws allow for non-engineering graduates to get their P.Eng. You might have to take some courses, but you have a physics degree, and there’s lots of overlap." I promised I’d look into it.b

After two exciting years at ISE, I developed an interest in marine navigation. More like a passion, actually. I loved the elegant ways in which sensors, software and mathematics could be combined to enable a surface vessel or submarine to determine its position and figure out how to get where it needed to go. I’d gained enough experience at ISE to transition into a systems engineering role, becoming responsible for the engineering of complete solutions. My first assignment was a year-long project to give DOLPHIN more autonomy, as having the capability to steer through a series of pre-programmed waypoints made it more attractive to government and military agencies. Standing on Researcher’s bridge and watching DOLPHIN run survey lines in Indian Arm for several hours with no human intervention, I felt proud to be both witness to and contributor of McFarlane’s vision of the future of autonomous marine vehicles. I felt like I had the best job in the world.

Working at ISE continued to be exciting and challenging; the time flew by, and one day we found ourselves working with DND scientists, helping them solve their cable-laying problem. Our first task: get the ARCS vehicle seaworthy.

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ARCS - Autonomous Remotely Controlled Submersible, 1984. Photo courtesy of ISE. (L-R): Clinton Thomas, Stan Warwick.

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Two DOLPHIN vehicles on the foredeck of the MV Researcher. Reed Point Marina, 1986.

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Cedric Butler and his friends after recovering the driveshaft from the SS Beaver. The Sun, Nov 5, 1962.

Chapter 2 - Laying Cable

ARCS had been collecting dust in a corner of ISE’s main shop for the past three years. We needed to get it operational so we had a reliable platform for evaluating cable-laying technologies.

A small project team was formed, led by Phil Hartley, an electrical technologist who’d been with ISE since 1979. Phil had managed several ROV projects and was familiar with ARCS, having run its final set of sea trials in 1986. Technologists Al West and Darryl Gittins, with whom I’d worked on the DOLPHIN vehicles, were assigned to the electrical and mechanical areas. Al West was an electrical wizard, able to figure out or fix anything that ran on electrons. Gittins and I shared a passion for Monty Python, and would rarely pass up an opportunity to recite a scene from one of their television shows or movies, especially if it annoyed those around us. As the fourth member of the team, I had to learn how the ARCS software worked, figure out how to operate the vehicle, and become familiar with its navigation system and sensors. I was finally getting my hands on a real AUV!

The four of us spent a few days acquainting ourselves with the vehicle, then Phil, Darryl and Al began systematically tearing it apart while I dug into the computer schematics and source code. The original ARCS team had done an excellent job documenting the electrical system and software, which made my job easier. ARCS had two identical computer systems, a necessity in an under-ice environment where a computer failure could not be tolerated. If the primary computer failed, the backup would take over with the sole task of steering the vehicle back to its launch ice hole. The software was also well-architected and documented, and it wasn’t long before I could rebuild the software from its source code, download it, and have the vehicle boot up and communicate with its operator console.

I then turned my attention to the vehicle’s navigation system. ARCS determined its position primarily through dead reckoning, a technique used for centuries by mariners the world over. DR, as it’s known, works on the premise that, if you start off at a known position, travel in a known direction at a known speed for a known length of time, you can, with basic mathematics, calculate where you are relative to your starting point. If you repeat this process whenever you change direction or speed, you’ll know where you are and where you’ve been.

ARCS used a gimballed ship’s gyrocompass, mounted inside the aft electronics hull section, to determine its heading relative to true north. When powered-up, it needed nine minutes to align itself and find North before outputting the vehicle’s heading. A device called a Doppler sonar, a type of echosounder that continuously pinged the seafloor with four separate sonar beams, was mounted in the tail section and measured both speed-over-ground and speed-through-water. The Doppler sonar and gyrocompass each took measurements several times per second; these were fed into the onboard computer system which executed the dead-reckoning calculations and produced the vehicle’s current position.

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Early in the project, I was mostly doing desk work but would come out to the shop whenever the guys needed an extra pair of hands. One of the biggest jobs we had was to replace the entire ARCS tail section, a heavy, custom-milled, oil-filled[18] aluminum cone that housed the thruster motor.

It took the four of us and a forklift to remove the tail section from the main hull. Curious about the state of the thruster motor, Phil and Darryl unbolted its cover plate. A horrible stench wafted upwards. Gagging, we bolted for the shop door and fresh air, with the rest of the shop workers close behind. The tail section had been filled with Canola oil — which was organic — and had been slowly rotting for the past four years. It was days before the smell left the shop.

With direction from Al Trice, the guys constructed a new tail section out of fibreglass, just as strong as the old aluminum one but much lighter and easier to work with. Al West purchased a more efficient thruster motor which he and Phil installed in a custom housing fabricated by a local machine shop (this time filled with non-organic oil) and mounted in the new tail.

Phil redesigned the old solid aluminum dive planes, fabricating them out of fibreglass-coated hard styrofoam. Al bought new electric drive motors, placing each inside an oil-filled aluminum tube that fit inside its dive plane and attached to the hull with a single shaft and locking pin. He also upgraded the plane motor controller circuit boards, which not only improved their reliability but reduced power consumption.

ARCS was powered by a nickel-cadmium battery bank — the size of a small steamer trunk — that filled one of the three pressure hull sections. The bank was a fibreglass tub with fifty, 1.2-volt cells wired in series, producing 60 volts. A single bank and its hull section weighed in at 460 kilograms (about 1,000 pounds) and could power ARCS for up to seven hours at five knots (for extended missions, a second bank/hull section could be added). Al ran each cell in both banks through several charge/discharge cycles and replaced those that weren’t able to hold a charge.

DREP, being scientists, were data hungry, and wanted us to record the vehicle’s sensor