Stealth Journeys with the Steam Mapper

Chapter 2: Stef's Beginning: The Family Business

Four months ago, Stef Land Fulton, named for three famous ancestors with ties to the sea, could hardly believe that this voyage had finally commenced.    Fascination with the sea came naturally.   From Dad's side, a "many times great" uncle, existed on the family tree, Robert Fulton, Jr., inventor of one of the earliest submersibles in 1800.

Robert Fulton's talents were many as an artist, especially talented with miniature portraits and as a poet.   But it was his inventions, including ones intended as an invention to prevent war (by using as a deterrent a submarine as a weapon so superior to warships) and his inventive ideas to move commerce forward for which he is most celebrated –the ideas of canals and of course, the steamboat.  

Robert Fulton did not hesitate to share his ideas with U. S. Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and with France's Napoleon Bonaparte to name a few prominent names.   Time spent in France may have put a few risqué ideas into Robert's head. Robert Fulton, Jr. was by some accounts into an alternative lifestyle, a ménage de trois, which supposedly explained some strange relationships that preceded his unexpected marriage to Harriet.  

That marriage produced a son and three daughters.   The son did not live long enough to have progeny to carry on the family name.   The daughters married and had children producing all of the direct descendants of Robert Fulton, Jr., inventor of the steamboat and manned submersible.

Abraham Fulton, Robert's only brother and the youngest of five children, was the many times great grandfather of Stef's father, Ed Fulton.

A distant cousin named David kept Ed in the know about the family tree.

Robert Fulton, Jr. had successes with inventions in France which helped him provide for his widowed mother, sisters and brother, and all of their children.    He especially desired to provide all of these children with important books to aid in their studies, as he himself had begun to endeavor to learn several languages and many sciences while realizing his own modest education and improving upon it throughout his life.

Fulton accomplished his submersible success in France with grant money from Napoleon and named his invention the Nautilus, which inspired others to use the same name for submarines and submersibles in the following years of invention and even in Jules Verne's science fiction. Which we now know wasn't all fiction after all.

Stef's mom had found online a book written back in 1915 by Robert Fulton's great-granddaughter, Alice Crary Sutcliffe.   She downloaded it for Stef, who read it many times, especially enjoying the chapter "Robert Fulton's Boyhood" and the later chapters about building the first submarine and then building the first steamboat.   Alice Sutcliffe's book is thorough, (it was her third book), and it covered his entire life in ways only a proud family would be able to recall first hand.   Stef loved it.

And, from Mom's side, the world famous, former whaler and survivor of the expeditions in which he traveled with French professor, Prof. Pierre Aronnax, "great grandfather times 3", was grandfather Ned Land.  Ned in later years teamed with Steam Mapper Steven Payne, among the very first oceanographers to study the hydrothermal vents and recognize their value to mankind. Stef also had a treasured copy of what was recognized as the very best English translation of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, which of course featured Ned Land.

The treasured book of Stef's was the completely restored and annotated translation of Jules Verne's original story first published in France as Vingt Mille Lieues Sous les Mers.    The popularity of the book resulted in an English translation published in 1873 by Lewis Mercier.

Mercier's translation was filled with errors and even bogus additions, and the poor translation was never declared unfit for consumption until 1965, when New York University English professor Walter James Miller decided to rectify the unfortunate translation.    He spent nearly thirty years to create the masterpiece known as the definitive English translation.    He partnered with Frederick Paul Walter to bring it to completion, even including the original woodcut illustrations, and all sorts of explanations regarding scientific studies and inventions.   The book was finally published by the Naval Institute Press in 1993.

Ed and Tammy Fulton bought two copies, and Mom's was now kept in Stef's trunk back home. Especially liked were all of the passages featuring Ned Land the great grandfather on Mom's family tree.

Ned Land married Steven Payne's mother, adding the third pioneer to the impressive family history.    Stef swelled with pride when classmates and instructors learned of the amazing heritage of undersea explorers and inventors.    It was almost as impressive as being a "Cousteau"!

The many generations of Jacques Cousteau's family now contained great grandchildren in a dynasty of conservationists that rivaled any other.   Stef's excitement in anticipation of meeting someone from the famous Cousteau clan while on this scientific exploration of hydrothermal vents equaled that of being chosen as the next to youngest member of the research team that was now on board this very research vessel.