Join Explorers Club President Emeritus and retired United States Navy Captain Alfred Scott McLaren to hear about the first manned dives to the World War II wreck of the German DKM Bismarck battleship.
In May 1941, the German Battleship Bismarck was scuttled after a battle with the British Navy and slowly sank to the North Atlantic Ocean floor. In 2001 and 2002, President Emeritus Captain Alfred Scott McLaren, USN (Ret.), Ph.D. made two lengthy dives to the wreck aboard the Mir-1 submersible. Combining the two dives, Capt. McLaren’s total time viewing/photographing Bismarck at close range was more than twelve hours.
Don’t miss this special retelling of these deep-sea expeditions into a dramatic episode of naval warfare history, accompanied by photographs of the sunken Bismarck taken by Capt. McLaren himself. He will be giving the talk in memory of four deceased Explorers Club members who took part in these two, historic expeditions; Captain Don Walsh, Commander P.H. Nargeolet, Emory Kristoff, and Mike duGruy.
This in-person event at the Explorers Club Headquarters will include an audience Q&A.
Streaming live here on explorers.org, our YouTube Channel, and our Facebook Live — Monday, September 4th at 7:00 pm ET.
RESERVATIONS
This will be an in-person lecture at Explorers Club Headquarters.
In-person tickets are $20 for Members, and $35 for the General Public.
Check-in will begin at 6:00 pm, with a beer and wine reception from 6:00 – 7:00 pm
CAPT. ALFRED S. MCLAREN, USN (RET.), PH.D.
Captain Alfred Scott McLaren, USN (Ret.), Ph.D. is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (B.S. in Engineering) and the U.S. Navy’s Submarine School, Advanced Nuclear Power School, Naval War College, and Major Shore Command School. He holds graduate degrees from George Washington (M.S.), Cambridge (M.Phil.), and Colorado-Boulder (Ph.D.) Universities. He is also President Emeritus of The Explorers Club and the American Polar Society. Honors include The Explorers Club’s Lowell Thomas Medal for Ocean Exploration in 2000 and its highest honor, “The Explorers Club Medal” in 2012 for “His extraordinary contributions to Arctic exploration and deep-sea research, including the first survey of the entire Siberian Continental Shelf.” He has also received The Sociéte de Geographic Paris’ Medal, La Medaille de La Ville De Paris, and the Joseph Bernier Medal for Arctic Ocean exploration and research from the Royal Canadian Geographic Society.
As a career nuclear attack submarine officer, he made three submarine Arctic expeditions: the first submerged transit of the Northwest Passage by USS Seadragon (SSN-584) in 1960; a 1967 Baffin Bay expedition, and, as Commander of USS Queenfish (SSN-651, a 1970 North Pole expedition that completed the first hydrographic and oceanographic survey, in shallow water and under thick sea ice, of the entire uncharted Siberian Continental Shelf. Awards as a Cold War Submarine Commander include The Distinguished Service Medal, two Legions of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal, and four Navy Unit Commendations. Prior to retiring from the U.S. Navy in 1981, he was Commanding Officer of the U.S. Naval Underwater Systems Center, headquartered at Newport, R.I, which was a major Department of Defense scientific laboratory complex of six laboratories, 3200 scientists and engineers, with a billion-dollar budget. Upon achievement of his Ph.D. at the University of Colorado-Boulder in 1986, he remained as a teaching and research professor until 1991, when he became Publisher of Science News in Washington, D.C. and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
As a deep-sea explorer and research scientist in Arctic oceanography, he has published more than 50 articles in refereed journals. He has completed dives to: RMS Titanic (1999 and 2003), Mid-Atlantic Ridge hydrothermal vents (1999), and two of the first manned-dives to the German battleship KM Bismarck (2001 and 2002) using Russian deep-diving MIR submersibles. He was a Director of Submarine Aviator Systems LLC and Senior Pilot of its Super Aviator submersible from 2004 to 2014. He has written three books: Unknown Waters: A First-Hand Account of the Historic Under-Ice Survey of the Siberian Continental Shelf by USS Queenfish (SSN-651) (University of Alabama Press, 2008), which was judged a “Notable Naval Book of 2008” by the U.S. Naval Institute, Silent and Unseen: On Patrol in Three Cold War Attack Submarines (U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2015) and Emergency Deep: Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander (University of Alabama Press, 2021).
