Diving engines, submarine knowledge and the ‘wealth fetch’d out of the sea’

This article examines the motives for human intervention into the submarine, using the seventeenth‐century diving engine to consider the epistemic and economic incentives for venturing under water. It shows how diving engines and other underwater technologies were imbued with the associated promises of gaining new submarine knowledge as well as the quest for retrieving precious materials from the bottom of the sea. Setting diving engines against learned attitudes towards the submarine and the challenges of experience in knowledge‐making, it moves to consider the external, commercial influences on the experimental philosopher and the consequences this has for notions of disinterestedness. It argues that diving engines should be understood within the pursuits of both knowledge and profit, for the submarine, like the subterranean, was an environment to be both studied and exploited.