Page 30: of Marine Technology Magazine (November 2025)

FEATURE AZORIAN PROJECT cover story that the Project was a com- plained the ship as a deep ocean mining could use his Hughes Tool Company in mercial venture to mine mineral depos- vessel that lowered a mining machine to Houston, Texas as the front for a commer- its called manganese nodules that were the seabed on a long pipe string where it cial deep ocean mining operation. The found on the deep seabed of the Paci? c would collect nodules and be raised back company was ideal because it was pri-

Ocean (below). At the time, a number of to the mining ship when it was full. vately owned, had no shareholders, was companies were beginning to explore for The CIA recognized that there could be ? nancially capable of funding the project manganese nodules that some claimed no overt U.S. Government involvement and Hughes habitually operated in secre- would displace existing land mines as without attracting close Soviet scrutiny cy and was known for his personal eccen- the primary source of nickel, copper, co- and learning the actual purpose of the tricities and speculative investments.

balt, and manganese. The cover story ex- Project. Howard Hughes agreed they

The Ship and the Capture Vehicle

The surface ship was built by Global

Marine and named the Hughes Glomar

Explorer. She was designed by John

Graham, Global’s chief naval architect, and later recognized as nothing short of an engineering marvel. The engineers did calculations on slide rules, plans were drafted using pencils, erasers, T- squares, triangles, and drafting paper to produce blueprints. Speci? cations were handwritten in cursive and typed on manual typewriters.

At ? rst glance the Explorer appeared to be similar to a supersized offshore oil and gas drilling vessel with a der- rick to lower and raise the pipe string, a moon pool under the derrick for the pipe to pass through, a pipe handing system and thrusters to keep the ship on station over a speci? c location on the seabed.

The Explorer displaced over ? fty thou- sand tons, weighed more than the battle- ship Missouri, was over six hundred feet long, had a beam of over one hundred feet, and a derrick that was over twenty- four-story high.

The heavy lift system needed forty- eight hydraulic pumps; the derrick and lift system sat on a base that used sixty- ? ve-inch air springs; the largest gimbled bearings ever built were used to isolate the system and the derrick from the ship’s pitching and rolling motions; and, two long docking legs on either end of the moon pool to stabilize the submarine when it was raised into the moon pool that was two hundred feet long, seventy- ? ve feet wide and sixty-? ve feet high.

The capture vehicle, designed and built by Lockheed, was one hundred

Bottom photograph of manganese nodules in the central Paci? c eighty-foot-long, ? fty-eight foot wide. taken through a one-foot square wire grid during a seabed survey.

It was nicknamed Clementine after the

Credit: David Pasho 30 November/December 2025

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