Project Spinnaker was a joint Canada-US defence project started in the late 1980s - the waning days of the Cold War. Its goal was to provide Canada with the capability to monitor Soviet submarine activity in its Arctic waters with listening posts deployed on the seafloor at strategic choke points.

The star of Project Spinnaker was Theseus, a Canadian-made autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) designed to lay fibre-optic cable on the seafloor from shore out to the edge of the Continental Shelf, almost 200 kilometres away.

Into the Labyrinth, written by the Theseus Systems Engineer, tells the story of how Theseus came to be and how it completed its record-shattering mission in the spring of 1996. It is the story of the engineers and technologists from a small Canadian sub-sea company that built, tested and deployed what was at the time the largest AUV ever built.

With a foreword by Dr. James McFarlane, OC, CD, P.Eng., FCAE, Founder and President of International Submarine Engineering Ltd., Into the Labyrinth provides a fascinating look into the high-tech engineering world of the 1980s set against the backdrop of Canada's breathtaking yet hostile High Arctic.

Paperback and e-book retailers:
Audiobook retailers:
Click here for audiobook samples!
Would you like a paperback copy signed by the author?   Click here!
Dr. D. Richard Blidberg, Director, Autonomous Undersea Systems Institute

Dr. Neil Bose, Vice President (Research), Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Anthony Dalton, FRGS, FRCGS, author of BAYCHIMO, Arctic Ghost Ship

Phil Nuytten, Founder and President of Nuytco Research Ltd.
Media Galleries
If you purchased a paper version of Into the Labyrinth or are reading it on a monochrome e-reader, click on the book cover to the left to access a full-resolution color gallery of all the photos in the book.
Interesting Links
Dr. Ron Verrall's Arctic Newsletters - a collection of stories of scientists at work in the High Arctic.
Canada's Polar Continental Shelf Project
Website for International Submarine Engineering Ltd. (the company that designed and built the Theseus AUV)
Arctic Loonies - Darryl Gittins' collection of Arctic photos
Autonomous Undersea Vehicle Applications Center - all things AUV-related can be found here


A great series of podcasts about all sorts of interesting subsea stuff.
All photos and images on this website are Copyright (c) 2018 Bruce Butler (unless otherwise noted).