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a navigable, submersible vessel for exploring the depths of the ocean, having a separate, overhead chamber filled with gasoline for buoyancy and iron or steel weights for ballast.
Historical Examples

They’re sending the bathyscaphe down unmanned, to test all apparatus before a manned dive.
Creatures of the Abyss Murray Leinster

I’m talking about the bathyscaphe that ought to be in Manila any day now.
Creatures of the Abyss Murray Leinster

Why assume that whatever attacked the bathyscaphe did it of its own accord?
Creatures of the Abyss Murray Leinster

The yacht seemed to tiptoe away from the scene of the bathyscaphe’s destruction.
Creatures of the Abyss Murray Leinster

“The Pelorus says she’ll be ready to send the bathyscaphe down for a test dive in two hours,” he reported.
Creatures of the Abyss Murray Leinster

And maybe you should tell them about the Pelorus and the bathyscaphe.
Creatures of the Abyss Murray Leinster

“I’m trying to picture myself going down in a bathyscaphe,” said Terry hastily.
Creatures of the Abyss Murray Leinster

The yacht went past no more than fifty yards away, just as the bathyscaphe left the water and swung clear.
Creatures of the Abyss Murray Leinster

The bathyscaphe had cost more money than is usually allotted to most scientific researchers, and now it was smashed.
Creatures of the Abyss Murray Leinster

n.

“diving apparatus for reaching great depths,” 1947, name coined by its inventor, Swiss “scientific extremist” Prof. Auguste Piccard (1884-1962), from Greek bathys “deep” (see benthos) + skaphe “light boat, skiff” (see skaphoid).
bathyscaphe
(bāth’ĭ-skāf’, -skāf’)
A free-diving vessel used to explore the ocean at great depths. The original bathyscaphe, constructed in 1948, was made of a cylindrical metal float and a suspended steel ball that could hold two people. The float contained gasoline used to lift the vessel, and heavy iron material used for ballast. Design improvements allowed the second bathyscaphe in 1960 to descend to a record 10,912 m (35,791 ft) in the Marianas Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, almost to the deepest level ever sounded on Earth.