THE STORY

WDCS104 'The Ping Pong Story' - 1949

Synopsis:
Donald and the nephews try to make a living by salvaging junk from the ocean floor, until they suddenly observe a sunken yacht. Donald calculates that he can raise it for 3,000 dollars, but when he finds out that Uncle Scrooge is the owner the price is opted to 50,000 dollars. Scrooge will only pay 2,000 dollars for the job which Donald snortingly refuses, whereupon an aggravated Scrooge decides to trick his nephew into taking the job anyway - for free.
Donald tries to raise the necessary sum to salvage the yacht by taking odd jobs, but in a boxing ring he is knocked out cold for days, and the yacht has to be raised before anyone else observes it. The nephews think of an idea of raising the yacht without having to use heavy and expensive equipment by watching a game of table tennis. Why not let superlight ping pong balls do the job cheaper?
But in the end the shrewd Scrooge manages to have his yacht salvaged for 1,000 dollars while Donald is stuck with a debt for a massive purchase of ping pong balls for 3,000 dollars. Back to junk salvaging...

Comments:
Donald is trying to make a livelihood from the ocean by simply collecting anything he can get his hands on. Barks used the same basic plot in several stories. Other examples are FC0159 Ghost of the Grotto in which Donald collects seaweed off the coasts of the West Indies, WDCS097 'Deep Sea Diving' in which he dives for pearls, and WDCS292 Instant Hercules in which he runs a salvaging business.
This must be Barks' most famous story on the subject of balls. Not only did he invent a nifty way of raising a sunken boat by pumping thousands of air-filled ping pong balls into the vessel's hull, but the idea was even put to good use in real life 15 years later!

TITBITS

ABUNDANCES

Despite the extra and rather tedious work, Barks liked to draw abundances of identical objects in his stories. Here are some examples: U$06 (bottle caps), U$09 (lemmings), WDCS104 (ping pong balls), WDCS146 (eggs), and WDCS267 (lumber). Not to mention vast quantities of Money Bin coins in the Scrooge stories...

APPEARANCES

In the story Scrooge is portrayed in unusual ways; he is a mean exploiter of Donald's labour, and he even manages to manipulate him into performing the job at hand for free. Furthermore, Barks took the rather surprising step of furnishing Scrooge with large spectacles as well as never before seen hat, shirt, tie, and jacket.

BACKGROUNDS

In many of his stories Barks added funny characters, animals, and objects that were just seen in the background, and that had no bearing on the plotlines whatsoever. An example from the story is the quietly sitting, penguin-like gull with the somewhat sad and downwardly bent beak (see more examples HERE).

TITLES

INVENTIONS

NAMES

Barks liked to invent odd but mostly apt names and titles for characters and objects. In this story we are - for the only time - presented to Scrooge's private secretary Jeebs, the supposed uncle Marmaduke Mallard, the wrecked yacht Lassie O'Doon, the ping pong ball manufacturers Bouncy Ball Company, and the pseudo law firm Squeezem, Fleecem, Skinem, and Skip...

THE INVENTION

The ship surfaces

Prepared to be towed

The date: September 14, 1964. The scene: Kuwait City's harbour. The incident: The 2,000 tons cargo ship Al-Kuwait carrying almost 6,000 live sheep in its hull capsized and sunk in the harbour. Since the city pumped their drinking water from the harbour, fast action was needed so that the rotting carcasses would not render the water poisonous. Because of the massive number of sheep, the depth of the harbour and the murky water, none of the usual methods of raising a sunken ship could be considered. A cry for help went out all over the world, and it was heard by the Danish manufacturer, engineer, and inventor Karl Krøyer (most often spelled Kroyer internationally), who rushed to the scene.

He realized that the only solution would be to raise the ship in one piece and then transport it to a place where it could be emptied safely. A novel idea came to mind: Krøyer remembered reading a Barks story, i.e. the one from WDCS104, in a Danish Donald Duck magazine from 1957 describing how Donald and his nephews were able to raise a sunken yacht by pumping scores of air-filled ping pong balls into the wreckage - thereby forcing it to the surface. Krøyer realized the same principle could be used to raise the sunken freighter.

He knew that normal ping pong balls would not be able to do the trick in real life, so he invented special pearl-sized balls made of a special composition of polystyrene foam that was baked into air-filled bubbles. These balls were able to occupy 40 times their volume thus giving them enormous lifting power in water. Huge numbers of small balls were formed and baked right on the scene, and then continuously pumped into the freighter's hull. First between the two highest decks, then into the lower holds. It took 27 billions (equaling 150 tons) of the ultra-light foam balls to raise the cargo ship in one piece, whereupon it was immediately towed away to be emptied.

Aftermath: After this indisputable success Krøyer went on to raise a Danish coaster which had sunk in the harbour of Sukkertoppen (now Maniitsoq) in Greenland. He then filed for a patent for his invention. The application was denied. Why? Because the invention was not new! It had already been published on a previous occasion - in the comic book WDCS104...

Semi-scientific testing: The popular American TV show Mythbusters - that is famous for trying out all sorts of popular myths and urban legends in order to verify or dismiss them - had a go at the basic concept in 2004. Watch the thorough testing and the surprising conclusion HERE (5 parts).