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    Divers and Diving
    Divers and Diving
    Divers and Diving
    Ebook152 pages1 hour

    Divers and Diving

    By Adam Gowans Whyte

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    About this ebook

    “Divers and Diving” is a vintage book on diving, looking in detail at its history and developments in equipment, technique, and purpose. With detailed descriptions of every aspect of diving as well as interesting accounts of notable historical dives and salvage operations, this volume constitutes a must-have for those with an interest in the history and evolution of diving. Contents include: “Diving in Olden Days”, “What Water Pressure Means”, “The Invention of the Diving Suit”, “Down Goes the Diver”, “Divers at Work”, 'The Dangers of Diving”, “The All-Metal Diving Dress”, “The Diving Bell”, “How Ships are Salved”, “Salving Ships Upside Down”, “Raising an American Submarine”, “The Treasure of the Laurentic”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new introduction.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacha Press
    Release dateJul 14, 2020
    ISBN9781528766463
    Divers and Diving

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      Book preview

      Divers and Diving - Adam Gowans Whyte

      INTRODUCTION

      IN Leadenhall Street, London, stands a building known over the world as Lloyd’s. There a record is kept of all the ships afloat and there, also, business is done in insuring ships against the risk of damage or loss by fire, collision, or storms.

      When news about any ship reaches Lloyd’s a bell is rung to call for silence while the news is read out. This bell is the famous Lutine Bell, which belonged to a French frigate wrecked off the coast of Holland in 1799 with a valuable cargo of gold and silver for which, as we shall see later, many hunts were made with little result.

      FIG. 1. THE LUTINE BELL AT LLOYD’S, WHICH IS RUNG WHEN NEWS ABOUT SHIPS MISSING OR LOST IS ANNOUNCED

      The Lutine Bell is sometimes called the Bell of Doom, but it does not really deserve that name. Although its tolling often means that a ship has been lost or damaged, it also brings the good news that a vessel posted as overdue or missing has come safely to port.

      Nowadays, as so many ships are fitted with radio, sea news travels fast. When a ship in distress sends out the S.O.S. signal (three dots, three dashes, three dots, in the Morse Code) and gives her position, the nearest ships race to her rescue. Their first duty is to save the lives of the passengers and crew: then comes the job of saving the ship.

      She may be so badly damaged, perhaps by fire or collision, that nothing can be done but leave her to sink. If, however, she is able to float, she can be taken in tow and brought to the nearest harbour for repairs.

      Sometimes a ship which has sprung a leak is able to crawl along with her pumps throwing the water out as fast as it pours in through the leak. In such cases the captain is lucky if, before the leak gets worse, he can bring his vessel to a smooth shore of sand or mud, where he can—at least in calm weather—beach her in safety.

      Although people who live all their lives on land often think that the open sea is more dangerous than the waters nearer home, the sailor knows that he runs most risk when sailing near a coast. There are more ships about, so the chances of collision are greater. Also, in a fog or a blinding snowstorm he loses his bearings and may too easily come to grief, or a fierce gale may blow him out of his course and drive the ship ashore to be battered by the waves or broken on the rocks.

      Thus in bad weather a sailor likes plenty of sea room. A chart, or sea map, on which the places where wrecks have taken place are marked with dots, will show far more dots along the edge of the land than anywhere else. Only too often the gallant efforts of lifeboat men are hopeless because the rocks and breakers make it impossible to get near the wrecked ship.

      After the work of rescue comes the business of salvage. And it is when salvage is being tried that the diver comes on the scene.

      Salvage means saving. In the case of a wrecked ship it may mean saving the whole ship by patching her up and getting her afloat again. Or it may mean saving part of the ship, so that the lost part may be added to make a complete ship. Or, if the ship herself is too badly smashed to be mended or lies in too deep water ever to be raised, it may mean saving her cargo.

      In any event nothing can be done without the aid of the diver. It is he who goes down into the water to find out where the ship has been damaged. It is he who has to do all the cutting and patching needed to get the ship afloat again. It is he, too, who, when precious cargo is being salved from a wreck in deep water, plants the explosives that clear the way to the treasure, and guides the grabs that bring it up again.

      Many other tasks fall to the diver. He goes down to look at the under-water parts of bridges which are showing signs of giving way. He recovers anchors and other things lost in harbours. He cuts away wire ropes which have got twisted round a ship’s screw. He goes into flooded tunnels to find out the cause of the flooding. When a ship is going into dry dock he is on guard, as the water is being pumped out and the ship is slowly coming down, to see that none of the huge wooden blocks on which she will rest have floated away.

      Most of these tasks are difficult. Many of them are dangerous and call for great coolness and courage. Even the easiest and safest of them cannot be tackled except after a long and careful training, which makes the diver feel just as much at home at the bottom of the sea as a workman is at his bench.

      The following chapters describe how a diver is trained and relate some of his adventures and some of the wonderful feats of salvage he has performed. They also tell how science has made deep-sea diving possible and has helped to overcome some of the perils of the diver’s daily work.

      DIVERS AND DIVING

      CHAPTER I

      DIVING IN OLDEN DAYS

      IT is a rather surprising fact that a man can hold his breath under water for as long a time as it takes a fast runner to cover a mile. The record time for the one-mile race is 4 minutes 6.7 seconds, and in certain cases divers have stayed under water for more than four minutes without breathing.

      Many years ago public displays used to be given by men who trained themselves to spend long minutes in a tank filled with water. One performer, whose record was nearly four and a half minutes, could pick up eighty halfpennies from the bottom of the tank with his mouth before he came to the surface again.

      These are, however, special cases. Anyone who tries, when diving in a swimming bath, to keep under water until he reaches the other end will find that the time, short as it is, is quite long enough for comfort. The boys who dive for coins thrown by passengers on ships in harbour at Algiers, Madeira and other places are under the water for only a few seconds at a time. Even the divers who earn their living by picking up sponges and pearl oysters, on the shores of the Mediterranean and of the Indian and Pacific oceans, seldom stay below for more than a minute or so. The stories told about wonderful divers who keep below for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes are only stories.

      Diving for pearls or sponges is an old, old trade. For thousands of years until quite recently it was carried on in much the same way. The diver carried a weight to help him to sink, a knife to cut away the sponges and a net or basket to hold them. He also had a rope round his waist, the other end of the rope being held by his companions in the diving boat. When he wanted to be hauled up he signalled by jerking the rope.

      The only change made in this ancient style of diving is that native divers, instead of carrying a weight in one hand, now hold a flat stone and use it to guide them downwards. The stone is fastened to a rope and is allowed to rest on the bottom while the diver, using both hands, gets on with his work.

      FIG. 2. A PEARL DIVER READY TO DIVE

      By courtesy of Siebe, Gorman & Co. Ltd.

      With all his skill, however, the unaided diver is hopelessly beaten by the man in a diving dress, who can stay below so much longer and work much more quickly and easily.

      It is reckoned that one diver using a dress can collect as many pearl oysters as twenty unaided divers. On the Indian pearl fishing grounds it is usual to have ten divers in each boat. They work in pairs, one man diving while his mate looks after the rope and draws up the catch and, later, the diver himself.

      Although each spell of diving is so short and the diver takes a good rest between the spells, diving in this old-fashioned way is terribly hard work. In many waters, too, there is a constant danger from sharks. Indian divers never go below without a knife and the fleet never sets sail until the shark-charmers have said the magic spells which are supposed to keep the sharks away.

      It is all to the good, therefore, that diving dresses are being used more and more in sponge and pearl fishing. They make it possible to reach the valuable sponges that lie far deeper than the best of unaided divers can ever hope to reach. Seventy-five or one hundred feet is about as far down as a naked diver can go, while a diver with the latest dress has gone down to over three hundred feet.

      Divers in Ancient Times

      In ancient Greek and Latin books diving is often mentioned. Apart from pearls and sponges a thriving business seems to have been done, during those far-off times, in salving treasure from ships sunk in shallow water. A Roman writer—Livy—actually tells us how the divers were paid. If the treasure was sunk three feet deep they got one-tenth of all they brought up; if the

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