History of the term "skin diving"

[DavidRitchieWilson]

I came across today the page on the Merriam-Webster website dedicated to the term "skin diving". On this page, the first known use of "skin diving" was dated 1937 without any documentation of the source of such information.

I subscribe to a newspaper cuttings database where I found the following:

.
This article appeared on page 14 of the 14 July 1920 edition of Australia's "The Sydney Mail", 17 years before the date of origin cited by the Merriam Webster website page.

I also managed to trace the related term "skin diver" even further back to 1915:

The above from page 5 of the 1 May 1915 issue of Indiana's "Fort Wayne Sentinel"

Of course, both terms originally preceded the use of masks, snorkels and fins. Back then, skin diving denoted descent underwater on a single breath in search of pearls or prey, assisted at most with a pair of goggles, as opposed to the use of "hard-hat" standard diving equipment with air supplied by a surface pump.

DRW

[nikeajax]

DRW, very cool!

As a side note: my wife's grandmother was from Fort Wayne; that's in Indiana, in case you didn't know; she lived to be 98 so she saw a whole lotta stuff...

Anyway, I love obtuse and esoteric stuff like this, it's always good as fodder for my stories.

JB

[SeaRat]

DRW,

I have a book, the Handbook for Skin Divers, from the early 1950s (no publication or copyright date on the book, by George Bronson-Howard (ARCO DO-IT-YOURSELF BOOKS). It has an interesting statement on page 14:

Since the introduction of the terms "skin diving" and "spearfishing into the vocabulary of the American Sportsman, methods and equipment employed in these sports have undergone a continual process of development. The development of masks, fins and guns all saw their beginnings on a large scale in the Mediterranean. Most modern technique is generally attributed to Italian and French divers of the 1930s, although there are many hear in the United States who would give greater emphasis to the part played by divers in this country, especially Florida and California, during the same period.

The advent of war in the late 1930s brought a sudden cessation to skin diving as practiced by the sports diver. At the end of hostilities, exciting recounts of the wartime activities of military and naval divers--in motion pictures and the popular press--brought about a resurgence of the sport.

From 1945 to present, the perfection and volume of equipment manufactured in this country and in Europe has been phenomenal. The sale of these articles in the United States alone has been running well ovre the $50-smillion mark for the past three years...

...Pg 50. The beginning date of skin diving in California is a pretty controversal subject, but it can safely be stated that it started sometime in the very early thirties. In those lean years anything a workingman did in his free time had to contribute directly to the support of himself and family. It was not long before the beachcomber seeking food had cleaned the abalone from above the tide line and began ducking for them. In time the Japanese diving doggle was introduced, but was eventually replaced by the face plate, because of "eye squeeze" as men went deeper. Flippers followed in the late thirties and beginning war years.

It was inevitable that these early skin divers would group together in their quest for food, and probably the first organized group on the West Coast was the Sand Diego Bottom Scratchers. Oh, they were a real salty bunch and a tight little clan! Tthey were good and anybody who waned in with them had to be good also. The requirements were tough but reasonable. A diver had to prove first that he was a real swimmer, able to handle himself in the ocean and cope with all situations. Besides proving that he could bag a legal limit of abalone (five) in one dive and perform other tasks, a potential Bottom Scratcher had to land a five-foot shark barehanded. This may sound like a foolhardy hurdle but the reasoning was that anybody who could keep cool when grabbing the tail and bady of a shark is also handy to have around in an emergency. ...

The first real diving text was "the Science of Skin and SCUBA DIVING," around 1955.

John

[cg43]

Hello

type in shallow water diving equipment 1940s U. S. Navy


Minute 08 : 44 there is the therm  "skin diver " .
I like this film very much because as a 15 year old boy I build my first shallow water diving system .

 
Greetings   Rainer

[SeaRat]

Well, I have several books which refer to the term "skin diving" in their titles. This includes:

Gene Parker's Complete Handbook of Skin Diving, Avon Books, A division of The Hearst Corporation, New York, Copyright 1965. (sponsored by Nemrod Seamco)

A.P. Balder's book, "The Complete Manual of Skin Diving," 1The Macmillan Company, Collier-Macmillan LTD., London, 1968.

But neither acknowledge the origins of the term. A better reference was from Calibrea 321, on the history of the skin diving watch:

calibre321.com/2022/01/11/the-skin-diver-watch-a-brief-history/

John