Vintage Diving Book Reviews

[SeaRat]

I have decided to start a thread for book reviews of vintage diving books. Many of these are available from Vintage Scuba Supplies elsewhere on this site. We dive right now, even when vintage diving, using techniques developed by the diving pioneers, and I'm not only talking about Cousteau. Divers like Hans Hass, Eugenie Clark, Guy Gilpatrick, Bill Barada and Philippe Diole have left a heritage that we need to read, analyze, and appreciate. Along with this, we need to read these authors so that we can gain, vicariously, their experiences and enjoy their adventures. We also need to learn why we dive the way we do, and why "vintage" diving as we now define it is actually a second generation of the sport. Finally, we need to understand the reasons behind the "rules" and techniques that we currently use, and re-learn those which have been lost except in these writings.

I ask all who have books, and have read them, to consider posting here a review of that book if it is not yet on the thread. If it is, and you have read it, or want to comment about the reviews, feel free to do so too. Please use the "subject" line to identify the author first, then the book being reviewed. I'll provide what I think is an appropriate format below. I will begin with Eugenie Clark, the original "Lady with a Spear."

John

[SeaRat]

Eugenie Clark
LADY with a SPEAR
Harper & Brothers, Publishers
49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y.
Copyright 1951, 1952, 1953, by Eugenie Clark Konstantinu

I decided to read this book because I have long been an admirer of Eugenie Clark. I actually met her in Florida in 1973 at the Warm Mineral Springs Underwater Archeological Project, when she visited the site.

Eugenie Clark is now known as the "Shark Lady," but she is probably the first to publish a book on both biology and breathhold diving. Her reasons for diving were simple. She wanted to see fish in their native habitat. The book begins with her thrill of being underwater and seeing fish, spearing them for science too. She then takes us on her pursuit of her Ph.D. in biology, and her subsequent studies in warm water areas. She was the first to systematically study both the Red Sea underwater, and the South Pacific. She also studied cooler waters in Southern California, and this was in the 1940s. At one point, she experienced problems with both gaining access to certain research projects because she is a woman, and because her mother was Japanese-American. These small details were ones I was not aware of until reading the book. But her persistence was rewarded with wonderful research opportunities.

The chapter titles of her book tell a lot about what she wanted to communicate to the reader. These include:

--Getting Acquainted with Fish
--Underwater off Southren California
--Platyfish and Swordtails
--Filefishes in the West Indies
--The Eyes of Fishes
--Bronx Zoo to Hawaii
--Kwajalein: The Poisoners and the Poisoned
--Guam: Wiskey and Raw Fish
--Siapan and Tide-pool Treasures
--The Palaus and the Best Spearfisherman

I'm about half way through the contents page, and you can see the wonderful stories that are intertwined with descriptions of diving techniques, and how they contributed to the science of marine biology. Here's a sample:

I was getting a little ahead of Siakong, as he was stopping for deeper dives, when I heard him call me back.

"Nechan, come see here."

I swam over to him, dove under the Schlieren, and looked where he was pointing down below. I couldn't make out much until I was down a few more feet. Then I could see a sandy bottom and sitting in the sand was a clam. It looked like an average-sized giant clam. However, there was nothing around to compare it with and I couldn't estimate the depth.

We swam to the surface and treaded water easily and forced a long series of deep breaths. We had been swimming for quite a while and I wasn't prepared for a deep dive. When I felt a little rested and saturated with fresh air, I nodded to Siakong. He started to dive toward the clam and I followed, swallowing to adjust my ears to the increasing pressure.

I've never measured how deep I can dive, but I know that at more than twenty-feet under, my face mask cuts into my head and my ears and nose feel uncomfortable. Usually I don't go much deeper for I have always found enough activity in the top twenty-five feet to keep me occupied and satisfied. But this time I follewed Siakong until I felt I was well below my usual limit and I knew my breath wouldn't last descending any deeper. Perhaps if I had dived with a weight and not spent som much energy swimming downward, I mught have been able to stand another ten feet--but I still wouldn't have been anywhere near bottom. From the depth I did manage to reach, I could see Siakong far below me getting smaller and smaller until he reached the clam.

Then I saw it was truly a giant.

Siakong looked like a midget beside the clam which seemed mearly four feet across. I saw him give it a kick to close the huge jaws which could have held all of Siakong with ease. And then I had to shoot for the surface. Iwas still panting heavily when Siakong finally came up with no sign of strain...

Eugenie then described the attempt to recover the clam. Their boat's anchor line did not reach the bottom, so she held onto it at a comfortable depth and watched the action.

Siakong still had not come up. Niraibui and I dived under again. As we descended I made out a sight that sickened me with horror. Siakong was caught in the clam.

I will leave you here, and if you want to know the ending of this small adventure, you'll need to read the book.

The fascinating part of this history from my perspective is not only the biology (the fish she speared became samples she collected were sent to muesems in the States, where they are still part of the museums' collections), but the free diving techniques themselves. The whole book documents some ten plus years of experiences, and how she evolved as a biologist into a diver.

It appears that all the illustrations were also by Dr. Clark, as they have no attribution to them. There are very interesting fish drawings which illustrate each chapter. At the end of the book there is an illustration of her diving equipment for that time. The illustration shows two hand spears, with a rubber arbalete-type spear gun, a mask and a snorkel. This whole book is written before swim fins were commonly available! She dove in a swimsuit and tennis shoes, or barefoot for this period of her diving experience. That, to me, is the amazing part.

Dr. Eugenie Clark became a renouned scientist, and expert on sharks. She recently retired from active teaching, but still works on research at Mote Marine Labs, University of Maryland. You can find out more about her at these sites:

www.sharklady.com/

www.life.umd.edu/faculty/clark.html

All in all, if you enjoy spearfishing, biology, and vintage skin diving, you will really enjoy this book. By coincidence, Dan has a copy of this book in his collection for sale (I bought mine some years ago, and did not think about this until after I started reading it), or you can check local libraries for it too.

John

[DavidRitchieWilson]

Peter Small
Your Guide to Underwater Adventure
London: Lutterworth Press, 1957

Peter Small and Oscar Gugen, to whom this book is dedicated, co-founded the British Sub Aqua Club in 1953. Small became one of the first two divers to reach a depth of 1000ft in the open ocean in December 1962, but did not survive the dive.

Small's book makes a very enjoyable and comprehensible read for the beginning diver, not only because of the author's enthusiasm, but also because of his awareness of his audience. He was a journalist by trade. In his preface he writes:

"I have tried to write the sort of book, not which would be most useful to me now, but which I would like to have read when I first felt the urge to take up underwater swimming. (...) What has been left out has been my notions on advanced diving, detailed advice on specialized applications (archaeology, photography, etc) and, of course, the personal titbits of personal adventure, which, more often than not, do not leave one any the wiser."

I find this restraint admirable, and endearingly British, in one of the UK's diving pioneers. It's what a good teacher does too. He warns his readers about the risks of the sport, but he is also determined to share with others what makes diving fun. As the caption to one of his photographs says "If underwater swimming is not fun, it's not anything". That photograph shows a family, including young children enjoying snorkeling. The very ordinariness of the scene makes a refreshing change from the female models and macho men in black that adorn some diving manuals.

The book certainly evokes a bygone age:

"As with snorkling, you would be wise to get used to your aqualung in a swimming pool - but don't choose a peak hour in the middle of a hot day, or you will find yourself emulating the Pied Piper among a horde of curious spectators"

I remember those days well, when I could go down with my fins, mask and snorkel to my local public swimming pool in the North East of England and nobody would bat an eyelid. Against regulations nowadays, of course.

Although the book targets the beginnner, it's a "must" for anybody researching British vintage diving equipment. There are full descriptions of the fins, masks, snorkels and suits commercially available in the UK at that time, including prices. It's the only source I know with information about Dunlop and Lillywhites rubber/stockinette suits.

I'm not sure when or where I purchased the book. I notice £3-25 on the flyleaf, so it must have been post-decimalisation, i.e. some time after 1968.

David

[SeaRat]

Hans Hass, Ph.D.
We Come From The Sea
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York
1959

When we think about diving history, and scuba, we tend to think that Cousteau invented it. Yet here is Dr. Hans Hass discussing his adventures in marine biology in the Caribbean Sea, Pacific near Galapagos Islands and at the Great Barrier Reef, and in the Red Sea. His expeditions to the Red Sea occurred several years before Cousteau got there, and Dr. Hess and his crew of the Xarifa made a number of observations which defied the conventional wisdom of the day. They were some of the first to be swimming free in shark waters. They photographed whale sharks for the first time, and documented their docile habits around divers.

Hans Hass did this from the early 1940s to 1955, using oxygen rebreathers. Here’s what he said about the rebreathers:

Up to that time the bottom of the sea had been known only from samples and specimens brought up by drag-net and grab from the depths. A few explorers had, indeed, gone down below water but they were clad in unwieldy helmets and diving suits. In free diving, however, it was possible to transform one-self into an amphibious creature and swim about with the creatures of the sea. In this way could be learned not only a great deal more about their modes of life but also about their reactions, their behaviour, the function of their senses and their intelligence.

Once I was convinced of these things I felt that my course was clear. I began to study zoology and I devoted my efforts to the perfecting of a breathing-apparatus which should be light in weight. First of all we experimented with compressed air but the noise of extruded air frightened the fish. We then consulted Herr Selzner, the chief engineer of the Draeger Works in Lubeck, who was an eminent expert in all connected with diving. At our request he adapted a H-boat surfacing apparatus for our needs. In this apparatus you breathed in pure oxygen and the expelled carbon dioxide was absorbed in chemicals. Thus breathing took place in a closed circuit and no bubbles were formed--and we could observe the animals in conditions of complete tranquillity.

In 1942, on an expedition to Greece, this apparatus proved excellent. We were able to push down into deep submarine grottoes and there to discover new kinds of sponge- and coral-fauna. I specialized in research work on the laws of growth in colony-forming Bryozoa and was able, through the assistance of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, to carry out further studies at the Zoological Station at Naples. In some scientific publications I stressed the utility of our methods for various special branches of marine research.

In those days there was one vision ever before my eyes--that of my own research ship--for only with such a vessel could we hope to carry on intensive and fruitful research work in far-off parts, especially in the tropical coral seas. The ship must have laboratories, a workshop, a scientific library, a darkroom, storage space for specimens and all that was necessary for our diving operations. But where was the money to come from?...

The book details where the money came from, and the fruits of their research. Dr. Hans Hass is a foremost pioneer in diving, having not only adapted the oxygen rebreather for scientific research, but also invented a camera housing which became world-renowned for the quantity of its images, the Rolleimarin (Rolleimarine). The produced many films, and he went on tour with his lectures on marine life.

The quality of the photographs in this book are better than those in The Silent World, but Dr. Hass did not do the self-promotion that Cousteau did. Hans Hass is a biologist first, a photographer and film maker, and story teller. This book is a “must” for those interested in the history of scuba diving, as Dr. Hess took a different turn in using oxygen rebreathers, down to about 60 feet depth, with thousands of hours underwater using them and one fatality. That fatal dive was documented in the book towards the end, and put a damper on the rest of their expedition. (Cousteau also had fatal and near-fatal dives with his group during the same time period.)

Dr. Hass is still around, and contact information can be found at:

www.nmnh.si.edu/iz/echinoderm/addhj/body_addhj.html

In the final chapter of the book, “We Go Back into the Sea,” Dr. Hess states:

During the last twenty years the sport of under-water hunting has become popular all round the world. Remote ages ago some fish ventured onto dry land, now Man ventures back into the sea. It needed millions of years for nature’s evolution to be accomplished. Man has managed, through his modern technique, to effect his evolution in a few decades.

The difference, of course, resides in this: each link in the chain of natural development must be fully equipped to survive--otherwise than link would snap and the chain of evolution be broken. Furthermore, each new feature of a living organism must be developed from a body and be an integral part of it. In the case of man--owing to the development of his mental powers--both of these conditions ceased to be imperative.

A crane, an airplane, a gun or a microscope are, biologically speaking, artificial organs which man has created in order to increase his possibilities and power. Within the natural evolutionary processes, as they have been in function up to now, such instruments could not have been produced in thousands of millions of years, since these implements far transcend anything which on a living organism can be formed and maintained. In Man, on the other hand, through the capacities of our brain, nature is able to achieve such results. We devised these tools and then, outside and apart from our bodies, construct them according to plan from parts and materials...

Such was also the case with the new diving method. This was not invented by scientists or by the technicians of the established diving “industry” and they also did not arise from special necessity. Modern skin-diving developed from fun and sport, it derived from a lust for adventure, from a delight in what is novel and from interest in the unknown...

Also inspired by the example of Guy Gilpatric, Jacques Yves Cousteau, Philippe Taillez and Frederic Dumas formed a group at Toulon. They dived off the French coast and also off the island of Jerba in southern Tunisia. Perhaps it was because we in Vienna were so far off from the sea that we ventured, already before the late war, to plunge into the Caribbean.

However, what was still lacking was “artificial gills”. In Toulon, as in Vienna, the talk was all about some appropriate breathing apparatus. Cousteau plumped for compressed air and devised, in collaboration with the technician Emile Gagnan, the “aqualung” which is not ]used by divers all over the world. We, on the other hand, as I have already mentioned, chose an oxygen apparatus, the first of which was turned out in 1942. As far as I know this is the earliest breathing apparatus (used by skin divers) whose existence can be proved by published documents.

In much of the present-day diving literature the dangers presented by use of pure oxygen are much stressed. In opposition to this opinion I can say only this--we have experienced no trouble at all with such an apparatus (up to depths of ten fathoms) during more than two thousand under-water adventures. Similar results are also reported from Italy and South Africa. All the same, I recommend sporting divers to make use of compressed air appliances. They are reliable, easy to use and allow one to descend to considerably greater depths...

To get more, you’ll have to read the book. For further web information about Dr. Hans Hass, see:

www.hans-hass.de/Englisch/Short_Vita/Short_Vita.html

www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/mycentury/transcript/wk28d2.shtml

www.buyhistoryprints.com/subaqua/display.asp?stock_number=1495

John

[Buc]

The name is HASS- H A S S--Dr. Hans Hass. Not Hess!

Dr. Hass has a number of books printed in the USA.

They are,
Diving to adventure -1951
Manta -1953
Men and sharks - 1954
We come from the sea - 1959 +
Challenging the deep - 1972
Men beneath the sea--1975

Also printed in UK in English, (Not in US)
I photographed under the seven seas 1956
Expedition to the unknown 1965

Lotte Hass also published in UK
Girl on the ocean floor--1972

Michael Jung published in German
"HANS HASS, Ein leben lang auf expedition" in 1994

[SeaRat]

Buc,

Oh my, my dyslexia is showing, along with my trifocals

Thank you for pointing out my mistake, and please feel free to review any of those books you mentioned. Hopefully, I have corrected all in my review.

John

[dogsbodydiving]

Just started reading Diving To Adventure, must try and scan the picture for those that have not seen it.....we think it may have helped in the movie 'Abyss'.

Kim

[Broxton Coalition]

dear mr. searat sir,
i would like to pickup this thread again and join the vintage roundtable dicussion about diving literature, old and new.
i have collected some old diving books but what i do enjoy the most are books like lady with a spear. the very personal expieriences of those who were diving and snorkling along time before me.
i enjoyed the chapters of lady with a spear, most her red sea expieriences having traveled there myself a few years ago.
mr searat sir, have you read "i thought i saw atlantis" yet?
mike

[YankDownUnder]

Dr Hans Hass and his wife Lotte made a series of television shows in Germany that were dubbed into English and shown on the BBC. They were done in the Red Sea and around the world. I watched them as a boy in Australia.

They always dived a Drager rebreather. See:

www.therebreathersite.nl/Zuurstofrebreathers/German/draeger_modell_138.htm

That lead to my first rebreather, a Cressi Sub ARO-57, which I still dive.

They are both on the Advisory Board of HDS. Lotte's picture can be seen at www.hds.org/