NW History of Diving, October 2018 Meeting

[SeaRat]

FALL CONFERENCE
SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
SEA STORYS
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2018
11:00 AM - 4:00 PM

FOSS WATERWAY SEAPORT MUSEUM
705 DOCK STREET
TACOMA, WA

Hello Friends,
We've been busy as usual, collecting more stories and photos. Here's a great series of stories and events about some "bold" but not so wise Northwest divers more than a half a century ago. Thanks to a lot of research by many dedicated people in diving, working divers have been able to follow a much safer profile to avoid the bends. However, in the early years many "bold" divers suffered a lot.

Bold Diving in Deep Water
By Tory van happy girl (photo on right)

By all accounts, Tommy Amerman was a bold diver. He broke into the commercial diving field with a daring feat that no other diver at the time could accomplish. He penetrated a sunken dredge in the wave breakers zone of the Clatsop Spit on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Bar and extracted a dead body from the wreck. He achieved success on his second dive. The first attempt was unsuccessful because he was told to search in the wrong part of the ship. The second day, diving at slack water tide, he entered the sunken vessel, found the body of the drown crewman inside, and pulled his body from the wreckage, delivering it to the topside personnel standing by to receive it.

Hard Hat divers had spent weeks trying to do what Tommy had done in two dives. The constant wave action, tremendous currents, and shifting surges of sea water thwarted every effort made by the Hard Hat divers to recover the body. The access doors on the main deck superstructure violently crashed back and forth against the bulkheads making a tremendous racket. Their equipment was too heavy and cumbersome to deal with, and they were unable to even successfully approach the wreck, let alone penetrate it and recover the lost crewman's body.

After Tommy's tremendous accomplishment, the US Army Corps of Engineers felt obligated to reward his herculean effort with additional diving contract work whenever Tommy desired to pursue it.

Harold Maiken, the owner of Commercial Divers Incorporated, one of the two major construction diving contractors in Portland, Oregon, had Tommy under contract as a SCUBA diver doing commercial diving work. The Hard Hat divers did not like the SCUBA equipped diver infringing upon their once sacred employment ground. Tommy worked circles around the Hard Hat divers and they just couldn't compete with him. He would dive in all different conditions and always get the job done quickly and completely. Very soon, all the working divers in the Pacific Northwest began using SCUBA equipment to perform their commercial diving jobs. The Mark V Deep Sea Diving Outfit was made obsolete overnight by Tommy Amerman and his heroic deed.

Other ambitious SCUBA equipped commercial divers began to join Harold Maiken's team of divers. These included Paul Mark and Bud Sanders. Harold Maiken got the contract from the Corps for the diving work on the John Day Dam. Tommy, Bud and Paul did virtually all the diving work on the John Day Dam from beginning to end. The job lasted from 1959 to 1962.

In 1962, Paul Mark and Bud Sanders got the diving contract work for De Long Construction on the four year long project building the Astoria Bridge across the mighty Columbia from Oregon to Washington. The Hard Hat equipped divers could not function near the mouth of the Columbia River except during slack water tide, and then only for about 30 minutes, four times a day, two in daylight and two in darkness according to the tides. Colonel De Long was going bankrupt waiting for slack water, until Paul and Bud came down after a snag diving shift and showed him that they could do the job in the current with their SCUBA equipment. Again, the Hard Hat divers were superseded by working SCUBA equipped divers.

It was during the Astoria Bridge construction project, about 1965, that this story took place. Tommy Amerman and Ed Forsyth were assigned to complete a diving contract awarded to Harold Maiken of Commercial Divers Incorporated. The job appeared to be rather easy up front. Dive to the bottom of a high Cascade dam reservoir in the central Washington Cascades and set dynamite charges on four old growth timber trees to blow them off the bottom and send them floating to the surface.

For super diver Tommy Amerman, this was just another day at the office, in about 35 fathoms of water. Eddie Forsyth was Tommy's diving tender. The two of them loaded all the equipment, demolition charges and accessories, air compressors, twin SCUBA bottle packs and other diving equipment, a single man recompression chamber, light weight diving skiff with outboard motor, and headed up to the high Cascades of Washington State to do the job.

Tommy had decided early on that he could do this easy dive job in one day instead of four days. What's the big deal? Dive down a couple of hundred feet in this clear water mountain reservoir lake and set some charges at the base of four big old growth fir trees. Cakewalk!

Tommy and Ed arrived at the job site and set up a base camp for diving operations. They loaded all the dive gear in the boat and launched it at the convenient boat ramp not too far from the dive site. Tommy quickly suited up in his wet suit, while Ed got his diving equipment assembled and ready to go.

They got out over the big trees on the surface of the lake and Eddie anchored the boat with a long descending line leading straight down to the bottom. There was no current to speak of in this lake reservoir, and the conditions for diving were perfect. A beautiful early fall day with clear blue sky, lots of sunshine and no wind. What could be better than this?

Ed helped Tommy get his twin 65 cubic foot air tanks and back pack on and buckled up, along with his weight belt adjusted with very little lead on it because of the deep water diving assignment. At two hundred feet of depth, even in the less dense fresh water, the water pressure is so great that more than 100 pounds per square inch of pressure pushes in over the entire diver's body. The ¼ inch thick neoprene wet suit material is compressed down to about the same thickness as a piece of newspaper. At that depth, the wet suit provides absolutely no additional buoyancy for the diver and the weight belt is no longer necessary. It also provides about zero insulating warmth for the diver. That's why Tommy only had about ten pounds of lead on his weight belt.

Tommy was ready to go and made a seated back roll over the side of the small boat into the lake reservoir. The water temperature at the surface was quite pleasant, having been warmed up all season long by the hot summer sun. Descending rapidly down to the reservoir bottom, Tommy passed through more than four thermoclines of decreasing water temperature. The water temperature at the lake bottom in 200 feet of water was quite cold, less than 45 degrees.

As he descended, he could see the big trees below him, with their needle-less large branches and the massive tree trunks underneath. He continued to pop his ears and equalize air pressure as he swam down rapidly to the bottom using his swim fins and powerful leg muscles. Time underwater is very critical, and especially in deep diving. He did not want to waste even a minute making his first dive.

In the meanwhile, Eddie was up in the boat keeping track of Tommy's bottom time with his Rolex Oyster Perpetual Diver wrist watch using the elapsed time ring rotating bezel. The no decompression limits end at one hundred and ninety feet of depth. Beyond that, you are decompression diving, which means you must stop your ascent at 20 feet of depth for about ten minutes to decompress underwater before coming directly to the surface in order to prevent decompression sickness, also known as the bends. It is called the bends, because divers bend over in pain from the excruciating painful madness of nitrogen bubbles exploding inside their body tissues and blocking normal blood flow circulation. Not a pretty picture.

Ed didn't really have to worry much about Tommy getting the bends, because Tommy was a superman and a super diver! The no decompression diving time limits, the decompression diving tables, and the repetitive diving tables for underwater divers breathing compressed air did not really apply to Tommy Amerman. They had been developed by the United States Navy long ago and were considered to be 95% accurate for the standard U.S. Navy Diver. Tommy was not bound to adhere to these diving tables and their prescribed limitations, because he was superior in all aspects to those lowly U.S. Navy Divers. He was a diver of no limits, and the Navy Diving Tables just didn't apply to him.

Underwater diving to 200 feet of depth or deeper is considered to be an extreme exposure dive. High altitude diving is also more critical for decompression because of the reduction in surface atmospheric pressure. Extreme cold water, fatigue, physical stress and heavy work will also severely increase nitrogen absorption in divers which makes them more susceptible to the bends. The more volume of compressed air you breathe underwater, the greater the intake will be of absorbed nitrogen saturating into your body tissues and bloodstream. All of these conditions existed on this dive job and none of them were in Tommy's favor. Tommy didn't care!

Tommy reached the bottom and placed the pre-packed demolition charges around the base of the first old growth fir tree very quickly. "Take your time, do your best, but hurry every chance you get," was the U.S. Navy Divers motto for working underwater with the conventional Mark V Deep Sea Diving Outfit. Tommy was on SCUBA, and he was a fast, hard worker underwater, and he had proven time after time that he was the diver that could get the job done, bar none!

He quickly headed back up to the surface to get the next demolition packs for the next tree. Eddie was there to assist him with his SCUBA gear. Tommy climbed aboard and quickly donned a fresh pair of SCUBA bottles, buckling up the back pack straps, and over the side he went.

He swam quickly back to the bottom and set the charges at the base of the next tree. He was feeling good and the time underwater had been pretty fast, so things appeared to be going according to plan.

He quickly returned directly to the surface and got another pair of tanks and loaded up with the demolition packs and returned to the bottom of the lake. As with the other two trees, he set the demolition packs around the tree base of the third tree and then quickly headed for the surface On this third ascent, at about fifty feet of depth, Tommy began to discern that something was not quite right. As he got closer to the surface, much to his chagrin, he began to realize that he had developed a bad case of decompression sickness.

When he broke the surface of the lake at the side of the boat, he said to Eddie, "I've got 'em and I've got 'em bad!"

Eddie quickly flew into action. He got Tommy on board and headed for the beach. He got Tommy out of the boat and into the single man recompression chamber as fast as he could.

The single man recompression chamber was situated upon the trailer, and the air compressor that charged the system was located close by the trailer. Ed got Tommy inside the chamber and closed the heavy access door and dogged it down.

These small recompression chambers are called coffin chambers, because they are about the same size as and resemble a coffin. They are quite small. Once you are lying on your back inside one of these pressure vessels, it is a very tight fit with no extra room to spare. If you suffer from any claustrophobic feelings and fear of tight places, then you never want to crawl inside one of these contraptions. Once you are inside, it is nearly impossible to move and there is no way out unless your diving tender opens the door and lets you out!

Ed fired up the air compressor, opened the valves and started sending compressed air into the coffin chamber. Tommy was in a very bad condition, having omitted decompression from three back to back dives to 200 feet of depth. Even with his short bottom times and rapid work, he still neglected to decompress and the dissolved nitrogen in his tissues bubbled up, as the reduced ambient pressure at the surface allowed the compressed extra absorbed inert gas to be released from pressurized solution.

Think of a soda pop bottle slightly shaken on a warm day and then having the pop top unstopped rapidly. It usually makes a mess, as the soda pop overflows over the top of the bottle. Now think of Tommy's body as that soda pop bottle overflowing with too much internalized pressure.

The air compressor fired right up and air pressure started flowing into the chamber to recompress Tommy and give him some very necessary instant relief from his pain. However, something was not right. The air compressor was running and the air was flowing into the chamber, but the inside chamber pressure was not increasing.

Eddie started looking around and listening over the roar of the air compressor engine and he realized that one of the through hull fittings on the chamber was missing. All the air that was being compressed and blown into the chamber with the main air line was bleeding right back out of the chamber through the missing valve hole.

Ed started scrambling around at a feverish pace trying to find something to plug that hole. He quickly located a wooden shovel handle, sawed off a short piece, whittled the dowel with his knife to fit the diameter of the hole, and pounded it into place with a hammer from the tool box.

Immediately, the chamber started to gain air pressure. Tommy popped his ears as the inside pressure rapidly increased. Eddie got the chamber atmosphere air pressure compressed to 190 feet of depth equivalent and Tommy got relief from his pain, torture and agony.

Now the long ordeal began to treat Tommy for his decompression sickness which resulted from his three repetitive 200 feet deep dives and the omitted decompression.

Recompression pressure squeezes the nitrogen bubbles back into solution form in the body tissues and restores normal circulation. Once this occurs, the pain disappears in the body of the affected diver. The air pressure is then gradually reduced inside the chamber and eventually the diver returns to topside atmospheric pressure, cured of his bends barotraumas. The process is quite lengthy and requires several hours to complete properly

Ed was working steady as the dedicated tender taking care of his injured diver. He kept the air compressor fueled and running, gave Tommy mandatory fresh air ventilations for two out of every five minutes inside the recompression chamber, while always watching the clock and keeping track of the required pressure reductions and timed stops as prescribed by the treatment table requirements.

With Tommy's extreme pressure exposure from the multiple deep dives, plus the high altitude factor, the treatment called for four hours of slow decompression. After about three hours of close quarter confinement within the dark coffin chamber, needless to say, Tommy was becoming quite agitated. Tommy was a very strong man. He stood about 5'9" tall, and weighed about 235 pounds of solid muscle. He was what one would call the original "Water Gorilla.' Even his name implied that he was a Merman, one born to live and breathe underwater and accomplish heroic feats beyond the pale of mere mortals. Tommy started making it very clear to Eddie that he was at the end of his rope. Being confined to this little coffin chamber for decompression sickness treatment that he no longer had, and perhaps never really did have, he now wanted out! He started kicking at the chamber access door with his wet suit boot clad feet. Eddie wasn't even thinking about letting him out of there until he had completed the full course of the decompression treatment table, no way!

Well, with Tommy Amerman, the rules of diving just didn't really apply. He was a Merman, and those rules applied to mere mortals and basic humans, not to the Super Diver. So Tommy continued to kick at the access door on the chamber. He kicked and he kicked and the longer he thought about it, the madder he got. It was a disgrace to even think that Tommy would find himself entrapped and enslaved in a tiny iron coffin for so long just to treat a mild or even nonexistent case of the bends. Eventually he prevailed and he kicked the door off the chamber and escaped out of that miserable iron coffin! He did not complete his entire decompression treatment, but with Tommy, enough was enough and he just wanted out.

The sad ending to this story is that this event effectively ended Tommy Amerman's commercial diving career.

This particular decompression sickness episode was not the first in his diving career. He worked with Paul Mark and Bud Sanders on the John Day Dam construction project. He would dive the first four hour shift while Paul and Bud tended him, and then Bud and Paul would split the next four hour shift, diving two hours each while the other one worked as the diver's tender. Tommy was known to stop at the Bonneville Dam recompression chamber on his way back to Portland and soak out for a quick decompression treatment on more than one occasion. Even though Tommy ignored the limits and believed that he was not confined to them as other divers were, he still periodically got the bends.

The old growth subaquatic timber harvest turned out to be a test for the diving application and feasibility of such in this deep water task Ed Forsyth told me that remote controlled surface operation technology had already been developed by the company that contracted with Harold Maiken. Tree removal via a remote controlled surface operation circumvented any requirement for divers. The decompression sickness episode that developed on this dive job made it clear that surface remote control operations in at least some applications were beginning to supersede divers.

The extreme depth and high altitude made this type of diving operation too dangerous to be profitable. . Tommy and Ed did their best and tried to deliver a good show, but events and circumstances played out differently. Severe health issues and the result of living life in the fast lane took its toll on Tommy, and he died about ten years later.

Ed Forsyth continued diving and took over the ownership of Commercial Divers Incorporated from Harold Maiken. He had a long and illustrious diving career, performing many difficult jobs and completing many very challenging contracts. Ed, Paul Mark and Bud Sanders never got decompression sickness during their entire diving careers. Although they were all very strong men and excellent professional divers, they realized that there were limitations to physical diving exposures, and they all respected those limitations and took care to remain well within the recommended normal deep diving decompression requirements. During snag diving shifts that may last the entire six hour ebb tide, they used the three tank rule dive limit. When they had blown through three fully charges SCUBA 2500psi 65 cubic feet bottles, they ended their repetitive diving shift for that day. That was known as the three tank rule, and they never got the bends using that rule. Although they were all "Water Gorillas" in their own right, they never professed to be Mermen like Tommy Amerman (photo on right).

"There are old divers and there are bold divers, but there ain't no old bold divers."

"Don't let too much "Can Do!" do you in!"

© Tory the Diver, 2018.

Author's Note: This story was told to me personally by Ed Forsyth more than 35 years ago. Some facts, figures and incidents may have been added to, changed and/or embellished in the interest of presenting a readable article with the reserved right and excuse of the author's creative license. Suffice to say, this historical event occurred and the divers included were real flesh and blood, living men who walked upon planet earth for their joyous season of life.

THANK YOU Foss Waterway Seaport for your support
www.fosswaterwayseaport.org

Call or email Tom Hemphill if you have any questions - comments - ideas
and if you want to volunteer to assist with a project.

EMAIL or CALL TO REGISTER FOR OCTOBER 20th

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This post was put together by Tom Hemphill, President, Northwest History of Diving Association.