Jani vry 1. 1915.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



189 



A Remarkable Salvage Operation Which Rubber Made Possible. 



By Robert G. Skerrett. 



THE submarine diver is able to follow his calling and to 

 do the tiling- thai amaze, at times, mainly because of 

 the vitally necessary part that india rubber plays in his 

 equipment. There arc about 400 commercial divers in the 

 United States, but all of these men are not equal to really 

 deep submergences, and the man that can go down ISO feet 



and there do g 1 work is the exception rather than the rule. 



But aside from these men there are other under-water workers 



( iKiH !■ OF M VSTKK 1 >IVERS. 



of whom the public hears but little. These are the qualified 

 divers in the navy, who are officially known as seamen 

 gunners. 



The seaman gunner i- the all-around handy man or enlisted 

 specialist of the battle fleet, and part of his comprehensive 

 training is submarine diving. When he dons hi- diving dress 

 he generally goes overboard to look for a lost torpedo, a stray 

 anchor, or to examine the bottom of the ship on which he 

 is serving. For this work the sailorman is not required to go 

 to any considerable depth, therefore he qualifies at the train- 

 ing school at Newport by proving his fitness to operate at 

 but 60 feet below the surface. Every fighting ship in the 

 United Slates navy has a numlier of these men aboard, being 

 in this respect like the battle craft of the British navy. The 

 story we have to tell is how some divers of the English 

 navy, from the cruiser 'Essex." with other of their citizen 

 fellows from Canada and the United States, recently com- 

 pleted an exceedingly hazardous under-water task in con- 

 nection with the sunken steamer "Empr.ess of Ireland." 



The reason the British naval divers took so important a 

 part in this work was because the admiralty set the pai e a 

 few years ago in certain revolutionary experiments which 

 showed how men properly trained and suitably equipped could 

 descend to a depth of 200 feet and assist there in the recovery 

 of sunken property. Prior to that, a good many divers had 

 lost their lives by submergences at lesser depths, and among 

 these were seamen in the royal navy. The medical men and 

 physicists engaged in that investigation found out how the 

 "bends," paralysis and sacrifices of life could be avoided 

 while actually increasing the operative zone of the under- 

 water worker, hollowing upon these disclosures some impor- 

 tant improvements have been made in the elastic diving dress 



as well a- in the armored rubber air hose and the hand pumps 

 employed in furnishing an ample supply of air to the diver 

 it i suitable pressure — the latter always regulated by the 

 distanci below the surface of the water. 



' lore going into the details of the salvage of the "Empress 

 of Ireland." a few paragraphs may properly be inserted here 

 descriptive oi the diver's equipment, to show how necessary 

 a part of this equipment rubber constitu 



\ modern diving dress consists essentially of two parts — 

 the bronze helmet and collar or corselet and the elastic body- 

 i ing, which is secured to it, extending from the shoulders 

 to the feet. In dressing, the diver gets into his one-piece 

 waterproof garment through the opening at the shoulders or 

 neck, and this section of his dress is akin to one type of 

 nightdrawers for children. The only openings arc at the neck 

 and the cult-, tin feet being covered by an integral part of 

 the dre-s It i- in this portion of the so-called submarine 

 armor that rubber plays so conspicuous a part. This garment 

 of the diver is made of solid sheet india rubber, between two 

 layers of tanned twill. It has an inner and an outer collar, 

 the inner one (sometimes called the "bib") of the same ma- 

 terial as that of the dress, to pull up round the neck, and the 

 outer one, of india rubber, to go over the breast plate or cor- 

 selet to form a water-tight joint. The cuffs are also of rubber 

 and fit tightly round the wrists, making, when secured by the 

 rubber rings, a water-tight joint, at the same time leaving the 

 diver's hands free. 



The rings for the wrists go over the rubber cuffs, and two 

 or more of them may be required, depending upon the condi- 

 tions under which the man is working. Now, of course, a 



Pair of Divers vt Work. 



diver could nol work without air being sent down to him from 

 tin surface, and armored rubber hose is the means by which 

 this vital current is forced down to him through the agency 

 of suitable pumps or tanks charged with a supply of com- 

 pressed air. As has been said by one of the world's 'largest 

 manufacturers of diving equipment: "It is of the utmost im- 

 portance that the diver's air pipe should be of the strongest 

 and best description, and we do not hesitate to assert from 

 our long experience that hose of less than S-ply should never 

 be used for deep-water work. < >ur hose is made from the 

 best possible materials, and before it is allowed to leave our 

 works every length is tested to a pressure of 300 pounds per 



