Oct. 12, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
-flio 
Diving and Sport. 
Or the Seven Stages of & Speed-Boat Race. 
BY JOHN D. SCHMIDT. 
It was not a great while ago that a launch 
which could go twelve or fifteen miles per hour 
was a fast boat indeed. In those days the 
purely racing type of boat had not come into 
its own and launches were built to stand wear 
and tear as well as for fast running. In recent 
years, however, great strides have been made in 
speed, and as the speed has increased, the boats 
have been built lighter and lighter in order to 
carry greater power with the least possible addi¬ 
tion of weight. When one of these forty-mile-an- 
hour racers strikes a log or a heavy swell, it 
not infrequently happens that the cockle-shell 
goes to the bottom. At this point the diver 
enters the game. 
A Reliance, a Dixie or a Bug, as the case 
may be, strikes a log and sinks. The owner 
immediately telegraphs to one of the big wreck¬ 
ing companies, while his men are out locating 
the sunken craft. Presently appears a lighter 
bearing the necessary gear for raising the boat. 
The deck hands place an iron side-ladder over 
the gunwales and take soundings to determine 
the depth of water and condition of the tide, 
while willing hands help the diver into his 
dress. 
Over a heavy suit of woolens and socks of 
the same material he draws on the baggy rub¬ 
ber-processed canvas diving dress. They clap 
a bronze collarplate over his head, onto which 
a rubber flange of the dress is securely clamped. 
His overalls are pulled on and made fast to 
the collarplate and the life-line is passed 
around his waist and similarly fastened. Lastly, 
upon being informed that the racer has been 
located and that all is ready for him, he steps 
into a pair of iron shoes weighing about 
twenty-five pounds and gets down on the 
ladder. Here his tender adds to his already 
weighty outfit a belt carrying seventy-five 
pounds of pig lead. The human turtle, for 
that is perhaps,what he most resembles, takes 
a last puff at his pipe; the tender calls out, 
“Go ahead with the pump,” puts the helmet on 
and screws it tight with a quarter turn, passes 
the hose under the diver’s left arm and makes 
it fast to the collarplate, and with a parting 
clap on the helmet, the queer monstrosity 
clambers slowly down the ladder and disap¬ 
pears under water. 
Once on bottom, the diver investigates the 
position of the hull and reports his findings by 
signals on the life-line. Presently the lighter’s 
boom is swinging out and the tackle lowered 
away. The diver passes a sling around the 
motor boat and makes it fast to the hook of 
the hoisting tackle. All this must be done by 
feeling, since at depths greater than ten or 
fifteen feet one can see nothing. In heavy tide 
and deep water this operation of passing a 
line around the hull is not as simple as it may 
seem and is not unmixed with danger. How¬ 
ever, this part over with, nothing remains but 
for the engineer to haul away and the craft 
is lifted up and set in a cradle on the lighter’s 
deck. 
This proceeding is becoming quite a com¬ 
mon one. In fact, scarcely a regatta has been 
held of late without at least one boat being 
sunk. At the international carnival at Hunt¬ 
ington, Tech Junior and Ace III. were sunk. 
At the last regatta at Buffalo Baby Reliance 
II. went under, and during the carnival on the 
Hudson, Tech Junior again met with misfortune 
and was salved by Merritt & Chapman’s lighter 
Champion. Thus a new field, and a profitable 
one, has been opened for the diver. 
They are a hardy, cool-headed lot, these 
explorers of the submarine world. I have seen 
a man who had been pulled up nearly un¬ 
conscious, after having his air supply cut off 
for about three minutes, go down again within 
half an hour. When asked whether his ex¬ 
perience had made him nervous about go¬ 
ing down again, he smiled and said, “Oh, 
well, that might happen only once in a life¬ 
time. I got up all right, so what’s the use of 
worrying.” 
On another occasion a staging, carrying 
the pumps and gear, broke while the diver was 
down in forty feet of water, throwing the 
pumps into the river. The tender immediately 
started to haul up his man, while all hands 
stood by ready to render any aid that could be 
given. If you have never been around in such 
a case you cannot imagine how heart-breaking 
is the suspense while someone else is doing 
all that can be done to save the man’s life, and 
and all you can do is to stand around and 
curse, pray, or hope, according to your char¬ 
acter. In this case the diver’s coolness saved 
him. When he felt himself hauled up without 
any preliminary signal being given, he surmised 
that something was wrong with the pump. 
Reaching around to the exhaust valve on the 
back of the helmet (not as easy as it sounds, 
when the suit is puffed out with air), he screwed 
it down tight, shutting in what air there was 
in the helmet and suit. This little proved suf¬ 
ficient to keep him from suffocation till they 
could pull him to the surface and get the helmet 
off. On the way up the tide swept him under 
some bracing, so that he came up on the wrong 
side of it and had to retrace his course to gel 
on the right side, losing several precious sec¬ 
onds. Picture to yourself what a strain it must 
be for a man to keep a cool head under such 
circumstances! 
logether with this coolness and nerve 
goes a very varied ability. They are “Jacks 
of all trades,” these divers, and, moreover, 
they belie the rest of the saying by being 
masters of more than one. One chap, a Nor 
wegian, of my acquaintance holds his master’s 
papers from the old country and has sailed as 
mate on more than one good ship and yacht. 
1 he diver is called upon for everything from 
laying pipes and cables, to raising motor boats 
or salving valuable cargoes from sunken 
freighters. And as I have remarked before, all 
their work is done by touch alone. Inventors 
have rigged up lights to be carried down and 
