Working Underwater: The Story of the Commercial Diving Industry

WORKING UNDERWATER 

The Story of the Commercial Diving Industry 

by Mike Cox 

A 50th anniversary commemorative publication of the Association of Diving Contractors International

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WORKING UNDERWATER 

The Story of the Commercial Diving Industry 

by Mike Cox 

A 50th anniversary commemorative publication of 

the Association of Diving Contractors International 

A publication of Press and Publications, 

Association of Diving Contractors International 

HPNbooks 

A division of Lammert Incorporated 

San Antonio, Texas

CONTENTS 

4 LEGACY SPONSORS 

6 THE HISTORY OF COMMERCIAL DIVING 

50 THE HISTORY OF THE ADCI 

61 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 

62 SHARING THE HERITAGE 

112 SPONSORS 

113 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

First Edition 

Copyright © 2018 HPNbooks 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing 

from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to HPNbooks, 11535 Galm Road, Suite 101, San Antonio, Texas, 78254. Phone (800) 749-9790, www.hpnbooks.com. 

ISBN: 978-1-944891-50-3 

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2018942132 

WORKING UNDERWATER: The Story of the Commercial Diving Industry 

2 

Working Underwater: The Story of the Commercial Diving Industry 

author: Mike Cox 

cover photographer: United States Navy 

contributing writer for “Sharing the Heritage”: Joe Goodpasture 

HPNbooks 

chairman and chief executive officer: Jean-Claude Tenday 

publisher and chief creative officer: Bernard O’Connor 

president and chief revenue officer: Ron Lammert 

project manager: Mary Hanley 

administration: Donna M. Mata 

Melissa G. Quinn, 

Lori K. Smith 

Kristin T. Williamson 

book sales: Joe Neely 

production: Colin Hart 

Evelyn Hart 

Glenda Tarazon Krouse 

Tim Lippard 

Craig Mitchell 

Christopher D. Sturdevant

An early day diver suiting up. 

CONTENTS 

3

LEGACY SPONSORS 

These companies have made major contribution to the book as part of our Legacy Program. We could not have made this book possible 

without their leadership and participation. 

Divers Institute of Technology 

1341 North Northlake Way 

Seattle, Washington 98103 

206-783-5542 

www.diversinstitute.edu 

J.F. Brennan Company, Inc. 

Brennan Marine 

818 Bainbridge Street 

La Crosse, Wisconsin 54603 

608-784-7173 

www.jfbrennan.com 


4

Mainstream Commercial Divers, Inc. 

322 C.C. Lowry Drive 

Murray, Kentucky 42071 

270-753-9654 

www.mainstreamdivers.com 

Underwater Construction Corporation 

110 Plains Road 

Essex, Connecticut 06426 

860-767-8256 

www.uccdive.com 

Walker Diving Underwater Construction, LLC 

75 Waterford Road, 

Hammonton, New Jersey 08037 

609-704-8650 

www.walkerdiving.com 

LEGACY SPONSORS 

5


6

THE HISTORY OF 

COMMERCIAL DIVING 

When the sails of the six Spanish ships rose over the horizon off the long, narrow sand barrier 

that centuries later would come to be known as Padre Island, lookouts in the rigging made out a 

bearded, semi-clad man waving frantically from the wreckage of a vessel partially submerged in the 

pounding surf. 

Of some 400 men, women and children who had been aboard three ships that had wrecked off 

this remote shore during a storm that spring, this man was one of only a handful of survivors. Half 

of those on the ships had drowned during the storm. Most of the rest had been slaughtered on the 

sand by Karankawa Indians. But for whatever reason, Francisco Vasquez had remained behind. He 

kept to the wreckage, for three months living mostly off raw fish and whatever of the ship’s stores 

he had salvaged. Like the scurrying sand crabs that formed part of his diet, he came out only at 

night to avoid discovery by the Indians. 

Captain Garcia de Escalante Alvarado afforded the sunburned survivor clothing, food and the 

comfort of shipboard life, but the captain had not come on a humanitarian mission. Another ship 

had been dispatched earlier in a vain search for survivors, somehow not finding Vasquez. Now 

Alvarado’s task was to recover as much of the gold, silver and other cargo as possible. In addition 

to the precious metals, coins and jewelry, the ill-fated flota (flotilla) had been carrying resins, sugar, 

wood, cowhides and cochinel (a red dye could be produced from them). 

In the wake of one of Spain’s worst maritime disasters to that point in its history, the New World’s 

first known use of divers in a salvage operation would soon begin in what are now Texas waters. 

Four ships had set sail from Vera Cruz on April 9, 1555, and laid a course across the Gulf of 

Mexico. Bound for Spain, they would stop at La Havana, Cuba, and then continue across the 

Atlantic laden with treasure for their home country. The vessels had made it half-way to Cuba when 

on April 29 they encountered a severe storm. Only one of the vessels reached Cuba. The other three, 

the San Esteban, the Espiritu Santo, and the Santa Maria de Yciar, wrecked on the Gulf Coast. 

The captain of the San Esteban left in a salvaged boat with some of his crew to sail for Vera Cruz 

to summon help. The other survivors, thinking they were not that far from the coastal city of 

Tampico, set out on foot. All but one of them, a priest named Fray Marcos de Mena, ended up 

getting killed by Indians. 

A rescue mission led by Captain Angel de Villafane left Vera Cruz on June 6 shortly after word 

of the tragedy reached Spanish officials there. Whether Villafane located any human remains when 

he arrived six weeks after the disaster is not mentioned in later accounts of the event, but after 

finding no survivors, he began diving on the wreckage of the Espiritu Santo. One of his divers 

recovered the trunk of a man the captain had known. While the body of its owner had been lost 

to the sea and its creatures, the trunk held three silver disks, 100 silver coins, and fine clothing. 

Alvarado had left Vera Cruz on July 15, beginning his salvage operation six days later on the 

wreckage of the San Esteban. Anchoring his fleet safely beyond the surf, he sent crew members and 

divers ashore in long boats to establish a base camp on the beach. To locate the hulks, the 

Spaniards dragged a chain between two small vessels until it snagged on wreckage. On August 20, 

Alvarado found the Santa Maria de Yciar, eventually recovering seven boxes of treasure she had on 

board when she foundered. In the process, however, the captain lost one of his salvage vessels in 

another storm. 

Fortunately for the salvers, the storm-tossed ships had gone down in shallow water, only 20 feet 

at the deepest point. Divers using weights for rapid descent and relying only on the air they could 

hold in their lungs, their eyes burning from the salt water, recovered a substantial amount of the 

lost treasure—but not all of it—in an operation that continued through September 12. 

A map of the northern hemisphere from 

Speculum Orbis Terrae by Cornelius de 

Jode, 1593. The Age of Discovery and 

conquest of the New World led to the first 

use of free diving for commercial purposes 

by Europeans in salvage operations in 

the Americas. 

THE HISTORY OF COMMERCIAL DIVING 

7

Above: A silver two-real coin recovered from 

the waters of the Gulf Coast. 

COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE. 

Below: Pearl Diving by Johannes 

Stradanus, c. 1596. 

COURTESY OF THE SAMUEL COURTAULD TRUST: WITT 

BEQUEST, THE FRICK COLLECTION. 

When the salvage expedition made it back 

to Vera Cruz, Spanish auditors counted 

35,805 pounds of recovered precious metals, 

jewelry and coins. But roughly 60 percent of 

the treasure the wrecked fleet had been 

carrying remained missing, some 51,000 

pounds worth millions in the 21st century. 

The operation had cost the Spanish crown 

one of the salvage vessels, lost in a storm on 

August 30, but from the perspective of King 

Charles V, the effort had been worth it. 

The disastrous aftermath of that sixteenth 

century expedition marked the first time 

anywhere on the North American continent 

that free diving had been employed for 

economic reasons by Europeans. The story of 

commercial diving involves a world-wide 

progression of scientific discovery and 

technological innovation on the part of a 

diverse group of people, but going under 

water purely for financial gain had its New 

World beginning in the crashing surf off the 

coast of Texas, some 50 miles south of 

present-day Corpus Christi. 

FREE 

DIVING 

For untold thousands of years, man had 

been diving under water first for food and then 

for material gain, but in their long course of 

evolution, homo sapiens had evolved as land 

beings. Unlike the gilled creatures of the sea or 

those confined to fresh water, a man’s lungs 

could not derive oxygen from water. In time, 

humans would begin to develop mechanical 

means to stay under water for longer periods of 

time and to descend ever deeper, but it all 

started at some distant point in pre-history 

when that first human sucked in a deep lungful 

of air, instinctively held his nose and plunged 

below the surface, opening stinging eyes to a 

water-clouded vision of another world. 

Archeologists investigating sites dating to 

roughly 5500 BCE have found shells that only 

could have been retrieved from deep water by 

the hand of man. That those shells had belonged 

to mollusks and other crustations point to the 

initial impetus for diving as being a quest for an 

essential part of staying alive—food. 

But objects of beauty considered even more 

desirable because of their scarcity also attracted 

early men, giving them more motivation for 

diving beneath the water surface. 

At a 7,500-year-old burial site in Umm al 

Quwain in the United Arab Emirates, 

archeologists found the oldest archeological 

pearl. Scientists say this is the earliest known 

evidence of the long-standing pearl diving 

industry along the Persian Gulf. The 

Phoenicians in the 6th century BCE are 

known to have traded for dive-harvested 

Murex shells, from which a valuable purple 

die could be derived. Digs in Egypt at sites 

dating to 3200 BCE have revealed carved 

mother of pearl. Again, only divers could have 

brought those shells with their iridescent 

interiors to the hands of artisans. 

Ancient Greece, the culture that gave the 

world everything from philosophy and 

mathematics to the notion of the republican 

form of government also saw the development 

of commercial diving as an industry. The natural 

resource stimulating this new industry was the 

sponge, a cavity-filled, multi-cellular undersea 

organism that once processed could be used for 

hygienic or cosmetic proposes because it could 

both hold water and other liquids such as oil or 

perfume and when squeezed, release that liquid. 

Due to high demand for this undersea 

commodity, sponge diving became a 

profitable undertaking. However, it was a 

dangerous way to make a living. Wrote the 

young but observant Greco-Roman poet 


8

Oppian in the second century A.D: “No ordeal 

is more terrible than that of the sponge divers 

and no labor is more arduous for men.” 

Tethered divers jumped into the water 

clutching flat, heavy rocks so they could 

quickly reach the bottom. Then, holding their 

breaths for three to five minutes and generally 

operating about 30 feet down, they harvested as 

many sponges as they could and stuffed them 

into nets. To compensate for the pain to their 

ears from water pressure, divers poured oil into 

their ear canals. They also filled their mouths 

with oil, spitting it out once on the bottom. 

Sponge diving even became an Olympic sport, 

with competitors judged on their speed and the 

amount of sponge they surfaced with. 

A traveler visiting the Greek island of Symi 

in 1837 recorded another benefit that could 

accrue to the better sponge divers: 

When a man of any property intends to 

have his daughter married, he appoints a 

certain day. Then all the young, unmarried 

men [sponge divers all] repair to the seaside, 

where they strip themselves in the presence of 

the father and his daughter and begin diving. 

He who goes deepest into the sea, and remains 

longest under the water, obtains the lady. 

Of course, he who went deepest and 

remained longest often obtained early death 

instead of fair maiden. 

Free diving for sponges persisted into the 

twentieth century, though with technological 

development and the invention of synthetic 

sponges, it had almost become a thing of the 

past by then. 

DIVING 

MAN- MADE 

FOR 

OBJECTS 

Early man knew that the sea and other deep 

water, whether by accident of fate or the whim 

of one of their deities, swallowed men and the 

vessels they built. The sea and its creatures, 

from giant sharks to minute worms, sooner or 

later consumed flesh, wood, sail cloth and 

rope, but glass, pottery, metal, precious metals 

and gems merely sank to the bottom. 

Herodotus, the Greek historian, left the 

earliest known account of divers being used 

in search of sunken treasure. Writing in the 

fifth century BCE, he told of a Greek diver 

named Schllias (or Skyllias)—“as a diver the 

best of all men”—and his daughter, Cyane. 

Both had been retained by Persian King 

Xerxes to bring up treasure from Persian 

galleys sunk by Grecian war vessels a halfcentury 

earlier. 

Father and daughter (naturally having more 

fatty cells women were less affected by cold 

water) dove on the sunken ships and recovered 

much of the valuables they had held. The king 

had promised them a portion of what they 

found by way of compensation, but being king, 

he kept the booty and held them prisoner on 

his galley for future diving jobs. 

Diving for natural sponges in the 

mid-twentieth century. 


9

A sixteenth-century painting depiciting 

Alexander the Great in a glass diving bell. 

COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL OCEANIC AND 

ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION 

During a storm, Schllias and Cyane 

jumped overboard and cut the anchor ropes 

of the Persian armada. That underwater 

action caused the chaos the pair had 

expected. Once the captains had their vessels 

under control, they began searching for the 

two escaped divers. Meanwhile, father and 

daughter had swum underwater and 

undetected to safety at Artemisium. In doing 

that, the two are believed to have used hollow 

reeds as breathing tubes, an early instance of 

what came to be called snorkeling. 

DIVING 

BELLS 

No one is known to have noted when or 

where it happened, but at some point prior to 

the beginning of the common era 21 centuries 

ago, someone observed that a solid container 

such as a cauldron or barrel, would not fill 

completely if pushed down into the water. 

When that happens, an air pocket remains. 

In 360 BCE, Aristotle noted in his 

Problematum that to supply sponge divers “… 

with a facility of respiration, a kettle is let 

down to them, not filled with water, but with 

air, which constantly assists the submerged 

man; it is forcibly kept upright in its descent, 

in order that it may be sent down at an equal 

level all around, to prevent the air from 

escaping and the water from entering….” 

What the Greek philosopher described 

came to be called a diving bell or caisson, the 

more common term being diving bell. 

Alexander the Great is said to have 

descended in a glass diving bell as his soldiers 

and seamen fought to take the island of Tyre 

in 332 BCE. More recent scholarship, 

however, suggests that the story is merely a 

legend, appearing both in medieval Western 

European texts and Islamic literature. True or 

not, the diving bell was the first assisted form 

of commercial diving. 

By at least the second century of the 

common era, a collective of Roman divers 

called the Corpus Urinatorum did salvage 

work at the port of Ostia on the mouth of the 

River Tiber. They handled underwater aspects 

of construction and maintenance of bridge 

and harbor infrastructure as well as salvage 

work. These divers operated under Lex 

Rhodia, or the Rhodian Sea Laws. The laws 

had been developed to settle disputes over 

salvage rights. If these divers salvaged a wreck 

lying deeper than 50 feet, they received a 

third of the salvage rights. Wrecks deeper 

than 90 feet netted a diver half the profit. 

Modern marine archeologists have found 

ancient shipwrecks which appear to have 

been probed by these early free-divers 

The first known use of a diving bell after 

that came in 1531 CE when Italian divers 

used a Campana Urinatoria (“bell for diving”) 

to find two supposedly treasure-laden 

pleasure galleys that had belonged to the 

licentious Roman emperor Caligula. Invented 

by Guglielmo de Lorena, an Italian physicist, 

the device was a barrel-shaped “bell” that 

went over the diver’s head and torso. With the 

bell supported by a sturdy rope, the diver 

could walk on the bottom for more than an 

hour before he had to surface for fresh air. 

Seven years later, in a different part of 

Europe, two Greek divers built a larger diving 

bell, one big enough to hold both inventors 

seated on planks inside. The pair not only 

were granted an audience with King Charles V 

of Spain, a reported 10,000 citizens of Toledo 

and environs showed up to see the device 

demonstrated. As the crowd looked on, the 


10

ell was lowered into the Tagus River. Before 

entering the device, one of the divers carried a 

candle. After the bell had been under water for 

a time, it was raised and the two inventors 

emerged in fine shape. And their candle was 

still burning. 

In the following century, Oppenheim artist 

and inventor Franz Kessler (c. 1580-1650) 

designed an improved diving bell in 1616. It 

looked like a man-sized thimble with eyes, 

the diver secured by a harness inside a 

leather-covered barrel with glass view ports. 

Von Guericke, in 1650, invented the first 

truly efficient air pump. Not only would that 

allow fresh air to be pumped down into diving 

bells, it made possible scientific experimentation 

on pressure and decompression. 

Another early instance of commercial 

diving came in 1658 when Albrecht von 

Treileben salvaged the Vasa, a Swedish 

warship sunk in Stockholm harbor 30 years 

before. Using a diving bell, divers working for 

von Treileben succeeded in raising nearly all 

of the ship’s bronze guns. 

An Englishman named Richard Norwood 

(1590?-1675) is credited with the first use of a 

diving bell in the New World. A mathematician 

and surveyor (some accounts say he dabbled in 

piracy as well), Norwood sailed to Bermuda in 

1616 to survey the islands for the Somers Isles 

Company. Hearing of supposedly treasure-laden 

shipwrecks, he used a weighted, inverted wine 

barrel in an unsuccessful search for bounty. 

More successful if on a smaller scale, in 1655, 

one Robert Willis used some form of diving bell 

in New England to salvage lost property. 

The flowering of scientific research and the 

arts that came with the Renaissance saw 

scholars developing new findings in physics 

and inventors experimenting with devices to 

assist man in underwater tasks, particularly 

diving bells. George Sinclair, a professor at 

Glasgow University in Scotland wrote in 1669 

of his theories regarding diving bells. In 1689, 

French physicist Denis Papin (1647-c. 1713) 

posited that a force pump or bellows could be 

used to provide fresh air to a diving bell. 

In 1686, Maine-born William Phipps (1651- 

1695) succeeded in getting financial backing 

for a venture in search of sunken treasure in 

what is now the Dominican Republic and Haiti. 

He must have been pretty persuasive, because 

all he had to go on was mere rumor and 

speculation as to the location of a lost Spanish 

galleon, the Nuestra Senora de la Concepion. 

Nevertheless, he found the wreck in January 

1687 off the coast of Santo Domingo and began 

his salvage efforts the following month. Using a 

square wooden diving bell re-enforced with 

iron bands that had windows and a stool on 

which divers could sit, Phipps used enslaved 

natives to recover the sunken vessel’s valuable 

cargo. He sailed for England that April with 30 

tons of silver, a quantity of gold and jewels. In 

modern dollars, that would be a $1 million 

haul. On his return, he was greeted as a hero 

and knighted. In addition, he netted onesixteenth 

of the treasure’s value and got named 

governor of Massachusetts. 

The prospect of recovering sunken treasure 

continued to drive innovation in diving. In 

1689, Sir Edmond Halley—the English 

astronomer who discovered the comet still 

bearing his name—developed a wooden diving 

bell with a window that could stay under water 

far longer than previous bells. Halley’s bell was 3 

W. Hooper’s rendering of Sir Edmond 

Halley’s diving bell. 


11

A replica of John Lethbridge’s diving 

engine at La Cité de la Mer in 

Cherbourg, France. 

feet in diameter at the top, 5 feet in diameter at 

the bottom and 5 feet high. With a volume of 64 

cubic feet, it needed nearly 4,000 pounds of 

lead sheathing to overcome its buoyancy. 

Rather than using a pump to supply air to 

his bell, he sent air down in weighted 36- 

gallon barrels through which fresh air could 

be taken in via a hose. Stale air, which he 

referred to as “warm” air, was released 

through a valve at the top of the bell. 

“This I take to be an invention applicable to 

various uses,” he wrote, “such as fishing for 

pearls, diving for coral or sponges and the like, 

in far greater depths than has hitherto been 

thought possible; also for the fitting and 

placing of the foundations of moles, bridges, 

&c., in rocky bottoms, and for cleaning and 

scrubbing of ships’ bottoms when foul, in 

calm weather at sea.” 

Halley was not interested in becoming a 

professional diver, but he did personally test 

his invention. He went down 60 feet and 

remained submerged for more than an hour 

and a half. 

“…I found that I could do anything that 

required to be done just under us,” Halley 

wrote in describing his descent, “and that I 

could, for a space as wide as the circuit of the 

bell, lay the bottom of the sea so far dry, as not 

to be over shoes thereon. And, by the glass 

window, so much light was transmitted, that 

when the sea was clear, and especially when 

the sun shone, I could see perfectly well to 

write or read…. 

However, the scientist observed that being 

that deep hurt his ears “as if a quill had been 

thrust into them.” Clearly, there were 

additional factors in diving to be considered 

other than the availability of oxygen. 

While knights and nobles did the scientific 

work, in 1715 an English commoner named 

John Lethbridge (1678-1759) sought to 

convert theory to money. As an alternative to 

the diving bell, the Devonshire man had a 

cooper build him a leather-sealed, wooden 

cylinder with watertight portals through 

which arms could protrude, making the 

person inside look something like a walking 

fat cigar. He called his lead-weighted 

apparatus a diving engine. It was six feet long, 

with a diameter of two and a half feet at the 

top, 18 inches at the bottom. That gave it a 

volume of about 30 gallons. Once inside, 

while peering through a glass window, a diver 

could descend to 60 feet (and to 72 feet “with 

great difficulty”) and stay down using the air 

trapped inside for about 30 minutes. Before 

the diver ran out of air, the “engine” would be 

pulled to the surface and the air inside 

replenished with a bellows. In the advent of 

an emergency, the device had detachable 

weights so that it would pop to the surface if 

they were released. 

Though his “engine” was not an engine in the 

modern sense of the word, it certainly proved to 

be an economic engine. Using the wooden 

submersible he invented, Lethbridge and his son 

spent the next three decades doing salvage work 

on shipwrecks. His contract to salvage the 

sunken Slotter Hooge for the Dutch East India 

Company provided that he would be paid 10 

pounds sterling a month, plus expenses. Any 

bonuses would be up to the “generosity of the 

company directors.” While profit had for 

centuries been the primary motive for risking 

one’s life underwater, Lethbridge was arguably 

the first commercial diver. 

Sixty years after Lethbridge had his “diving 

engine” built, in 1775 Edinburgh confectioner 

Charles Spalding enhanced Halley’s diving bell 

design, and the astronomer’s air supply 

technique by developing a weight mechanism to 

make it easier to lower and raise the container. 


12

1788, when John Smeaton (1724-1792) 

designed a diving bell made of cast iron 

instead of wood. He also invented the first 

hand-powered pump to force fresh air into 

the bell through a hose. His device had other 

innovations as well, including valves to keep 

air from being sucked back up the supply 

hose if the pumping stopped. 

In 1779, Smeaton’s device was employed 

in underwater repair work at the Hexham 

Bridge in Northumberland, England. 

Smeaton’s second major contribution to 

commercial diving was designing the world’s 

first cast iron diving bell. As was his wooden 

prototype, the iron bell was supplied with air 

by the pump he invented. 

By 1800, the use of diving bells for 

underwater work had become commonplace 

in Europe and North America. Still, as British 

diving historian Dr. Peter Bennett noted in his 

paper “A History of Deep Commercial 

Diving,” while diving bells offered “remotely 

acceptable level of safety,” they were far from 

perfect. Such devices were expensive and 

required “considerable manpower to achieve 

limited diving effort that could only be 

undertaken in sheltered water.” The maritime 

world needed a more efficient system for 

underwater work. 

Above: An 1860 rendering of Charles 

Spalding’s diving bell. Spalding and a 

relative would suffocate in a diving bell of 

his design in 1783. 

Left: With this imagined system, all a diver 

had to do was slide down a pole into a 

diving bell. 

DIVING HELMETS & SUITS 

In addition, he added a system of ropes so those 

in the bell could signal the support crew above. 

Improved as it was by earlier standards, 

Spalding and a relative suffocated in his bell in 

1783 offshore from Dublin. 

The first American innovation in the 

development of commercial diving came in 

Since the Bronze age, man had been 

fashioning metal helmets to protect 

combatants from sword blows, arrows and 

spears. But with the development of highvelocity 

firearms and artillery, the reliance on 

steel helmets and suits of armor in warfare 

had been made obsolete. 

Not until 1771 did it occur to a Frenchman 

named Freminet that a helmet might be used to 

protect divers. In addition to designing a brass 

helmet with glass-covered eye holes, he 

developed a “breathing machine” that connected 

by two hoses to the helmet. The device was 

trailed behind a suited diver though he later 

fitted it to be carried on a diver’s back. He used 

his helmeted diving suit in the harbors of Le 

Havre and Brest for more than a decade. 

Helmets and diving suits (originally referred 

to as diving dresses) developed together. 


13

Above: A design for an early diving suit by 

Karl Klingert from 1797. This device might 

have worked as long as the diver did not 

bend over or step ono anything sharp on the 

sea floor. 

Below: A sealed diving suit patented June 

14, 1834. 

“The invention of the diving dress,” the 

1904 edition of the Encyclopedia of Britannica 

said, “like that of most useful appliances, was 

gradual, and the work of many minds.” 

In 1786, John and William Braithwaite 

came up with a more efficient version of 

Freminet’s helmet and a year later, a German 

designer also developed a diving helmet. More 

than four decades would pass before a more 

efficient system of helmet, suit and air supply 

evolved. As with many innovations, it came 

about as an effort to solve some other problem. 

Charles Anthony Dean and his younger 

brother John, like so many Englishmen of 

their time, made their living in the maritime 

world—Charles as a sailor, John as a shipyard 

worker who specialized in caulking the hulls 

of wooden ships. Both saw firsthand that 

drowning was not the only hazard connected 

to plying the vast waters separating the 

various holdings of the British Empire. Fire at 

sea or dockside could burn a ship to the 

waterline. Even if the fire were brought under 

control in time to save the ship, thick, 

superheated smoke could kill a man. 

At some point in 1823 or 1824, Charles 

had an idea. After witnessing a fire that broke 

out in a stable, Charles thought what he called 

a “smoke helmet” could benefit firefighters. 

He fashioned a copper helmet with a small 

glass window attached to a flexible collar and 

suit. A leather hose through which air could 

be pumped by a bellows was attached to the 

back of the helmet. A final touch was a valve 

for the release of stale air. 

In 1824, he filed a patent for an “apparatus 

to be worn by persons entering rooms or 

other places filled with smoke or other 

vapour, for the purpose of extinguishing fire 

or extricating persons or property therein.” 

William Barnard, the owner of the London 

shipyard where Deane worked, paid him 417 

pounds for what was called an “indenture of 

assignment,” essentially preempting any further 

right Deane had to his invention. Since no one 

was interested in manufacturing it, Deane may 

have gotten the best end of the deal. 

In addition to their experience on or near 

the water, the brothers had on occasion gone 

beneath the surface in a diving bell. At some 

point it occurred to one or the other of them 

that the helmet Charles had conceived could 

be used, in effect, as a miniature diving bell. 

Charles and John paid London engineer 

Augustus Siebe to build a helmet to their 

specifications in 1827. Two years later, in 10 

feet of water off the Isle of Wight, the brothers 

salvaged the cargo of a beached ship owned by 

the East India Company. That shallow dive is 

considered the world’s first commercial dive 

using a diving helmet and suit. 

The Deane diving apparatus was far from 

perfect. The helmet connected to a jacket, but 

it was not a sealed system. In fact, water rose 

to the bottom of the helmet, leaving only 

enough room for the wearer to see and breath. 

But if the diver leaned forward, the helmet 

could flood with water. Obviously, if a diver 

happened to fall, he likely would drown. 

Another problem was that the bellows used 

to pump air into the Deane brothers’ diving 

apparatus could not produce enough pressure 

to allow for a deeper dive. The brothers again 

sought out Siebe to build them a stronger 

pump. By 1832, they were able to go down as 

far as 60 feet. Four years later, with an even 

more efficient pump, they made it to 100 feet. 

In addition to their seminal design work, in 

1836 the brothers produced the world’s first 

diving manual, Method of Using Deanne’s Patent 

Diving Apparatus. 


14

With the world’s first practical diving gear, 

the brothers made numerous successful dives, 

including salvage operations on two of 

England’s best-known shipwrecks, the Royal 

George and the Mary Rose. 

A 100-gun, first-rate ship of the line, the 

Royal George had capsized off Portsmouth in 

1782 with roughly 900 crew and family 

members drowned. At the time, it was the 

largest warship in the world. Diving on the 

wreckage from 1834 to 1836, Charles Deane 

recovered 28 of the ship’s cannon. 

Meanwhile, after fishing boats started getting 

their nets tangled in something on the bottom 

of the Solent, the straits north of the Isle of 

Wight, the British Admiralty hired diver Henry 

Abbinett to see if he could determine what had 

been snaring the nets. In June 1836 he found 

that it was the wreckage of a large ship resting 

on its side partially imbedded into the sea floor. 

Rather than proceeding with Abbinett, the 

Navy turned to Charles Deane based on his 

success in working the wreck of the Royal 

George. In mid-month, Dean and his partner, 

William Edwards, began diving on the wreck. 

They brought up some of the ship’s timbers, 

weapons and other artifacts to the surface. 

Based on the maker’s stamp on one of the 

recovered guns, the wreck was positively 

identified as the Mary Rose that August. That 

warship had gone down on July 19, 1545, 

during the Battle of Solent with the loss of 

some four hundred lives. 

Even though the Mary Rose had been 

beneath the sea for nearly three hundred years, 

the diving effort was more a commercial 

enterprise than historical project. The 

fishermen and Deane and his partner made 

money off the deal, though Abbinett was denied 

a share in the profits. 

In 1837, Siebe introduced what came to be 

called the “closed” dress as opposed to the 

earlier diving jacket, which was called an 

“open” dress since it was not watertight. 

Deane began diving on the Mary Rose again 

in 1840. This time, in another commercial 

diving first, he used explosives to expose 

more of the wreckage and brought up more 

relics that would be offered for sale. 

Left: Charles and John Deane wrote the first 

diving manual in 1836. 

Right: An illustration of Charles Deane 

working twenty-one feet underwater off the 

London commercial dock. 


15

Above: The HMS Royal George can be seen 

on the far right in this painting by John 

Cleveley the Elder, 1757. Diving dress 

inventor Charles Deane was hired to 

salvage the wreck of the Royal George in 

1834, carrying out dives over the course of 

two years. Dean would ultimately salvage 

28 of the ship’s 100 cannons. 

Below: An illustration of the Mary Rose, the 

flagship of Henry VIII, by Anthony Roll. 

Charles Deane was hired by the Royal Navy 

to salvage the ship nearly three hundred 

years after she sank at the Battle of Solent. 

Just before Deane began his work on the 

wreck that had proven to be the Mary Rose, the 

Royal Navy resumed salvage operations on the 

Royal George. Charles Pasley (1780-1861), a 

colonel in the Royal Engineers, would use 

explosives to break up the wreck and then 

salvage as much as he could. At first, Pasley 

employed civilian divers, but in 1840 he began 

using some of his Royal Sappers. In the 

process, he developed procedures and 

techniques that would become mainstays of 

commercial diving. He regulated the length of 

dives and allowed for a brief rest period 

between dives. In ordering his divers to work 

in pairs, he is credited with the first known use 

of the so-called “buddy system” in diving. 

No matter Pasley’s innovative safety 

measures, spending time underwater at depth 

took a toll on the men. A doctor observed that 

divers came up looking “pale, languid and 

exhausted,” further noting: “They all agree that 

they are much weakened and wasted by the 

exertion, and as they express it, they are not the 

men they were when they began the operation.” 

One of his divers made the first recorded 

emergency ascent when his air hose became 

tangled and he had to cut the line. 

Pasley continued his work on the Royal 

George until 1843. By that time, 30 more 

guns and everything from the ship surgeon’s 

instruments to silk clothing had been 

removed from the hulk. When the ship’s keel 

was raised along with its bottom tenders, the 

wreck was considered clear and no longer a 

navigational hazard. 

Salvage work on the two wrecks had 

greatly advanced diving technology. “The long 

continued experience gained in diving while 

these operations were in progress suggested 

improvements and alterations which had a 

great effect in bringing the diving dress to its 

present perfection as now manufactured,” the 

1904 Encyclopedia of Britannica concluded. 


16

Charles Deane died in 1848, but brother 

John lived on for another 36 years. Still diving 

at age 56, he was hired by the Royal Navy to 

salvage sunken Russian ships in the Black Sea. 

That work involved diving under ice. 

TAYLOR’ S SUBMARINE 

ARMOUR 

Imitation may be the sincerest form of 

flattery, but sometimes “stealing” is a more 

accurate word than “imitation.” 

In 1837, North Carolina-born William H. 

Taylor put out a pamphlet called A New and 

Alluring Source of Enterprise in the Treasures of 

the Sea, and the Means of Gathering Them. In it, 

he referred to the Deane diving apparatus, 

which the Deanes had begun manufacturing 

and selling the year before. 

Later that year, Taylor applied for a U.S. 

patent for a diving suit he claimed as his own 

design. Taylor’s “Submarine Armour” was 

described as a helmet and dress which would 

protect a diver “from the pressure of the water 

and from danger from fishes, etc., and at the 

same time give him the free use of his limbs and 

enable him to be supplied with air….” When a 

newspaper intimated that Taylor’s invention 

closely resembled the Deane diving suit, Taylor 

protested that his gear was “...of entirely 

different principle and construction, and has 

never been known until used by me in New 

York.” That had happened in the late summer of 

1837, when Taylor invited a reporter to try out 

his equipment in the Hudson River. 

The journalist survived the experience and 

wrote an article about it, but Taylor wanted 

more ink. In October, Taylor demonstrated 

his apparatus in a large wooden vat at Niblo’s 

Garden, a popular venue in New York City. 

Initially, Taylor intended to drum up financial 

backing for a deep water pearl harvesting 

venture and diving on treasure-filled 

shipwrecks in South America. While Taylor is 

rightfully credited as being the founding 

father of American commercial diving, he also 

was an early—and successful—practitioner of 

what today is known as public relations. 

By 1838, Taylor had become convinced 

that it made more sense to seek investors so 

he could begin marketing his invention in the 

U.S. To do that, he organized the New York 

Sub-Marine Armour Company. 

“It would appear that human enterprise, 

not contented with exploring the fields of 

earth and air, is seeking for itself occupation in 

diving beneath the waves of the ocean, and 

recovering thence treasure that had been 

regarded as forever lost,” the Baltimore 

Above: W. H. Taylor founded the Submarine 

Armour Co. in the spring of 1838. 

Below: An illustration of a rebreather 

systerm from 1860. 


17

James Buchanan Eads. 

American observed in the late spring of 1838. 

The article went on to credit “a Captain 

Taylor” with inventing “an air and water tight 

dress denominated ‘Submarine Armour’...as 

the means of visiting the foundations of the 

vast deep.” That fall, Taylor won a gold medal 

at the annual New York Mechanic’s Fair after 

demonstrating his diving suit. 

Taylor had a partner, George W. Taylor, a 

New Jersey native who traded in Indian rubber. 

(From which diving hose was made.) The two 

men were not related, but beyond having the 

same last name, they shared a common interest 

in making money off diving. In late 1838, 

along with others, the two Taylors went to 

Florida to salvage wrecks. Not long after they 

got there, William Taylor’s promising career 

ended in his mysterious and unpublicized 

death. By February 1839, George Taylor was 

referring to himself simply as “Captain Taylor.” 

In essence, George Taylor had become William 

Taylor. He even claimed to have been from 

North Carolina. From 1840 to 1845, using his 

late partner’s diving gear, Taylor the second did 

marine salvage work in the New York area and 

the Great Lakes. 

In December 1845, he invited someone 

only identified in the press as “F.R.” to 

descend with him and two other gentlemen in 

a diving bell at the Washington Navy Yard. 

“The first sensation, after being immersed 

beneath the surface of the water, was one of 

extreme uneasiness in the whole region of 

lympanon, with a sensation of oppression on the 

chest, which increased constantly until we had 

reached the bottom of the river,” F.R. wrote in a 

letter published by newspapers in the northeast. 

Not wishing his guests to suffer undue 

discomfort, Taylor sent a note up (F.R. did not 

say how) and soon one of his assistants, clad in 

submarine armour, descended with a chilled 

bottle of “very passable” champagne for the 

diving bell occupants. The underwater party 

lasted about 20 minutes. No matter the sedative 

effect of the bubbly, F.R. again felt the same sense 

of unease he had experienced on the descent. 

The closer the bell got to the surface, the worse 

he felt. “After the rim of the bell had passed the 

surface of the water, and the cold air rushed in,” 

he concluded, “the contrast of the atmosphere 

was so great as to excite much pain.” 

MONEY IN THE 

MISSISSIPPI MUD 

With its high volume of travel, the 

Mississippi River claimed hundreds of 

riverboats, often due to boiler explosions, 

collisions with other vessels or being 

breached by submerged objects. By the 

1840s, with more than 1,200 steamboats 

churning up and down the mighty river and 

its navigable tributaries, a robust salvage 

industry had developed. The principle 

method used to retrieve cargo and equipment 

from wrecks was the diving bell and divers 

wearing in submarine armour. 

James Buchanan Eads pioneered the 

development of the Mississippi River salvage 

business. He and his family came to St. Louis 

when he was 13. They arrived in 1833 on a 

steamboat which caught fire at the wharf, 

claiming eight lives. In 1842, then 22, Eads 

convinced St. Louis shipbuilder William Nelson 

to construct a salvage vessel to his specifications. 

Eads had no money to pay for such a vessel, but 

Nelson agreed to cover the cost in consideration 

of half-interest in the river salvage business Eads 

proposed. The steam-powered vessel Nelson 

built was named the Submarine. Despite its 

name, it did not operate underwater. But it 

carried divers who did. Eads would in time 

operate three other vessels on the river, the 

Submarine 2, 3 and 4. Eventually, relying 

primarily on diving bells, he expanded his 


18

usiness beyond salvage work to include the 

underwater aspects of bridge construction and 

building navigational structures. 

While Eads was the first to do salvage work 

on the Mississippi, others followed. In March 

1846, operating from a refitted former slave 

ship named the Spitfire, Captain George 

Taylor was in New Orleans to salvage the 

steamboat Doctor Franklin, which sank off the 

wharf after it collided with another riverboat. 

“The divers attract the notice of the 

curious,” the New Orleans Daily Delta reported, 

“especially the one who wears the Submarine 

Armor, which probably was never seen worn 

before in this city.” 

The newspaper went on to explain the 

simple business model of the salvors: Taylor 

and his crew would receive 50 percent “on the 

amount of everything brought up from the 

sunken boat.” The value of the Doctor Franklin’s 

cargo was estimated as $170,000, a staggering 

amount of money at the time. Already, the 

newspaper continued, the Spitfire crew had 

recovered $5,000-$6,000 in goods. 

But earning their money was not easy. “The 

men have to perform a most difficult labor; 

first from the coldness of the water, and next 

from the mud which settles upon the wreck, 

at the rate of about two inches thick, over the 

deck, in every twenty-four hours.” 

One recovery vessel that worked the 

river full time was the St. Louis-based Sub 

Occulator, which the Natchez Weekly Courier 

described as “looking like a foundry with a 

hardware store on top of it.” In the fall of 

1847 the Sub Occulator tied up at Natchez to 

lay in supplies before heading downstream to 

dive on the wreck of the steamboat Tennessee. 

“We are informed that [the Sub Occulator] 

has made a very neat little fortune since it 

commenced operation under the great highway 

of western commerce,” the newspaper noted. 

“Many fortunes have been made on the 

Mississippi, but the Sub Occulator is the first 

agent that has drawn its wealth from 

Mississippi mud. May it go on, and go down, 

and draw up, until the industry of all on board 

has been amply rewarded.” 

The Mississippi salvage business flourished 

during the golden age of riverboats, but 

continued with the emergence of barge traffic. 

GOVERNMENT 

CONTRACTS 

When the Mexican War broke out in the 

spring of 1846, George Taylor saw economic 

opportunity and soon made his way to Texas 

aboard the schooner Spitfire. The New Orleans 

Picayune noted that he had arrived in 

Galveston on May 21 with “all his sub-marine 

diving apparatus.” The article did not mention 

it, but his vessel also carried large Indian 

rubber bladders of his invention, flotation 

devices he called “camels.” These could be 

positioned by divers and then inflated to 

refloat stranded vessels from sandbars. In 

addition, he could offer underwater 

demolition skills to clear waterways. 

He proceeded from Galveston to Brazos 

Santiago on the southern tip of the state to 

join the flotilla of smaller vessels supporting 

Commodore David Conner’s blockade of 

eastern Mexico’s ports. In October, when 

Conner’s successor, Commodore Matthew 

Perry, engaged Mexican forces on the Tabasco 

River, Taylor stood by to use his camels to lift 

any U.S. vessels that might become mired in 

the shallow river. Whether he actually did 

that is not known, but he did use explosives 

in removing piles driven into the river to 

block U.S. vessels. 

Having sold the U.S. Navy two diving suits 

and served as a civilian contractor in the early 

stages of the Mexican War, Taylor had a 

An illustration of an Army free driver, 

Frank Pierce, assisting with the search for 

a portion of railroad track during the 

Civil War. 


19

THE “ PRACTICAL DIVER” 

The burning of the United States steam 

frigate Missouri, at Gibraltar Aug. 26th 

1843. William Taylor was hired by the U.S. 

government to salvage the vessel. 

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY. 

potentially far more lucrative project in mind 

halfway across the world. He wanted to get a 

contract from the Navy to salvage the U.S. 

steam frigate Missouri, which had sunk off 

Gibraltar in 1843. He did receive a modest 

federal contract to perform an initial survey at 

the wreck site, but Congress proved slow to 

move on the full salvage effort. 

Meanwhile, Taylor focused on a potentially 

richer prize, the sunken British man-of-war 

HMS Hussar. The ship had gone down on 

November 23, 1780, in 26 fathoms at Hell Gate 

off New York during the Revolutionary War. The 

ship carried $2 to $4 million in gold, payment 

intended for British troops then battling to 

prevent independence of the American colonies. 

Unfortunately for Taylor, he never realized 

either of these goals. (In fact, no one ever fully 

salvaged the Hussar.) “Captain” Taylor became 

ill in the spring of 1850 and never improved. 

He died at 43 in Washington, D.C. on April 

28, 1850. Local newspapers noted his death 

and listed his numerous accomplishments, 

but for a man who had succeeded in getting 

so much publicity in life, his passing was not 

widely reported. A savvy businessman and 

promoter, though little-known today, he and 

the partner he might have had a hand in 

getting rid of, had been key figures in the 

development of the commercial diving 

industry in the U.S. 

Another noted American commercial diver 

was James Aldrich Whipple. Born July 22, 

1826, he grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. 

The son of a machinist, he demonstrated an 

early interest in engineering and soon had an 

apprenticeship with a steam engine firm. At 

some point, he saw a demonstration of 

Taylor’s submarine armour and decided to 

develop his own helmet. His design featured 

an escape valve for stale air, which did away 

with the need for two hoses. That 

improvement made it easier both for the diver 

and his tenders above. 

Using his hard-helmet diving gear, pumps 

he also invented, a diving bell and other 

equipment, his main source of income was in 

underwater salvage operations. With the term 

“commercial diver” still in the future, he 

called himself a “practical diver.” Whipple 

traveled the world in the 1850s to dive on 

sunken vessels. In 1851, the owner of the 

West Point Foundry presented Whipple a 

gold watch for raising the engines of the 

steamer Pioneer, which had sunk in the 

Hudson River. Diving on a wreck off the 

Venezuelan coast in 60 feet of water, he 

brought up $2 to $3 million in specie. In 

1861, while traveling to a salvage job he 

became ill and never recovered. 

JOHN 

GREEN 

While Taylor and Whipple seemed willing to 

go just about anywhere they stood a chance of 

making money, commercial diving pioneer John 

B. Green focused primarily on the Great Lakes. 

Born in Canada near Montreal in 1826, 

before he turned 10 his family moved to 

Ogdensburg, New York to farm along the Saint 

Lawrence River. In that major waterway, young 

Green learned to swim. He could swim for 

miles and stay afloat for hours at a time. If he 

went beneath the surface, however, it was only 

when he jumped in the river. When he was 

fourteen, his family moved again, this time to 

Oswego, New York. “In that locality,” Green 

later wrote, “I had ample opportunity to 

indulge my propensity for swimming by often 

bathing in the deep waters of Lake Ontario.” 


20

In the spring of 1841, as Green walked 

along the dock in Oswego, he saw two men 

jump into the water and disappear beneath 

the surface. When they came up a minute or 

so later, he asked what they were doing. They 

said they were trying to recover a stolen clock 

and two boxes of soap that had been thrown 

into the river. Green decided to join the effort 

and ended up finding one of the soap boxes 

and the clock. 

“Elated by this success,” he later wrote, “I 

at once conceived the idea of following diving 

for lost property as a vocation.” 

Until well into the twentieth century, that’s 

what diving would be: A vocation. Not until 

the idealistic days of the 1950s, when a warweary 

public suddenly had time and money 

on their hands did people look at diving as a 

recreational sport. But for men like Green, 

diving would be a hard and dangerous job, 

not something undertaken for fun. 

As a young man Green for a time operated 

a freight scow on the Erie Canal, but he also 

did free diving for salvage. Occasionally he 

helped recover the bodies of drowning 

victims and once rescued a young woman 

who had fallen from a steamboat gangplank. 

For that, the girl’s father gave him $500, a lot 

of money in the mid-19th century. 

The 1852 Lake Erie wreck of the City of 

Oswego, on which Green and possibly his wife 

and child were passengers (the record is 

confusing but likely they died in the 

accident), shaped the rest of his career. While 

participating in the hunt for the Oswego’s lost 

cargo, Green heard of a salvage operation 

underway at the site of another shipwreck 

about 10 miles from the scene of the Oswego’s 

demise. Going there, after demonstrating his 

free diving abilities he convinced the captain 

of the salvage vessel to let him try out one of 

the diving suits they were using. The salvors 

liked his style and he joined the crew. After 

that, he spent most of the rest of his life as a 

commercial diver. 

In an era when underwater exploration 

generated the same sort of public interest that 

would later accrue to space exploration, 

Green got a lot of publicity. “John Green 

alone, in all the world, possesses the secret 

power to ‘go down to the depths of the 

seas’...he is confident that he can reach the 

depths of any of the Lakes at their greatest 

soundings, explore vessels and attach to them 

the necessary fixtures for raising,” said the 

Cleveland Herald. Eventually he capitalized 

on his name identification by writing (or 

more likely using a ghost writer) and 

publishing a book chronicling his adventures 

as a commercial diver. 

One of Green’s most significant contributions 

to the development of commercial diving were 

his observations of the unpleasant side effects of 

spending time at depth. His worst experience— 

nearly fatal—came following a long day of 

diving on the sunken steamship Atlantic, which 

had gone down in Lake Erie with a large loss of 

life on August 20, 1852. He had dived on the 

wreck twice before, but still sought the ship’s 

safe, which contained more than $30,000. 

Using a modified version of Taylor’s 

“diving armor,” Green began diving on the 

wreck in August 1855. The vessel lay about 

150 feet down. Light did not penetrate to that 

depth, so he had to grope around on the ship 

in darkness. On the fifth or sixth day, he 

finally found the safe, touching its cool metal 

through a deckhouse window. He returned to 

the surface for a buoy and line to mark the 

location. Each dive that morning lasted for 20 

to 30 minutes. After lunch, he went back 

down again, this time with the equipment he 

needed to cut into the cabin where the safe 

sat. This operation took about 40 minutes. 

An illustration of the collision of the 

Atlantic and the Ogdensburg on Lake 

Erie in 1852, from Gleason’s Pictorial. It 

was on his dive of the wreckage of the 

Atlantic that diver John B. Green suffered 

a near-fatal case of paralysis caused by 

decompression sickness. 


21

A 1939 advertisement for Merritt-Chapman 

& Scott, one of the largest salvage 

companies in the world in its day. The 

company’s distinctive “black horse” flag can 

be seen at the bottom of the ad. Founded as 

a salvage company, its operations expanded 

into construction projects, including 

Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge, the longest 

suspension bridge between anchorages in the 

Western Hemisphere. The company ceased 

operations in the early 1970s. 

Back on the surface, he sat on the deck of 

his diving vessel to rest before making a 

fourth dive to attach a cable hook to the safe. 

But within moments, “a sharp pain shot like 

lightening through my lower extremities, and 

the next instant it went through my whole 

system, so prostrating me that I could not 

move a limb or even a muscle.” Co-workers 

got him ashore, where he lingered near death 

for two weeks. When it seemed evident that 

he would survive, he was taken to Buffalo, 

where he remained for ten days before 

reaching home in Boston. There, “five tedious 

months” went by before he could walk again, 

and only with the aid of crutches. 

“There have been many conjectures in 

regard to the cause of my paralysis,” he wrote. 

“Some attribute it to my meal; others to the 

pressure of the water.” 

In the summer of 1856, Green organized a 

fourth expedition to recover the safe. Given 

that he still had not fully recovered, he hired 

two divers to do the job under his 

supervision. When neither of them could get 

all the way down to the wreck, Green donned 

the diving suit and succeeded in reaching the 

hulk. Once again finding the cabin where he 

knew the safe to be, he discovered that it was 

gone. Someone else had recovered it. 

Though bitterly disappointed at having lost 

a treasure he had been the one to find, Green 

sought to capitalize on his diving in less 

hazardous ways. Too afflicted to work 

underwater, he published his book and soon 

went on the lecture circuit. Though he still 

intended to at least oversee salvage operations, 

booze, money troubles, and the dissolution of 

his marriage pulled him downward as surely 

as lead diving weights. In October 1868, he 

ended his life with a fatal dose of poison. 

During the era that author Jerry Kuntz 

called “diving’s heroic age,” Green had not 

been the only man whose willingness to risk 

his life underwater in the hope of financial 

gain had advanced the progress of commercial 

diving, but he had been one of its most 

colorful and tragic figures. 

By the early 1860s, the vented diving 

helmet, with air hose and protective suit had 

virtually replaced the diving bell or caisson, as 

it was less commonly known. Diving 

companies developed in most major ports, 

their primary income coming from ship 

owners needing to have hulls cleaned or 

repaired. They also recovered lost anchors 

and items that fell overboard. 

The New York firm of Merritt-Chapman & 

Scott had its beginning in 1860 as Coast 

Wrecking Company and soon reorganized 

under Israel Merritt as Merritt’s Wrecking 

Organization. In 1897, it merged with Chapman 

Derrick and Wrecking Company to form Merritt 

and Chapman Derrick Wrecking Company. The 

company merged again in 1922 with T.A. Scott 

Company to form Merritt-Chapman and Scott 

Corporation. Before long, it had grown into the 

largest and best-regarded salvage company in 

the world. Known as the “Black Horse of the 

Sea,” the company expanded beyond salvage 

work to maritime construction. 


22

SCUBA 

The common perception is that the 

development of self-contained underwater 

breathing apparatus (SCUBA) came during 

World War II. Scuba diving did play a part in 

the war, and exploded in use after the conflict 

ended, but it was not a new concept. The big 

difference was that what had been envisioned 

for years finally proved workable. At least at 

shallow depths, divers could operate freely 

without having to worry about getting their 

surface-connected air hose tangled or severed. 

William H. James, yet another Englishman 

who advanced the diving industry, is credited 

with developing the first scuba equipment in 

1825. In his design, a diver wore a helmet, but 

the air he breathed came from a tank of 

compressed air fastened on his waist. James 

claimed a diver could stay underwater an hour 

with his invention, but whether his equipment 

was ever produced and used is not clear. In 

1839, two Canadian inventors, James Eliot and 

Alexander McAvity were granted a patent for 

an “oxygen reservoir for divers.” Their design 

featured a device a diver carried on his back 

that contained either “condensed” oxygen or 

“common atmospheric air proportionate to the 

depth of water and adequate to the time he is 

intended to remain below.” 

In the United States, engineer Charles 

Condert invented a system where air could be 

contained inside a copper pipe worn around a 

diver’s body. The diver also wore a hood 

covering the top half of his body. While 

Condert had the right concept—a portable air 

supply and head covering—he drowned while 

trying out his invention. 

“Though the natural constitution of man 

entirely unfits him for remaining in water with 

safety for more than two minutes at a time, the 

desire of obtaining valuable objects lying at the 

bottom of the sea has led him to devise 

numerous expedients,” the New American 

Cyclopaedia noted in its 1859 edition. 

French mining engineer Benoit Rouguayrot 

designed in 1860 a cylindrical air tank 

attached to a demand regulator. He developed 

the equipment for miners to don in the event 

of a sudden mine shaft flood, but if it could 

work underwater below ground, it could 

work in open bodies of water as well. 

In 1864, Rouguayrot partnered with French 

naval officer Auguste Denayrouze to tweak his 

invention for use by divers whose primary air 

supply came from an air hose above water. A 

diver could detach himself from the air hose for 

a short time, but the tank could only hold 

about 30 minutes worth of air. Still, the 

equipment marked a significant advance in 

diving and by 1865 it was in mass-production. 

Five years later, diving with the use of 

scuba equipment made its first appearance in 

fiction in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the 

Sea when novelist Jules Verne describes a dive 

in which Captain Nemo, the master of the 

submarine Nautilus, saves a pearl diver from a 

shark attack. 

Above: A French inventor’s conception of an 

underwater breathing apparatus. Clearly, 

he did not envision diving in cold water. 

Below:A design of a diving helmet from the 

early 1900s. 


23

ALPHONSE ESQUIROS TAKES A DIVE 

Alphonse Esquiros, a French writer, wrote a book called English Seamen and Divers in 1868. 

Rather than have someone tell him what it was like to be a diver, he tried it himself. His 

account captured what diving was like only three decades after the development of the first 

commercially available diving gear: 

“The helmet which covered my face and head was provided on the back...with two hollow 

metallic studs; one of these was protected against the intrusion of the water by a strong valve, 

and was intended to give vent to the air vitiated by breathing; the other, called the pipe-holder, 

was to be fixed to the air-tube.” 

That, he explained, was a long India-rubber “pipe.” Esquiros watched as one of the sailors 

connected one end of the hose with a pump and then attached the other to his helmet. 

“I could then well understand how the whole theory of this art is based,” he continued, “as 

might be expected, on the physical constitution of man. The diving apparatus only doubles 

and lengthens his respiratory organs; the air-pump is for him nothing but his external lungs, 

and the air-tube is only a floating windpipe.” 

Once the helmet’s three glass view ports had been screwed on and Esquiros began breathing 

the pumped air, his hosts directed him to a ladder extending down the side of the ship. Slowly, 

the writer began climbing down into the water. He did not stay down long and was happy to 

get back to the surface. 

Reflecting on the experience, Esquiros wrote: 

I knew now, by experience, all the essential details of the art of diving, and, as the result, I could 

not help admiring the courage, and wondering at the acquired nature of these men, who were not 

merely capable of remaining a few minutes underwater, but were able to continue there for several 

hours, and to execute all kinds of different work. 

Yves Le Prieur. 

Henry A. Fleuss, a British merchant 

mariner, developed a self-contained diving 

apparatus that used compressed oxygen 

(instead of compressed air). The device 

included a rebreather by which carbon dioxide 

was made breathable again by being passed 

through a rope soaked in potash. The 

apparatus Fleuss developed allowed a bottom 

time of up to three hours and was used in 1880 

by noted English diver Alexander Lambert. 

Wearing Fleuss’ equipment, the diver went into 

a flooded tunnel sixty feet down and sealed a 

hatchway located a thousand feet into the 

tunnel. Fleuss’ invention is considered the first 

workable scuba equipment and the model for 

closed-circuit scuba, which is still used today. 

In 1933, a French naval captain, Yves Le 

Prieur, built on the latest version of the 

nineteenth century Rouquayrol-Denayrouse 

equipment by attaching a specially designed 

demand value to a high-pressure air tank. With 

no regulator, a diver got fresh air by opening a 


24

valve. Exhaled air escaped from under the 

diver’s face mask. Two years later, though a 

diver could not remain underwater long with it, 

the device was put into use by the French Navy. 

Though most diving still involved the use 

of pressurized suits, in 1933 Louis de Corlieu 

received a patent for a set of spoon-shaped fins 

that swimmers or divers could use to enhance 

their underwater propulsion. Corlieu’s 

invention led to the further development of 

fins that fit on a swimmer’s feet, giving him 

even faster movement beneath the surface. 

Meanwhile, another French naval officer, 

along with an engineer from a natural 

gas company, developed a regulator that 

revolutionized scuba diving. The officer was 

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910-1997). The 

engineer was Emile Gagnan. Working together, 

they repurposed a car engine regulator so that 

it automatically provided compressed air to a 

diver anytime he took the slightest breath. 

Prior to their invention, divers using scuba 

equipment received compressed air constantly. 

The two men affixed their new valve to a 

rubber hose with a mouthpiece that was attached 

to two compressed air tanks. In the deep winter 

of 1943, Cousteau dove into the Marne River 

near Paris to test the new device, which worked. 

After some modification, the two men received a 

patent for what they call an Aqua Lung. 

The regulator developed by Gagnan and 

Cousteau marked a pivotal moment in the 

CAPTAIN WILLIAMS AND FUNERAL BOB 

Newspaper reporters found that interviews with commercial divers made good copy. 

Farmers and ranchers in Wise County in far North Texas must have marveled in reading in their April 20, 1883, issue of the Wise 

County Messenger a story headlined “Under The Sea.” Reprinted from an unnamed Philadelphia newspaper, the piece was based on an 

interview with Captain Anthony Williams, a commercial diver with two decades of experience. 

“Can you breathe as freely in your diving dress as you can out of it?” the unnamed reporter asked. 

“Yes, indeed,” Williams said. “When ten or twelve fathoms under [60 to 72 feet] water my breathing is as wholly devoid of effort 

as it is when I am walking about on dry land.” 

Williams then went on to explain how diving equipment worked, communication with his surface tenders and other aspects of 

commercial diving. Admitting he did get an ear ache from time to time, otherwise, he said, “the sensations [under water] are delightful, 

and I feel just as well, happy and contented at the bottom of the sea as I can under any circumstances.” 

He did, however, sometimes get annoyed with his tenders above. 

“While engaged in raising the sunken schooner Dauntless, in Kingston, Jamaica, on the 18th of August, 1880, I became so 

disgusted at the stupidity of the men above in answering my signals that I took a book which I found in the captain’s cabin, and, 

sitting down read it for nearly an hour.” 

The Galveston News, the morning newspaper in what was then Texas’s largest port, reprinted on Sept. 5, 1885 an interview with a 

diver known as Funeral Bob first published in the New York Sun. Despite his nickname, Robert B. Russell the diver was alive and doing 

quite well at his trade. 

“People always associate diving with wrecks, dead bodies or treasure,” he said, “but that’s a small part of our work, and not a 

particularly fine line of it either.” 

Described as New York’s “No. 1 diver,” Russell said, “The fine work of a diver’s occupation is that in which he has to ply some trade 

like carpentering or pipe-laying under water. You see, a diver should be skilled at many trades to be a success.” 

Russell said he and his colleagues in the business only worked four hours a day, earning $6 a day. However, if a diver furnished 

his own equipment—boat, pump, hose, lines and dress—the price ranged from $35 to $50 a day, depending on the job. 

Three years later, a Chicago newspaper published another interview with Capt. Williams, “the famous English diver.” 

Williams said he began his underwater career above the surface, supervising the raising of a sunken wreck off the coast of Cornwall. 

“I had working for me a diver who seemed a very lazy, careless sort of fellow,” the captain began. “I was paying him by the day, and 

once, after being under water for a long time, he came up and reported very little progress in his work. I was angry and expressed 

myself strongly. He retorted with: ‘Try it yourself if you think you can do any better.’” 

To the diver’s surprise, Williams took him up on the offer. Once he realized his boss hadn’t been joking, the diver removed his suit 

and Williams put it on. “I discharged him when I came up and I have been doing my own work ever since.” 


25

Above: An advertisement for Cousteau and 

Gagnan’s Aqua Lung. 

Below: Commercial divers and their exploits 

captured the public’s imagination. Stage and 

film actress Sarah Bernhardt can be seen in 

these diving-themed photographs from the 

late 1800s. 

COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

history of diving. It was reliable and low-cost. 

Following World War II, the Aqua Lung 

went into commercial production. Other 

innovations followed, but in regard to scuba 

diving, the work of Gagnan and Cousteau 

allowed diving to become mainstream. 

THE 

1890S 

While salvage diving had already become 

the mainstay of the commercial diving 

industry, in the last decade of the nineteenth 

century something old became something 

new in the U.S. 

Since the 1820s, it had been known that 

sponges could be found off the Florida Keys. 

By the late 1840s, some of the organisms were 

being harvested with the use of long poles. 

When turtle fishermen from Key West 

discovered sponge beds along the western 

coast of Florida near where the Anclote River 

enters the Gulf of Mexico, spongers began 

working that area. John Cheyney, a 

businessman in the new community of 

Tarpon Springs, opened a sponge-packing 

house there in 1890 and the North American 

sponge industry migrated from the Bahamas 

and Cuba to Tarpon Springs. 

By the turn of the century, the town was 

the largest sponge port in the U.S. and 

starting in 1905, some five hundred Greek 

sponge divers immigrated to Florida. Though 

their ancient predecessors had collected 

sponges by free diving, the Greeks embraced 

new technology and began diving in hard 

helmets and pump-fed diving suits. The 

business fluctuated due to environmental and 

economic issues, but Tarpon Springs sponges 

are still exported all over the world. Not until 

well into the twentieth century did tourism 

surpass sponge harvesting as the community’s 

primary industry. 


26

THE UNDERSEA GOURMET 

George W. Fuller had been making his living as a diver for a good while when he came up 

with yet another way to turn a profit in underwater work. 

In talking with acquaintances about the sort of things he could accomplish with his diving 

apparatus, Fuller asserted that he could even catch, dress and cook a fish under water. Not only that, 

he boasted, he could bring it to the surface without even getting it wet, hot and ready to eat. 

Of course, no one believed he could do it. In fact, one gentlemen cheerfully wagered $100 that 

Fuller could not pull off such a stunt. Taking the bet, Fuller set the date of his demonstration for 

the following week. He did that because he knew he had a little below-the-surface work to do first. 

The diver took his boat and a couple of his employees to a point far out into the harbor where 

he was fairly sure it wouldn’t be too hard to find fish. Fuller lowered a weighted barrel and then 

donned his diving suit. On the bottom of the bay, Fuller secured the barrel with ropes and then 

stood up inside it. As he stood there, air coming from his escape valve began rising to the top, 

steadily pushing down the water. Soon he was able to remove his helmet and before long the whole 

barrel was filled with air. Next, with hammer and nails, he attached a board to the side of the barrel 

that would serve as a shelf. 

The next week, with his crew, the man who had made the bet and assorted hangers on, Fuller 

took his boat to the approximate spot where he had tethered the barrel. Then, taking with him 

a lantern, a small stew pan, salt, pepper and a fishing hook, he descended to his “fish house.” 

He soon spotted a fish, harpooned it with a sail needle attached to a line, and pulled it inside 

his barrel. There he gutted the fish, washed it, added salt and pepper and parboiled it over the 

flame from his lantern. When the fish was done, he placed the skillet inside the water-proof 

lamp container, stepped out of his barrel and pulled the line signaling his men to pull him up. 

“I had been gone only a few minutes, and the people thought as a matter of course that I 

had come up to say that I could not catch the fish, never dreaming that I had caught it, dressed 

it and cooked it already. They were very much surprised when...I showed them the fish 

steaming hot and well-cooked.” One of those surprised people was also out $100. 

(The story, reprinted from the Boston Globe, appeared in the Bryan [Texas] Eagle on January 9, 1890.) 

One of the earliest uses of commercial 

diving was sponge harvesting. The industry 

grew in Florida in the late 1800s. 


27

Above: A sponge diver in Tarpon 

Springs, Florida. 

Below: An illustration from the 1850s of 

Lodner D. Phillips’ design for an 

atmospheric diving suit made of cast steel 

and iron. 

ATMOSPHERIC 

DIVING SUITS 

Atmospheric diving suits are one-man, 

human-shape submersibles. For decades, the 

principle issue in the way of making such 

suits practical was the need for joints that 

could both allow for natural body movements 

(so the diver could get work done) and at the 

same time be strong enough to support the 

necessary internal pressure. 

Alphonse and Theodore Carmagnolle, two 

French inventors from Marseilles, designed 

the first atmospheric diving suit in 1878 

and received a patent on it in 1882. Made 

of metal, the suit consisted of 22 concentric 

ball-and-socket joints kept watertight by a 

linen wrap. Each arm had six joints, each 

leg four joins and there were two joints 

for the body of the suit. With all that metal, 

the contraption weighed 862 pounds. The 

suit is displayed in the Musee de la Marine 

(Marine Museum) in Paris. To the modern 

eye, it looks like something out of a science 

fiction movie. Indeed, science fiction buffs 

point to it as the first robotic-looking device 

made by man. 

In Germany, in 1913 the Kiel-based firm of 

Neufeldt and Kuhnke built two cast iron suits 

that the German Navy bought. Five years 

later, with Great Britain and Germany locked 

in a viscious world war, inventor Joseph Salim 

Peress (1896-1978) began experimenting 

with a stainless steel diving suit in 1918. Four 

years later, he patented a spherical joint that 

used fluid to equalize pressure. 

In 1930, the patent figured in Peress’s 

development of the Tritonia diving suit. He 

had started working on such a suit in the 

1920s and by 1929 had found that using 

magnesium instead of steel made suits much 

less heavy and therefore considerably more 

practical. To solve the joint problem, he used a 

trapped cushion of oil to keep them easy for a 

diver to move. In September 1930, Jim 

Jarrett—Peress’s head diver—used the new 

suit to descend to 404 feet in Loch Ness. He 

didn’t find the legendary Loch Ness monster, 

but he did find that the suit worked perfectly. 

Not only did the atmospheric suit keep him 

safe from the physiological woes of deep 

diving, he was able to move with no problems. 

Today, Peress is credited with having invented 

the first usable atmospheric diving suit. 

During the 1960s, Peress developed a more 

modern version of the suit,. When it began to 


28

e used in 1972 was referred to as a JIM suit 

in honor of diver Jim Jarrett. The term “JIM 

suit” became a generic term in the industry. 

Even though Peress used magnesium, the suit 

still weighed 1,100 pounds. Four years later, 

it set a record for the longest working dive, 

one minute less than six hours at 905 feet. 

Atmospheric diving suits are still being 

used. Despite ongoing improvements, they 

still do not offer the mobility that other gear 

affords, but for deep work, in keeping a diver 

at atmospheric pressure, they do prevent the 

majority of physiological issues that make 

deep diving dangerous. 

MEDICAL 

BREAKTHROUGHS 

Commercial diving would not exist if it 

had not been for the physiological discoveries 

and medical breakthroughs that made it 

relatively safe for those who venture deep 

underwater. 

Diving had evolved over the centuries, but 

not until the early twentieth century did 

significant advances occur in understanding 

the causes and treatment for the lifethreatening 

body reactions related to matters 

of physics and physiology—the crushing 

pressure of deep water and the issues related 

to oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. 

Well understood much earlier was that 

diving was a dangerous way to make a living. 

The first significant finding in regard to the 

effect pressure had on divers came thanks to a 

poisonous snake. In 1667, Sir Robert Boyle, 

an English physicist, observed a gas bubble in 

the eye of a viper he had compressed and 

decompressed with a pump. He wrote: “I have 

seen a very apparent bubble moving from side 

to side in the aqueous humor of the eye of a 

viper at the time when this animal seemed 

violently distressed in the receiver from which 

the air had been exhausted.” 

Five years before, in 1662, Boyle had 

posited what came to be called Boyle’s Law, 

the modern expression of which is: “The 

absolute pressure exerted by a given mass of 

an ideal gas is inversely proportional to the 

volume it occupies if the temperature and 

amount of gas remain unchanged within a 

closed system.” 

Based on Boyle’s research, in 1681 Abbe 

Jean de Hautefeuille wrote a treatise called 

“The Art of Breathing Underwater.” The 

scientifically minded French priest correctly 

declared: “It is not possible for man to breathe 

air at normal atmospheric pressure when he is 

himself underwater at depth.” 

In the turn of the twenty-first-century 

movie Men of Honor, in which Robert De Niro 

A diver in a Tritonia ADS and a diver in 

traditional gear preparing to dive on the 

wreckage of the RMS Lusitania, 1935. 


29

Sir Robert Boyle. 

plays a tough Navy diving instructor, he 

makes Boyle’s Law a bit easier to understand. 

Beyond that, it puts it into perspective: 

“Boyle’s Law describes the behavior of 

gases under varying amounts of atmospheric 

pressure. It states that if a diver holds his 

breath at one hundred feet, continues holding 

while rising to ten feet, then the gases in his 

lungs increase four times. Now why is this 

important to a diver? Forget to exhale on the 

way up, and your lungs explode.” 

The expansion of gases in a diver’s lungs 

under the conditions set forth in De Niro’s 

line is actually by a factor of three, not four. 

But the effect would be the same. 

In the early days, no private association or 

government agency existed to keep statistics 

on diving deaths, but fatalities were not 

uncommon. And adverse physical reaction for 

divers was very common. 

Worrisome symptoms connected to diving 

were noted and described by physicians as 

early as the 1840s. When his air pipe burst on 

October 11, 1842, Royal Navy diver John 

Williams had been eighty feet down. Reaching 

the surface in a minute and a half, he was only 

semi-conscious. “His face then was a mass of 

lividity,” a doctor reported, “his neck was 

exceedingly swollen, bloated and suffused 

with livid coloured blood.” 

To bring him back around, the doctor 

administered a turpentine enema and applied 

leaches to one of his arms to remove 20 

ounces of blood. Despite his initial pressurerelated 

injuries and the witch doctor-like 

treatment, the diver apparently enjoyed a 

complete recovery. 

In 1854, a diver working in the U.S. was 

not so lucky when his air hose burst at depth. 

When the surface crew received no response 

to their tug on the diver’s signal line, they 

pulled him up immediately. When they 

opened his helmet, “to their horror [they] 

found him quite dead; although he had been 

down but one minute.” What they beheld was 

not a pretty sight: “Blood was oozing from the 

eyes, nose and mouth...we found the head 

very badly swollen, the face and neck so filled 

with blood as to resemble liver, while the 

remainder of the body was as white as 

unclouded marble.” 

As innovations in equipment enabled divers 

to go deeper and stay down longer, many began 

suffering with breathing difficulties, dizziness 

and disorientation, pain in the joints and 

paralysis. While the symptoms could be noted 

and described, no one understood their cause 

other than the obvious connection to diving. 

The same maladies experienced by divers 

also occurred on land. Tunnel builders, 

miners and others who worked in an 

environment under pressure experienced 

difficulties. At least twelve workers died in St. 

Louis during construction of the Eads Bridge 

in 1871 from what is now known as 

decompression sickness, or DCS. Workers 

also died as the Brooklyn Bridge went up. 

A year later, a researcher correctly concluded 

that DCS could be prevented by slower 

compression (descents) and slower 

decompression (ascents). He suggested that 

underwater workers be limited to four-hour 

shifts and that recompression treatment could 

help severe cases. In 1873, Andrew Smith 

coined the term “caisson disease” in describing 

the health problems associated with the 

Brooklyn Bridge project, which like the Eads 

Bridge had employed divers using compressed 

air. About the same time, since one of the 

symptoms of DCS is joint pain causing sufferers 

to bend forward, the condition came to be more 

commonly referred to as “the bends.” 


30

In 1878, Paul Bert, a French physiologist, 

further advanced the understanding of the 

scientific factors involving the effect pressure 

had on the body. In his 1,000-page seminal 

study, La Pression Barometrique (The Barometric 

Pressure), Bert set forth the impact of both 

high and low air pressure on the human body. 

The adverse effects associated with 

underwater work, he wrote, were attributable 

to the formation of nitrogen gas bubbles. Bert 

also offered what would become the standard 

way for divers to cope with pressure issues— 

coming back up gradually and using a 

decompression chamber to relieve symptoms. 

During the construction of the Hudson 

River Tunnel in 1889-1890, Ernest William 

Moir developed an airlock chamber for 

treatment of divers suffering from DCS. A 

decade later, Leonard Hill—with backing 

from the Siebe Gorman Co.—experimented 

with frogs to develop theories regarding 

compression and decompression. By 1904, 

the diving equipment company had 

developed a decompression chamber. 

The work done in Britain was by Scottish 

physiologist John S. Haldane, who the Royal 

Navy hired to do research on decompression 

sickness. Along with Arthur E. Boycott and 

Guybon C. Damant, Haldane published a 

paper on the prevention of what they called 

“compressed-air illness.” As Bert had found 

earlier, the principle way to guard against the 

bends was for divers to practice staged 

ascensions. Based on this work, the Royal 

Navy developed a set of tables listing the rate 

of ascension for divers based on how deep 

they go and how long they stay under. 

By 1912, the U.S. Navy also was using 

diving tables based on the British research. 

In a long article on risky if profitable 

professions, the Houston Post observed on 

November 19, 1905: “[N]ow recognized as a 

profession, [diving] is followed by a class of 

people who devote their lives to the work, 

going to all parts of the country and working 

in sunken wrecks, examining the bottoms of 

ships, searching for lost things in the deep 

waters, and doing anything else that requires 

work below the surface of the sea.” 

While diving tables, decompression 

chambers, stricter safety standards and 

improved equipment have gone a long way 

toward making commercial diving safer, even 

today life-threatening health issues remain to 

be resolved. 

The most significant threat to divers today 

is High Pressure Neurological Syndrome. 

“Since this is a direct, physical effect of 

pressure, then perhaps we really have now 

reached the depth limits of ambient pressure 

diving,” Dr. Bennet wrote. “The pressures we 

are now reaching are so great that our 

Above: Paul Bert. 

Below: John Scott Haldane. 


31

Above: A diver preparing to repair a lock 

gate at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. 


Below: A man on a ship in a diving outfit, c. 

the 1910s. 


complex protein molecules, in particular 

those of our central nervous system, are being 

physically distorted and their critical 

properties subsequently changed.” 

Bennett then expressed the problem in 

plainer terms: “Excursions into deeper depths 

can ultimately end in permanent 

denaturization of protein molecules from 

which there will be no retreat or therapeutic 

procedure. Denaturatization of protein is 

what happens when you hard-boil an egg. 

And as someone once said, you cannot unboil 

an egg.” 

More recently, Dr. David Sawatzky, in an 

article published January 17, 2012, in Dive 

Magazine said, “HPNS is a fascinating problem 

and one that current deep technical divers 

will definitively have to try and find some way 

to deal with.” 

WAR- BORN TECHNOLOGICAL 

ADVANCES 

The military use of divers is separate from 

the story of commercial diving with one 

significant exception: Technological advances 

made during both world wars would improve 

the safety and efficiency of a new generation 

of divers who ventured beneath the surface to 

get a job done, not to destroy and kill. 

In 1917, the U.S. Bureau of Construction 

and Repair introduced for the Navy the Mark 

V diving helmet. Capping a diving dress and 


32

A two-lock recompression tank (above) and 

a three-lock recompression tank (right) at 

the U.S. Naval Submarine Base New 

London in Groton, Connecticut. Until 1994 

New London was home to the Escape 

Training Tower which was used to train 

submarine crews in escape techniques and 

to train naval special operations teams. 


with air hose and communication line 

attached, the Mark V would be the mainstay 

for underwater work for decades. When the 

second world war broke out, the Mark V, with 

a few modifications from the 1917 model, was 

still the U.S. Navy’s standard diving helmet. 

While most of the Navy’s diving work was 

accomplished by men wearing these helmets, 

the war also saw the first military use of scuba 

equipment, face masks and swim fins. 


33

Right: Divers at work on the wreck of the 

USS Maine, Havana, Cuba, 1898. 

Below: A diver recovering shells after an 

explosion set off by German saboteurs on 

July 30, 1916, on Black Tom Island in New 

York Harbor near Liberty Island. 


Opposite: William Badders, Master Diver, 

U.S.N., being helped into his underwater 

suit just before taking an experimental dive 

in the tank at Washington Navy Yard, 1938. 



34


35

Above: A replica of a Mark V diving helmet. 

COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR. 

Right: Many a commercial diver learned the 

trade as a Navy diver. This underwater 

sailor is undergoing training at Camp 

Endicott, Rhode Island, during World 

War II. 

Prior to the war, the commercial aspect of 

diving had centered largely on salvage, the 

repair and maintenance of vessels or building 

and maintaining underwater infrastructure, 

such as wharves and piers. There was 

work, but not much. It’s been estimated 

that before 1941 the U.S. had only 250 

trained divers. 


36

During the war, the focus on diving 

obviously was related to the prosecution of 

hostilities or maritime and salvage or rescue. 

But with peace came a whole new career field 

for commercial divers, many of them former 

Navy frogmen. 

In 1946, Everett W. Edmund with partner 

Pat Madison started a retail business they 

called M&E Marine in Camden, New Jersey. 

The created a division they call MAR-VEL 

Underwater Equipment and their store became 

the first retail outlet to focus only on the diving 

industry, both commercial and recreational. 

Their primary source of inventory was surplus 

U.S. Navy equipment, from Mark V helmets to 

diving suits and other equipment associated 

with surface supply diving to scuba tanks (still 

called “Lungs”), facemasks and swim fins. 

At first, they worried how in the world 

they were going to sell all the used diving gear 

they acquired at auction, but in a vigorous 

post-war economy, business flourished. In 

offering scuba gear for sale at their store or by 

Above: A U.S. Navy sailor using a Momsen 

Lung rebreather. In October 1944 the U.S 

submarine Tang was sunk by one of its own 

torpedoes east of Meizhou Island in the 

Taiwan Strait, coming to rest in 180 feet of 

water. Thirteen sailors escaped from the 

vessel’s forward escape trunk, some of them 

using Momsen lungs. Of those thirteen 

sailors, five survived to be rescued. It is the 

only known use of the Momsen lung. 

Left: Vice Admiral Charles Momsen. 

Momsen invented of the rebreather which 

bears his name when he was a lieutenant in 

the U.S. Navy. 


37

Oil rigs off the coast of Galveston, Texas. 

catalog, they found their largest number of 

customers were men who dived at night in 

water traps for sunken golf balls to resell. 

OIL AND WATER 

For the W. Horace Williams Co. it must 

have seemed like just another job. A steampowered 

construction barge had sunk 

adjacent to a wooden drilling platform 

operated by Superior Oil in the Creole field 

about a mile off the Louisiana shore. The oil 

company wanted the barge raised and turned 

to the Williams Co. to get the job done. After 

all, that company had built the bridge leading 

to the rig. 

The New Orleans-based construction 

company hired two helmet divers to get the 

barge up and they got it done. That 1938 job 

is believed to have been the first time an oil 

company ever used divers in connection with 

an offshore drilling operation in the Gulf of 

Mexico. It was not, however, the first time 

divers had worked around an oil rig. 

More than 30 years earlier, a California 

wildcatter had built a wharf near Santa 

Barbara that extended into the Pacific and 

then drilled a well in the seabed. Many more 

wells soon followed, all close to shore. In the 

first decade of the twentieth century, one 

Albert Christie is believed to be the first diver 

to do oil-related work off a wharf. Christie’s 

half-brother, Rigden Crawford, did an 

underwater geological survey in an area 

between Santa Barbara and Ventura. This was 

in 1929 and according to Christopher Swann 

in his exhaustive history of oil field diving, 

“probably the first time a diver had 

investigated the seabed for oil anywhere in 

the world.” 

By the time that survey job took place, oil 

companies had begun to suspect that large 

deposits of crude lay in salt dome formations 

under the mud and sand in the shallow Gulf 

of Mexico. But despite ample demand for 

petroleum in the midst of war, due to the 

threat of marauding German U-boats that 

brazenly operated off the Gulf coast during 

the early years of World War II, not until after 

the war did oil companies look seriously 

toward the Gulf as a place to drill. 

In 1947, the Houston-based Kerr-Magee 

Co. oversaw construction by Brown and Root 

of a tennis-court size drilling platform 43 

miles southwest of Morgan City, Louisiana, 

but only 10.5 miles from shore. The rig went 

up in 18 feet of water, the deepest-ever 

offshore operation to that point in the history 

of the oil industry. The well came in on 

November 17 that year. Producing 960 barrels 

a day, it was not a spectacular well, but the era 

of offshore oil exploration and drilling had 

begun. And for the commercial diving 

industry, the completion of that modest 

offshore well marked the emergence of a huge 

new business opportunity. The linking of the 

two industries would lead to the development 

of technologies that would advance both 

petroleum production and commercial diving 

at a high-octane pace. Indeed, commercial 


38

diving helped revolutionize the oil industry, 

and vice versa. 

“Today, nearly all work done under water, 

whether with divers or robots, is carried out 

using equipment and techniques developed to 

meet the requirements of the offshore oil 

industry,” Swann wrote in the preface of his 

definitive book, The History of Oilfield Diving: 

An Industrial Adventure. “To a considerable 

extent, the history of oilfield diving is the 

history of modern diving as a whole.” 

During the 1960s, as energy demand 

continued to rise, several diving companies 

grew into international corporations as oil 

and gas drilling moved into ever deeper water. 

While some production occurred in the midto-late 

1960s, the energy crisis of 1973, which 

quadrupled the price of crude oil, led to 

extensive exploration and drilling in one of 

the roughest bodies of water in the world. 

Given the depth involved, the North Sea play 

brought rapid advances in saturation diving, 

which only dated back to 1964. 

With Americans waiting in line to buy gas 

before service station supplies ran out until 

the next refill, Comex (founded in France by 

Henri Delauze in 1961) had 33 diving 

systems and 300 divers along with a technical 

staff of 400. The company’s annual earnings 

were more than $20 million. 

As the figurative stacks of cash accruing to 

the oil industry and commercial diving grew 

higher and higher, commercial divers and the 

wells they supported went deeper and deeper. 

In 1973, Comex had divers working at 600 

feet in the North Sea; two years later the same 

firm salvaged an abandoned wellhead 1,092 

feet down off Labrador. By 1988, a joint 

operation with Comex, British Petroleum, the 

French Navy, and other corporate entities 

carried out a 1,752 foot dive. 

The price of crude oil fluctuates like the 

daily ebb and flow of the tide, only with far 

less predictability. When the price of a barrel 

of crude goes up, more drill bits go down, on 

land and sea. The only constant is that wells 

have steadily gone deeper over the years. And 

when those wells are in water, so do 

commercial divers. 

DIVING BELLS REDUX 

The oldest type of diving equipment, the 

bell, remains a mainstay in commercial 

diving. Obviously, ever increasing technology 

has made diving bells safer and far more 

efficient than an upside-down weighted 

wooden barrel attached to a rope. 

There are two categories of bells, wet and 

closed. Wet bells are cable-suspended 

chambers open at the bottom. They are used 

as a way to get divers down and provide them 

a base of operation. The air inside is kept at 

ambient pressure, so there are no extreme 

pressure differences. The closed diving bell is 

a sealed chamber. It can be used for what is 

called mixed gas “bounce” diving, a short dive 

in which decompression can be accomplished 

Above: An offshore oil well drilling rig with 

supply boat, Kerr-McGee Oil Industries 

Inc., Cameron, Louisiana, c. the 1940s. 

COURTESY OF THE DEGOLYER LIBRARY, SOUTHERN 

METHODIST UNIVERSITY. 

Below: An American Louisiana Pipe Line 

Company drilling rig, 1955. 

COURTESY OF THE DEGOLYER LIBRARY, SOUTHERN 

METHODIST UNIVERSITY. 


39

in the bell, and saturation diving. 

Commercial diving today relies more on 

closed bells. 

REMOTELY OPERATED 

VEHICLES 

Shell Oil Co., in the early 1960s, 

developed a device called “Mobot” that had a 

gyrocompass, sonar and a TV camera. 

Connected to a vessel, it could be 

maneuvered under water with thrusters. 

Moderately successful, the Mobot and other 

similar ROVs initially were only intended as 

underwater eyes, not a robotic diver. 

But submersible equipment that could do 

more than merely look around was the next 

obvious step in the evolution of commercial 

diving. That had also begun to happen in the 

1960s, with military funding driving 

technological development. The pace picked up 

in the following decade, with both Royal Navy 

and U.S. Navy contractors developing devices 

that could recover lost objects from very deep 

water or to handle deep-sea rescues. 

The oil and gas industry, building on the 

military technology, began developing 

submersible ROVs. With offshore drilling 

increasingly taking place in deep water, such 

tools became even more important in that 

they could operate at depths beyond the reach 

Above: A diver in full dress at Cone Lake, 

April 16, 1912. 

Right: This postcard from 1920 is simply 

titled “The Diver.” 


40

of human divers. Progress slowed with the big 

slump in oil and gas prices that came in the 

mid-1980s, but regained momentum as oil 

reached record highs. 

Technological developments have proceeded 

apace since then, with ROVs being used to do 

deep-sea surveying and to inspect pipelines and 

drilling platforms. Beyond merely being used for 

observation, ROVs can assist in underwater 

construction, maintenance and repair. 

COMMERCIAL DIVING IN 

POPULAR CULTURE 

Deep sea diving burst into popular culture 

with the publication in 1869 in France of a 

serial novel called Vingt mille lieues sous les 

mers: Tour du monde sous-marin. A year later 

the work of science fiction involving Captain 

Nemo and his submarine the Nautilus came 

out as a hardback book. Soon the work was 

translated into English and Twenty Thousand 

Leagues Under the Sea went on to become a 

classic of the genre. 

In the book, Verne devotes a long scene to 

diving. Based on the technology of the day, he 

fairly accurately described the future of diving. 

“You know as well as I do, Professor, that 

man can live under water, providing he carries 

with him a sufficient supply of breathable air. 

In submarine works, the workman, clad in an 

impervious dress, with his head in a metal 

helmet, receives air from above by means of 

forcing pumps and regulators.” 

“That is a diving apparatus,” said I. 

“Just so, but under these conditions the 

man is not at liberty; he is attached to the 

pump which sends him air through an Indiarubber 

tube, and if we were obliged to be thus 

held to the Nautilus, we could not go far.” 

“And the means of getting free?” I asked. 

“It is to use the Rouquayrol apparatus, 

invented by two of your own countrymen, 

which I have brought to perfection for my 

own use, and which will allow you to risk 

yourself under these new physiological 

Above: ROVs and AUVs are some of the 

newer tools to be embraced by the 

commercial diving industry. 


Left: A student-built ROV. Programs like 

Marine Advanced Technology Education 

offer education and internship opportunities 

to students interested in pursuing careers in 

the commercial diving industry. 


41

Buster Keaton in the 1924 film 

The Navigator. 

conditions without any organ whatever 

suffering. It consists of a reservoir of thick 

iron plates, in which I store the air under a 

pressure of fifty atmospheres. This reservoir is 

fixed on the back by means of braces, like a 

soldier’s knapsack. Its upper part forms a box 

in which the air is kept by means of a bellows, 

and therefore cannot escape unless at its 

normal tension. In the Rouquayrol apparatus 

such as we use, two India rubber pipes leave 

this box and join a sort of tent which holds 

the nose and mouth; one is to introduce fresh 

air, the other to let out the foul, and the 

tongue closes one or the other according to 

the wants of the respirator. But I, in 

encountering great pressures at the bottom of 

the sea, was obliged to shut my head, like that 

of a diver in a ball of copper; and it is to this 

ball of copper that the two pipes, the 

inspirator and the expirator, open.” 

“Perfectly, Captain Nemo; but the air that 

you carry with you must soon be used; when 

it only contains fifteen per cent. of oxygen it is 

no longer fit to breathe.” 

“Right! But I told you, M. Aronnax, that the 

pumps of the Nautilus allow me to store the air 

under considerable pressure, and on those 

conditions the reservoir of the apparatus can 

furnish breathable air for nine or ten hours.” 

The first time a helmeted diver appeared 

on the big screen came with the release in 

1911 of a silent black and white short called 

The Diver. Subsequently remastered, the film 

is available today on Youtube. 

Five years later during World War I, with 

German U-Boats changing naval warfare, an 

American movie company produced a silent 

film adaptation of Verne’s novel in 1916. 

Commercial divers took part in the movie 

both as camermen and actors. 

With much more realistic props, sound, 

color and big name actors like Kirk Douglas 

and James Mason, in 1954 Walt Disney 

released his movie studio’s take on 20,000 

Leagues Under the Sea. Not only did the movie 

raise awareness of the undersea world for 

millions of Baby Boomers, not to mention 

popularizing the mechanical means to enter 

that world, it brought business to commercial 

divers used in its filming. 

While 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 

pumped fresh air into the world’s interest in 

diving, it was a 1950s television show that 

went a long way toward popularizing 

commercial diving. Diver recruitment clearly 

got an extra blast of oxygen in January 1958 

when a television show called Sea Hunt first 

aired. In the half-hour, black-and-white series, 

actor Lloyd Bridges played Mike Nelson, a 

former Navy frogman who became a freelance 

diver after leaving the military. In other words, 

he made his living as a commercial diver. 

The action-packed show, in which Nelson 

did everything from hunt treasure to disarming 

a lost nuclear missile, did for recreational and 

commercial diving what Walt Disney’s Davy 

Crockett did for the coon skin hat industry. 

Other books and films have focused on 

diving and its commercial aspects, but 20,000 

Leagues Under the Sea and Sea Hunt were the 

figurative hooks on each end of the anchor 

when it came to popularizing both 

avocational and vocational diving. 

Men of Honor, a film that debuted in 2000, 

is still considered the best-ever diving movie. 

Starring Robert De Niro and Cuba Gooding, 

Jr., the movie is based on the true story of Carl 

Brashear, played by Gooding, who was 

trained at the Navy’s diving school in 

Bayonne, New Jersey. Successfully 

surmounting racism and discrimination, 

Brashear went on to become the first African 

American master diver in the U.S. Navy. 


42

ADVENTURE ( AND 

TRAGEDY) BENEATH 

THE WATER 

Like any profession where at least some 

level of risk is always present, most 

commercial divers would say their career 

amounted to performing arduous if routine 

tasks in an underwater work place. 

But despite centuries of accumulated 

knowledge and constantly improving 

technology, working under water continues to 

be challenging and sometimes dangerous. 

Few veteran divers have not survived one or 

two close calls. 

Longtime diver Mike Hughes, founder of 

Oceaneering International, Inc., tells of an 

incident that occurred when he was diving off 

a submersible drilling platform in the Gulf. 

Seventeen stainless steel drill cases, worth 

roughly $10,000 each, had accidentally rolled 

overboard. The bottom consisted of deep 

mud he described as being like Jell-O. After 

getting 14 of the long pipes hooked to a chain 

so that they could be pulled to the surface, 

Hughes started trying to get to the 15th pipe. 

In the process, the mud closed in around him 

about a dozen feet below the bottom, even 

though it wasn’t much of one. He barely made 

it out, and after getting back to the drilling 

barge, he made the decision that the last two 

pipes were going to stay where they lay. 

Beyond close calls like that, which 

improved safety standards have certainly 

helped to reduce though not eliminate, 

commercial diving sometimes involves movielike 

scenarios. Just a few examples: 

• In 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber 

armed with four nuclear bombs collided 

with a KC-135 tanker during mid-air 

refueling and crashed near Palomares, 

Spain. Three of the devices fell on land, but 

the fourth went into the Mediterranean Sea, 

settling on the bottom 2,850 feet down. 

Ocean Systems, which later was acquired 

by Oceaneering, successfully recovered the 

bomb after a two-and-a-half month search. 

• In 1982, Oceaneering received a contract to 

dive on the sunken ocean liner Andrea Doria, 

which had gone down in 240 feet of water 

off Massachusetts in 1956. The man who 

hired the firm, department store heir Peter 

Gimbel, wanted the ship’s first-class safe 

recovered. Oceaneering got the job done, 

but the safe did not have nearly as much of 

value in it as Gimbel had counted on. 

• In 1999, Oceaneering used an ROV to recover 

the Liberty Bell 7, the Mercury space capsule 

that sank after astronaut Gus Grissom’s 

otherwise successful suborbital fight on July 

21, 1961. The capsule was brought up from 

16,100 feet, the deepest large-object salvage 

operation undertaken to date. 

The story of U.S. Navy Master Diver Carl 

Brashear was told in the 2000 movie Men 

of Honor. Brashear became the first 

African-American U.S. Navy Master 

Diver in 1970, four years after losing part 

of his left leg during a salvage operation 

to recover a nuclear bomb off the coast 

of Spain. 

COURTESY OF THE U.S. NAVY. 


43

THE COMMERCIAL DIVING 

INDUSTRY TODAY 

Left: Astronaut Virgil I. Grissom climbing 

into the Liberty Bell 7 space capsule on 

July 21, 1961. The capsule was lost during 

recovery operations and came to rest at a 

depth of 16,100 feet. 

COURTESY OF NASA. 

Right: The Liberty Bell 7 after its recovery 

by Oceaneering International in 1999. 

COURTESY OF NASA. 

Ongoing technological improvements, 

the continued expansion of offshore oil 

production and a generally strong national 

economy made commercial diving an 

increasingly attractive career choice for those 

who preferred a rigorous outdoor vocation as 

opposed to being behind a desk. 

Today, commercial diving is a multi-billion 

dollar a year world-wide industry, but in the 

U.S. the number of men and women who do 

underwater work is surprisingly small 

considering income generated. 

The U.S. Department of Labor defines 

commercial diving as: 

Work below surface of water, using scuba 

gear to inspect, repair, remove, or install 

equipment and structures. May use a variety of 

power and hand tools, such as drills, 

sledgehammers, torches, and welding 

equipment. May conduct tests or experiments, 

rig explosives, or photograph structures or 

marine life. 

Excluding those who dive as fishing 

workers or law enforcement officers, the 

federal agency reported only 3,370 individuals 

working in the U.S. as commercial divers. Not 

surprisingly, the states with the largest number 

of commercial diving jobs are adjacent to 

water. The top five states, in number of divers, 

are Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Washington and 

Michigan, followed by Virginia, Alaska, New 

Jersey, Alabama and Missouri. 

In terms of metropolitan areas, ground zero 

for the largest concentration of commercial 

divers in the nation is greater New Orleans- 

Houma, Louisiana, axis followed by the 

Houston area. 

LOOKING 

AHEAD 


44 

The ever-expanding technology that 

eventually enabled man to work and play under 

water with relative safety has not stopped. On 

land and sea, the use of robotics is growing. 

In the spring of 2016, a humanoid robotic 

named OceanOne made news around the

world when it recovered a grapefruit-sized 

vase from the sunken wreckage of the La 

Lune, a vessel not seen by man in nearly 

350 years. The flagship of France’s Louis XIV, 

the warship went down in 328 feet of 

water 20 miles south of the coastal city of 

Toulon in 1664. 

Though originally designed to explore 

deep ocean reefs, with OceanOne’s artificial 

intelligence abilities, the dive off the coast of 

France made it clear that the underwater 

robot and its successors are the future of 

deep-sea commercial diving. 

Oussama Khatib, a computer science 

professor at Stanford University in Palo 

Alto, California, piloted the humanoid robot 

from a vessel on the surface. Using joysticks 

to control the robot’s movement, he saw 

everything through the robot’s two “eyes,” 

a set of cameras in an orange head that 

gives the device a distinctively human 

appearance, at least from its “shoulders” up. 

Even the robot’s two arms are reminiscent 

of human appendages and they certainly are 

in function. 

Each hand has, as an article in Digital News 

explained, force sensors “that transmit haptic 

feedback to the robot’s pilot. Because of this, 

the driver can feel exactly what OceanOne 

feels, helping determine if it’s grabbing 

something dense or delicate.” 

A planned modification of the robot will 

include tactile sensors in each finger. 

“The human can provide the robot with 

intuition, expertise and cognitive abilities,” 

the professor told the Stanford News. “The 

robot can do things in areas too dangerous for 

a human, while the human is still there.” 

In expanding on that, Khatib set forth 

the obvious for anyone who knows anything 

about commercial diving: In diving 

beneath the surface, despite technological 

advances, humans must still deal with air 

supply issues and the dangers of decompression 

sickness. 

“The intent is to have a human diving 

virtually—to put the human out of harm’s 

way,” the professor said. “Having a machine 

with human characteristics, that can project 

the human diver at depth is going to be 

amazing. OceanOne will be your avatar.” 

In Khatib’s view, the future lies in a 

combination of old-fashioned human skill 

and a sturdy, man-like diving robot that can 

work for longer and at great depths. Man will 

still have a place in commercial and all other 

aspects of diving, but he can accomplish 

much of what needs to be done without ever 

getting in the water. 

“[Scientists] see a future where ROVs and 

AUVs in their present form will cease 

to exist and are replaced by transformative 

e-robotics that can roam, hover, reside, and 

perform all underwater tasks,” notes an article 

in Ocean News & Technology Magazine 

(February 2017). 

Commercial divers in training preparing to 

embark upon careers beneath the waves. 

COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY 

POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE. 


45


46

As the industry embraces technological 

advances, there is still a need for new 

generations of trained commercial divers. 




47

Modern commercial diving educational 

programs combine classroom instruction 

with hands-on training in the field. 



Gregory R. Trauthwein, associate publisher 

and editor of Marine Technology Reporter 

Magazine put it even more plainly in the 

January-February 2017 issue of his magazine: 

“The age of robotics is here and now. 

Advances in robotics are quickly removing 

people from some of the dirtiest and more 

dangerous jobs, inserting vehicles, sensors 

and systems where no man has gone, or 

would like to go....This reliance on 

automation extends to the subsea sector, as 

vehicles of every shape, size and price point 

gain capability and confidence among a 

growing legion of users.” 

Ryan Harris, an underwater archeologist 

with Parks Canada, studies the past with the 

aid of modern technology. In 2014 Parks 

Canada located the HMS Erebus and two 

years later the hulk of the HMS Terror—two 

English vessels lost in the Arctic Ocean in 

1845 while in search of the Northwest 

Passage—through the use of remote-operated 

vehicles and other state-of-the-art undersea 

technology. But despite the tremendous 

and ongoing high-tech advancements in 

underwater work, he says there is still a place 

for divers in the equation. 

What he said in the January-February 

2017 issue of Marine Technology News had to 

do with his specialty of underwater 

archeology, but it applies to all aspects of 

commercial diving: 

“To my mind, there will always be an 

important role for hands-on underwater 

archaeology,” he said. “Certainly, I’m able to 

get much more information from a site when I 


48

can get up close and have a tactile 

experience....While AUVs and ROVs are 

amazing tools, there are some things that 

machines do well and certainly do better 

than human beings, but definitely not 

everything. It’s the appropriate marriage of 

human and technology that will get the 

job done.” 

A tank that is used to teach underwater 

welding skills to students enrolled n 

National University Polytechnic Institute’s 

commercial diving program. 




49


50

THE HISTORY OF THE ADCI 

FORMING 

ADC 

Sound travels very well underwater, but above the surface, being heard is not always as easy. By 

the 1960s, it had become evident to industry leaders that commercial divers needed an 

organization to communicate in their behalf. 

As Swann wrote in his landmark History of Oil Field Diving, “...diving contractors in the Gulf of 

Mexico began to realize that unless they set up an association to police themselves, the government 

in the form of the Coast Guard or some other body was going to do it for them. Given the 

competitive pressure of the business and the strongly independent nature of diving entrepreneurs, 

it was no easy task.” 

Mike Hughes, the founder of Oceaneering International, was one of the key players in the 

organization of ADC. 

“The first discussions about forming a contractor’s association started when it appeared that the 

union was organizing a major push to unionize divers in the Gulf.” he later wrote. “The contractors 

thought it made sense to have a place to meet and discuss the threat of unionization and do what 

we could as a group to avoid conditions which would encourage divers to depend on a union. 

Frankly, we were more than a little irate that divers might believe some union organizers from up 

north could do more for them than we would.” 

Another major factor in the genesis of ADC was a desire on the part of contractors to have an 

organization that could work to standardize diver safety issues. 

“There were some differences in how each contractor viewed some safety questions,” Hughes 

continued. “Some told the customers a [decompression] chamber would be required in a certain 

depth and others were willing to work without one. Some contractors stretched the decompression 

schedules more than others. These differences caused some concern on the part of the divers.” 

Hughes and others in the industry knew the importance of standardized procedures, but 

believed if they could find a way to work things out among themselves it would be far preferable 

to dealing with a union on those issues. Unions were at the height of their power in the 1960s, but 

that did not mean they were universally popular, especially in the South and Southwest. 

“The only problem was that we were a fiercely competitive and secretive group of contractors, 

many of whom had experienced various differences of opinions,” he remembered. “In more than a 

few cases, the issue was temporarily resolved with fists. Unfortunately, this seldom produced a 

permanent settlement.” 

At the time, the major players in the business were Taylor Divers, Dick Evans, Inc., Ocean 

Systems, World Wide Divers, and Santa Fe. Several smaller companies also had a respectable piece 

of the market. 

“The first meeting as I recall was called by Ken Wallace of Taylor Diving,” Hughes went on. “We 

met for dinner at Chris’s Steak House out on Broadway in New Orleans. We had some great steaks 

and strong martinis which resulted in not many decisions, but at least no one hit anyone else that 

night. It was not a bad beginning for this group.” 

But then, Hughes and the other interested parties got some legal advice that an association 

might not be the best way to go. Such an organization, a lawyer said, might give the union a way 

to take on the whole industry at once rather than requiring them to organize each company 

individually. Accordingly, they dropped the idea of forming a contractor’s association. 

However, developing safety standards remained an important need. In fact, it became more urgent. 

As Hughes explained, “The Marine Technology Society was emerging as the principal oceanrelated 

industry organization. Many of us became active in MTS and used the MTS meetings as a 

place to come together and talk about the diving industry.” 

Subject to constant innovation and everincreasing 

demands by industry, 

commercial divers have been given a 

voice—The Association of Diving 

Contractors International. 




51

THE ADCI RESHAPES THE INDUSTRY 

A long, long time ago, (kind of sounds like a nursery story my mother used to read me, doesn’t it?) back in the early 1960s, the ADCI 

started with a bunch of entrepreneurial men, like: 

Danny Wilson, Subsea Divers 

Dick Evans, Dick Evans Divers 

Buck Frolich, Frolich Marine Divers 

John Gallettia, J&J Divers 

Mike Hughes, World Wide Divers 

Bob McGuire, McDermott Divers 

Jack Smith, S&H Divers 

Ken Wallace, Taylor Diving & Salvage 

And myself 

These men and others in commercial diving were involved in construction, salvage, drill rig support, inspection, pipeline, inshore, 

nuclear power plants, dams, and other underwater work. They were hard-working men who wanted to make commercial diving a safe 

occupation. Each had their own vision of how and where they wanted their companies to be in the future. These men would work together 

at the meetings but would cross the street if they met each other outside the meetings. We started with a long table but thereafter went to 

round tables. 

They were afraid the offshore industry would say something about them fixing prices and or other shady business dealings. But the only 

competition we had was over competing for the best divers. At that time the only real forum that was available for the diving industry was 

the MTS Society. 

But its meetings were small and mainly directed towards R&D activities, and none of our customers really attended these meetings. 

So, the ADC decided to establish the International Diving Symposium, which was held in the diving capital of the world, Morgan 

City, Louisiana. 

We solicited our vendors (twisted their arms) to take part in the symposium, as well as encouraged our customers and members to 

present technical papers. The Association’s motto at that time was: Communications, Education and Safety. 

Workers’ Compensation insurance was about forty-eight percent of gross payroll, so that alone was enough enticement for members to 

increase their profits without raising prices. That is if they could get those rates lowered…most of the coverage came from Lloyds of London. 

The offshore industry was moving into deeper waters and was afraid that the diving industry wouldn’t be able to provide diving services 

at those depths. More bottom time would be required with less in-water decompression. 

Two very important aspects that changed commercial diving at this point of time was, in my view, were: 

First was the U.S. Navy. We recruited or I should say raided the Navy for master divers, technicians, operations supervisors, equipment 

supervisors. We had divers, but needed the deeper diving technology. 

I should also mention that Navy master divers were somewhat like the pied piper; they had a following of men who trusted them and 

followed them into the commercial diving arena. Jack Lahm was the first Navy master diver our company hired. (Jack passed away several 

years ago, but won’t be forgotten.) With his team we moved into open-bottom bell diving. 

We later started using closed-bottom bells because the decompression was on deck and wouldn’t hold up the offshore industry’s 

equipment. Although the cost was much higher, our customers went along with the increased prices because the operations were more 

efficient and safer. Longer bottom times were again requested which meant that we had to move into helium diving, and then eventually, 

saturation diving. 

Dr. Bill Gillen, who had done considerable 

hyperbaric research in the Navy, and was 

chairman of the MTS’ “Man’s Underwater 

Activities Committee” asked Hughes if he 

thought that developing standard diving 

safety rules would be a good project for the 

committee. Hughes said he believed it would 

be and agreed to head a group tasked with 

giving it a try. 

“John Galletti was a member of our MTS 

committee and, in 1968, attended a meeting of 

the USIA where diving safety standards were 

being seriously discussed,” Hughes recalled. 

“When we learned that an effort was under 

way to write standards without much industry 

involvement, we decided it was time to act.” 

That September, Hughes sent a letter to his 

fellow contractors requesting that they attend 


52

Again the U.S. Navy played a large role in assisting the commercial industry movement into these activities. We hired some notable Navy 

personnel and there were dozens more who assisted other member companies as well. Bud Mills contributed a lot in making commercial diving 

safer. He had been a medical corpsman, had lots of paperwork experience, excellent accident investigation skills—he’d been there, done that. 

Bob Merriman, is the divers’ diver who deserves this award more than I do, and I hope that he receives it in the near future. 

Some of the Navy personnel, although highly trained and very professional in performing their duties, we thought would better serve 

us by moving them into different positions based on their personalities, such as diving sales skills. Who best could explain in technical 

terms to our clients how diving in the GOM had changed? Therefore, we moved Frank Mantell and Bobby Vendetto…into diving sales. 

Those two fellows brought us more sales at times than we could handle. 

Then, one day along came the “Flying Eyeball,” Dru Michel. Dru was with Taylor Diving & Salvage and introduced it into the offshore 

industry. Some others thought that it was a good idea, like Jack Smith at S&H Diving. Others thought that it would cause them to lose 

diving days, but eventually Dru and others assisted in convincing me to purchasing some RCV 225s and later obtaining some RCV 150s. 

But where would I obtain the support personnel to operate and maintain those vehicles? 

I inquired around with our Navy divers about the Navy’s activities with ROVs. I was informed that yes the Navy did have and use them 

but it was mainly black box type operations. Again the U.S. Navy to the rescue. 

When I asked for names of personnel I could contact for possible hiring I was told that they knew of a fellow only by his nickname. 

After weeks of searching. I finally located the person whose nickname was Duke. I set up an interview with him in California. At the 

meeting he gave me his resume, but a lot of good it did because it was marked classified on most of the answers. 

When I asked Duke what he did in the Navy he said it was classified. After much discussion I finally hired him, Duke Miller. Duke 

headed up our ROV’s worldwide. I was going to call him by his real name but no one here would know whom I was talking about. 

ROVs assisted in making commercial diving safer and less expensive along with moving diving into deeper depths faster than anyone expected. 

Earlier I mention there were two aspects that really changed the commercial diving industry safety record, and gave it the respect it 

deserved. The second item was this: 

Well, now go back in time again into the late ’60s. The ADC board members performed all the activities for the association, gave lectures, 

speeches, presentations, etc to promote the organization. But when a board member performed one of these tasks, his company usually 

benefited by obtaining the contract and or that job. 

This didn’t set well with all the board members even though they all had equal opportunity in performing those functions. The ADC 

started a search for someone to manage its operations. 

One day, Ken Wallace, who was with TD&S, which was part of Brown & Root, went to the Association of Building Contractors, a 

building contractors’ association that represented thousands of statewide companies, meeting in New Orleans. There he was impressed 

with their spokesperson and brought him to the next board meeting. 

At that meeting we hired our first executive director, Jeff Hingle. Jeff was with us for 3 to 5 years. He now is, and has been for the past 

twenty-plus years, the sheriff of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. 

Now the ADC’s executive director could lead the association under the direction of the board of directors. He would act as a third-party, nonbiased 

person in representing the ADC. The board was very happy. Of course other notable executive directors such as: Bob McArtle, Ross Saxton, 

and Phil Newsum followed over the past 46 years in maintaining the high standards that were established in the early years of the association. 

With and through the entrepreneurial leadership of the board of directors, today the ADC is clearly the only nationally recognized 

association that speaks for the commercial diving industry. 

- Tom Angel 

ADCI Commercial Diving Hall of Fame 

a meeting to organize a non-profit industry 

association that would be based in Louisiana. 

Most of the contractors had their own inhouse 

safety standards, but that had begun to 

present problems. 

“Some of our customers were even starting 

to use our differences in policy as a 

negotiating tool,” Hughes said. ‘Company A 

will do such and such (basically cut some 

corner on safety)—why won’t you?’ As little 

contact as we had with each other, we could 

not easily learn whether this was true or not.” 

The contractors agreed to form the 

Association of Diving Contractors and 

Hughes was elected its first president with 

Tom Angel as secretary-treasurer. 

About the same time the ADC got up and 

running, the commercial diving industry 


53

THE ADCI RESHAPES ITSELF 

When I first became aware of the positive effects of the Association of Diving Contractors (ADC) I was a diving supervisor/diver with a 

few years experience in deep bounce and saturation diving, mostly working overseas. 

The first underwater convention I attended was in the late 1970s. I was working for Ocean Systems and had just completed a sixweek 

rotation on a exploration drill ship in Venezuela. My flight landed in New Orleans just as the underwater event was getting 

underway. What an eye opener the event was—all the latest equipment, all the latest research, and the people who were behind all the 

new technology, plus every bar in the French Quarter was full of divers. They were easy to spot since most were physically fit and wearing 

a waterproof watch. 

The equipment on display and technical papers were eye and brain candy to me. I just couldn’t get enough. This was where the shakers 

and movers of our industry gathered to talk about new procedures, equipment, research, and, of course, the camaraderie. 

I still have my copy of Decompression Sickness and its Therapy, organized by the Association of Diving Contractors and the Institute for 

Environmental Medicine. (University of Pennsylvania, April 1978, C. J. Lambertsen, editor.) 

I attended quite a few of these annual shows through the years but it wasn’t until a few years later that I was introduced to the inner 

workings of the ADCI while I was working for Andre Galerne (IUC). He had just been elected president of the ADCI and was fully engaged 

in the process of resetting and the association to include the inland divers, international members and the creation of Underwater Magazine. 

We had quite a few conversations about its purpose and direction of the ADC. He had a vision for the association. 

More years pass and I am appointed to the ADCI board of directors representing two major diving companies—Stolt and then Cal Dive 

International. Here is where the reality hit me (remember I am a card-carrying member) that every member of the board is sitting at the 

meetings with one goal—to ensure the standards and level of safety meet or exceed best industry standards, as well as regulatory standards. 

The meetings are interesting. After all, this is the heartbeat of commercial diving operational sanity. Some members have different views 

but, at the end of the day, the voting on each issue was completed via a majority consensus. A couple of years later I was honored to be 

elected to be chairman of the board and president of ADCI. This job lasted for six one-year terms. 

As one can imagine, this was not an easy job; you learn as each moment passes. During the first meeting I perspired like I was in a 

sauna. I learned to keep my mouth closed until others had spoken; I tried to keep my opinion till last. I studied and implemented “Robert’s 

Rules of Order” in a relaxed manner to allow a free exchange of ideas and opinions as everyone was entitled to express his opinion. I found 

myself at times acting as a referee rather than chairman. Fifteen-minute breaks helped to re-focus the agenda. 

We created an aggressive agenda to re-write the consensus standards for the twenty-first century, and a new evergreen standard now 

called the International Consensus Standards for Commercial Diving and Underwater Operations, 6.0 Edition. This was a major task 

because we started from scratch to completely review every issue and wrote the standards to meet and exceed best industry practices. This 

realized the new Occupational Safety and 

Health Administration (OSHA was created in 

December 1970) likely would try to come up 

with safety rules that would be federally 

imposed. Industry leaders wanted to develop 

their own standard operating procedures and 

then if necessary, spar with OSHA over their 

adequacy and acceptability. 

“The OSHA threat did not go away just 

because we formed ADC and continued to 

work on the MTS safety standards,” Hughes 

said. “The day came when we were notified 

that...formal open hearings on diving 

safety standards would be held in 

Washington. I was elected to go to 

Washington and speak. I worked hard at 

putting together a passionate argument that 

ADC knew more about commercial diving 

than the government bureaucrats ever would. 

We wanted to convince OSHA to let us finish 

our standards and then have them accepted.” 

Hughes flew to Washington and went to 

the building where the hearings were 

underway. There was a large auditorium with 

a podium on the main floor between the front 

seats and a raised stage. 

“I took a seat in the back of the auditorium 

and looked the situation over,” he said. “The government 

officials who were there to hear testimony 

were seated up on the stage behind a long 

table which stretched across the stage. There 

were at least fifteen of them, but they all seemed 

to be coming and going, talking to each other, or 

even sleeping. What they were not doing was listening 

to the people who were testifying.” 

Even worse, the podium was turned so it 

faced the audience in the auditorium, not the 

OSHA officials on the stage. 


54

took nearly three years and many hours on the part of the executive committee to finish. I cringe to think of the corrections and many 

typos we discovered. 

We also reviewed the by-laws of the association and added teeth to the membership, where if a member of the association acts in a manner 

disregarding the consensus standards the board can review and either terminate or suspend the membership of the company. Why, you ask? 

Well, if one company acts foolishly and unsafe by ignoring the consensus standards it affects the credibility of every member of the association. 

We also initiated a mandatory reporting of accidents and fatalities, as well as membership audits of personnel document and equipment 

inspection, maintenance, and testing. 

The new standards have: 

• A minimum bailout bottle capacity for all depths. 

• Emergency Diver Evacuation Standards requiring a means of diver evacuation from saturation systems. 

• PVHO maintenance guide. 

• Contaminated water diving guide. 

• Diving on DP vessels. 

• Translated into Spanish and Chinese. 

Various new committees were formed: 

• Saturation Diving Safety Committee. 

• Civil Engineering Diving Committee. 

• Medical Physician Committee. 

How did this help the association? The membership was one hundred percent behind this and the response from our regulatory agencies 

was very positive. Working relationships were signed with the U.S. Coast Guard, OSHA and ANSI (American National Standards Institute), 

and ACDE (Association of Commercial Diving Educators). 

Yes, the Association of Diving Contractors International has been a very positive experience for the industry and of course me. It was 

an honor to be a part of the association. 

The future is very bright for the ADCI. The ongoing question is, “What are we doing well and what can we do to make it better to 

uphold our values of safety, education, and communication?” 

Finally, we cannot forget Phil Newsum who has been the focal point of the success the association since he first became executive 

director…he gets things done. Thank you Phil. 

- Bill Crowley 

Past President, ADCI 

The Divex display from the 1991 ADCI 

convention. 


55

The show floor at an ADCI convention is 

the chance for the ADCI’s 600 members to 

display their latest technical innovations, 

products, and services. 


“The person testifying couldn’t even see the 

people on the stage,” Hughes said. “The only 

people in the audience were people like me who 

were there to testify. Basically we were talking to 

each other and the government was ignoring us. 

The more I watched the madder I got.” 

Diving safety standards were only one of 

numerous issues before the panel that day. 

“The man who spoke before me was a 

representative of the Michigan Highway 

Contractors Association,” Hughes said. “My 

turn finally came and they called me up to the 

front of the auditorium. As I walked up, not 

one single person on the stage was even 

looking at me, much less acting like they 

intended to listen.” 

Hughes put his speech down on the 

podium and gripped his hands on either side. 

The speaker’s stand was made of heavy oak, 

about three feet square and five feet high. 


56

THE ADCI CONTINUES TO BUILD UPON ITS SUCCESSES 

Regardless of the places I have worked, or the positions that I have held, I have been 

fortunate enough to have spent my entire diving career working for ADCI member companies. 

The ADCI Consensus Standards for Commercial Diving and Underwater Operations are not 

only recognized as best industry practice here in the U.S., but in many other parts of the world. 

These standards, combined with the wealth of experience that our diverse membership 

provides, have been vital resources to our organization; providing us with the guidance 

necessary to conduct diving operations as safely as possible. 

Having also served on the ADCI board of directors for nearly a decade, I can attest to the 

fact that our membership is passionate, knowledgeable, and committed; constantly evolving 

and working to be at the forefront of best practices for our industry. 

Without a doubt, having been elected as the ADCI’s president for 2017 is one of the 

greatest honors of my commercial diving career. I am consistently surrounded by good people 

working to achieve one goal—building upon the success of the past fifty years in order to keep 

divers safe. 

- Bryan Nicholls 

President, ADCI 

“I dragged it around until it faced the 

stage,” Hughes continued. “The microphone 

on the podium made a heck of a racket as the 

podium grated on the floor.” 

The noise got the attention of the panel and 

even woke up two men who had been asleep. 

“I realize you gentlemen have had a long 

day, but I’ve come a long way to say 

something which is very important to me and 

my fellow contractors,” Hughes said. “I’d 

appreciate it if you could at least give me your 

attention for a few minutes.” 

At that, he recalled, the others waiting in 

the auditorium burst into applause. 

His talk, he said, probably didn’t have 

much to do with the eventual outcome of 

the OSHA regulations, but it did feel to 

him like ADC had at least gotten a hearing 

in Washington. 

“A lot of us worked hard for several more 

years to hammer out a reasonable 

understanding about diving safety standards,” 

he continued. “It was truly an effort of most of 

the contractors, large and small. That effort 

also showed us we could work together and 

weren’t such bad guys after all. ADC has come 

a long way since then, but it probably won’t 

encounter anything as challenging as getting 

that first group of guys together.” 

As Dive Training Magazine explained, “The 

basic ADC Commercial Diver certification is 

Entry Level Tender/Diver. To earn more 

advanced certifications, a diver must log 

experience in the field (called “field days”) 

and underwater (referred to as “working 

dives”). Divers are required to receive 

on-the-job training to be eligible for 

more advanced commercial diver certification 

unless they received the required formal 

training through an accredited commercial 

diving school, military dive school, or 

the equivalent.” 

Today the ADCI—now based in 

Houston—has more than 600 member 

companies, furnishing services and support 

for the conduct of safe underwater operations 

from 41 nations throughout the world. 

Encompassing offshore and inland sectors of 

diving, ADCI is comprised of segments from 

the business, educational and medical 

communities. ADCI cooperates and participates 

with state and federal regulatory agencies and 

works closely with all stakeholders to develop 

standards that are consistent and attainable, 

while meeting the highest standards of safety 

for underwater operations. 

ADCI now has four membership 

classifications. General membership is for 


57

ADCI sets industry standards for 

educationa nd safety that have made a 

lasting, positive impact upon the commercial 

diving industry. 



those members who conduct commercial 

diving as a substantial part of their business. 

Associate members support general members 

through the training of personnel engaged in 

commercial diving services, and/or through 

the manufacturing/supporting of goods and 

services. Supporting members are “for profits” 

or “not for profits” that support the mission 

and purpose of the ADCI. This includes 

government regulatory authorities, oversight 

agencies and military authorities among 

others. Affiliate membership includes any 

organization that supports the purposes of the 

ADCI that is invited by the board of directors. 

The mission of the ADCI is: 

• To promote the highest level of safety in 

the practice of commercial diving and 

underwater operations. 

• To promote proper and adequate training 

and education for industry personnel. 

• To foster open communication within the 

underwater industry. 

• To hold all members accountable 

in adherence to the Consensus 

Standards for Commercial Diving and 

Underwater Operations. 

Recognized as the premiere association 

that issues safe diving guidelines through 

its International Consensus Standards for 

Commercial Diving and Underwater 

Operations, ADCI is also the primary entity 

for the issuance of certifications for diving 

personnel in the United States. and many 

regions globally. 

ADCI has formal partnerships with the U.S. 

Coast Guard, the American Salvage 

Association, the U.S. Navy’s Naval Sea Systems 

Command (Supervisor of Salvage and Diving), 

as well as with several navies in the Latin 

America and Asia Pacific sectors. The U.S. 

Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and 

Health Administration (OSHA) “recognizes 

ADCI standards as the best established 

industry practice.” 


58

CELEBRATING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ADCI 

At my first ADC meeting in 1974 little did I think I’d observe this 

50th Anniversary of the organization. The success of ADC (now 

ADCI) has only been achieved through the efforts of many 

committed persons and member companies; all working to enhance 

and continually improve safety throughout the international 

commercial diving profession while simultaneously cooperating and 

educating the implementing government agencies under whose laws 

we must operate. I am proud to have served in many roles over the 

years and to have been given an opportunity to contribute. 

- Ross Saxon, Ph.D. LCDR USN (Ret) 

Former Executive Director, ADCI 


Congratulations to the ADCI on its fifty-year anniversary! And 

many thanks to the ADCI for its dedication and service to the 

commercial diving industry. The ADCI has done more to promote and 

implement commercial diving safety than any other entity. From 

drafting the first National Safety Consensus Standard to the present 

International Safety Consensus Standard, to commercial diver 

certification, to the present audit initiative, and so many, many more 

activities, that not only promoted diver safety, but also protected its 

member firms from overregulation by government and outside 

entities. All industry stakeholders owe a debt of gratitude to the ADCI, 

and must continue to support this organization in our ultimate goal of 

getting our divers and dive support crews home safely! 

Again, Congratulations to the ADCI for 50 great years! 

- Jon Hazelbaker 

Commercial Diving Consultant 

Hammerhead Marine Services, LLC 


Congratulations to ADCI, and particularly the great André 

Galerne, for creating a modern, cohesive, internationally respected, 

organization from a group of strongly independent individuals who 

operated a “My Way or the Highway” system of a mongrel industry 

(non)co-operation back in the 1940s-1970s. A true fifty-year 

American success story! 

- Leslie Leaney 

Co-founder, Historical Diving Society USA 

Founder, The Journal of Diving History 

Founding Trustee, Santa Barbara Maritime Museum 


The ADCI, including all the Diving Professionals and other 

Passionate Men and Women, who unselfishly contributed, 

voluntarily, with their time and hard work to make the Association 

a definitive voice for the Commercial Diving Industry, have been an 

enormous part of my profession and my career, spanning over forty 

years to date. Thank you and happy fiftieth anniversary! 

- Mike Brown 

Onyx Services, Inc. 


I want to congratulate the many people, both staff and 

volunteers, who have made the ADCI what it is today—fifty years, 

truly a remarkable milestone! From very humble beginnings, the 

organization has grown to represent our industry throughout the 

world and, most importantly, to help ensure the safety of the guy on 

the end of the hose! 

- Craig Fortenbery 

Founder, Mainstream Commercial Divers, Inc. 


For over thirty years the ADCI has been a reliable ally to Dryden 

Diving. We could not have reached the level of professionalism we 

have today without them. Thanks to their guidance our crews are 

among the most professional in the industry. 

- Donald Dryden 

President, Dryden Diving Company, Inc. 

I have witnessed in my twenty-five years with the ADCI its 

progress from requiring not much more from its diving contractors 

than its desire to operate safely, and having no diver certification, to 

an association with universally accepted standards for contractors 

and training centers, plus universal certifications for divers. 

Congratulations, ADCI! 

- Barbara Treadway 

Manager, Administrative Services, ADCI 

East Coast Chapter Chairman 


59

THE COMMERCIAL DIVING HALL OF FAME 

Since 2005, ADCI has inducted selected nominees into the Commercial Diving Hall of Fame. These individuals are nominated from all walks 

of life and represent men and women who throughout their lifetime have made a recognized and lasting contribution to commercial diving. 

The genesis of the program goes back a year before, when in 2004, the board of directors decided to establish the Hall of Fame with the 

first group of inductees being those who had previously been awarded either the John B. Galletti Memorial Award (established in 1978) or 

the Tom Devine Memorial Award (established in 1995). 

That initial group included 33 persons and one additional dedicated Hall of Fame selectee to represent 2004. This group had 25 prior 

John B. Galletti Memorial Award winners and 8 prior Tom Devine Memorial Award honorees. 

With the passage of time the number of Hall of Fame nominees has slowed. This may be due to a lack of understanding of what the 

Hall of Fame is intended to represent or simply because as the commercial diving community continues to grow the contributions of 

individual persons become less evident. It also may be that some of the individuals deserving recognition are from small nations where the 

commercial diving community is not as well recognized as in other parts of the globe. Even so, many people from the industry’s global 

community have dedicated their lives to improving commercial diving in one way or another. These may be men and women who have 

been commercial divers, developers of equipment, contributors to the medical sciences used to keep divers safe, safety professionals who 

recognize and alert the community to on-the-job hazards, individuals who establish companies to employ commercial divers or others who 

produce improved tools for underwater use. 

- Adapted from ADCI website. 

List of Prior Awardees 

(Note: Posthumous awards are noted by the letter “P”) 

John B. Galleti Memorial Award 

Capt. George Bond (P) 1978 

Cdr. Jackie Warner (P) 1979 

Dr. Chris Lambertsen 1980 

Hugh (Dan) Wilson 1981 

Bev Morgan 1982 

D. Michael Hughes 1983 

Dick Evens (P) 1984 

George W. Samson (P) 1985 

Jim Joiner 1986 

Henri Delauze 1987 

Phil Nuytten 1988 

Murray Black (P) 1989 

Lad Handelman 1990 

Dr. Joseph McInnis 1991 

Herbert G. Newbury (P) 1992 

John T. Johnson 1993 

Jack D. Smith, Jr. 1994 

Andre Galerne 1995 

Ellis R. Cross (P) 1996 

Joe Savoie (P) 1997 

Steve Helburn 1998 

Bill Dore 1999 

Bob Kirby 2000 

Ross Saxon 2001 

Conway Whitey Grubbs (P) 2002 

R. H. (Dutchy) Holland 2003 

Tom Devine Memorial Award 

Ms. Bernice McKenzie 1995 

Juan R. Crofton 1996 

Mike McGovern 1997 

Fred Aichele 1999 

Rick Jager 2000 

John Hazelbaker 2001 

Jim Caldwell 2002 

Hall of Fame Award 

Bob Barth 2005 

Rodney Cruze 2006 

Dick Long 2006 

Torrence Parker 2006 

Jack Reedy 2006 

Walter (Whitey) Stephens 2007 

Wilber (Jerry) O’Neill 2007 

Dr. Jeff Zhang 2008 

Dr. Robert Workman (P) 2008 

John Manlove (P) 2008 

Norman Ketcham 2008 

Lazaro Del Castillo 2008 

Dr. Joseph Serio 2009 

Leonard Greenstone 2009 

Robert W. Honaker 2009 

Bud Mills 2010 

Bob Ratcliff 2010 

Ben Miller 2011 

Tom Angel 2011 

Joe Sanford (P) 2011 

Paul Leblanc 2012 

Drew Michel 2012 

Lawrence Goldberg 2013 

Bob Merriman 2013 

Richard Geyer 2013 

Van T. Bell (P) 2014 

George Cundiff 2014 

Dr. Keith Van Meter, M.D. 2014 

Dr. John Beran 2015 

Denny Swartz 2015 

S. Joe Vidrine 2015 

Mike Von Alvensleben 2016 

George Wiswell 2016 

Leslie Leaney 2017 

Owen Boyles 2017 

Mike Ward 2018 

Craig Fortenbery 2018 


60

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Delgado, James P. Misadventures of a Civil War Submarine: Iron, Guns and Pearls. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012. 

Green, John B. Diving, With and Without Armor: Containing the Submarine Exploits of J.B. Green, the Celebrated Submarine Diver. Buffalo: 

Faxon's Steam Powered Press, 1859. 

Hughes, D. Michael. Oceaneer: From the Bottom of the Sea to the Boardroom. NP, 2015. 

Kuntz, Jerry. The Heroic Age of Diving: America's Underwater Pioneers and the Great Wrecks of Lake Erie. Albany: State University of New York 

Press, 2016. 

Marx, Robert F. The History of Underwater Exploration. New York: Dover Publications, 1978, 1990. 

Swann, Christopher. The History of Oilfield Diving: An Individual Adventure. Santa Barbara, California: Oceanaut Press, 2007. 

COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE. 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 

61


62

SHARING THE HERITAGE 

SPECIAL 

THANKS TO 

Profiles of businesses, organizations, 

and families that have contributed to 

Collins Engineers, Inc. 

the development and continued growth of 

the commercial diving industry 

Underwater Construction Corporation..............................................64 

J.F. Brennan Company, Inc. ............................................................70 

Logan Diving & Salvage ................................................................74 

Eason Diving & Marine Contractors, Inc. ........................................78 

Mainstream Commercial Divers, Inc. ..............................................80 

Commercial Diving & Marine Services, Inc. ......................................82 

Divers Institute of Technology ........................................................84 

W.J. Castle P.E. & Associates, P.C. ..................................................86 

DRS Marine Inc. ..........................................................................88 

Global Diving & Salvage, Inc. ........................................................90 

Marine Diving Technology Class of 1973— 

Santa Barbara City College.......................................................92 

American Marine Corporation ........................................................94 

Teichman Group of Companies ........................................................96 

STS Chile 

(STS Marine Engineering and Constructing Limited) ......................98 

Walker Diving Underwater Construction LLC ..................................100 

Marion Hill Associates Diving and Marine Services Group.................102 

ONYX Services, Inc. ....................................................................104 

U.S. Underwater Services, LLC .....................................................105 

Subsalve USA.............................................................................106 

Hammerhead Marine Services, LLC 

Commercial Diving Services, Inc. .............................................107 

Dryden Diving Company, Inc. .......................................................108 

Chesapeake Bay Diving, Inc..........................................................109 

Resolve Marine Group .................................................................110 

Association of Diving Contractors International...............................111 

Enviroscience, Inc. 

Historical Diving Society USA 

Lakes & Rivers 

Contractors, Inc. 

National University 

Polytechnic Institute 

The Ocean Corporation 

Randive, Inc. 


63

UNDERWATER 

CONSTRUCTION 

CORPORATION 

Approaching fifty years of industry 

innovation and job creation 

Above: Co-Founder, John Chiangi, Sr., 

in 1972 preparing to test radiological dive 

equipment to be used at the Yankee Rowe 

Nuclear Plant. 

Below: UCC divers completing the first 

successful radiological dives at the Yankee 

Rowe Nuclear Plant in January of 1973. 

Underwater Construction Corporation (UCC) 

was founded in 1969 by John Chiangi, Sr. 

and Stuart Leech. Both men had previously 

worked for a Connecticut-based company 

called Marine Contracting, Inc. where they 

gained their respective knowledge in commercial 

diving. It was here in the 1960s 

that they performed the first commercial 

saturation dives at Smith Mountain Dam in 

Virginia. Although very little commercial 

diving had been performed at power plants 

in the past, this method of diving service 

was rapidly growing in the industry. The 

founders took this experience and shaped 

their vision to expand UCC’s diving services 

into the fossil, nuclear, and hydro-electric 

power markets. 

One of the company’s first significant 

milestones occurred in the early 1970s when 

UCC pioneered radiological diving, and 

made the first of these dives at the Yankee 

Rowe Nuclear Plant in Rowe, Massachusetts. 

This inventive approach, although new, 

caught on quickly and, by the early 1980s, 

the company’s radiological diving was 

being performed in several nuclear plants 

throughout the domestic United States. UCC’s 

unique ability to offer such a specialized 

service helped the company expand its 

marine diving applications at an accelerated 

pace. Throughout the 1980s, UCC had 

numerous service contracts with customers 

in the power industry, as well as with owners 

of several water dependent facilities. 

In 1986 the founders decided it was time 

to leave the company when it was acquired 

by a publicly owned asbestos abatement company 

named The Brand Companies. Under 

public ownership, Chiangi’s son, John, Jr., 

took over as president of the company. At 

this time, UCC was still relatively small with 

annual revenues of less than 5 million and 

roughly thirty employees. However, UCC’s 

new parent company pushed for rapid growth 

regardless of the means. By the late 1980s, 

UCC, through its parent company, began 

acquiring and starting-up separate companies, 

most of which were unrelated to diving. 

During the next several years, UCC struggled 

with its identity and navigated through 

name and ownership changes when The 

Brand Companies was finally acquired. 

Despite these hurdles, UCC continued to 

grow in both the specialized radiological 

diving and marine diving services. In fact, 

1987 would be the year the company 

completed its first international project at a 

nuclear plant in Taiwan. As a result, the 

company went on to successfully complete 

several nuclear plant projects throughout 

Taiwan from the late 1980s and into the 

early 2000s. 


64

The year 1989 proved to be a monumental 

year for UCC when its parent company 

acquired Lakeshore Marine, located in 

St. Joseph, Michigan. This allowed the company 

to expand its operations west to the 

Great Lakes region and service a host of new 

customers. Additionally, it enabled UCC to 

more effectively service existing clients, like 

one noteworthy customer located on Lake 

Michigan, which UCC signed a contract with 

in 1987, and happens to be UCC’s longest 

running contract to date. The company’s 

primary Midwest office eventually relocated 

to Stevensville, Michigan, where it remains 

today. Over the past twenty-eight years the 

hard work and effort of the Midwest division 

now accounts for roughly thirty percent of 

the company’s combined annual revenues. 

Also in 1989, while still under the pressures 

of its parent company, UCC took on 

two of the largest projects the company had 

ever performed up until that time. The first 

was a massive re-rack project at a nuclear 

plant in California. This was a two-year 

project that alone accounted for roughly one 

half of the company’s annual revenues. The 

second was a challenging marine construction 

project for Metro-North Commuter Railroad 

in Connecticut that involved the extensive 

rehabilitation of four railroad bridges over 

a two-year period. Both projects were a 

great success and helped the company gain 

substantial recognition in the nuclear and 

marine diving industry. 

In the early 1990s, another significant 

milestone achievement for UCC came from 

the company’s extensive R&D with underwater 

welding, which was a highly-specialized 

service that nuclear power plants around the 

world could benefit from. UCC had already 

caught the attention of a worldwide reactor 

service company, which hired them to perform 

their first international underwater 

welding project at the Cofrentes nuclear site 

in Spain. This endeavor created a viable new 

market and a multitude of new welding projects 

for UCC to be involved in. In 1991, UCC 

received approval from Japanese authorities to 

weld in Japan, thus creating additional new 

opportunities for the company. To enhance 

this endeavor, a state-of-the-art hyperbaric 

facility was established in Essex, Connecticut, 

where it is still used today to perform R&D, 

and underwater welding training and certifications 

used on safety-related components 

around the world. 

In 1994, after eight years as president, 

John, Jr., parted with the company his 

father founded some twenty-five years before. 

Rather than replace him, the parent company 

chose to leave the business in the capable 

hands of the existing management group, all 

of whom had worked for the company for 

many years. In that same year, UCC began 

a relationship with one of its long-time 

competitors in the re-racking market that 

Above: UCC diver/welder entering 

the water at a nuclear plant where 

modifications were performed on 

reactor components. 

Below: View of the internal portion of 

a reactor vessel inside a nuclear plant. 

The purple glow is the highly-irradiated 

fuel that will be removed prior to diving. 

Even with the fuel removed, advanced 

methods are necessary to protect the diver 

from radiation exposure. This is one of 

several areas within a nuclear facility that 

UCC conducts highly-specialized diving. 


65

Left: The three new owners along with 

representatives from the Connecticut 

Development Authority (CDA) and Webster 

Bank shortly after acquiring the company in 

December of 1996. From left to right; UCC 

Vice President/Secretary Michael Pellini; 

UCC President/CEO John Lawton; CDA 

Representative; Vice President/Treasurer 

William Feeley and Webster 

Bank representative. 

Right: UCC completing extensive dam 

rehabilitation on the Tennessee River in 

1999. The work involved repairs to the 

downstream apron of the dam over a period 

of several months. 

proved to be a significant move that continues 

to benefit the company to this day. The offices 

in Connecticut and Michigan continued to 

grow as the company attained more annual 

contracts and took on such large projects as 

the Keokuk Dam on the Mississippi River 

in Iowa as well as chemical feed line installations 

and mollusk remediation throughout 

Lake Michigan. 

For the next several years the underwater 

welding program was intensifying and providing 

UCC many new opportunities both 

domestically as well as internationally. By 

1995, UCC had completed its first safetyrelated 

welds at a Nuclear Plant in North 

Carolina and its first dryer cut-up at a 

nuclear site in Japan. These were two significant 

advancements in UCC’s welding and 

reactor services program that brought the 

company additional and well deserved recognition 

in the nuclear industry. 

In 1996, UCC was awarded a long-term 

contract in Ludington, Michigan, which helped 

the company grow to roughly $10 million 

in annual revenues. Then, after a decade of 

public ownership, the company was privately 

acquired by three standout employees who 

were part of the management group entrusted 

to run the company in 1994. All three had 

worked many years for the company as 

divers and, eventually, in management. The 

new leadership team was comprised of 

John Lawton, who served as president while 

Michael Pellini and William Feeley served 

as the company’s two vice presidents. The 

acquisition was successful due in part to the 

assistance it received from Connecticut state 

agencies like the Department of Economic 

and Community Development (DECD) and 

the Connecticut Development Authority 

(CDA). These two agencies, in combination 

with Webster Bank, helped the three new 

owners accomplish the transaction and 

reclaim the company’s original name, which 

is synonymous with commercial diving. 

Also in 1996, UCC made an important 

decision to open a new office in Soddy Daisy, 

Tennessee, to service the vast network of 

power producing facilities along the 

Tennessee Valley River System. By early 1997 

the office was staffed and fully operational. 

This expansion into Tennessee helped the 

company in its pursuit of future growth in 

the Southeast region. Some twenty years later, 

through the talented leadership and support 

staff, the Tennessee office now accounts for 

roughly twenty-five percent of the company’s 

annual revenues. 

The impact of the aggressive new ownership 

was apparent almost immediately, and by 

the end of 1997, UCC had annual revenues of 

approximately $11 million and seventy-five 

employees. The new management group was 

mostly comprised of veteran employees who 

had worked as divers for the company for 

many years; “They are a diverse and talented 

group of individuals that William Feeley and 

I have worked with for many years, both 

diving and in management. The fact that 

they all still work at the company in major 

roles is a true testament to their dedication. 

We could have never achieved our success 

without this group and the people that 

support them,” comments Pellini. 


66

By 1998 the company was well into developing 

its nuclear underwater coatings program. 

This involved state-of-the-art methods 

and products that could withstand high levels 

of radiation as well as be applied underwater 

in nuclear plants on various underwater 

components without the need for dewatering. 

Moreover, the company was heavily involved 

with large-scale modification projects at 

nuclear plants with one of them requiring 

upwards of fifty-six divers, many of whom 

were highly skilled underwater welders. 

In 1998, UCC was awarded a first-of-itskind 

project at a world-famous theme park 

in Orlando, Florida. This project involved 

the extensive rehabilitation of the largest 

salt water aquarium in the world. It was a 

technically challenging project that had 

more than twenty divers working for several 

months while the attraction stayed open to 

the public. At this same time, UCC was 

continuing to forge strong relationships with 

some of the world’s largest companies in the 

nuclear industry in preparation for the future. 

Business slowed slightly in the early 2000s 

as some nuclear contracts came to an end. 

However, the company rebounded in 2003, 

when it acquired work for all three of its 

regional offices. One of the projects undertaken 

by UCC was a highly technical and challenging 

assignment in Japan for one of the largest 

manufacturers of nuclear reactors in the world. 

More than thirty divers worked at the site 

for several months and the outcome of the 

project proved a tremendous success, bringing 

forward more opportunities in Japan. 

By the end of 2004, UCC had record 

growth, which roughly tripled its annual 

revenues since the three new owners acquired 

it in 1996. The Connecticut corporate office 

was responsible for roughly two thirds of 

the company’s revenues that year due to a 

large influx of nuclear plant services. 

Additionally, the other two offices, Michigan 

and Tennessee, were continuing to grow in 

their respective regions, which represented 

the remaining one-third. UCC continued to 

prosper over the next few years with projects 

involving its specialized underwater coatings, 

reactor services and welding, marine services 

and general diving. 

In 2008, UCC had an incredible year; 

when the company had its second-best 

revenue year in history. UCC had a considerable 

amount of both radiological and marine 

diving services during the year. The Michigan 

office had two large projects: one at a nuclear 

site in Florida and the other for a utility 

customer on Lake Michigan. The Michigan 

office achieved its highest revenues to date. 

In addition, the Connecticut and Tennessee 

offices had successful years with their large 

client base, which continued to grow steadily. 

UCC marked the completion of the company’s 

fortieth year of service and its sixth straight 

year of sustainable growth. 

Above: UCC completing turnkey repairs on 

multiple mooring cells at an Ohio River 

fossil plant in 2012. 

Below: UCC diver preparing to complete a 

dive on Lake Michigan. In the background is 

the company’s eighty-foot Jack-up Barge 

that supports multiple diving operations. 


67

Left: Equipment being mobilized to 

Ludington, Michigan, where UCC personnel 

annually install, maintain and remove the 

largest barrier net in North America. 

UCC has been responsible for this 2.4 mile 

net since 1996. 

Right: UCC diver/welder completing 

underwater test welds in preparation to 

travel abroad to a nuclear plant where 

reactor modifications were performed. 

Work remained consistent for the next few 

years and, by 2011, UCC’s Michigan office 

expanded its marine diving operations further 

west to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In addition, 

the acquisition of Seaview Diving of Seymour, 

Wisconsin in 2014, provided this office 

the ability to expand into Green Bay and 

the surrounding areas. UCC continued its 

acquisitions and in 2015 made two additional 

purchases to expand its Midwest division. 

The first was Sea-Brex Diving located just 

a short distance from UCC’s existing office 

in Stevensville. The second was Great Lakes 

Diving located in Rockford, Michigan. Now 

with three acquisitions, all within two years, 

the Michigan office needed a larger location. 

In the summer of 2015, UCC moved across 

the street into its new 50,000-square-foot 

facility. At this same time, the Connecticut 

division was making a relentless push to enter 

the decommissioning market in the United 

Kingdom. Success came when the company 

was awarded a contract at a nuclear site 

in England. This, in turn, led UCC to open 

its first international subsidiary, Underwater 

Construction Corporation, UK, LTD. In 2016, 

UCC pioneered the first radiological dives 

in the country, further establishing itself as 

an elite diving authority. 

In 2014, Lawton retired from the company 

after serving as its president for the previous 

eighteen years. The two remaining owners, 

Pellini and Feeley remained as co-chairmen 

and promoted the company’s Chief Financial 

Officer Raymond Palumbo, to the position of 

President and CEO. Ironically, after being so 

intrigued with UCC, Palumbo came to the 

company eighteen years prior in 1996 from 

the very same bank (Webster Bank) that 

assisted the three owners with the purchase. 

In 2014 and 2015 the company’s international 

reputation was further enhanced when 

UCC was awarded multiple reactor projects 

with a worldwide reactor service company 

at a nuclear plant in Mexico. These projects 

involved highly technical applications, extensive 

tooling design and mock-ups to complete 

steam dryer repairs on several reactor units. 

Today, UCC is recognized as one of the 

largest in-land diving companies of its kind, 

both in the United States and internationally. 

UCC’s corporate headquarters, along with its 

three regional offices and international 

subsidiary, provide marine diving and radiological 

diving to many of the largest utility 

owners in the power generation industry. In 

addition, UCC provides a variety of services 

to numerous clients and diverse industries, 

including port authorities, private waterfront 

owners, government and municipal owners, 

the DOE, manufacturing owners, general 

contractors, and many more. The company’s 

vast expertise in radiological diving has 

afforded UCC the incredible opportunity to 

work with some of the largest companies in 

the power generation industry. To its credit, 

UCC has performed highly specialized radiological 

diving throughout the domestic 

United States and worldwide in more than 

twenty-two countries including, Japan, South 

Korea, China, Taiwan, Brazil, Spain, Sweden, 

Switzerland, and England, to name a few. 

The company is proud to employ more 

than 200 commercial divers and support 

staff. Their marine diving operations support 

customers throughout New England, the 

Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, the Tennessee 

Valley and southern area regions, as well 

as numerous locations across the domestic 

United States. All the company’s international 


68

services are performed from its corporate 

office located in Essex, Connecticut, where 

roughly one-half of its workforce is located. 

UCC has been an active member in many 

organizations, including the Long Island 

Marine Community for many years and is 

a proud member of the Connecticut Maritime 

Coalition. The company takes an active and 

responsible role in supporting several charitable 

programs both nationally recognized as 

well as in its own communities. 

“It’s no doubt that our competitive edge 

is our dedicated people,” comments Pellini. 

“We have highly talented people in the 

company that have been with us for more 

than twenty years. This includes some of the 

best underwater welders in the world, as well 

as divers who are well trained on nuclear 

components. We also have some of the 

best marine staff, who are performing some 

very challenging marine-related work on 

Lake Michigan, the Tennessee River and 

throughout New England, from mooring cell 

repairs to dam rehabilitation.” Pellini also 

adds, “Although the business has grown 

four times under the current ownership 

that took over twenty years ago, it all comes 

down to our people.” 

UCC has the expertise, resources, and 

flexibility to perform large turnkey projects or 

support small local tasks on a call-out basis. 

The company strives to provide innovative, 

high-quality, cost-effective services that are 

consistent with its commitment to the 

safety of the employees and customers. UCC 

meets or exceeds the requirements of the 

Occupational Safety and Health Administration 

(OSHA) and the Association of Diving 

Contractors International (ADCI). All divers 

are certified as commercial divers and maintain 

current first aid and CPR certifications. 

The goal is to bring only the highest degree of 

professionalism to every job. The company 

is an equal opportunity employer and has 

been a proud member of the ADCI for more 

than twenty years. 

“We see a very bright future for Underwater 

Construction Corporation,” says Pellini. “We’re 

coming off our third year of record growth 

and enjoyed our best year ever in 2016. 

We already have a considerable amount of 

new work for the next year or two and 

anticipate doing even better as we continue 

to grow even further. We are anticipating 

growth in the specific areas that we understand 

well and will continue to foster strong 

relationships with our customers.” 

The company would like to acknowledge 

its senior managers: Keith McClintock, Philip 

McDermott, Darrell Moody, and James Nichols, 

as well as their dedicated and hardworking 

operations managers, project managers, 

supervisors, divers and support staff and, 

finally, to the assistance it received some 

twenty years ago from the two Connecticut 

agencies and Webster Bank. This has helped 

the company create and maintain jobs in 

Connecticut as well as in other states 

where UCC has regional office locations. 

UCC looks to continue its successful growth 

as it nears close to its fiftieth-year anniversary. 

For more information on UCC’s mission 

and services, please visit www.uccdive.com. 

Above: Five of UCC’s veteran employees 

receiving their Mark IV dive helmet for 

twenty years of outstanding service in 2016. 

To date, UCC has recognized forty 

employees for twenty years of service. 

Clockwise from left to right; Donald Hunt, 

Phillip Such, William Lee, Jon Shelton, 

and Mark Pawlus. 

Below: Today’s senior management 

staff from left to right; Southern 

Regional Manager Darrell Moody; 

Co-Chairman/Treasurer William Feeley; 

Midwest Regional Manager Keith 

McClintock; Co-Chairman/Secretary 

Michael Pellini; Director of Finance 

James Nichols; Nuclear and Northeast 

Regional Manager Philip McDermott and 

President/CEO Raymond Palumbo. 


69

J.F. BRENNAN 

COMPANY, INC. 

Above: A an early picture of a diver suiting 

up on a Brennan bridge construction 

project, c. 1937. 

Below Left: Sealing a cofferdam, c. 1938 

Below Right: Missouri River articulated 

block mat installation, c. 1994. Left to 

right: Craig Bartheld, Darryl Balu, and 

Mike Boser. 

J.F. Brennan Company (Brennan) is a 

marine construction, environmental services, 

and harbor management company headquartered 

in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Over the last 

century, Brennan has worked along the 

inland waterways on challenging above- and 

below-water construction projects. Since the 

beginning, diving has always been an essential 

part of serving the needs of clients who own 

and operate water-based infrastructure. 

Brennan was founded as Brennan Brothers 

Construction in 1919 when brothers, James 

and Eugene Brennan, left the family farm 

and began to build bridges in northeast Iowa. 

As they grew, they took on larger projects, 

many of which were located on rivers and 

streams. The brothers eventually hired Walt 

Boltz, who had dive experience and could 

carry out an underwater inspection or help 

seal a cofferdam. Using rudimentary equipment, 

this individual would depend heavily 

on topside crews to help position him 

correctly, supply air, and retrieve him from 

the bottom of the river. 

By the mid-1950s the construction of an 

improved U.S. highway system had provided 

many opportunities for the brothers to 

expand into southwestern Wisconsin and 

southeastern Minnesota. Larger projects 

required floating marine plants, so they began 

building barges to support their equipment. 

In 1959 the brothers split and James 

formed J.F. Brennan Company in La Crosse, 

Wisconsin. Work continued on bridge structures, 

but as the next generation began to take 

leadership roles, they started focusing on 

work for the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Army 

Corps of Engineers. James’ son, Ralph, and 

son-in-law, Roger Binsfeld, continued to build 

a substantial fleet of barges and workboats to 

serve both public and private owners of riverbased 

infrastructure. Brennan quickly morphed 

into a marine contractor who pursued 

work along the Upper Mississippi River from 

St. Louis, Missouri to St. Paul, Minnesota. 

In 1971, Roger decided it was time to have 

a full-time diver on staff. He heard that a 


70

young crew member named Ray Kronfrost 

had taken a scuba class the previous winter. 

Roger asked Ray to assist with a few dive 

inspections. Before long, Ray was assisting 

with salvage work. In 1976, Ray went to commercial 

dive school and returned to work as 

Brennan’s only diver for over a decade. 

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Brennan 

became one of the largest marine contractors 

in the Upper Mississippi River. As needed, 

freelance divers were hired to support the 

growing needs of the topside construction 

crews. In 1993, Tony Binsfeld, the third 

generation of ownership, saw an opportunity 

to expand beyond the Mississippi River and 

provide services to utility companies that 

owned hydroelectric dams. He hired a 

seasoned superintendent, Earl Boser, who 

brought five individuals with him, including 

two certified divers; his son, Michael Boser, 

and Darrell Belleau. This crew made up the 

newly formed Industrial Division, which 

specialized in both above and below-water 

concrete repairs and scour remediation. Earl 

had high expectations for his divers and 

was adamant about working hard and doing 

things the right way. His younger son, Neil 

Boser, began diving soon afterward to keep up 

with growing demand and later become a lead 

superintendent. In 1996, Tony hired David 

Cullum who, for the next twenty-two years, 

grew the division and served a large number 

of industrial clients throughout the country. 

This division specialized in preplaced 

aggregate concrete, a tried and true method of 

underwater concrete placement that is 

especially resistant to the yearly freeze-thaw 

cycles found in the Midwest. 

By 1999 the demand for diving for lock 

and dam and railroad projects was so great 

that Brennan created an official dive program 

separate from the Industrial Division. Craig 

Bartheld, an experienced Brennan crew 

member, attended dive school and earned his 

commercial diving certificate. His role was to 

assist the growing marine construction 

operations with all of their diving needs. 

Under Craig’s leadership, the Dive 

Department grew to as many as twelve divers 

who traveled throughout the country and 

worked for a variety of owners of water-based 

infrastructure. His crew included a multitude 

of individuals who would become the 

foundation on which future dive operations 

were built. 

The story of the Brennan Dive Group cannot 

be told without including Pro-Dive 

Incorporated. Pro-Dive was founded in 1975 

Above: Ray Kronfrost standing in front of 

the Winona, Minnesota, Railroad Bridge 

Crossing in 1978 

Below: Gary Dondlinger and Mike Boser at 

a timber cribbing repair job in 1995. 


71

Above: Jon Burchill performing an 

underwater bridge repair for the Minnesota 

DOT in Minneapolis, Minnesota, c. 2015. 

Below: Jacob Rodgers assisting Ross Brocies 

in Sabula, Illinois, c. 2014. 

by Randy Jacobs and his two partners, who 

focused on the inland towing industry by 

patching leaking barges and clearing fouled 

wheels. They grew slowly through the 1980s 

and 1990s, pioneering new technologies 

such as lightweight diving helmets and 

band masks with bailout bottles. Located in 

Ottawa, Illinois, they worked mostly along 

the Illinois River and Upper Mississippi River 

in support of the rehabilitation projects on 

various lock and dams. 

In the early 1990s, the ADC increased its 

presence in the Midwest. Randy embraced the 

opportunity to learn new methods and share 

ideas with other divers who worked along 

the inland waterways. Randy and Pro-Dive 

became one of the founding members of the 

Midwest Chapter of the ADC, with Randy 

serving in a number of positions, including 

the chapter representative on the ADC Board 

of Directors. 

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Pro- 

Dive built a loyal customer base as the 

industry and Pro-Dive changed to accommodate 

new regulations. Pro-Dive crews carried 

out contaminated and potable water projects, 

water-based structure inspections, hull 

inspections, pipeline inspections, concrete 

repairs, and several other inland diving 

activities. During this time, Pro-Dive teamed 


72

with Brennan on numerous opportunities to 

complete large-scale and technically advanced 

dive projects. The two companies were culturally 

aligned and, when working together, the 

crews were indistinguishable. The Pro-Dive 

crews integrated completely with fellow 

Brennan divers and topside crews. 

In 2014, J.F. Brennan Company acquired 

Pro-Dive and, under Randy’s leadership, a 

stand-alone Dive Group was formed. All 

diving was consolidated under Randy, numbering 

nearly twenty divers initially. The 

combination of the two firms opened the 

door for rapid growth into several market 

areas such as dam construction, marine construction, 

railroad services, environmental 

services, and harbor management services. 

As of 2018, the Brennan Dive Group numbers 

over fifty ADCI Certified Commercial 

Divers. Backed by some of the largest assets 

and most experienced construction crews 

along the inland waterways, the scope and 

ability of the Brennan Dive Group has 

expanded to include deep water diving, 

underwater construction and repair, environmental 

remediation, penetration dives, vessel 

repair and more. Safety is at the center of each 

and every project at Brennan as evident by its 

world-class safety program and exemplary 

safety statistics. Continued investment in the 

latest technologies and a company culture 

that promotes innovation will ensure the 

Brennan Dive Group remains on the cutting 

edge of underwater capabilities. As Brennan 

enters its fourth generation of leadership, the 

Dive Group is an integral part of Brennan’s 

ability to better serve its clients and meet their 

high expectations. 

To learn more about J.F. Brennan, check 

their website at www.jfbrennan.com. 

Above: Eric Hanson climbing out of the 

river at Lock and Dam 16 on the Upper 

Mississippi River, c. 2016. 

Below Left: Blake Rocque and Tony Labarge 

heading out to a dive job. 

Below Right: Brothers Klayton and Tanner 

Brietbach assisting with a dive chamber in 

Hot Springs, Arkansas, c. 2017. 


73

LOGAN DIVING & SALVAGE 

Top, right: Joe Logan on left. 

Below: Scott Anderson, Oakland, 

California. 

Bottom, right: Scott Anderson at the 

Defiant wreck. 

Logan Diving & Salvage has been deeply 

involved with the Commercial Deep Sea 

Diving and Marine Construction communities 

of the Americas for over seventy years. 

The firm was started in 1947 by Campbell 

“Cam” Logan who was a U.S. Navy diver during 

World War II and received his training on 

board the USS Normandy, which sank in New 

York Harbor after she caught fire. Cam went 

on to become the Chief Navy Diving Officer at 

Mayport, Florida, after the war and spent his 

USN time supporting ships husbandry and 

aircraft recovery operations. Campbell separated 

from the USN in 1947 and started 

Logan Diving & Salvage. 

Marine vessel salvage jobs from hurricanes, 

accidents and mishaps were always 

available to the company from the beginning. 

However, heavy marine salvage was 

sporadic and unscheduled, prompting 

Logan Diving & Salvage to branch out 

and offer marine construction diving support 

services for bridges, dams, power plants, 

electric cables, communication cables, oil, 

gas, and water pipelines as well as services 

for heavy industries such as pulp/paper 

and hydroelectric power. Additionally, 

underwater welding and burning has been 

and continues to be a major part of day to 

day operations. 


74

During the 1950s, oil and gas production 

and interstate pipelines became one of the main 

areas of the business revenue with the explosion 

of production volume and discoveries in the 

U.S. Gulf States. Pipelines were being installed 

across lakes and rivers from Houston, Texas, and 

Houma, Louisiana—North and East to Chicago, 

Detroit, New York, and the entire east coast. 

These pipelines, some of which are still in operation 

today provide the fuel oil, diesel, natural 

gas and gasoline that run our country. All long 

term Logan Diving & Salvage divers to this day 

are experts at subaqueous pipeline installation, 

repair, cathodic protection, and inspection. 

Cam’s brother, Joe, a professional engineer, 

came on board to help with the business in 

the 1950s. Cam and Joe maintained steady 

work installing, maintaining and inspecting 

the new subaqueous pipelines river and lake 

crossings. Cam and Joe split up the work with 

Cam working the pipelines, and Joe working 

the bridges and cables. 

Other individuals who helped build the 

company in its early days include Jack Mixer, 

who came on board as project manager in the 

early 1970s after a tour with the US Army in 

Vietnam and eventually became company 

president. Jack was married to Jane Mixer formerly, 

Jane Logan, Cam’s daughter. 

Susan Armel, served over forty years as 

office manager and bookkeeper. Susan always 

had a smile for all and a can-do positive attitude 

that was infectious. Susan had many 

clients far and wide, both foreign and domestic, 

wondering if she was single once they 

heard her beautiful southern drawl. Many 

Logan project managers were questioned at 

length at remote job sites about the mysterious 

beauty in Florida with the enchanting 

southern accent that answered the phones. 

LDS expanded into the Caribbean, Central 

America, South America, Cuba, and even had 

projects in the Persian Gulf. Expansion was 

mainly by referral and word of mouth in the 

early days. As projects were completed successfully, 

more clients enquired and vetted the 

company. The result was virtually nonstop 

contracts and potential opportunities moving 

forward with the surge in oil production and 

energy demands, coupled with civil infrastructure 

projects of a growing nation. 

Departing from its usual business and 

going Hollywood, Logan Diving & Salvage 

provided the divers and diving support for 

the popular movie, The Creature from the 

Black Lagoon in 1954. This was a fun 

“Outside our Wheelhouse” project that the 

divers enjoyed while trying to woo the 

glamorous Hollywood actresses. 

Logan Diving & Salvage went on to 

become the number one leading commercial 

diving support provider in the 

Southeastern United States, while also 

regularly working all of the states east of 

the Mississippi River as well as a handful 

of states west of the river. 

Among the many services provided 

today by Logan Diving & Salvage are diving 

construction, inspection, and repair services 

in support of subaqueous oil and gas 

pipelines, fiber optic cables, dock and pier 

construction, bridge construction, dam 

inspection and repair, underwater welding 

and burning, vessel salvage, marine oil spill 

response, industrial diving, emergency 

response, trans-oceanic subaqueous cable 

landings, ships husbandry, and pile driving. 

Scott Anderson joined the company in the 

early 1980s after a tour of duty with the U.S. Air 

Force. Scott received his deep sea diver training 

at Coastal School of Deep Sea Diving in Oakland, 

California, prior to moving to Florida in 1984. 

With a 200-foot Air Ticket from Coastal, Scott 

started as a diver, progressing to dive supervisor, 

project manager and eventually becoming vice 

president through 2008. Logging over 3500 

commercial dives, inland, coastal, and offshore 

Top: Scott Anderson, Acosta Bridge, 

Florida, 1989. 

Above: Chris Davis wet welding. 


75

Above: Chris Davis and Joe Busuttil, Royal 

Navy Submarine. 

Top, right: Brandon Fuhrman Offshore 

Jacksonville, Florida. 

by the age of fifty-five. Scott is well suited to provide 

an experienced, safe and productive environment 

for new and current employees. Scott 

has negotiated, managed, administered, and executed 

large marine construction and industrial 

diving projects in the USA, USVI, Puerto Rico, 

Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Honduras, 

Panama, Bahamas, Curacao, Cuba, and Belize. 

Chris Davis joined LDS in the early 2000s 

after serving in Iraq with the U.S. Army. Chris 

received his commercial diver training at 

Divers Academy, International. Chris started 

out as a diver and progressed to dive supervisor, 

diving superintendent, and project manager. 

Chris has worked with LDS over the 

years and managed projects in the Gulf of 

Mexico, USA, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. 

Chris continues to play an integral role in all 

phases of field operations for the company 

with an emphasis and specialty in Marine 

Substructures and Subaqueous pipelines. 

Sarah Anderson joined the company in 

2008 as office manager and bookkeeper. Sarah 

graduated from the University of Central 

Florida in 1999 and now oversees all day to 

day office duties and staff as well as helping 

with project logistics and the Puerto Rico operation’s 

admin side. Sarah handles all regulatory 

compliance and also works closely with the 

Association of Diving Contractors International 

to ensure adherence to ADCI Consensus 

Standards. Scott and Sarah purchased the business 

from the original owners in 2008 and continue 

to operate the corporation today. 

Joe Busuttil first joined LDS in 2002 after 

ten years of mixed gas diving experience in 

the Gulf of Mexico. Joe started out as diver 

and quickly progressed to dive supervisor. Joe 

is now a fulltime estimator and project manager. 

He plays an integral role in all phases of 

daily operations from marine construction to 

ships husbandry. 

Sharon Carey came on board in 2010 as an 

administrative and staff manager. Sharon handles 

day to day admin and ensures ADCI/EM 

385 diver requirement compliance in addition 

to project planning. 

Logan Diving & Salvage domestically has 

been involved with many major heavy construction 

bridge projects in Florida and 

Georgia, including the Bridge of Lions in Saint 

Augustine; I-95 Fuller Warren Bridge; Main 

Street Bridge; Wonderwood Bridge, and Beach 

Boulevard Bridges in Jacksonville, Florida. 

Logan Diving & Salvage and the USCG 

negotiated a Basic Order Agreement (BOA) in 

1990 to cover casualty vessels and marine oil 

spill response in the USCG 7th District from 

Jacksonville, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

This BOA is in effect today with dive teams 

ready to deploy and be operational within 

twenty-four hours of activation. 

The firm’s recent subaqueous fiber optic 

cable projects include the Undersea Warfare 

Training Range (USWTR) Cables for the 

United States Navy offshore Jacksonville; 

Alcatel Fiber Optic Cable landings in 

Jacksonville and Fort Lauderdale, Florida; 


76

and Alcatel Fiber Optics in Cable landing 

Condado Beach, Puerto Rico. 

Ships Husbandry on large ocean-going vessels 

is a significant portion of the work carried 

out over the years and today from Jacksonville 

to Panama and all ports in between. Logan 

Diving & Salvage is certified as an In Water 

Survey Specialist with the American Bureau of 

Shipping (ABS), Det Norske Veritas 

Germanischer Lloyds (DNV-GL), and Lloyds 

Register (LR). Class surveyors rely on Logan 

Diving & Salvage to inspect and document 

existing vessel conditions for dry dock extensions, 

vessel certifications, and purchases. 

Other services include underwater welding, 

in water hull repair, coatings, cathodic protection 

and running gear maintenance. 

Logan Diving & Salvage has performed 

many projects in Central America with the 

majority in Honduras since the early 1980s 

during times of severe civil unrest and 

peace from Chouleteca to Roatan. Panama 

diving operations have been carried out from 

Colon to the Canal to Fort Sherman/US 

ARMY. Most recently a project was completed 

in Belize City. 

Caribbean operational response has included 

multiple projects in the Dominican 

Republic in Santo Domingo, Puerto Haina, 

and Boca Chica. Haitian diving and salvage 

operations have been successfully carried out 

in Port Au Prince and Saint-Marc. Cuban projects 

have been limited to GITMO in the recent 

past. Bahamian operations have been carried 

out in Abaco, West End, Freeport, Treasure 

Island, and on the Grand Bahama Bank. 

Jamaican operations are still in play 

today with crews working regularly in 

Kingston and Port Royal in support of shipping 

and civil infrastructure. 

Providing special operations to a variety of 

clients, on one such project, Logan Diving & 

Salvage was contracted to help move the 

Shuttle Explorer to Houston Space Center via 

barge assisting with boat service and delivery 

docking. Logan Diving & Salvage is also 

involved with the current private space programs 

and reusable rocket recovery. 

Logan Diving & Salvage is headquartered 

in Jacksonville, Florida, and also operates a 

Caribbean Division out of Catano, Puerto 

Rico. Logan Diving & Salvage maintains a 

full-time residence and equipment warehouse 

in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As a registered 

Puerto Rican Corporate Entity, LDS is well 

positioned to respond to the Caribbean from 

its San Juan facilities. 

Scott ran the Puerto Rico office from the 

late 1980s to 2011. Shifting time between 

the states and the island as needed. Revenue 

and volume of work increased steadily. 

Working in San Juan, Mayaguez, Guayanilla, 

Guayama, Arecibo, Rincon, Fajardo, and 

Humacao to name a few, Logan Diving & 

Salvage has been blessed with a large network 

of friends and associates in Puerto Rico and 

the Caribbean maritime communities. 

Continuing to this day to support the maritime 

shipping and port infrastructure interest 

in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, USVI, Haiti, 

Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic from 

the Puerto Rico Office. 

The company currently has approximately 

twenty-five employees, over seventy-five percent 

of whom are honorably discharged veterans 

of the U.S. Armed Forces. 

LDS has doubled its office and warehouse 

space in Jacksonville to 20,000 square feet in 

the last five years and maintains ten high 

speed-low drag dive work boats, and dive 

trailers ready to mobilize at a moment’s notice. 

The company has enjoyed constant growth of 

plus twenty percent annually since 2008. 

Logan Diving & Salvage supports our 

veterans and a number of community and 

charitable activities, including East Pointe 

Church, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, 

Rivertown Church Haiti Outreach, Haven for 

Hope, Dreams Come True, Vietnam Veterans, 

and the VFW. 

To learn more about Logan Diving & 

Salvage and its services, check their website 

at www.logandiving.com. 

Logan Diving & Salvage was contracted to 

help move the Shuttle Explorer to Houston 

Space Center. 


77

EASON DIVING 

& MARINE 

CONTRACTORS, 

INC. 

Tom Eason. 

Tom Eason’s exposure to commercial diving 

began in high school and college when 

he worked at a local marina and on offshore 

fishing boats in Charleston, South Carolina. 

After graduating from college in 1976, Eason 

founded Eason Diving Company as a sole 

proprietorship and began diving on recreational 

and workboats to clean the hulls, 

change propellers, and other routine underwater 

maintenance and repairs. The business 

quickly grew into working for local shipyards, 

repairing and maintaining their drydocks 

and railways, as well as performing ship 

husbandry services for the large U.S. Navy 

fleet home ported in Charleston. As a selftaught 

commercial diver, Eason attended the 

Ocean Corporation in Houston for formal 

underwater burning and welding training. 

In 1980 the company was incorporated as 

Eason Diving & Marine Contractors, Inc. with 

Eason as its president. The company’s offices 

and workshops were built adjacent to the U.S. 

Naval Base in Charleston, where they remain 

in use today. 

In the early 1980s, Eason Diving expanded 

geographically and began providing diving 

services to an increasingly diverse clientele 

including power plants, engineering firms, 

marine construction companies, the railroad, 

and governmental agencies including state 

DOT’s, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. 

Coast Guard, U.S. Environmental Protection 

Agency, U.S. Department of Energy, and 

NOAA. With the closing of the Charleston 

Naval Base in the mid-1990s, the company 

greatly increased its services to the hydroelectric 

and nuclear power generation industries 

heavily concentrated in the Southeast United 

States, where it continues to work for the 

same clients today. Extensive diving work 

on the fuel handling systems and working 

in spent fuel pools of nuclear power plants 

became a specialty, with procedures developed 

to protect the diver from radioactivity. In 

1991, Eason attended the first Underwater 

Bridge Substructures Course held for divers 

at New Mexico State University and the 

firm inspected over a thousand DOT and 

railroad bridges. 

In 1994 the tank barge, Morris J. Berman, 

grounded near San Juan, Puerto Rico spilling 

800,000 gallons of crude oil onto the economically 

and environmentally sensitive shoreline 

areas. Eason Diving was tasked with the underwater 

cleanup of the submerged oil that sank in 

these areas. Eason Diving, utilizing twelve 


78

divers with Eason as the 

site Dive Supervisor, 

worked sixty-one days 

nonstop to successfully 

and safely complete the oil 

recovery work. Eason 

coauthored the Federal 

On-Scene Coordinator 

(FOSC) report and presented 

the oil recovery 

section by divers at the 

1995 International Oil 

Spill Conference held in 

Long Beach, California. 

Performing the Berman 

and numerous other 

vessel casualty cleanups, Eason Diving 

became the preferred contractor to the 

USCG and U.S. EPA in responding to oil and 

hazardous material spills requiring diving in 

contaminated water. 

In 2001, as a result of the USCG encountering 

questionable commercial diving 

activities during salvage and pollution 

response operations, Eason was asked to 

assist the District 7 Marine Safety Division 

in developing guidelines for conducting 

compliant and safe diving operations. These 

guidelines, in the form of a “Commercial 

Divers’ Checklist” were ultimately incorporated 

into the Coast Guard Diving Policies and 

Procedures Manual. 

From the beginning as a one man operation 

to eventually employing fifteen full-time 

divers, with double that during peak work 

periods, the company was fortunate to 

employ many dedicated and skilled personnel 

over the years. Eason Diving’s work practices 

exceeded the OSHA Commercial Diving 

Standard and as a long-time member 

of the Association of Diving Contactors 

International, complied with their more rigorous 

Consensus Standards with the company 

always ensuring that equipment and personnel 

certifications were kept current. 

“Most importantly, I owned and operated 

a very safe commercial diving company for 

forty years, never having had an employee 

encounter a life threatening injury,” Eason 

says. “This became a goal I was obsessed 

with and spared no cost in obtaining the 

proper equipment to make every diving 

job as safe as possible.” Eason insisted that 

no job be undertaken unless the company 

could adequately address every potential 

hazard and alleviate concern for diver safety. 

A remote operated vehicle (ROV) and current 

flow meters were purchased to deploy prior 

to diver entry in situations of potential differential 

pressure, and custom dive boats with 

entry doors were built providing safer diver 

ingress and egress. 

In the late 1990s, Eason made multiple 

trips to Russia and a trip to Azerbaijan as a 

volunteer for an American nonprofit organization 

assisting emerging local diving companies 

in operating their businesses after the 

collapse of the Soviet Union. 

During his career, Eason served on 

many local commissions including the 

Charleston Commissioners of Pilotage, 

the South Carolina Maritime Security 

Commission, and the USCG Federal Area 

Maritime Security Committee. He also served 

on the Association of Diving Contractors, 

International Board of Directors as the 

elected Vice Chair and Chair of the East 

Coast Chapter for ten years. 

In 2014, Moran Environmental Recovery, 

LLC (MER) acquired Eason Diving & Marine 

Contractors, Inc. and merged it into subsequently 

acquired Mainstream Commercial 

Divers (MCDI) in 2017. At that time, Eason 

retired from day-to-day operations but 

remains involved in the diving industry as an 

advocate for diver safety. 


79

MAINSTREAM 

COMMERCIAL 

DIVERS, INC. 

Craig Fortenbery. 

Mainstream Commercial Divers, Inc., headquartered 

in Murray, Kentucky was founded in 

1988 by Craig Fortenbery. While in college, 

Craig lived at the University’s biology station 

on the Tennessee River and performed the diving 

work for several professors’ environmental 

studies. One of his primary professors introduced 

him to the owner of a small commercial 

diving firm and Craig began working for the 

firm as he put himself through college. 

Finding he enjoyed the challenges inherent 

with this type of work, he received additional 

commercial training and worked for other 

companies and on government contracts as a 

diver until founding Mainstream. 

Since its formation, Mainstream has grown 

to become one of the nation’s largest inland 

commercial diving contractors providing 

diving and technical services nationwide in 

environments ranging from shallow water, 

utilizing air as the breathing medium, to 

deeper projects using mixed gas. 

Mainstream provides full-service underwater 

construction, repair, and inspection work 

as well as technical services including hydrographic 

surveying, engineering and design 

services, environmental surveys and biological 

assessments (especially related to endangered 

freshwater mussels) as well as confined space 

entry services. The company has worked on 

in-water structures of all types, successfully 

completing many difficult projects across the 

country. The company is committed to providing 

underwater construction and inspection 

services of the highest quality while maintaining 

an impeccable safety record. 

MCDI has personnel with extensive training 

and experience in underwater inspection and 

construction techniques and has successfully 

performed underwater inspection, construction, 

and maintenance projects on numerous 

dams, large and small bridges, pipelines, water 

intake and outfall systems, stilling basins, 

mooring cells and mooring dolphins, docks, 

water storage tanks, wastewater treatment facilities, 

marine ways, and commercial vessels and 

barges. MCDI crews routinely work at heavy 

construction sites, major industrial sites, power 

plants, and governmental sites. A major factor 

in MCDI’s reputation as one of the premier 

inland commercial diving companies is its 

divers, all of whom, in addition to their commercial 

dive school training, are certified commercial 

divers through the Association of 

Diving Contractors International (ADCI.) 

The MCDI facility in Kentucky is comprised 

of three custom-built buildings making 

up approximately 20,000 square feet of office, 

shop, and equipment warehouse space on a 

three and a half-acre site. The facility has a 

7,000-gallon, 15-foot-deep, dive training/test 

tank for underwater welding and cutting 

training and for practice performing complicated 

underwater tasks. The facility also has a 

large classroom, which is used for training as 

well as project planning meetings. 

Due to the large number of underwater 

construction, inspection, and repair projects 

performed by MCDI, the company has an 

extensive inventory of specialty equipment to 

support daily operations including mixed gas 

diving equipment, decompression chambers, 

all types of underwater tooling for construction 

and inspection projects, truck-able 

barges, crane, vessels, etc. 

MCDI is a member of the Association of 

Diving Contractors International (ADCI), 

whose goals are to promote safety, education 

and communication within the diving 

industry. In addition to certifying commercial 

divers, the ADCI publishes the most 


80

comprehensive set of safety standards for commercial 

diving operations, the International 

Consensus Standards for Commercial Diving 

and Underwater Operations. The ACDI diver 

certification program and the ADCI Consensus 

Standards are recognized by the U.S. Coast 

Guard and OSHA. MCDI meets or exceeds all 

OSHA, USCG, and the ADCI Consensus 

Standard requirements. 

Craig, founder of MCDI, is highly regarded 

in the industry and is a long time board 

member and the immediate past president 

of the Association of Diving Contractors 

International. Craig wrote the current MCDI 

diving safe practices manual and, as an ADCI 

Board member, Executive Committee member, 

and Consensus Standards Review Committee 

member, was actively involved in writing the 

newest edition of the ADCI Consensus 

Standards (Version 6.2). Craig states, “I feel 

that one of my most valuable and fulfilling contributions 

to this industry has been my active 

involvement with the ADCI, working with its 

many talented members as we have developed 

and implemented the most comprehensive set 

of diving safety standards in existence.” 

MCDI’s dive operations manager and diving 

supervisors are responsible for the implementation 

and adherence of MCDI’s safety 

program at each individual jobsite but all 

employees have the right and obligation to 

stop a job if an unsafe condition exists. Craig 

is most proud of Mainstream’s exemplary safety 

record through the company’s many years 

of operation. 

MCDI utilizes only commercially certified 

divers—not recreationally trained SCUBA 

divers—and all required extensive equipment 

and personnel certifications, training and testing 

are kept current. Additionally, Mainstream 

has its own in-house training programs that 

foster continued education and knowledge for 

their divers for the unique situations they may 

encounter in the inland diving environment. 

In October 2015, Mainstream Commercial 

Divers, Inc. was acquired by Moran 

Environmental Recovery (MER). MER is a 

diversified environmental company that previously 

(in 2014) had acquired Eason Diving and 

Marine Contractors located in Charleston, 

South Carolina. Prior to these acquisitions, 

Mainstream and Eason had performed numerous 

jobs together and had a strong relationship 

and comparable approach to safety and quality 

in the workplace. In January 2017, Mainstream 

Commercial Divers, Inc., and Eason Diving & 

Marine Contractors, Inc., merged to become 

one company with both the Murray and 

Charleston locations working under the 

Mainstream Commercial Divers, Inc. name as 

part of the MER family of companies. Since 

Mainstream and Eason crews have worked 

together on many large projects over the years, 

making the transition to becoming one company 

was a natural fit. 

Looking to the future, the merger of Eason 

Diving & Marine Contractors and Mainstream 

Commercial Divers will provide the resources 

for the company to provide even better services 

to its customers in the years to come. 


81

COMMERCIAL 

DIVING & 

MARINE 

SERVICES, INC. 

Commercial Diving & Marine Services, Inc. 

has provided quality diving services for over 

forty years and its name and reputation are well 

known throughout the inland diving industry. 

Wayne Brusate explains he started diving 

in 1971 as a sport diver. Occasionally, someone 

would ask him to recover their wallet 

or fishing gear in the St. Clair River. This 

soon expanded into recovering larger things 

like outboard motors and small boats and 

then automobiles. 

Around 1975, Wayne started working for 

his uncle, Keith Malcolm, at Malcolm Marine 

in St. Clair, Michigan, as a deckhand/diver. 

The company did all sorts of marine work 

from seawall construction, tug and barge work, 

to Great Lakes salvage jobs. “I learned a lot 

in those years,” Wayne says. “Salvage jobs 

were tough and when working ‘no cure, no 

pay’ it could cost you more to complete the 

salvage than what you were going to be paid.” 

By 1977, Wayne felt he was ready to go out 

on his own and founded Commercial Diving 

& Marine Services, Inc., based in Marysville, 

Michigan. Wayne looked after the diving part 

of the business while his wife, Donna, ran 

a daycare, managed the bookkeeping and 

answered the business phone at home. 

Wayne recalls that it was difficult building 

a client base, and to fill in the gaps, he often 

worked for marine contractors doing pile 

driving and underwater work as needed. 

He credits Charlie Cosgro, a heavy gear diver, 

with teaching him how to work safely in 

tough, zero visibility conditions. 


82

“Work was not steady during the early 

years of the business,” Wayne recalls. “When 

we had a job, I would contact some of my 

fellow divers and put a crew together. 

Greg Lashbrook, Arnie Chickonoski and 

Tom Clingenpeel were very skilled both 

underwater and topside. As work increased, 

we added additional personnel, including 

Kathy Johnson and Colette Witherspoon, 

two very experienced divers.” Wayne notes 

that while Kathy and Colette may not have 

been as physically strong as some of the male 

divers, they were pretty smart. “This proved 

to be just as effective as brawn and they 

had no problems going through eighteen and 

twenty-four inch pipes, which most of the 

guys could not do,” Wayne adds. 

Many of Wayne’s divers came right out of 

Dive School and one of them, Roger Randall, 

ended up marrying Wayne and Donna’s 

daughter, Laura. Roger went on to start his 

own dredging business. Both daughters, 

Laura and Anna, are divers and the grandchildren 

also enjoy the water. 

Commercial Diving & Marine Services, 

Inc. has grown steadily over the years and 

its dive crews have performed numerous 

salvage operations, sonar surveys, zebra 

mussel removal and maintenance of various 

industrial and municipal facilities throughout 

the Great Lakes region. 

The list of unique services provided by 

Commercial Diving & Marine Services, Inc., 

includes confined space diving in deep 

vertical shafts containing high methane 

levels. This highly specialized crew has been 

called in to perform critical repairs from 

California to Florida. 

For details about these services, consult 

the firm’s website at www.workingdiver.com. 

As a member of the Association of Diving 

Contractors International since 1993, Commercial 

Diving and Marine Services, Inc., holds to the 

highest commercial diving safety and operational 

standards in the country. 

Commercial Diving & Marine Services, Inc., 

is a union company and all divers and tenders 

are proud members of Pile Drivers Local 687 in 

Detroit, Michigan. Keith Mear and Ted Binnall, 

each with more than twenty years with the company 

are the lead dive supervisors. 

Wayne has always been active in the local 

search and rescue community. He joined 

the local sheriff dive team in 1971 and 

remains very active. He joined a volunteer 

fire department in 1985 and retired from 

fire service in 2006. 

Today, Wayne works primarily on the 

administration side of the business, bidding 

the work and troubleshooting difficult jobs. 

Looking back on the company’s success, 

Wayne says he learned early in his career 

that dedicated employees, top of the line 

equipment and a desire to be the best would 

build the company’s reputation and clientele. 

Opposite, top: Working in the 

St. Clair River. 

Opposite, bottom: Salvage team. 

Top: Lake Huron pipeline work. 

Above: Decontamination of diver. 


83

DIVERS 

INSTITUTE OF 

TECHNOLOGY 

Divers Institute of Technology (DIT) in 

Seattle is pleased to congratulate ADCI as 

we both celebrate fifty years serving the commercial 

diving industry. Since its inception, 

DIT has trained thousands of professional 

divers for elite commercial diving companies 

worldwide. DIT’s comprehensive seven-month 

program trains divers in initial skills and 

certification requirements for both U.S. and 

international commercial diving. 

DIT’s educational philosophy is to provide 

high-quality education that is sound in 

concept; implemented by an experienced, 

competent, and dedicated faculty; and 

designed to serve those seeking a solid 

foundation in the skills and knowledge 

required for the commercial diving industry. 

DIT emphasizes hands-on training that is 

relevant to employers’ needs and focuses on 

areas which offer long-term employment. 

The school was founded in 1968 by 

John Manlove after a twenty-year U.S. Navy 

diving career that included training 

personnel for advanced qualifications. John 

was joined by co-founder Leiter Hockett, 

who was later succeeded by Navy Veteran 

Dyer ‘Jack’ Bisplinghoff as co-owner and 

president. Navy Veteran Charles ‘Chuck’ 

Litzo joined the early leadership team and 

helped students acquire financial aid to 

attend DIT. 

Graduate, instructor and later owner, 

John Ritter recalls, “The school was like a 

family. The original facilities were a converted 

refrigeration barge salvaged by John Manlove. 

Rather than pay John for the work, the 

owners gave him the barge. He had an idea, 

and a school was born.” Some students 

cleaned the barge and kept the pumps 

running in exchange for free lodging in the 

crow’s nest. 

DIT was a family investment. Manlove’s 

wife, Marlene, wrote the first DIT brochure 

and helped establish the 

business and John, Jr., was 

an instructor. The Manloves’ 

six children spent weekends 

literally scraping candle wax 

off the floors of “The Barge.” 

“On Fridays, after classes 

ended, John would hold 

‘church’ in his office to hear the BS from the 

week,” recalls daughter, Lizabeth Manlove 

Horton. “He always served ‘mountain oysters’ 

to the most unsuspecting newbie. I’m sure 

booze shots were also involved.” 

“At times Dad would get a call that a 

student had gotten into a scrape of some 

sort and he’d go straighten it out,” remembers 

daughter, Cindy Manlove Moran. “Dad touched 

a lot of lives. His no-nonsense way was 

rough, but fair. He didn’t mince his words. 

He was called ‘Big John’ because of his 

stature and also because of his character 

and presence.” 

“He was a giant of a man with a huge 

heart, loved the ocean and was so very proud 

of his vision,” Horton says. 

DIT was first accredited in 1973 (NATTS), 

maintaining continuous accreditation in good 

standing ever since, including a transfer to 

ACCSC in the 1990s. 

When the original location’s floating barge 

sank into the ship canal connecting Lake 

Union and Puget Sound, DIT relocated to 

Eleventh Avenue in Ballard. Five portable 

trailers served as classrooms and administrative 

offices. Dive stations were four floating 

barges with the deep dive vessel, the sixtyfive 

foot, M/V Response. 

Manlove retired in 1986, selling the school 

to retired First Class Navy Diver Ritter, who 

then ran DIT for thirteen years; however, 

Manlove was soon back assisting at the 

school. He conducted diver training at DIT 

until the day he died—January 3, 2006. 

The school changed hands again in 1999 

when Jamestown Marine Services (JMS), led 

by retired Navy Commander Bruce Banks 

and retired Navy Engineering Duty Officer 

Captain Jack Ringelberg, purchased DIT. 

JMS was well-poised to assume school 

leadership and expand into the international 

diving community. The two principles provided 


84

extensive expertise in marine engineering, 

diving instruction and underwater operations. 

Commander Banks was a Navy Special 

Operations Officer who held command of 

two salvage vessels, served as the executive 

officer of the Navy Experimental Diving 

Unit (NEDU), and as commanding officer 

of the Naval Diving and Salvage Training 

Center (NDSTC). Captain Ringelberg specialized 

in Naval Architecture and was commanding 

officer at NEDU. In 2000, they 

appointed retired Navy Commander and 

former saturation diver, John Paul Johnston 

as DIT’s executive director. 

DIT expanded into the international 

standards arena in 1999, collaborating with 

the Workers’ Compensation Board of British 

Columbia. Navy Master Diver Richard 

“Ragman” Radecki, Banks, and others continued 

writing, developing and implementing 

new commercial diver training standards 

under the auspices of the Canadian Standards 

Association. In 2003, DIT became the first 

U.S. diver training establishment accredited by 

Diver Certification Board of Canada (DCBC). 

ADCI Executive Director Phil Newsum was 

the first DCBC certified diver in the U.S. 

School facilities have been continually 

upgraded and expanded since 1999. In 2011, 

DIT moved to its current Seattle campus at 

1341 North Northlake Way, now housing 

four floating barges as dive training stations, 

a designated welding and metals shop with 

two underwater welding tanks, and the 

M/V Response. 

DIT is staffed by an experienced instructor 

team: many are graduates who returned to 

teach after diving careers offshore, inland and 

internationally; approximately fifty percent 

are veterans. Average tenure among current 

instructors is five years; several have taught 

more than ten years. 

DIT prides itself on the quality of graduates 

entering the diving industry upon graduation. 

Significant numbers of DIT graduates 

have gone on to highly successful professional 

commercial, recreational, and regulatory 

diving careers, including industry leaders of 

several notable commercial diving companies. 

Divers Institute of Technology has proudly 

supplied skilled divers to the marine industry 

for half a century and plans to follow that 

same path into the future with growth in new 

areas of marine technologies. 


85

W.J. CASTLE, 

P.E. & 

ASSOCIATES, 

P.C. 

W.J. Castle, P.E. & Associates, P.C. was 

founded by William J. Castle, P.E., S.E. in 

1983. W.J. Castle & Associates is a consulting 

engineering company specializing in bridge, 

marine, and structural engineering, including 

underwater inspection and evaluation. W.J. 

Castle is a certified VOSB (Veteran-Owned 

Small Business) and SBE (Small Business 

Enterprise) engineering firm located in 

Hainesport, New Jersey. He is a licensed professional 

engineer in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 

New York, Maryland, Florida, Virginia, West 

Virginia, and Delaware. 

A native of Pennsylvania, Castle received 

a two-year degree in Civil Engineering 

Technology from Penn State University. After 

gaining considerable experience in bridge 

design from working at PennDOT and other 

consulting engineering firms, Castle became 

the Bridge Engineer at Burlington County, 

New Jersey in 1974. Eventually, he decided to 

start his own company and stay in Burlington 

County, New Jersey. 

“I had always wanted to own my own 

business, so I thought I would give it a shot,” 

Castle explains. “I opened a one-man shop 

in my house and gave myself three months 

to see if I could come up with enough work to 

keep going.” 

In the early 1980s, there were very few 

professional engineer-divers in the whole 

country, so Castle developed an underwater 

inspection program to work with contractors 

and engineers. He credits Jim Caldwell of the 

Caldwell Marine with helping him with commercial 

diving and developing that field of 

engineering in his company. 

“I was able to gain a lot of experience and 

underwater diving soon became our trademark,” 

Castle says. “These abilities also helped 

attract other types of engineering work.” 

Over a period of several years and different 

locations, the company eventually moved to 

its current location in Hainesport, New Jersey 

with a staff of fifteen. In 2006, Castle purchased 

three acres in Hainesport, designed his 

building, and constructed the current 10,000- 

square-foot headquarters. 

W.J. Castle & Associates has a diverse list of 

services including: design, rehabilitation, and 

inspection of various marine structures, hydrographic 

survey, sonar imaging, submarine cable 

location and repair, and NDT testing, etc. 

However, underwater inspection remains one 

of the core services offered. All divers are certified 

ADC commercial divers and are members 

of ADC. Much of the diving equipment has 

been custom designed based upon the extensive 

experience obtained through the years and 

built to Castle’s specifications with great attention 

given to mobility and efficiency required 

for underwater inspection. 

A few years ago, W.J. Castle invested in 

sonar technology as a way to stay up-to-date 

with the latest technology. Kongsberg-Mesotech 

Scanning Sonar and JW Fisher Side Scan Sonar 

imaging have been instrumental in both the 

inspection and construction fields enabling W.J. 

Castle to perform top notch work. 

As business increased, Castle saw an opportunity 

to expand. He and his wife, Janet, decided 

to start a construction company, with Janet 

as owner and president. Hydro-Marine 

Construction Co., Inc., specializing in marine 

construction, was founded in 1997. A certified 

Woman Business Enterprise (WBE) in multiple 

states, Hydro-Marine is Union affiliated and is 

staffed with highly trained, certified commercial 

divers who are dedicated to the highest quality 

underwater diving contracting. In 1999, Castle 

developed a third company, Simplified Bridge 

Systems, Inc. (SBS), which specializes in the 


86

custom design and fabrication of small to medium 

span bridges. These three companies, now 

referred to as “The Castle Group”, offer a 

diverse field of services in both engineering and 

construction. As a result of this unique organization, 

Castle’s engineers have extensive experience 

in not only underwater inspection and 

design, but actual construction providing the 

most comprehensive inspection, design and 

construction services that are practical, functional, 

cost efficient, and designed to work in 

the complexity of the real world. 

The Castle Group’s clientele has included 

both private organizations such as marinas, 

condominium associations, oil companies, 

major contractors and the public sector. 

Castle’s Professional Engineers are highly qualified 

as both commercial divers and structural 

engineers providing a “unique blend” of technical 

and practical abilities. This “blend” of 

knowledge provides a more efficient and accurate 

underwater inspection, which results in a 

complete structural evaluation. 

Innovation to engineering problems has been 

a key component to Castle’s continued success 

in the ever competing field of engineering. 

W.J. Castle, P.E. & Associates, P.C. is located 

at 1345 Route 38, Hainesport, New Jersey, 

and has a satellite office in Philadelphia. 

Centrally located, W.J. Castle can easily travel 

to Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania for 

any inspection or construction project. 

The Castle Group has grown in recent years 

and now employs over 20 people, including 

13 engineering staff and 18 union divers as 

needed. The Castle Group has worked in 

Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania 

and Virginia and other surrounding states. 

The firm’s growth was given a big boost 

four years ago when it was selected to shore 

up and strengthen a failing foundation at the 

Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. 

Castle came up with an innovative engineering 

concept to solve the problem and when 

additional problems were discovered with the 

foundation, the $3 million project became a 

$4.5 million project. 

The key to keeping the company equitable 

is diversification. The Castle Group is not 

content to sticking with one type of client or 

one type of service. The economy fluctuates 

and as one source dries up, another may open 

if you are ready and willing to go after it. 

Looking to the future, Castle hopes to see 

the companies grow by thirty to fifty percent, 

which would take it to around $10 million in 

annual revenues. Castle feels he and his wife 

have been successful because they have tried 

to look ahead and not take anything for granted. 

“Nothing lasts forever and you have to 

keep moving, keep up with the trends, diversify 

and move into new fields,” he says. 

William has been involved with both the 

Pennsylvania State University Advisory 

Council and Development Fund and has set 

up scholarships at both Penn State and 

Burlington County College. Castle has been a 

member of Association of Diving Contractors 

for several years and served three years as 

director of the association’s East Coast 

Chapter. He is active in a number of professional 

engineering associations and involved 

in local church and civic endeavors. He 

was a member of the ASCE Committee that 

developed standards for the underwater 

inspection on piers and other marine structures 

in 2001. He also helped develop a twoweek 

and one-week underwater inspection 

course at Penn State University and NJIT. 

Castle is approved by numerous states to 

give certified talks that provide PDH for 

Professional Engineers. 

Janet is a member of the ADC, Women’s 

Business Enterprise National Council, and 

Utility Transportation Contractors Association. 

In addition to being a certified commercial 

diver, Janet is actually involved with church 

activities and has taken missonary trips to 

Nicaragua. She is also active in regional organization 

and CEO meetings, which has helped 

the Castle Group to improve its overall organization 

and become more efficient. 


87

DRS MARINE 

INC. 

Top: Owner Richard Williams. 

Bottom: Vice President and Dive Supervisor 

Jeff Williams. 

DRS Marine Inc., a commercial diving company 

located in the San Francisco Bay Area, 

has provided a wide range of maritime services 

for more than three decades. DRS Marine can 

handle any task in the marine or diving industry 

24/7, 365 days a year, from wharf pile 

repair, ship husbandry, dams and powerhouses 

to underwater welding and diffuser outfall 

pipelines by utilizing surface-supplied air diving 

or mix-gas diving techniques to 260 feet. 

The company was founded in 1985 by 

Richard Williams and several partners, 

including Don Mays, Dom Ferreria, and Buck 

Kamphausen. Williams, who serves as president, 

grew up on a high sierra ranch in 

California and attended Oklahoma State 

University, where he studied Chemistry and 

Geology. He went on to complete dive school 

in 1978 and worked several marine jobs 

throughout the industry before starting his 

own company. 

“We struggled during the first year and 

decided we needed more organization,” 

Williams explains. “We incorporated the firm, 

worked up a professional business plan, 

elected a president, and began building the 

company. We concentrated on serving our customers…the 

word-of-mouth about our service 

and capabilities is really what got us going.” 

DRS continues its philosophy of treating every 

client’s request with 110 percent effort and 

results, no matter the size of the project. 

The company’s thirty-three years of 

success is directly attributable to teamwork, 

safety, and pride of craftsmanship. “At DRS, 

the goal is to complete each job safely, on 

time, and with excellent quality,” says 

Williams. The company is driven by a team of 

marine craftsman, many of them long-term 

with over fifteen years of service, who bring a 

wide variety of skills, knowledge, and experience 

to each project. 

In 1995, DRS added ROV (remotely operated 

vehicle) technology to their portfolio to 

provide underwater inspection services for 

various projects. The company expanded 

again in 1997 when Williams bought out 

Sweetwater Construction, a marine pile driving 

firm. Services added include sheet pile 

cofferdams, wharf pile driving, abandon mine 

closures, marshland restoration and levee 

maintenance projects. 

Williams estimates that three-quarters 

of the company’s projects represent repeat 

business, an indication of the trust and confidence 

customers place in DRS Marine. Most 

of the company’s business originates from 

California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, 

Hawaii, and has recently expanded into 

South Carolina. 

Here are a few of the projects successfully 

completed by DRS Marine: 

• On a Central Valley Dam in California, 

DRS did a complete removal of a thirty-ton 

bulkhead and its hydraulic system in 150 

feet of water, finishing several days ahead 

of schedule. DRS returned the following 

year and cycled the refurbished bulkhead 


88

in/out for lower tunnel repairs. Work was 

accomplished utilizing mixed-gas diving 

technique to a depth of 260 feet. 

• Pile driving activities include constructing 

a new 350-foot pier at Lake Tahoe, Nevada 

for the United States Forest Service. The 

largest crane barge ever on the lake was 

put together for this operation. Crew completed 

the project during the winter of 

2013 in three feet of snow. 

• For the construction of Calaveras Dam, 

DRS removed the original outlet screen for 

the dam and executed a full bottom survey 

for layout of the entire project. A 300- 

cubic yard concrete foundation was placed 

on CIDH piles, which support the new fish 

screen outlet structure. Dredging, concrete 

placement, formwork layout, drill support, 

crane work, heavy steel and demolition 

were all completed successfully. 

DRS owns its headquarters in Vallejo, 

California, encompassing two large warehouses, 

administrative offices, and storage yard 

with diving, fabrication and heavy construction 

equipment, all located on a two-and-ahalf-acre 

tract. A facility in Oakley, California, 

harbors tug boats, crane barges, and pile 

driving equipment. 

“Company growth the last five years has 

skyrocketed,” says Williams. “We’re finding 

that a lot more of our clients want turnkey 

jobs and we are able to give them that. We can 

provide it all so they don’t need to involve 

several different companies for one project.” 

DRS Marine will continue to groom long-term 

employees to become successors for the company 

to maintain its legacy of service. 

DRS Marine is a member of ADCI and contributes 

annually to the Civil Air Patrol and 

Vallejo Police sponsored Christmas Shopping 

for Children. 

For more information about DRS Marine 

Inc., visit the website at www.drsmarine.com. 

“I want to give thanks to my wife Patty for 

all the help and support she gave along the 

way. I also wish to give the greatest appreciation 

to all the men/women that protect this 

country and make it possible for all of 

us to live and prosper in this great nation, 

including my father, Walter Williams (WWII); 

my brother, Howard Williams (Cold War); 

and brother, Clifford Williams, Bronze Star 

recipient, (Iraq War).” 

God Bless America. 

Bottom: Vice President and Dive Supervisor 

Mark Land. 


89

Above: Bolting the company sign down. 

GLOBAL DIVING & SALVAGE, INC. 

Below: Salvage and wreck operations 

involve complex planning and adherence 

to strict environmental and insurance 

requirements. Every call is unique and the 

Global team is quick to respond with a 

thorough plan. 

Global Diving & Salvage, Inc. is a leading 

provider of marine construction and infrastructure 

services and an internationally 

recognized casualty responder. 

Global was founded nearly forty years ago 

and the importance of responding quickly to 

any challenge is embedded in the company’s 

DNA. Once the small group of professional 

divers decided to form Global in 1979, events 

moved very quickly. The company’s first 

president, Greg Harem, was met at a bar at 

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport shortly 

after touching down from a dive job in 

Texas by a group that included John Graham, 

Thom Davis, Mark Niccoli, Joe Antonucci and 

Norm McCullum. Harem was sworn in over 

drinks before he even got to baggage claim. 

Tim Beaver soon joined the ranks as well. 

The company was founded with the 

purpose of providing day-to-day diving, 

ship husbandry, marine construction, small 

vessel salvage, and spill response services in 

the Puget Sound region. The company’s 

philosophy was simple: provide tough, smart, 

and professional services for the maritime 

community, deliver outstanding customer 

service, and focus on employee safety. 

In the early days, a Global crew would 

clean up small oil spills in their Harbor 

Island neighborhood, responding in sandals, 

shorts, and T-shirts. After the jobs, Jackie 

Lewis (office manager AKA “The Queen”) 

would walk over with a roll of paper towels 

and root beer floats. 

The jobs soon got much bigger and the 

company grew quickly as it established a 

reputation for having crews available any 

time of day or night. “We never wanted to tell 

a customer that we couldn’t do something 

or give them any reason to look elsewhere,” 

explains Graham. “When other companies 

did that, their customers came looking to 

us and we never let them down.” 

Global soon earned a reputation as the 

company to call on for any marine construction, 

emergency response or salvage job. 

Today, Global is one of the few full-service 

underwater marine contractors that provides 

project management, in-house engineering, 

marine and upland environmental services, 

as well as the full spectrum of commercial 

diving services. This is done through Global’s 

five core services—marine construction, 

marine casualty response, energy support 

services, marine and environmental services, 

and Global technical services. 

Global has been involved in several 

high-profile projects over the years. On 

December 22, 1988, off the coast of Grays 

Harbor, Washington, the towline connecting 

the tug Ocean Service to the Nestucca 

snapped. While trying to recapture the 

drifting barge in severe weather, the port 

rudder of the Ocean Service punctured a 

cargo tank resulting in a release of 227,000 

gallons of fuel into the bay. The spill required 

a massive response and Global hired approximately 

thirty workers from nearby tribes 

to assist. 


90

Global was also one of the first subcontractors 

brought in to assist when the 

Exxon Valdez caused one of the largest oil 

spills in U.S. history. Global crew members 

were on site in Valdez, Alaska, for the next 

year-and-a-half, working on lightering the 

vessel and supporting the oil spill cleanup. 

In 2000, Vice President of Marine 

Construction Mike Langen and CEO/President 

Devon Grennan, laid the groundwork for a 

new company initiative—Safety, Quality of 

Service, and Growth (SQG). This shifted 

some of the company’s structure from 

remaining founders Graham and Beaver and 

involved a larger group to have a voice in the 

future direction of the company. 

After Hurricane Ivan in 2004, Global’s 

focus on safety and quality ushered in an 

entirely new category of dive work. The 

hurricane left several downed platforms in 

the Gulf of Mexico—most needing saturation 

divers to remove the downed platforms 

and control and kill the trapped live wells. 

Global navigated a major growth effort 

between 2000 and 2009, including the 

acquisition of Inshore Divers of Rio Vista, 

California in 2004 and Offshore Divers of 

Anchorage, Alaska in 2009. 

Today, Global is headquartered in Seattle, 

Washington, and operates an Alaska office 

in Anchorage, a northern California office 

in Vallejo, a southern California office in 

Signal Hill, and a Texas office in Houston, 

along with several remote offices that 

facilitate immediate response operations 

throughout the country. Currently, the 

company has approximately 250 fulltime 

employees. 

Global’s leadership team includes CEO/ 

President Devon Grennan; Vice President of 

Operations Dan Pierson; Vice President of 

Marine Construction, Engineering and 

Technology Mike Langen; Vice President of 

Casualty Response David Devilbiss; Vice 

President of Finance and Administration 

Trinity Ng-Yeung; and Vice President of 

Quality Assurance Jennifer Jensen. 

Global employees are deeply involved in 

many community organizations, including 

Seattle Children’s Hospital. Over the past ten 

years, Global employees and partners have 

helped raise more than $300,000 to support 

the hospital’s mission. 

In addition, Global has been a supporter 

of Puget Sound Maritime (PSM) for more 

than a decade. PSM’s mission is to create 

appreciation of the Puget Sound region’s 

maritime past to better understand the present. 

Global Diving & Salvage, Inc., is an active 

participant in the Association of Diving 

Contractors International (ADCI). Dan Pierson 

currently serves on the association’s board 

of directors. 

The company’s continued growth and 

success has been built by execution of its 

guiding core values of honesty, teamwork, 

and professional pride. “As proud as we are of 

our history, and where we have been, we have 

many chapters still left that we are writing,” 

says Grennan. “And everyone at Global gets 

to contribute to the story. We’re honored 

to work with such a committed group of 

people who exhibit the same principles.” 

Below: Global has more than thirtyfive 

years of underwater construction 

experience. The company addresses needs 

of customers in both public and private 

sectors; creating custom solutions for 

complex problems. 


91

MARINE 

DIVING 

TECHNOLOGY 

CLASS OF 

1973–SANTA 

BARBARA CITY 

COLLEGE 

Marine Technology Program Instructors: 

Bob Christensen, Jim Parker, and 

Ramsey Parks. 

Friendships forged and lessons learned 

forty-five years ago still bind the 1973 graduates 

of the Marine Diving program at Santa 

Barbara City College. Twenty-six of the original 

forty-four classmates in the Class of 1973 

entered the workforce immediately after graduation. 

As many as fifteen are still active in the 

industry and a number have developed their 

own companies, ranging from a tourist 

submarine business in the Asia Pacific to a 

civil engineering diving firm in San Francisco. 

Graduates of the Class of 1973 have 

managed the deepest dive ever recorded in 

the Gulf of Mexico, developed underwater 

welding and nondestructive testing technology, 

and participated in the top-secret mission 

to recover a Russian nuclear submarine. 

“Our class was unique because of the close 

bonds created together at the MT Noble Street 

shop playing volleyball, building Jorgie’s Reef 

on the beach near SBCC, learning to operate 

Otto’s boats out of Santa Barbara Harbor, and 

making dives in the ADS IV bell system offshore,” 

says Tom Belcher. Another graduate, 

Gary Kane, notes that, “Our instructors were 

legends in the industry and became a major 

influence on all of us.” 

Three of the instructors best remembered 

by the Class of 1973 are Bob Christensen, Jim 

Parker, and Ramsey Parks. They conducted 

classes for the two-year program that included 

everything from physical oceanography to 

fundamentals of marine engines and compressors, 

and from underwater construction to 

marine law and economics. 

“We couldn’t ask for any better and they 

certainly trained us on how to act, figure out, 

and defend ourselves and to develop our 

abilities and skill sets into what we were to 

become,” comments Belcher. 

“We were trained professionally by our great 

teachers and we owe them big time,” adds Pete 

Metson. “They provided us with the opportunity 

to have a successful career, make a lot of 

money, and work with a lot of great people.” 

Among the graduates who went on to successful 

careers in the industry are Gary Kane, 

John McClure, Pete Metson, Tom Belcher, 

Tom Ulrich, Ray Chamberlain, William “Billy” 

Robinson, and Greg Bryant. 

Ulrich grew up in Santa Barbara and 

had his scuba certification by the age of 

fourteen. His early career took him to many 

locations including the Gulf of Mexico, the 

North Sea, Mexico, Japan, the Pacific Basin, 

and his current home in Alaska. He has made 

it through the ranks to become Alaska 

Regional Manager and Vice President with 

American Marine International. 

Chamberlain has spent forty years offshore 

working in diving internationally, ROVs, and 

as a client’s representative. Chamberlain 

believes that the marine technology program 

at SBCC gave its graduates the skills and confidence 

to pursue their ambitions. “I have 

fond memories and lots of gratitude for our 

instructors,” he says. 

Metson went to work for SubSea 

International soon after graduation and wasted 

little time in rising up the corporate ladder, 

eventually becoming the number two man. 

Metson was involved in building the first 

permanent North Sea fixed platform jacket 

installations in the BP Forties Field. He 

obtained his MBA from Tulane and completed 

his dive career by helping build SSI into a 

mega-firm that is now a major part of SubSea 

Seven, one of the largest underwater contractors 

in the world. 

Kane left Santa Barbara and spent the 

next ten years establishing himself in the 

industry, working with Metson, Belcher, 

Ulrich, Robinson, Chamberlain, and others 

in the North Sea. After returning to the Gulf 

of Mexico, he continued working offshore 

where he supervised a working saturation 

dive to 1,073 feet, a record still today. Moving 

on in his career, he opened his own consultancy 

company in 1996, which he sold in 

2015. An active writer, he has written over a 

dozen articles for Underwater Magazine. 


92

McClure started his diving career as a Navy 

diver in the rivers of Vietnam. After discharge, 

he graduated from the new SBCC Marine 

Technology Program. McClure’s commercial 

dive experience includes thousands of hours 

underwater, involving a full spectrum of projects 

deep to shallow, from simple to complex, 

using many modes of diving. He worked for 

Union Carbide for fourteen years, becoming 

project manager, and is currently Vice 

President/COO of Pacific Subsea Saipan, Inc., 

engaged in tour submarine operations in Asia. 

Belcher’s varied career has involved him 

in dive projects throughout the world. He 

founded Underwater Resources in 1982 

and spent thirty-five years performing 

shallow/deep air, gas diving services to 230 

feet, ROV and sonar inspections, and heavy 

civil construction. Belcher developed techniques, 

equipment and methodology to 

conduct tethered dive penetrations within 

flooded tunnels/pipelines up to 3,000 feet 

to perform internal inspections and repairs. 

Robinson worked in the Gulf of Mexico 

and the North Sea, conducting air, gas, and 

sat diving. He is a talented leader of people 

and became operations manager for geophysical 

survey projects. Robinson is experienced 

in all facets of shallow and deep-water diving. 

Bryant worked throughout Southeast 

Asia and became the diving superintendent 

of a 1,000-foot saturation system in the 

Philippines. He received a BSME degree from 

Cal Poly and became an assistant professor in 

the Marine Technology program. He then 

became a Professional Engineer and partnered 

with McClure in Pacific Offshore Contractors 

before becoming robotics system manager for 

NASA’s space station. Bryant has also worked 

for Walt Disney and Universal Studios and 

was involved in the motion picture, The Abyss. 

Bryant remains active as a commercial diver 

and engineer. 

Two of the Class of 1973 were lost while 

working. Richard Walker died at 500 feet in 

the North Sea and another classmate, Ron 

Smith, was killed during an accidental detonation 

of explosives. “The memories of Dick 

and Ron and the circumstances of their deaths 

still to this day play a part in my professional 

decisions,” says Kane 

Those from the Class of 1973 who went 

on to careers in the industry include: Tom 

Belcher, Gib Blevins, Greg Bryant, Ray 

Chamberlain, John Colgate, Ken Corsen, Walt 

Croson, Andy Culwell, Burt Davis, Hal 

Epstein, Gary Fisher, Bob Hargis, Wade 

Harris, Pat Helmstetter, Gary Kane, Joe Krivi, 

Leslie Lynch, Gary Margadant, John McClure, 

Pete Metson, Craig Roberts, Billy Robinson, 

Bill Rudolph, Ron Smith, Jack Spinney, Jim 

‘Diego’ Terres, Tom Ulrich, Richard Walker, 

and Russ Westfall. 

“Our Class of ’73 was on the cutting edge 

of changes in deep diving technology, and we 

were among the pioneer divers and technicians 

who responded to the industry need to 

expand limits and work deeper,” comments 

McClure. “We have remained connected over 

the years both professionally and socially. 

Sharing common goals and life experiences 

with classmates is the adhesive that bonds us 

together today.” 

Top: Marine Tech Field Lab, Bell 

Diving Class. 

Below: Left to right: John McClure, Tom 

Ulrich, Billy Robinson, Gary Kane, Ray 

Chamberlain, Pete Metson, Greg Bryant 

and Tom Belcher. 


93

AMERICAN 

MARINE 

CORPORATION 

Since its beginnings as a start-up commercial 

diving business called American Divers 

Inc., in 1973, American Marine Corporation, 

has grown to become one of the more respected 

firms in the Commercial Diving industry. 

American Marine Corporation (AMC) 

provides commercial diving, specialty marine 

contracting and vessel support services to 

clients in both the public and private 

sectors. AMC has been responsible for prime 

construction projects ranging from new pier 

and breakwater construction to harbor dredging 

and ocean outfall installation and repair. 

The company operates workboats, derrick 

barges, flat barges, cranes, dive vessels, and 

crew boats. The firm’s three operating regions 

are Hawaii and the outer Pacific Islands, the 

west coast of the United States, and Alaska. 

The company is based out of Honolulu, 

Hawaii, the original location. From these 

offices, operations extend nationally, and at 

times internationally. 

AMC began nearly forty-five years ago 

when a partnership was formed within a small 

dive shop adjacent to Honolulu Harbor. 

Pat Wolter, was born and raised in France 

and by 1973 had started American Divers 

Inc., the first formal diving company in Hawaii 

to provide general commercial diving services, 

with a focus on dive support for marine 

construction companies. Robert Shahnazarian 

had come to Hawaii from New Jersey on a 

University of Hawaii swimming scholarship 

and it was a natural first step for him 

to be involved in waterfront activities. Scott 

Vuillemot, starting from a young age, had been 

involved in offshore federal funded infrastructure 

projects in the Islands and had spent time 

on the West Coast in formal commercial dive 

school training. These three young men were 

the core of the initial expansion of American 

Divers Inc., which incorporated in 1975. 

The focus of this expansion was the installation 

of coastal ocean outfall projects as funded 

by federal law. In 1972 the law became 

known as the Clean Water Act. This law established 

the basic structure for regulating pollutant 

discharges into the waters of the United 

States and gave the EPA the authority to implement 

pollution control programs such as 

setting wastewater standards for industry. In 

Hawaii, there were three primary ocean outfalls 

to be constructed as well as significant 

repair projects to existing systems. Good work 

for this young group of motivated divers. 

The pivotal year for the young company 

was 1979. The Hawaii outfall projects were 

drying up, but similar new opportunities were 

opening up in the Caribbean in Puerto Rico. 

Larger marine construction companies had 

been pleased with the work of American 

Divers, Inc., and offered them work on the 

Bayamon Ocean Outfall serving San Juan 

Puerto Rico. This significant project called for 

support boats so Pat and Scott made the first 

of many trips to New Orleans, searching for 

reliable support vessels. They decided on two 

boats; a small tug and crew boat. These vessels 

added another business line to the company 

and American Workboats was formed in 1979. 

Puerto Rico provided American Workboats 

and American Divers, Inc., with good and 

steady work for over four years. While Pat ran 

the established Hawaii operation, Bob and Scott 

ran the two companies in Puerto Rico, providing 

solid dive and vessel support services on 

three large outfall projects, in the Caribbean. 

Subsequent to the completion of these 

major projects in the Caribbean, the work 

dried up to a point where a decision was made 

to relocate the division on the West Coast. 


94

This primary regional location of American 

Divers Inc., and American Workboats grew 

steadily between 1983 and 1987, fueled by 

several large projects in Southern California, 

including construction of the Diablo Canyon 

nuclear power plant and the San Rafael ocean 

outfall project. The West Coast proved itself as 

a good market for these maturing businesses. 

Tragedy struck the company in 1987 when 

Pat’s helicopter crashed as he was landing on a 

grounded barge to consider wreck removal 

options off of the Big Island of Hawaii. Pat was 

killed, and in short order, everything changed 

for the company. That evening, Scott flew back 

to Hawaii to take over management of that 

division, after being away for eight years. 

Pat’s death convinced Bob and Scott to seriously 

discuss and plan the future of the company 

as well as to write a new business plan. The 

first step in this plan was the establishment of 

an administrative arm to help the company 

manage and track growth, and provide customer 

service and support. Another decision, 

was to create an environmental arm to prosecute 

and support coastal spills and waterfront 

environmental needs. Pacific Environmental 

Corporation (PENCO) was formed. 

The following decade was a time for development 

for the companies, including an opportunity 

for permanent expansion in Alaska. In 

1993 a decision was made to enter the market 

through the acquisition of equipment and personnel 

of a failing marine group in the region. 

By 1998, with the company growing rapidly, 

Bob and Scott decided it was time to formalize 

a new structure for the company’s 

future. The companies were realigned to serve 

three basic markets in the three regions and 

American Marine Services Group (AMSG) was 

developed as a reference to the overall organization. 

American Divers, Inc., was renamed 

to become American Marine Corporation. 

“A major part of our growth philosophy is 

to plan and control the various facets of the 

businesses, from the administration to personnel 

and equipment,” Scott explains. 

“Things along the road don’t always work out 

the way a plan is originally conceived, but 

perseverance and good business practices go a 

long way toward reaching your goals.” 

Today, AMSG focuses on specialty marine 

construction projects, commercial diving, tug 

and work vessel support, crew boat operations, 

and vessel inspection and repair services. 

The environmental arm under PENCO has 

developed into a nationally recognized group 

of professionals. Although the AMSG offices 

are in the Pacific region, the company performs 

work routinely on the Gulf and East 

Coasts, North Slope Alaska, Central America, 

and internationally. Offices in Honolulu, 

Anchorage, and Los Angeles are staffed with 

local personnel who have spent the majority 

of their careers in those regions offering a 

solid basis of local knowledge. 

American Marine Services Group and 

its operating companies; American Marne 

Corporation, Pacific Environmental Corporation 

and American Workboats currently are moving 

in the direction of the second generation with 

the intent of providing “Excellence in 

Operations” for another fifty years. 

To learn more about American Marine 

Corporation, check the website at 

www.amarinecorp.com. Pacific Environmental 

Corporation may be located at www.penco.org. 


95

Above: Teichman Group Founder, Rudy 

Teichman, on a salvage project. 

Below: Diving operations. 

TEICHMAN GROUP OF COMPANIES 

The Teichman Group of Companies operates 

one of the most extensive emergency 

response networks in the world and is 

committed to serving the needs of the shipping 

and energy industries with the highest 

standards of safety and quality. 

Pre-positioned throughout the United 

States, its territories, Singapore, Europe, and 

South America, the Teichman Group owns 

and maintains a comprehensive inventory 

of state-of-the-art commercial diving, fast 

response firefighting systems, inert gas and 

nitrogen generators, high capacity dewatering 

pumps, ship-to-ship lightering systems, 

anti-pollution systems, three-dimensional 

sonar, remotely operated vehicle systems, 

and myriad of other response equipment. 

Equipment is packaged so it can be rapidly 

transported by air, land, or sea. The specialized 

portable assets are complemented by 

floating and portable heavy lift and salvage 

support vessels ready to meet both routine 

and emergency response challenges. 

The company was established in 1957 

when Rudy Teichman, an experienced 

machinist, established T&T Marine Ways, 

Inc., a small shipyard at the end of Teichman 

Point in Galveston, Texas. At first, the business 

consisted of a dock for working on 

small vessels, a machine shop, and a small 

dredge. Later, a marine railway was built to 

perform dry repairs on small vessels. In 1960, 

Rudy bought a wooden tug named Josephine, 

that he rebuilt to provide towing services 

to the area. 

The shipyard was destroyed when Hurricane 

Carla hit Galveston in 1961, but Rudy started 

over and by 1964, was expanding, hiring 

more employees, and building bigger and 

better facilities. 

Recognizing the need for a salvage and 

diving company along the Texas coast, 

Rudy started T&T Marine Salvage, Inc., to 

raise sunken boats and barges. In 1976, 

Rudy bought a steam crane with a capacity 

of seventy-five tons for heavy lift work. 

Today, T&T owns and operates a wide 

assortment of equipment, providing a variety 

of services including heavy lift, response, 

salvage, and marine firefighting. 

The Teichman Group’s dedicated commercial 

diving company, T&T Subsea, provides 

high quality marine salvage support, ship 

husbandry and under hull cleaning, class 

approved hull and propeller repairs, vessel 

and facility inspections, marine construction, 

and contaminated water diving, among other 

underwater services worldwide. 

T&T Subsea continues to retain a competitive 

advantage by providing safe and high 

quality services, while faithfully adhering to 

T&T founder’s core values of honesty, integrity, 

and hard work. On every project, T&T Subsea 

provides comprehensive reports, including 


96

photographs and video documentation that 

fully satisfy classification society and regulatory 

requirements. Additionally, T&T implements 

a comprehensive quality-assurance program 

that includes client feedback throughout the 

project. This valuable customer feedback 

ensures the company is continuously improving 

processes and procedures. 

Rudy’s son, Kevin, learned the business 

and operational aspects of the salvage industry 

from the ground up, under his father’s 

mentorship. Following Rudy’s passing in 

2012, Kevin stepped forward to lead and 

expand the Teichman Group into what is 

now, an international corporation with 

bases of operation around the world. As 

Managing Director, Kevin, has implemented a 

strategic plan that includes expanding offices 

in Europe, South America and Asia. His 

efforts have been attributed with enhancing 

marine safety, emergency response, and 

environmental protection efforts worldwide. 

In addition to the salvage and diving 

businesses, Kevin also helps manage two oil 

spill response cooperatives, Clean Gulf 

Associates and Clean Channels Cooperative, 

including managing all emergency response 

equipment and personnel. The Teichman 

Group of Companies now maintains one 

of the nation’s largest inventory of portable 

salvage and oil spill response equipment. 

In addition, T&T has developed a comprehensive 

non-floating oil detection and 

recovery capability to meet national U.S. 

Coast Guard classification requirements. 

Under Kevin’s leadership, the Teichman 

Group’s fleet of boats, and salvage and oil 

spill response equipment inventory continues 

to grow. The company now has the capacity 

to recover more than two million barrels of 

oil per day with more than 300,000 feet 

of containment boom. Given the Teichman 

Group’s capacity and capabilities, the company 

is contracted by over 100 oil and gas 

producers with over sixty percent of the 

tank ship industry selecting T&T to be 

named as their salvor of choice on their 

vessel response plans. 

The Teichman Group has responded to 

hundreds of marine casualty incidents and oil 

spills, from saving sinking offshore oil rigs 

to refloating the Battleship Texas that saw 

battle in both World Wars. Additionally, T&T 

has successfully completed marine salvage 

operations from the Equator to the Arctic. 

The company is based in Galveston, Texas, 

with bases of operation throughout the 

U.S., Singapore, Peru, Germany, Netherlands, 

and Guam. 

For more information about the Teichman 

Group of Companies, check the website at 

www.teichmangroup.com. 

Above: Offshore salvage operations. 

Below: Lightering a grounded ship. 


97

STS CHILE 

(STS MARINE 

ENGINEERING 

AND 

CONSTRUCTION 

LIMITED) 

STS Chile is the largest and 

most experienced subsea engineering 

and services company in 

Chile and a leader in Latin 

America. STS designs and builds 

maritime and underwater works 

through sophisticated engineering 

and the best construction methods 

that offer safety and ensures 

the highest quality possible. 

Founded in 1960 by Claudio 

Castro Jonas with the passion of 

the pioneers opening and developing 

the future of the underwater 

world, STS provides integral 

maintenance of ports and underwater pier 

structures; repair of underwater oil and gas 

pipelines; underwater engineering design and 

construction of underwater lines. In addition, 

the company is involved in rescues and salvages; 

supports construction and installation 

stages of oil platforms and underwater lines; 

constructs submerged structures; and provides 

general maintenance of SPM. 

In recent years, STS Chile has conducted a 

re-engineering process based on the highest 

international standards, developing and 

incorporating management control and quality 

assurance as well as the business assurance 

concept according to ISO 9001 standards. 

STS is the first maritime company in Chile to 

be certified with the new 2015 version by the 

prestigious and demanding Lloyd’s Register 

QA. The company is also certified with integrated 

management system ISO 14001:2015 

and OHSA 18001, all accredited in the 

United Kingdom. 

To date, STS is the first company in Latin 

America to be audited and certified by 

ADC International for 2016, under the standards 

of underwater operations according to 

International Consensus Standards version 6.2 

auditing initiative. 

These high standard certifications confirm 

STS’s goal of offering clients the best quality 

and safe engineering and underwater construction 

services. 

STS encourages a safety oriented philosophy 

and is proud of a record of over two 

million underwater man hours without 

accidents. The company incorporates the 

Health Safety Environmental and Community 

(HSEC) system as its guide. 

STS has the largest infrastructure of professional 

diving systems and equipment in Chile 

and Latin America. An internationally certified 

staff develops continuous maintenance and 

update processes for more than 500 tons of 

equipment. This allows the development of 

parallel projects in Chile and overseas with the 

highest standards of ISO 9001:2015 QAQC. 

STS is the first company in Chile to 

become a general member of Association of 

Diving Contractors International (ADCI) to 

participate in conferences, seminars, and 

international expositions to promote technological 

advances on safety in commercial diving 

through the best industry practices and 

international standards. CEO Castro is also 

founder of the Chilean Association of Diving 

Contractors and Chairman of the Chilean 

Chapter of ADCI. 

Safety is a primary concern of STS and has 

recorded more than two million underwater 

immersions without accident during its fiftyseven 

years of existence. During this period, 

STS has executed more than eighty percent of 

the maintenance and installation of oil and 

gas terminals throughout Chile. This allows 

STS to offer more technical and economic 

advantages for providing highly efficient and 

economically viable underwater service 

promptly in Latin America and beyond. 

The company currently employs fifty-seven 

people in management, engineering, design, 

administration and maintenance. These 

employees are based in two main offices: 


98

Marine Engineering in Vina del Mar and 

Subsea Operations and administrative staff in 

the Port of Quintero. The company contracts 

with surface-supplied air divers and supervisors, 

mixed gas, ROV personnel and bell saturation 

dive supervisors, depending on the size 

and scope of the projects being executed. 

The company has produced continuous 

growth of more than ten percent annually 

for the past ten years. Customers include 

international engineering companies, mining, 

ports, oil and gas, power plants and desalination 

plants. Project sizes and revenue are up 

to ten million USD, but has developed bigger 

multimillion dollar marine projects in joint 

ventures or partnerships. 

STS contributes directly to its local communities 

in Quintero by sponsoring elder 

homes and programs for disabled children. 

The company funds a scholarship for academic 

excellence in one of the most prestigious 

schools in Chile. STS also donates funds 

for ADCI scholarships. Because of its HSEC 

philosophy, STS is involved with every local 

community in which it performs projects. 

The business plan for STS Chile includes 

becoming the leader in engineering design 

and construction of Marine Works for 

Desalination Plants in the American South 

Pacific and internationalization to grow its 

Latin American market during the next five 

years in subsea engineering and saturation, 

deep dive projects and to grow its marine 

engineering projects abroad. 


99

WALKER 

DIVING 

UNDERWATER 

CONSTRUCTION 

LLC 

Top: Diver in a forty-eight inch water main 

in New Jersey (2009). 

Bottom: Founder Glenn Walker working on 

a diving helmet (1970). 

Walker Diving Underwater Construction, 

LLC, based in Hammonton, New Jersey, has 

been a well-known name in commercial 

diving in the Northeast for sixty years. The 

company was founded in 1957 by Glenn 

Walker. His family had been in commercial 

fishing on the New Jersey coast for generations. 

However, when the family sold their 

boat, Glenn stayed in the water and took up 

another maritime career. Operating as Glenn 

Walker, Inc., his new company grew steadily 

from a one man diving operation, to a company 

that employed ten divers and provided 

diving services across the eastern half of the 

United States, from New Jersey to Missouri. 

The diving company still proudly bears the 

Walker name to this day. 

In 1973, Glenn decided to leave the diving 

industry to pursue other adventures. He sold 

the business to Harry Streit and headed 

westward. Harry had been working at the 

Philadelphia Naval Station and was looking 

for a business opportunity and new adventures 

of his own. With the assistance of some 

friends, Harry acquired the diving company 

and renamed it Walker Diving Contractors, 

Inc. By keeping the Walker name, he kept the 

goodwill and contacts that had been built up 

over the years. 

Harry owned and operated the business for 

more than thirty years during which time he 

employed almost every member of his family, 

making this a true family business. Walker 

Diving took on numerous unique and challenging 

projects. One project involved several 

years of surface decompression diving for the 

US Army Corps of Engineers in Georgia, 

while another required designing special 

pipe to slip-line a siphon for the City of 

Philadelphia. By taking on bold challenges 

and succeeding where others were reluctant 

to go, Walker Diving became the largest 

inland diving company in the eastern half of 

the nation. In the late 1980s, Harry bought 

Portadam, Inc. (a portable dam company) and 

founded W. H. Streit, Inc. (a marine construction 

company.) The family ran all three affiliated 

companies until they were sold upon 

Harry’s retirement in October 2004. 

Several years before he retired, Harry 

signed Walker Diving and W. H. Streit with 

Local Union 454, the Wharf and Dock 

Builders of Philadelphia, which is the local 

union of the United Brotherhood of 

Carpenters. Becoming a union employer 

allowed Walker Diving to rapidly hire 

large numbers of capable, experienced 

divers and to work for many of the larger 

heavy and highway contractors who were 

also union affiliated. This partnership with 

organized labor continues to provide Walker 

Diving with many benefits including the ability 

to rapidly hire large numbers of capable 

experienced divers and the ability to use the 

nationwide training resources of the United 

Brotherhood of Carpenters. 

In 2004 when Alex Kalafatides purchased 

the diving company, he renamed it Walker 

Diving Underwater Construction Corp. Alex 

had grown up in a maritime family, and he 

and his wife provided renewed energy to the 

small diving company, which had in recent 


100

years been overshadowed by W. H. Streit, Inc. 

With their efforts, the Walker Diving name 

again became well known in the industry. 

Additionally, they brought on an experienced 

and capable project management staff. Those 

managers continue to allow Walker Diving 

to solve the complex underwater challenges 

presented by the aging infrastructure in 

the Northeast. 

In 2009 the Kalafatideses decided to focus 

their efforts on another business opportunity 

and the diving company was again sold. The 

new and current owner, David Earp, is a Navy 

veteran who grew up in New Jersey. With a 

degree in Ocean Engineering from the US 

Naval Academy and ten years of experience 

leading Navy Divers and SEALs, David was 

thrilled by the opportunity to remain in the 

diving community in a new capacity. He has 

retained to this day the business name, 

Walker Diving Underwater Construction. 

Since David’s arrival in 2009, Walker 

Diving has grown rapidly. With more 

resources and improved equipment, the experienced 

management team at Walker Diving is 

once again competing for and successfully 

completing larger and more challenging 

underwater projects. Walker Diving has been 

selected to build several intake and outfall 

systems for new natural gas power plants. 

Additionally, Walker Diving has established 

itself as a capable and trustworthy partner 

in the construction industry, frequently 

employed by larger marine contractors when 

they need to add additional diving capability, 

beyond their in-house dive crews. Walker 

Diving provides services as a subcontractor to 

both union and non-union general contractors. 

They also perform as a prime contractor 

when the scope of work is an appropriate fit. 

In recent years, Walker Diving has modernized 

its facilities, equipment and procedures. 

The staff has expanded to include more 

project managers, a full time safety director 

and additional office staff to keep up with the 

increasingly complex regulations in the construction 

industry. The expanded team works 

hard each day to live up to its slogan, “The 

Commercial Diving Experts.” 

The aging infrastructure in the Northeast 

will continue to provide complex underwater 

challenges and the Walker Diving team is prepared 

to provide the required solutions. Walker 

Diving looks forward to engaging with our construction 

colleagues to solve challenging underwater 

problems in the region and to driving 

innovation in the inland diving industry. 

Top: Diver on a jobsite in New York harbor. 

Skyline can be seen in background (2017). 

Bottom, left: David Earp prepping for a dive 

while in the Navy (1997). 

Bottom, right: Barge used to construct a new 

cooling water intake for a power plant in 

Pennsylvania (2010). 


101

MARION HILL 

ASSOCIATES 

DIVING AND 

MARINE 

SERVICES 

GROUP 

Top: Divers in the Gatehouse. 

Below: Howard Kline. 

Marion Hill Associates, an 

inland diving and marine construction 

contractor located 

near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 

provides a unique mix of topside 

and marine contractors, 

commercial divers, and environmental 

professionals. Teams 

from MHA routinely handle 

unique problems encountered 

in underwater construction. 

The company was founded 

in December 1980 by Richard 

Riley, Sr., and Richard “Rich” 

Riley, Jr. Richard Sr. was a 

partner in a construction company 

that specialized in plant 

and mill construction. When 

the company was awarded a 

contract to build a hydroelectric 

plant outside Pittsburgh, 

there were no local marine 

contractors willing to take on 

the project. Having some 

experience in scuba, he completed 

the project with a 

small team. Rich enjoyed the 

work so much he decided to 

attend dive school at the Professional Dive 

School of New York, which was operated by 

Andre Galerne. 

After graduating from dive school, Rich 

went to work for Galerne on an international 

project. Once the project was completed, 

Rich returned to Pittsburgh for a brief 

respite and met Tracy, who would become 

his wife. At that point, he decided to put 

away his passport and focus his efforts on 

developing a company to service the 

Pittsburgh region. 

With the help of contacts developed in the 

days of steel mill construction, Marion Hill 

Associates was able to gain a foothold in the 

Pittsburgh marketplace. The growth of these 

relationships provided access to bigger and 

better projects. 

MHA’s first underwater project was to 

place 1,000 cubic yards of concrete underneath 

a hydroelectric plant. This was 

done with a two-man dive team, while a 

third man floated on an inner tube keeping 

time on the surface. It took two different 

concrete contractors to keep up with the 

supply for the project. The tremie was 

moved into place with come-a-longs and 

the total underwater placement was completed 

in ten hours. 


102

Today, MHA is comprised of approximately 

twenty divers, tenders, operators, pilots, 

laborers, and mechanics. The company 

prides itself on offering a wide variety of services 

for nearly any inland marine customer. 

MHA has long-standing relationships with 

power plants, steel mills, paper mills, water 

authorities, drilling contractors, nuclear 

power plants, sewage treatment, and most 

any other business that calls the river home. 

MHA also has a marine construction division 

that offers services ranging from piledriving 

dock building to river drilling. MHA 

is proud to service customers ranging from 

small property owners looking to have a dock 

built at a riverfront home, all the way up to 

multi-year contracts with such companies as 

General Electric, Department of Defense, and 

the USACE. 

The company strives for safety in all its 

construction and diving projects and has 

been awarded the Chief of Engineers Safe 

Performance Award for Underwater Diving 

Projects performed in the Pittsburgh Division 

of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and a 

Public Service Commendation by the U.S. 

Coast Guard. MHA is committed to providing 

a safe working environment for its employees, 

subcontractors and job site owners. 

A number of dedicated individuals 

have contributed to the company’s growth 

and success over the years. Vice President 

Leen Dykstra has an extensive background 

in inland construction diving and has been 

with the company more than twenty years. 

MHA employs 15 to 20 divers spread across 

3 dive teams. The dive supervisors—Mike 

Folweiler, Josh Gostomski, and Steve 

Benaventeùhave all been with the company 

for ten years or more. MHA also operates a 

marine construction division headed by 

Superintendent Les May. 

Rich’s son, Gwynn Riley, now serves the 

company as Business Development Manager 

and represents the third generation of the 

family involved in the firm. 

MHA regularly donates time, money 

and equipment to the Boy Scouts of America. 

Rich is the recipient of the James E. West 

Fellowship Award, which acknowledges 

distinguished contributions to the Boy 

Scouts of America. MHA is also the proud 

recipient of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 

safety award. 

Marion Hill Associates is located at 1740 

Fifth Avenue in New Brighton, Pennsylvania. 

To learn more about the company, check the 

website at www.marionhilldivers.com. 

Top: A dock used by Marion Hill. 


103

ONYX SERVICES, 

INC. 

Above: ONYX setting articulating concrete 

mats on a pipeline in Biscayne Bay, Florida. 

Below: Splashing a diver to inspect pipe. 

ONYX Services, Inc. is a diversified pipeline 

services company based in Houston, Texas. 

The company specializes in pipeline inspection, 

maintenance and repair. ONYX partners 

with a broad range of clients across all energy 

sectors and environments, including land, 

marsh, and underwater. 

ONYX Services, Inc., began in January 

2012 after a small group with knowledge 

and experience in oil and gas service agreed 

to pursue a common goal of working for 

themselves and owning a business. 

The mission of the new company was 

to provide all pipeline operators a one 

call resource for their inspection, repair, 

maintenance, and construction needs on 

land, marsh, or underwater. Professional, 

knowledgeable and experienced crews provide 

and implement cost effective solutions 

for any location, wherever customers work. 

They summed up the services they offered 

with the slogan, “Got Pipe? Get ONYX!” 

It took a few months to secure all the 

permits, licenses, and insurance required 

to get the business going. Finally, several 

experienced people were hired and ONYX 

hung out its shingle and began work in the 

North Houston, Texas, area. Starting with 

some basic equipment and a leased building 

and land purchased three years later, it was 

not long before the first small project was 

awarded. Soon, through word-of-mouth and 

lots of cold calling, more and more projects 

were awarded. ONYX has now performed 

work in all the contiguous forty-eight states. 

ONYX had to overcome a major challenge 

when a drought-ending flood early in 2014 

left six inches of water in the building after 

the rain stopped. With no power in the area, 

but plenty of customers calling for ONYX’s 

services, all employees not already working 

on projects started cleaning the building 

while continuing to answer the needs of 

their clients. This went on for several days 

and on through the weekend before things 

began to gain a semblance of order. However, 

ONYX’s clients never realized the chaos 

caused by the flooded building as all their 

needs were met during the post-flood cleanup. 

ONYX has grown steadily year after year 

and had approximately fifty employees in 

2016. The company and its employees take 

great pride in supporting the local high 

schools and many youth teams in the area. 

Looking to the future, ONYX plans to 

remain highly diversified in its clientele 

and services with a focus on North America 

and the Upstream and Midstream oil and 

gas sectors. 

To learn more about ONYX Services, check 

their website at www.onyxincorporated.com. 


104

U.S. Underwater Services, LLC has a solid 

history of more than two decades as a commercial 

diving contractor in the inland, Gulf 

of Mexico and international markets. USUS 

provides a wide range of commercial diving, 

inspection, repair and maintenance services to 

industries such as oil and gas, shipping, public 

works, defense and marine infrastructure. 

USUS was founded in Burleson, Texas, in 

1995 by a young entrepreneur and sport 

diving enthusiast who saw an opportunity 

to utilize diving to assist local municipalities 

in maintaining their water systems. 

Soon after, commercially trained and certified 

divers were added to the team, providing 

legitimization and a path to becoming a true 

commercial diving contractor. By 1997 the 

company had expanded into the offshore 

Gulf of Mexico market, and over the next 

several years, USUS expanded its client base 

and rig support/diving services to nearly every 

major offshore driller in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Key individuals in the company’s early 

years included the Canadian duo of Jason 

Smith and Scott Miller, as well as Scott 

Farris, Bryan Nicholls, David Wolfe, Compton 

Cooper, Rich Campbell and Craig Loftin. 

In 2006, private equity firm, Benford Capital, 

purchased controlling interest of the company. 

The following year, Australian-based Neptune 

Marine Services purchased USUS and integrated 

the company into its international portfolio 

of oilfield and energy service companies. 

After the devastating Hurricanes Katrina, 

Rita and Ike in 2005-2007, USUS was 

involved in a variety of post-hurricane work, 

including platform inspections, site surveys, 

debris removal and subsea structural repairs. 

The additional offshore work generated by 

these storms enabled USUS to expand its 

service offerings and accelerated the company’s 

growth for the next several years. 

In 2010, USUS recorded several significant 

milestones, some of which included: the 

rebranding of USUS to Neptune Underwater 

Services; the relocation of the operations 

base to a newly remodeled 50,000-squarefoot 

facility in Mansfield, Texas; the 

completion of its largest multi-platform 

inspection campaign; and the deepest mixed 

gas diving projects in the company’s history. 

U.S. UNDERWATER SERVICES, LLC 

In 2012 the management team of USUS, 

with the help of Benford Capital and 

Coppermine Capital, purchased the assets of 

NUS in a management buyout. The new privately 

held entity, U.S. Underwater Services, 

LLC was formed; reestablishing the USUS 

brand within the commercial diving industry. 

USUS prides itself on being an employer of 

veterans and a supporter of veteran’s causes. 

In 2014 the company was recognized as a 

Patriotic Employer by the Office of the 

Secretary of Defense for its support of the 

National Guard and Reserves. 

U.S. Underwater Services joined ADCI in 

1996, only a year after its founding. The 

company’s current President/COO, Bryan 

Nicholls, has served on the ADCI Board 

of Directors since 2009, was second vice 

president from 2014-2017, and was elected 

president of the ADCI in 2017. 


105

SUBSALVE USA 

Above: Crew at work on the salvage of a 

vintage submarine. 

Below: The front cover of a Subsalve USA 

product catalog. 

Bottom: A diver ascending to the surface 

with an anchor secured to an underwater 

lift bag. 

Richard Fryburg knew exactly what he 

wanted to do as a career! Fryburg started 

diving at age fifteen and at seventeen, he failed 

at raising the 300-ton sunken tug boat Mount 

Hope from Narragansett Bay using 5,000-gallon 

oil tanks. Fryburg began designing and 

manufacturing underwater lift bags in his parent’s 

garage in Worcester, Massachusetts and 

in 1977 Subsalve USA was born. 

Fryburg graduated from Long Island 

University in 1977 with a degree in marine 

geology. He was far more interested in developing 

underwater flotation than working for 

offshore drilling companies. With the help 

of his father, George, he moved Subsalve USA 

to Providence, Rhode Island, and began 

marketing and manufacturing a line of underwater 

lift bags and traveling to trade shows 

around the country. This created the Subsalve 

USA brand and enabled expanding the product 

line to a larger range of standard open 

bottom and enclosed lift bags. Subsalve USA 

grew to offer custom flotation devices and 

systems for special applications that exceed 

the capabilities of standard products. The 

company developed proprietary products, 

including the Quad Bag—a multipurpose dive 

bag, the VRS-2000—vehicle recovery system 

and the MarkV/ORCA Underwater Ordnance 

Disposal System. 

Subsalve USA developed the skill and 

experience to become an innovator in buoyancy 

and engineered inflatable products 

including: Pipe Pluggers used in construction 

operations; Inflat-a-Tank—inflatable containment 

and storage bladders; Water Load Test 

Bags for crane testing; Fend-Air—a product 

line of marine inflatable fenders; and Aircraft 

Lift Bags–used to remove crashed or crippled 

aircraft from runways. 

Subsalve USA was awarded a U.S. Navy 

EOD contract for 170 units of the government 

designed MARK II Mod I Flotation Bladder 

for use in the removal of mines. Over the 

following years, Fryburg worked with the 

U.S. Navy to modify the outdated system, 

ultimately developing Subsalve’s state-of-theart 

Mark V-Explosive Underwater Ordnance 

Disposal System, which has been delivered to 

the U.S. Navy and twenty Navies worldwide. 

Following the 9/11 attack, demand for the 

system increased and resulted in modifications 

to the system and a sole source development 

contract with the U.S. Navy with the new 

Mark V/ORCA System. Subsalve USA now 

has contracts with the U.S. Navy and many 

foreign navies for the MarkV/ORCA system. 

Under Fryburg’s guidance and tireless 

work ethic over the last forty years, Subsalve 

USA has become a world-leading innovator 

in buoyancy and engineered inflatables with 

brand recognition and loyalty around 

the world. Subsalve USA has had many highprofile 

projects including James Cameron’s 

record-breaking solo dive to the bottom of 

the Mariana Trench documented by National 

Geographic, underwater habitats for Discovery 

Channel’s Shark Week and National Geographic, 

projects for NASA, Texas A & M University, 

Oracle Team USA, Disney, Exxon Mobil, 

Warner Brothers, Woods Hole Oceanographic, 

and many others. 

After forty years in business, Subsalve USA 

was acquired by Performance Inflatables in 

May 2017 with Fryburg taking a new position 

as Chief Growth Officer, which will insure 

that Subsalve USA will continue to offer the 

highest quality products and service available 

in the industry and will be raising the world 

to new heights for years to come. 


106

Looking back on a long and successful 

career, Jon Hazelbaker explains that he has 

been fascinated by the underwater world 

since childhood, watching Mike Nelson 

(Lloyd Bridges) on the television series, Sea 

Hunt. At age ten, Jon purchased his first scuba 

tank and regulator by mail for $40. By age 

twelve, he had purchased another tank and 

started a pool cleaning business. As a teenager, 

he worked part-time in a dive shop, and 

for a small inland commercial dive firm. 

Jon’s career now spans nearly fifty years in 

the commercial diving and marine construction 

industries as an inland “hard-hat/heavy-gear” 

diver and as the owner/operator of commercial 

diving and marine construction companies. 

His career began in 1968 when he made 

his first commercial dives while working as 

a young diver for a small commercial dive 

firm in the Midwest. He attended commercial 

dive school after high school (1967) and 

joined the United Brotherhood of Carpenters 

and Joiners as an apprentice in 1969. 

He became a journeyman “hard-hat” diver in 

1972 and maintained his membership in 

the union until his retirement in 2003. 

Jon founded his own dive firm, 

Commercial Diving Services, Inc., in 1969 

and over a thirty-year span and with the 

addition and assistance of two vital partners—Tony 

Kiefer (1978) and Thomas “Tim” 

Garnette (1983)—grew it to be one of the 

larger inland dive firms in the country. In 

1994, they sold the firm to American Oilfield 

Divers, Inc., and Jon stayed on as a vice 

president and general manager of American 

Inland Marine, Inc., and, subsequently, Stolt 

Offshore-General Contracting Division. 

Jon has been a strong supporter of ADCI 

throughout his career. His company first 

joined ADCI in 1989 and he was elected to 

the Board of Directors, where he served for 

seven years. He was the founding chair of the 

association’s Midwest chapter and served in 

that capacity from 1990 to 1993. He chaired 

the ADCI National Committee on Underwater 

Bridge Inspection Standards from 1990-1994. 

The bridge committee was the forerunner of 

the present engineering diving committee, 

and was instrumental in making critical 

revisions to the FHWA Manual’s chapter on 

HAMMERHEAD MARINE SERVICES, LLC 

COMMERCIAL DIVING SERVICES, INC., 

Also associated with: 

AMERICAN OILFIELD DIVERS, INC., 

AMERICAN INLAND DIVERS, INC., 

Underwater Inspection to eliminate 

references to recreational diving 

certifications, and more closely align 

with the ADCI consensus standard 

and current industry standards. 

In 2001, Jon was awarded the 

Tom Devine Memorial Award, presented 

to those individuals making 

“significant contributions to the 

practice of commercial diving.” 

He was inducted into the ADCI 

Commercial Diving Hall of Fame in 2005, 

and in 2014, he was presented the ADCI 

President’s Award of Excellence. 

Today, Jon lives in South Florida with his 

wife, Colleen, and provides consulting services 

to the industry through his new company, 

Hammerhead Marine Services, LLC. He provides 

services as an expert witness on diving 

accidents and contract disputes; he served as 

one of the instructors for the U.S. Army Corps 

of Engineers Dive Safe Safety Administration 

courses; serves the ADCI on special projects; 

and as a designated third-party auditor, conducting 

dive safety audits on member dive 

firms, and commercial diving schools. 

Additional information is available at 

www.hammerheadmarineservicesllc.com. 

Jon Hazelbaker, founder 

AMERICAN INLAND MARINE, INC., 

CEANIC, STOLT OFFSHORE,INC. 

Top: Jon Hazelbaker, raw water intake 

repair project, Lake Michigan. 

Above: Jon Hazelbaker receiving the 2014 

ADCI President’s Award of Excellence. 


107

DRYDEN DIVING 

COMPANY, INC. 

Above: Donald Dryden. 

Dryden Diving Company, Inc., is owned 

and operated by Donald Dryden, whose family 

has been in the marine construction industry 

since the 1930s. Don started working in the 

marine construction industry in 1970 and 

founded Dryden Diving in 1979. The company 

was incorporated in 1985. 

The company’s early success was due to the 

fact that Don was an experienced journeyman 

dockbuilder prior to attending commercial 

dive school. Dive school taught him how to 

go underwater, he already knew how to work 

when he got there. 

In the early days of the nuclear industry, 

Don and company pioneered some of the 

first diving in radioactively contaminated 

water on reactors and nuclear fuel handling 

systems. Over the past thirty-five years, the 

company has conducted safe and efficient 

diving operations at eleven American nuclear 

power plants and has current blanket service 

agreements with two. 

In response to the needs of the nuclear 

power plant industry, Dryden Diving developed 

its on-call response program. Dryden is 

one of the few commercial dive companies 

that maintain a crew of divers with staged 

equipment on standby to respond to emergent 

work at any time of any day. The company’s 

emergent work dive crews often work 

at five or more different locations in one 

week. Clients know they have a dependable, 

professional, and well-equipped crew ready 

when they need them. 

Today, Dryden Diving continues to perform 

marine construction, salvage and 

nuclear diving as well as potable water, 

contaminated water, marine structure inspection, 

and ship husbandry for domestic and 

international shipping. 

In 2013, Dryden Diving initiated the 

development of a wet welding program. Today, 

Dryden Diving has qualified procedures and 

diver/welders to perform Class B structural 

welds as per AWS D3.6M:2010 for A36 and 

A572 steel. The company intends to qualify a 

stainless steel procedure for the nuclear 

industry by the fall of 2017. The company’s 

diver/welders provide professional structural 

welding services directly from Dryden Diving 

as well as for other diving companies requiring 

‘wet stick’ structural welds. 

Dryden Diving’s affiliation with the United 

Brotherhood of Carpenters gives the company 

access to the approximately 1,000 

commercial divers in its membership 

nationwide. This ready pool of trained 

diving mechanics allows Dryden Diving 

to operate anywhere in the United 

States with a largely local workforce. 

Dryden Diving has conducted diving 

operations a mile from its office in 

New Jersey to Palau in the Pacific Ocean. 

Dryden Diving Company, Inc., looks 

forward to continuing servicing the 

broad customer base it has developed 

over the years and meeting the challenges 

of new technology and markets 

as they arise. For additional information, 

visit www.drydendiving.com. 


108

Chesapeake Bay Diving, Inc., based in 

Portsmouth, Virginia, provides a broad range 

of services, including ships husbandry, salvage, 

construction, water treatment facilities, 

power generation facilities, along with many 

other underwater needs. The firm’s experienced, 

professional divers provide services 

coast-to-coast as well as internationally. 

The company was founded in 1986 by 

Bill and Donna Santabar. As Donna recalls, 

Bill noticed a ‘For Sale’ sign on the property 

next door to his one day and came in to 

announced he was going to buy the building 

and make it into a dive shop. “My reply was, 

‘You are crazy!’” Donna says. “It’s a good thing 

he didn’t listen to me.” 

The new business was a natural for Bill, 

who was the diving supervisor at the Norfolk 

Naval Shipyard after retiring from the Navy’s 

Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team at Fort 

Story. Bill earned numerous awards for developing 

underwater techniques and promoting 

efficiency while underwater. 

After operating the dive shop for fourteen 

years, Bill was ready to retire and play golf. The 

business was sold in 2000 to three employees: 

Aaron Addison, Jay Wilson and Martin Dorn. 

Addison trained under Bill, Wilson was a scout 

swimmer in the Marine Corps before attending 

dive school and signing on with Chesapeake 

Bay Diving. Dorn served in the U.S. Navy and 

joined CBD shortly after. Bill deemed the trio 

capable of carrying on the Santabar legacy. “Bill 

was like a second father to me,” Addison says. 

“We’ve tried to pick up where he left off.” 

In recent years, Chesapeake Bay Diving has 

expanded its heavy salvage capability and has 

been involved in clean up following a number 

of Gulf Coast hurricanes. The company has 

the resources to cleanly extract petroleum or 

other products from submerged vessels while 

protecting the safety of the local ecosystem. 

Chesapeake Bay Diving can design, manufacture 

and install any cofferdam a vessel may 

need. It can also help set up a maintenance 

schedule for hull inspections, hull cleanings, 

propeller polishing, and seachest cleanings. 

These inspections help lower fuel costs and 

insure hull integrity. 

The company is also involved in construction 

work, including form work, welding, burning, 

CHESAPEAKE BAY DIVING, INC. 

epoxy injection, and jacketing. In addition, 

Chesapeake Bay Diving provides turnkey power 

generation services that include stop logs, cleaning 

intake gratings and trash racks, repairing 

and replacing valve, and all other maintenance. 

Chesapeake Bay Diving also has the 

means to locate and inspect submerged and 

buried pipelines to verify coverage prior to 

potential exposure, and to perform any other 

pipeline maintenance. 

“We’ve done about everything there is to do 

over the years, from finding a lost engagement 

ring to huge salvage operations,” Addison 

comments. “We’ve got a well rounded group of 

guys who are well trained and equipped. 

“We’re proud of the work we do and look 

forward to carrying on the proud tradition 

begun by Bill Santabar.” 

Above: Chesapeake Bay Diving attending a 

container ship at the local cargo terminal. 

Bottom: Bill Santabar diving on the 

Chesapeake Light Tower. 


109

RESOLVE 

MARINE GROUP 

Joe Farrell outside of Resolve Marine 

Group’s headquarters. 

Joe Farrell was only twelve years old 

when his family moved from the inner 

city of Boston to the Quincy, Massachusetts, 

coast, and at that age, he found a job 

with a boat rental firm. His love of the 

sea was born from this experience and 

sparked a career that eventually became 

Resolve Marine Group, a worldwide leader 

in salvage and wreck removal, emergency 

response, and maritime training. 

At eighteen years of age, he joined the 

United States Coast Guard. After attending a 

U.S. Navy diving school, he became a ship’s 

diver and an engineman on a USCG icebreaker 

working in the Arctic, followed by duty as 

an explosives advisor in Vietnam. After four 

years, he left the military and joined the U.S. 

Navy’s Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation 

Center (AUTEC) in Andros Island, Bahamas. 

He spent the next four years recovering torpedoes 

as a diver jumping out of helicopters, 

strapping the surface floating weapons and 

flying them under the helicopters back to the 

AUTEC base. 

After leaving the Bahamas, Joe served as 

the Chief Engineer on a large Dutch-built 

oceangoing salvage tugboat. After a few 

years working onboard the tug, the owners 

allowed Joe to use the tugboat in an attempt 

to independently develop work. Joe was able 

to use the tugboat to perform the salvage projects 

and eventually allowed to purchase the 

vessel. He promptly renamed the tugboat 

Resolve after having resolved what he wanted 

to do in life. 

Over the next ten years, Resolve undertook 

salvage jobs in the warm waters of the 

Caribbean, working on various small 

freighters and island vessels. Following the 

1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, the 

Coast Guard established new regulations for 

OPA-90 and Joe realized if he wanted to 

remain in business, he would need to meet 

those requirements. In short, Resolve needed 

a shipboard firefighting team and the best way 

was to build his own training facility. Resolve 

soon became the only salvage company with 

an in-house team of experts who also served 

as professional firefighting instructors. This 

effort led to establishment of the Resolve 

Maritime Academy, which has trained more 

than 37,000 professional marines and port 

firefighters from around the world. 

Resolve’s core business is vessel emergency 

response and has more fully stocked and 

owned response warehouses globally than any 

emergency vessel responder. The company 

operates worldwide and with facilities and 

staff in Singapore, Shanghai, Gibraltar, 

Mumbai, London, Rotterdam, Cape Town, 

Florida, Alabama, and Alaska, in addition to 

twenty-two OPA-90 SMFF depots in the 

United States. 

Resolve has also successfully performed 

extremely complex salvage operations 

throughout the world. The company has 

experienced salvage masters, naval architects, 

engineers and divers standing ready to assist 

clients around the clock. 

In 2006, Resolve, in conjunction with 

the U.S. Navy, sank the decommissioned 

USS Oriskany aircraft carrier to create the 

world’s largest artificial reef off the coast of 

Pensacola, Florida. The challenging project 

took more than two years and more than 150 

full-time personnel. While completing the 

project, Joe learned the Oriskany was the 

aircraft carrier that a young Lieutenant 

Commander named John McCain flew off on 

October 26, 1967. McCain was shot down 

over Hanoi and spent five and a half years as 

a captive of North Vietnam. It was also on the 

deck of the Oriskany where McCain’s father, 

Admiral Jack McCain, assumed command of 

the Navy’s Pacific Fleet while his son was 

being tortured in Hanoi. 

As a token of appreciation, Joe saved a 

porthole from the Oriskany and presented it to 

McCain, now a U.S. Senator, in his office at 

the U.S. Capitol. 

For nearly thirty-eight years, Resolve 

Marine Group has met some of the biggest 

maritime challenges throughout the world. As 

Resolve has grown, it has remained steadfast 

in its commitment to reinvest profits in people 

and businesses that align with Resolve’s 

core mission: to protect life, the environment, 

and property at sea. Joe attributes his phenomenal 

and successful growth and good fortune 

to giving more then you ask for in return 

and to simply treat people the way you would 

like to be treated. 


110

ASSOCIATION 

OF DIVING 

CONTRACTORS 

INTERNATIONAL 

BY PHIL NEWSUM 

The Association of Diving Contractors 

International stands today as more than just a 

trade association. Since 1968, the ADCI has 

become the voice and symbol of safety for 

commercial diving and underwater operations. 

Industry stakeholders such as government 

regulatory agencies, militaries, schools, 

vendors, manufacturers, the medical and 

insurance communities, as well as those that 

engage in the operations of commercial diving 

all look to the ADCI as the premier entity for 

the establishment of industry best practices. 

One reason for the longstanding sustainability 

of the Association is its willingness to engage 

in open dialogue with the industry when developing 

the guidelines and recommendations 

within the International Consensus Standards 

for Commercial Diving and Underwater 

Operations. The hallmark and strength of the 

Association is its diverse make up, which allows 

it to approach industry challenges on a variety 

of levels. The ADCI’s regional chapter framework 

provides an outlet for both members and 

non-members to share their lessons learned and 

notable operations conducted, all of which supports 

the Association’s focus on safety, education, 

and communication. 

There have been many individuals over 

the course of the last fifty years who have 

helped make the ADCI what it is today. They 

can be found in the Commercial Diving Hall 

of Fame, serving on a committee or on the 

Board of Directors. They can be found working 

on a pipeline, a dam, or in an office. 

Supporters of the Association serve the industry 

in a variety of different ways. Over the 

course of its history, the ADCI has become 

adept at listening to and acting upon feedback 

in the best and most effective way to better 

the conduct of underwater operations. In 

short, the key to the ADCI’s first fifty years 

and the key to its next fifty years, will be its 

ability to embrace change and focus its efforts 

for change on positive terms. 

As the current Executive Director of the 

ADCI, I am honored to serve in the footsteps 

of those who’ve paved the way for me to try to 

make a difference. I am also blessed to work 

every day with the longest tenured employee 

in the Association, the Grande Dame and my 

colleague, Barbara Treadway. No one person 

has seen more of the progression of the ADCI 

firsthand than Barbara. 

I have also encountered others who have 

helped me to lead organizational change, build 

positive industry relationships, learn from my 

mistakes, be open to new ideas, take the 

initiative, and fix fatal flaws. I cherish the 

opportunity to hold this position and be a part 

of the positive impact that the Association of 

Diving Contractors International has on the 

underwater industry. 

Underwater Intervention, UI 2018. 


111

SPONSORS 

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Association of

Working Underwater: The Story of the Commercial Diving Industry

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