Working Underwater: The Story of the Commercial Diving Industry

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.
THE HISTORY OF COMMERCIAL DIVING
31