Dumas Doria Dive.

[Ron]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvrId8v2JEg

The year is 1956, and Frederic Dumas makes a dive to the Andrea Doria, with Louis Malle, one week after its sinking. Based upon what the narrator says, I ran his approximate dive profile through Vplanner, a modern computer based dive profile calculator. It took the divers about 4 minutes to descend to the structure of the ship (then at 160 feet). They spent 8 minutes on the bottom, and made a safe ascent with decompression stops along the way. They consumed about 62 cubic feet of air per diver during their dive. Based upon the latest, greatest technical agency training each diver needed about 52 cubic feet of gas in reserve in case he had an equipment failure or emergency that required an ascent soley on his buddy's SCUBA. They wore triple 44 cubic foot tanks, for a sum total of 132 cubic feet of gas each, which means they had well over 52 cubic feet of gas in reserve. They planned, prepared, and executed the dive with the utmost precision by the modern standards of the variable permeablility model, even with a safety factor of +2. They made a 1 minute stop at 20 feet and a 4 minute stop at 10 feet for decompression. Their total time from the start of the dive to the start of the ascent was 15 minutes, and they may have used the 1950's Navy tables, which were one of the only diving tables available at the time. They would have had to make a 40 second stop at 30 feet, a 2 minute stop at 20 feet, and a 3 minute at 10 feet if they had used Vplanner's computations.

Their dive was conducted in 1956, three years after the Aqualung was produced in America. If I had to make that same dive today with that exact equipment, I could not have done it much better with a computer the size of a paperback book that crushes the computing power of anything around in the 1950's. They did it with some dive tables, a double hose regulator, a rubber drysuit, and some long johns. I would have added a third 40 second stop at 30 feet 54 years later, but other than that not much would have changed if I had to plan that same dive on compressed air. A redundant regulator and isolated dual outlet manifold would be standard kit for a dive like this today, but a diver utilizing compressed air would not perform this dive in a manner all that foreign from the way that they did back then. He might choose a different gas mixture and sling a bottle or two, but such things did not exist in 1956. He might dive a computer instead of looking at a set of tables and writing some numbers on his hand with a grease pencil. He might cut his own tables that he would place in the pocket of his two thousand dollar laminate drysuit which would appear a far cry from the simple sheet rubber with which Dumas covered himself. Still, at the core of it all, the dive would be planned, prepared, and executed the same way. A team would make sure that they had a drill rehearsed for emergencies, and they would ensure that they had enough gas with them to make it home on one set of gear if the world fell to pieces 160 feet beneath the ocean. In an interesting bit of trivia, today there isn't any structure of the Andrea Doria left at 160 feet. Nevertheless, the point remains that what many would call a "technical" dive of the vintage era was planned in an effective and safety conscious way, especially given the time period in which it was conducted.

Two points in closing, with tongue firmly in cheek:

1.)How cool is that video?
2.) Isn't it amazing that even though divers of old have that hairy chested, dangerous reputation from some people that they still planned, prepared, and executed a dive that when presented in the form of data and examined with modern gas planning and decompression knowledge with respect to compressed air implies an exceptional amount of forethought, safety-mindedness, and redundancy given their available equipment?
3.) Do you like how item 2 was essentially one giant run-on sentence AND I said there would only be two points? That just happened.

[Gilldiver]

Peter Gimbel and Joseph Fox were the first to dive her. They got to the wreck the day after she sank and had lots of problems, the least of which was the boat running out of gas on the way back in.

[JES]

Thanks for posting the link.

[Ron]

Peter Gimbel and Joseph Fox were the first to dive her. They got to the wreck the day after she sank and had lots of problems, the least of which was the boat running out of gas on the way back in.

Yep, they were in Time. They didn't have video cameras though to my knowledge, so it would have been difficult to analyze their video for a dive profile That's the good part about any of the guys who worked with JYC, they video taped everything. I knew anything with Malle and Dumas would be taped, it was common for them. I wanted to see how their profile would hold up under modern scrutiny. I think it held up pretty well.

[captain]

Peter Gimbel and Joseph Fox were the first to dive her. They got to the wreck the day after she sank and had lots of problems, the least of which was the boat running out of gas on the way back in.

Yep, they were in Time. They didn't have video cameras though to my knowledge, so it would have been difficult to analyze their video for a dive profile That's the good part about any of the guys who worked with JYC, they video taped everything. I knew anything with Malle and Dumas would be taped, it was common for them. I wanted to see how their profile would hold up under modern scrutiny. I think it held up pretty well.

Young'un, They didn't have video cameras, for the same reason they didn't have cell phones, BC's, single hose regulators and SPG's. Just keeping it vintage.

[YankDownUnder]

I remember the sinking. It was in the news everywhere. I was a boy and my family was to sail out of New York sometime later on the SS Constitution. We were to go to Casablanca. The miracle save was the hottest subject. A sleeping girl was in her cabin in the Andrea Doria, when the Stockholm struct. As the Stockholm pulled back, her cabin came with it and she was saved on the Stockholm.

The recording was made on film, not video tape. Compact video tape recording was a long way off. The earliest video tape recorders were the size of a small car and TV cameras fed them through cables. They were rarely used for remote recordings and they too came later. Live TV shows from that era, were saved on Kinescope, which was a film camera pointed at a TV screen. I did TV news filming in college for practical experience in 1964 and 16 mm film was the most common format. Hollywood movies were on 35 mm film.

I am curious about the capacity of the tanks. Dumas was using the early tanks that appear in the Silent World. They used the CG-45 and green label Aqua Lungs in the movie. I saw a set of the tanks at DEMA 2002. The set was sitting on the floor at the Cousteau Society venue, with no one around. The tanks were substantially smaller than my triple 44 cu ft Broxton's. They were much smaller than I expected. I would guess 5 liters. Does anyone know their actual capacity and working pressure? Perhaps Ryan could help us out. Steve

[Ron]

It just occurred to me that I used the term video camera instead of uh....what would that be...a motion film camera?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_camera

Ah, there we go. I have never spoken the term "movie camera" in my entire life You learn something new every day around this place.

[capn_tucker]

They more than likely used the 1952 Navy tables. I'll have to break out my copy of the '52 tables and see how that compares..

[Ron]

Yeah, I ran the profile against the 58 tables, as I don't think I have any 52 tables here. Let me know what you get.

[eskimo3883]

Got to love the guy who came up with the idea to shark fish while two divers begin a decompression dive. I recall reading Dumas tore his dry suit open on that dive and had to decompress in bone chilling water. Also, the camera got messed up so they only got a few seconds of film while on the Doria.

Decompressing in a leaking dry suit while watching a bleeding shark hang off the end of the boat would not be fun.

[DiverTim]

This was an excellent thread( I mean article ) Ron. Tim

[Gilldiver]

Sharks on the Doria are common, usualy 3 to 4 foot Blues. They will come up and bump you and in general make to new guys nervous.

But Joel Silverstine has a story where he was diving with Hank Garvin of the Garloo (ex Wahoo) on the wreck and the blues were bumping them. Joel just tried to ignore them after a while and then saw that Hank had moved off a bit on the 20 and 10 foot deco hangs. When they got back onn the boat Joel asked Hank why he had moved off. Hank told him that when the 2 Mako's started to bump Joel he decided to move away from their dinner table.

Joel had never seen the Makos.

[Gilldiver]

Here is Joels Mako story in his own words, I was a bit off on some of the details.

"So it has to be sometime in the mid 1990s Hank Garvin and I do the tie-in on the Andrea Doria. Screaming current on the bottom, a real dog of a tie-in but we get it done. By the time we are up on deco the seas calmed down a bit BUT visibility was maybe 15 foot or so. We were up doing the 20 foot stops on the surface supply oxygen and all was good. Hank moved over to one of the other drop lines about 10 feet away, which was pretty normal for him / I to do with another 20 min or so infront of us.

The sea kicks up a little again and I get tossed a bit, no biggie. Then again, then a little later another bump. I see other divers heading down the line so i think i may have been one of them ......

I get back on board and I ask Hank why he stayed on the other line so long and did not want to play cards. He replied...... "you were getting bumped left and right by those two makos..... i did not want to be part of it"