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    SCUBA Pioneer: Diving from the 1950's to the Present
    SCUBA Pioneer: Diving from the 1950's to the Present
    SCUBA Pioneer: Diving from the 1950's to the Present
    Ebook156 pages1 hour

    SCUBA Pioneer: Diving from the 1950's to the Present

    By George Landgrabe

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    About this ebook

    Welcome To A Whole New Underwater World...
    Whether you're new to the sport of scuba diving, considering giving it a try, or a seasoned veteran, you will enjoy reading the insights from someone who has been diving for more than half a century.

    You'll appreciate how advancements in equipment have changed and made it easier than ever for more people to enjoy the vast underwater world that, for most, remains a hidden mystery.

    Are you ready to dive in?
    Why settle to read only facts and statistics about what can become a lifelong hobby, when you can benefit from reading a story? This book shares with you one man's journey of "taking the plunge", from swimming across the surface of the water to diving down to explore vast reaches of magical world invisible to those above.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHigherLife Publishing
    Release dateAug 3, 2020
    ISBN9781951492250
    SCUBA Pioneer: Diving from the 1950's to the Present

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      Book preview

      SCUBA Pioneer - George Landgrabe

      Epilogue

      INTRODUCTION

      This is the autobiography of an average individual who envisioned a sport that would allow him to explore the underwater world that previously eluded him.

      I’m glad to have entered scuba diving on the ground floor of its history. It’s kind of like the pilot who learned to fly in the seat of one of the older planes with limited instrumentation. Oh, what he learned by experience rather than having everything planned out for him on all those dials and numbers! Our diving was much like that: a lot of drive to get into the water and explore without the assistance of specialty equipment. That sparked our imagination to the point of making do or making it better. No standing still for someone else to hand us the answers.

      We met many challenges with enthusiasm and repetitive failure. But the upside is that with failure comes an education—an education that tells you, Don’t do that again. By not doing it again, you soon learn to eliminate the mistakes from your next attempt. The trick is to never stop trying.

      CHAPTER 1

      BEGINNING

      FROM ARCHERY TO SCUBA DIVING…OR CROSSING THE AISLE

      No, the title of this chapter is not a digression from my life of scuba diving; it’s just letting you know how a young person’s interests can change from one hobby to another.

      My father thought it would be interesting if our family became involved in some sport we could all participate in. So he joined the Cleveland Archery Club, and we took lessons to learn how to use a bow and arrows. We were a family of four. My older brother, Russell, also took up this hobby. It wasn’t long before he and my mother dropped out of shooting arrows, though, which left my dad and me to continue. It was a great bonding opportunity for us. My brother went on to study music and became a talented clarinet player.

      For the next four or five years, my father and I participated in numerous archery tournaments. An accountant, he became treasurer of the club. Our club became a major factor in the Cleveland scene. We even had a member, Russ Reynolds, who competed in the US Olympics. He demonstrated his skills at the Northeast Ohio Sportsman Show by standing in the balcony of the auditorium and shooting at a target down on the stage. At those Sportsman Shows, our club ran a booth where the public could get some general instructions and then, for a dollar, shoot ten arrows at targets we had constructed. We also gave them some information about our club. As one of the members, I helped out in the booth.

      After graduating from high school, I enrolled at Fenn College in downtown Cleveland, which later became Cleveland State University. Because I loved the water and my high school didn’t have a swimming pool, I immediately tried out for the swimming team. I qualified to start a four-year participation with them.

      At the same time, I continued with the archery, but my fascination with water grew more and more prevalent in the back of my mind, especially with a program called Sea Hunt on television and Jacques Cousteau’s movie Silent World. One winter, while working in our booth at the Sportsman Show, I noticed that a local sporting-goods store had a booth across the aisle. On the counter, they displayed a diving tank and regulator. I was mesmerized and started to chat with the store representative about what these devices could allow me to accomplish under water. This just added fuel to the fire of my fascination with the relatively new sport of scuba diving.

      As I tell everybody who asks how I moved from archery to scuba diving, I tell them that I crossed the aisle and never came back.

      Shortly after my encounter at the Sportsman Show, I went to a sporting-goods store and purchased a scuba tank, regulator, weight belt, depth gauge, and knife for a grand total of $150. I had previously purchased fins and a mask. The year was 1956, and I was on top of the world to find out just what these devices could do.

      Fortunately, being on the swimming team in college gave me the opportunity to try out the new device in the college pool. Each one of my team members had to have a test run with my equipment, but none caught the diving fever as much as I did.

      My next step was to find out more about just how to use this new equipment so I didn’t end my life experimenting on my own. Growing up on the shores of Lake Erie, I desperately wanted to explore the lake similar to what I had seen on Sea Hunt.

      I soon learned there was a small diving club that met at the local aquarium. The club was started by a group of divers who came together while searching for the murder weapon from the Sam Sheppard murder case. The murder took place on the west side of Cleveland at a house that was positioned above a cliff overlooking Lake Erie. The movie The Fugitive was patterned after this case. Speculation was that the weapon may have been tossed off the cliff into the lake. For this reason, local authorities made a plea to anyone who had diving experience to join in a hunt for the weapon. After the hunt provided no results, the divers got together and formed the Cleveland Skin Diving Club.

      Now, I’m going to stop right here and explain just why the club name was selected. You have to realize that back in the mid-1950s, diving was called skin diving. This related more to what is known today as free diving, or without an Aqua-Lung. Back then, we were skin divers using scuba equipment. SCUBA, at that time, was the abbreviation for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. This abbreviation has since morphed into a title for diving with the aid of a breathing device.

      When I arrived at the Cleveland Skin Divers club meeting, I was fascinated with the conversations taking place among the members as to how they got started and what experiences they had since.

      I inquired as to how I might learn to better use my newly acquired equipment and was told I would have to go through a check-out session at a local pool.

      At the very earliest opportunity, I met the person who was going to qualify me. He had me dump all my equipment—mainly the tank and regulator, weight belt, mask, and fins—at the 10-foot deep end of the pool. Now, he said, go down and put all your equipment on before you surface.

      As you might have guessed, there is a trick to this. Of course air is essential, so your first task is to turn on the tank and place the regulator mouthpiece in your mouth, clear the water out, and begin breathing. Next, you have to be able to stay at the bottom without bobbing up to the surface, which requires putting the weight belt across your lap. With these two major steps completed, it’s almost downhill from there. Almost, I say, because you still have to put on the mask and fins.

      Typically, you do the first two steps without the mask. You will not have enough air to clear the water out of your mask until you receive a continuous supply from the regulator. You then clear your mask by putting it on and looking toward the surface while exhaling through your nose. The air going into the mask rises to the surface and voids the water out through the sides that rest against your face. You then put on the fins and transfer the weight belt from across your lap to around your waist before surfacing.

      After doing all of that, I got an approving nod from my instructor, who then said I was ready to go into Lake Erie.

      CHAPTER 2

      DIVER DOWN

      INTO THE DEPTHS OF LAKE ERIE

      Was I really ready for Lake Erie, as my instructor said? Ready or not, I scheduled myself on the next dive with the club on their boat, which was an old wooden trap netter owned by one of the members. My understanding was the destination that day was a sunken oil barge by the name of Cleveco that went down in a storm in 1942 in 80 feet of water. During a storm in December 1942, about thirteen miles from Cleveland, the tugboat called the Admiral sank to the bottom of Lake Erie. Its entire crew of fourteen men died. The eighteen men on the Cleveco, the oil barge it was towing, also died.¹ The Cleveco was marked with a buoy because it is a possible hazard to navigation, so it was not hard to find its location. In addition, it was leaking oil from the reported one million gallons of fuel oil it had in its tanks. Unfortunately, it had landed upside down, so there was not a lot to see except the rounded bottom.

      Club Boat

      While they set the anchor, the divers prepared for the dive. Most divers dive Lake Erie only in June, July and August because during the other months, the water is too cold to endure without the wet or dry suits that were not readily available at that time. All we could do was wear close-fitting garments that, in most cases, turned out to be long underwear. So there we were, about ten divers standing on the boat in our rear-flap diving suits, preparing to explore the deep.

      Because this was my first dive in Lake Erie, the club assigned me to Don, one of their more experienced divers, to accompany me to the wreck. We both entered the water and experienced the first shock of the 72-degree surface temperature. After a thumbs up, indicating that both of us had checked out our equipment, we started down. Because I was so new, my dive buddy actually held my hand during the descent. The next shocking experience was

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