Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 February 1917 — Divers Who Work on Bottom Of the Sea Must Be Willing To Confront Many Dangers [ARTICLE]

Divers Who Work on Bottom Of the Sea Must Be Willing To Confront Many Dangers

. Arthur P. Mayfield of the United States navy was honor man of the first class to be “-graduated” by the deep sea diving school ’started by the navy department. Here is how it feels to go down. to. -the. floor of the ocean with life dependent on a slender hose, as related by Mr. Mayfield, according to the Kansas City Times: “When they let you down from the side of a boat into deep water, the first Impression is like going out of a brilliantly lighted room into a dark one, for your eyes are slow in getting accustomed to the gloom. After a while you begin to see the phosphorus In the water, and that helps a bit, and later when you are used to the difference, you find that you can see things dimly by means of the light that has filtered down from above. However, that is not enough to work by. You take

an electric light for that purpose. “By the time you get down around ninety feet the oxygen supplied through your air hose gets in its work, and you feel wonderfully exhilarated —it’s almost like having a ‘jag’ on. You descend gradually, and the feeling of exhilaration wears off a bit, and then you begin to realize the dangers about you. “There are all kinds of dangers. First there is the danger of carbon dioxide poisoning, which hits a man if he doesn’t regulate his air supply properly and breathes vitiated air over again. It’s just like being in a closed room without any ventilation. The air pressure is regulated to some extent from above, but you have got to do most of the regulating yourself by means of the valve in your diving suit. Then, at great depths, when the pressure is half a dozen or more atmospheres, there is danger from oxygen poisoning, and this is extremely hard to overcome. • - “Contrary to the general belief, there is little danger from the sharks or other big dwellers down in deep water, for they are afraid of divers. You see, the air rushes out of the diver’s suit with a shrill, whistling sound; he carries an electric light, and his looks are enough to frighten off worse things than sharks. “A diver stays down from/ twenty to twenty-five minutes, on an average. It would be dangerous to stay down too long, for in addition to the chance of being poisoned, there is the cold to be reckoned with, to say nothing of the tremendous pressure.”