Basic gear from mid-twentieth-century Italy: Other manufacturers

[David Wilson]

Thank you so much for your two explanatory messages, Angelo. The first really cheered me up this morning when I rose to find torrential rain pouring from dark skies here in North East England and then you enabled me to view the beautiful seaside town of Nervi in all its sunlit glory. I was completely unaware of the significance of Nervi for diving instructors! I'm grateful too for your observations on the significance of the year 1971 in one of the images I posted.

I am not a fan of plastic products either, particularly in the case of fins, because I can still remember the cheap, flimsy-looking plastic fins of the 1960s that hurt children's feet. I have never really come to terms with plastic being adopted as a fin material from the late 1970s onwards although I do understand the advantage of its lightness for airline travel.

 

[Angelo Farina]

David, as I know you like vintage equipment and the history of diving, here an one-hour long video describing the equipment, exercesis and diving techniques employed during the Instructor Training Course at the Nervi Diving School in the sixties.
The video features Duilio Marcante and some of the instructors operating at the diving school under his direction, including Sergio Canu, who was working with me and my wife at Club Vacanze resorts at Maldives in 1986.
The comment is in Italian, but just watching the video shows how many things changed profoundly.
For example, propulsion using hands was considered very important, particularly in caves or wrecks.
And the standard Scuba system employed was the ARO, the military-grade CC rebreather...
Enjoy it when you have some spare time:

 

[Luis H]

Very cool video. I just skipped and watched some sections. With my Spanish, I can understand some of it.
I am going to have to look at it more when I have some time.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[jale]

Cool the video and the buddy breathing at 3 from the Cressi
Something similar on the French side. No aro but quadritank...

 

[WeRtheOcean]

Rough translation: "SALVAS. Salvas-Shark Adesiva mask, designed for freedivers: very low internal volume, easy compensation, maximum adherence to the face. Black, blue or lobster coloured models with a fixing band in the case of yellow models. The price is 3,500 Lire".

Lobster colored? Would that be live lobster or cooked lobster?

Date ties in with the Sea Hornet timber speargun the guy is holding as first versions had bronze coloured plastic parts, later they were black.

I can't help noticing that the majority of the scenes with models have them holding spearguns. Am I to understand that spearfishing was more prominent than recreational snorkeling/diving, even as late as mid-twentieth century?

 

[David Wilson]

Lobster colored? Would that be live lobster or cooked lobster

Unlike French and German, Italian isn't a language I have studied in any great depth, so I rely on Google Translate for an initial draft rendering when working with languages I know less well. "Aragosta" as a noun is Italian for "lobster", but I see now from the Collins dictionary site at English Translation of “aragosta” | Collins Italian-English Dictionary that "aragosta" as an invariable adjective actually translates to "bright orange". I stand corrected.

 

[Popgun Pete]

Lobster colored? Would that be live lobster or cooked lobster?


I can't help noticing that the majority of the scenes with models have them holding spearguns. Am I to understand that spearfishing was more prominent than recreational snorkeling/diving, even as late as mid-twentieth century?

I guess spearguns have always added some glamour to advertising shoots.
https://forums.deeperblue.com/attachments/bernicee-jpg.42843/

 

[David Wilson]

Thanks, everybody, for your likes, contributions and the videos. They are truly appreciated.

More Salvas breathing tubes today. Let us begin with the "Ustica" snorkel, which is named after a small Italian island (port and hinterland above) in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is about 5 kilometres (3 miles) across and is situated 52 kilometres (32 miles) north of Capo Gallo, Sicily. Roughly 1,300 people live in the municipality of the same name. There is a regular ferry service from the island to Palermo in Sicily.

Here is the snorkel in a 1961 issue of Mondo Sommerso:

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The caption simply reads "respiratore con tubo corrugato in gomma, which roughly translates to "snorkel with corrugated rubber tube." So what we have here is a flexible-hose breathing tube of the type invented during the 1950s and supposedly preferred by scuba divers because the mouthpiece drops out of the way when out of use.

Here is the Ustica again in the German-language Salvas catalogue of 1966:

There it is bottom left, identified as "art. 303, geriffelt mit Plastikröhre" (Article No. 303, corrugated with plastic tube). The following year, in 1967, there appear to have been at least two versions of the Ustica with different colour combinations including the corrugated hose:

In the late 1960s a copy of a Whitstable Diving Company catalogue came into my possession. WDC turned out to be a Salvas stockist:

And there is the Ustica bottom right with a note in Italian saying this model was used along with Bucher fins and a Super Cirano mask during a word-record breath-hold dive on 11 August 1962.

We complete our review of the Ustica snorkel with a few auction photos:

The code "DIN 7878" on the mouthpiece of the final image designates a 1981 and 1990 German Standard for snorkels that has since been superseded by European Standard EN 1972 of 2015.

 

[David Wilson]

Last snorkel of the day is the Rapallo, which is named after a municipality (above) in the Metropolitan City of Genoa, located in the Liguria region of northern Italy. Here is a picture of the breathing tube from a 1975 issue of Mondo Sommerso:

Italian: "Salvas il boccaglio comodo. Il nuovo boccaglio « Rapallo » della Salvas di Castelnuovo Scrivia ha l'imboccatura che può ruotare sul tubo sagomato, in modo da sistemarla nella posizione più comoda. La forma della imboccatura, con i due piuolini che vanno serrrati fra i denti, è stata studiata anatomicamente. La parte terminale del tubo è rivestita da un nastro fluorescente, per rendere il subacqueo più facilmente avvistabile da lontano. Prezzo orientativo, senza IVA: lire novecento."
Rough translation: "Salvas the comfortable snorkel. The new "Rapallo" snorkel from Salvas of Castelnuovo Scrivia has a mouthpiece that can rotate on the contoured tube, so it can be placed in the most comfortable position. The shape of the mouthpiece, with the two lugs that must be clamped between the teeth, is a product of anatomical research.. The end of the tube is covered with a fluorescent tape, to make the diver easier to see from a distance. Suggested price, without VAT: 900 lire.

So the Rapallo snorkel is of the contoured variety that became popular during the 1970s.

Ans that's where I shall leave matters until the weekend, when I shall return to review the snorkel-masks Salvas manufactured. In the meantime, keep safe and stay well.

 

[David Wilson]

Thanks, Sam and Jale, for the "likes".

Today I shall focus on the Salvas range of snorkel-masks. As I have said before, don't dismiss mid-twentieth-century masks with built-in snorkels out of hand as "children's playthings", as they were objects in the toolbox of a number of underwater hunters in the Mediterranean back then. Our first model is the Salvas Capri, named after the island (pictured above) located in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrento Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. The main town Capri that is located on the island shares the name. It has been a resort since the time of the Roman Republic.

I am going to review my sources of information about the Salvas Capri in approximate chronological order, starting with 1954:

The bather on the left is wearing the Capri snorkel mask, which you can see is a rather elaborate affair combining a round-lens full-face mask with a drain valve below and fitted with one long breathing tube above topped with a rather complicated-looking check valve. The caption accompanying the photograph was "Two young women going snorkelling. (Photo by Slim Aarons/Getty Images) Collection: Slim Aarons. Date created: 01 January, 1954".

My second source is the Rex-Hevea catalogue from the same year (1954), which provides a few more details:

Italian: "CAPRI: più grande della precedente, colore azzurro, speciale shnorkel «a bolla d’aria»: misura unica grande. (MAPRI) Lit. 3.600."
English: "Larger than the preceding, blue in color, special snorkel «with air bubble»; one large size only".

My third source transports us States-side across the Atlantic:

The picture is from page 96 of the 1955 edition of Rick & Barbara Carrier's Dive: The Complete Book of Skin Diving, one of the most celebrated American diving books of the 1950s and a must for any serious collector of such literature. The caption reads: "Full face mask with or without snorkel attached".

My fourth source this morning is Ley Kenyon's 1957 title Collins Pocket Guide to the Undersea World, which is an excellent go-to book for reviews of 1950s European dive gear. Here is what the author says on page 32 about the Salvas Capri: "[SALVAS] CAPRI. Italian. Works on the same principle as [SALVAS] Nettuno, but with the tube carried over the top of the head, and a larger round window giving extra wide vision. Neither the Capri or Nettuno are (sic), as far as I know, obtainable in Britain".