Greetings from SEALAB author Ben Hellwarth

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Welcome to SCUBAboard!

Looking forward to your book!
 
It's a great book. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot.

Thanks.


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Thanks, fisheater. SEALAB was meant to be an enjoyable book to read and also one from which most readers would learn a lot, since this history of manned undersea exploration had never been fully told. I was glad to be able to tell it - and as you can probably tell from those lengthy endnotes and acknowledgments, writing this book was no small task, but it's been satisfying to bring the story and some great characters to light.
 
The amount of effort and research was quite obvious. Yet, you never let that get in the way of the story narrative.

Not many authors can pull that off.


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Thanks for the kind words, fisheater - I'm always glad to hear that my book was both informative and enjoyable to read. Thanks, too, for the words of welcome from others and I'm afraid Akimbo is right about the fate of Sealab II & III. I once had a section in the book about the explosive technique used to form those concave heads at either end of the lab but it wound up on the cutting-room floor. I could probably retell it if folks are interested - was definitely a unique approach that would probably NOT be tolerated today.

And thanks to everyone else whose thoughtful responses have appeared in recent days – some good threads now going in the “Vintage Equipment Diving” forum following my photo post “State of the art, 1969” and also “50th anniversary of a diving experiment.” Also great stuff so far from readers of the thread in “Book/Media Reviews” called “Lessons from SEALAB and a golden age” (this one actually started out in “Basic Scuba Discussions” before getting moved – sorry for the confusion). I look forward to reading more thoughts and observations about these and future posts.

- Ben

---------- Post added December 2nd, 2012 at 10:43 PM ----------

Thanks for the kind words, fisheater - I'm always glad to hear that my book was both informative and enjoyable to read.
Oops - forgot I already said thanks to fisheater in an earlier thread post - but thanks again!
 
Here's that "State of the art, 1969" gear, by the way . . .
 

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Welcome! I remember as a boy reading and watching everything I could about sealab.
 
I would describe that as a Washington-based non-diving engineering committee’s wet dream. State of the art was much better than that. A few companies in the Gulf of Mexico were actually doing much better by 1969. The poor diver’s had to try making that pig work. As I recall, the D. G. O’Brian electrical connector sticking out the back had about 24 pins… and lighting and video weren’t even part of the rig. They were the same connectors used on Nuclear submarines and were rated to 20,000'.

Aside from making getting through the hatch with it ridiculous, you couldn’t get them apart at depth when mated on the surface. If you mate them at depth and forget to take them apart before decompression, you got huge helium bubbles in the cable.

The umbilical “seemed” like a good idea… to someone who never used one before. The molded jacket did make it slide nicely; but repairs were impossible, it was way too stiff, and it was way too negative in the water.

There were great piles of this stuff in the diving locker by the time I came along a couple of years. Sure glad I never had to actually use it!
 
Good points, Akimbo, and I would say that a lot of the SEALAB divers felt the same way about this "state of the art" rig - and about a number of other things that happened with SEALAB III, as described in my book about this final phase of the program, the accident, and the subsequent Navy investigation.
 
Ben, you did a great job in the book describing the difference in sensibilities between the Navy/Captain Bond compared to Ed Link and Jacques Cousteau. The Navy’s early risk aversion and vast bureaucracy meant a lot of people laid their careers on the line and would be the “goat” if anything went wrong. Fortunately, Washington spooks discovered a need for saturation diving by the time the Sealab III fiasco occurred.

It is ironic that the absurd timetable imposed by Washington made Sealab III a disaster-in-waiting and the project failure itself was used for cold-war misinformation… which I didn’t fully appreciate until reading your book. The many people who put their lives and careers the line deserve better.
 
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Thanks for the kind words about my descriptions, Akimbo. Always means a lot to hear such kudos from people of your experience. And good point about the irony, sad though it may be.

By the way, it looks like I'll be giving my SEALAB presentation a few more times this year, so anyone who's interested might want to stay tuned to the Events page of my web site in case I'll be in the neighborhood. And of course I'm always delighted to have visitors "like" my Facebook page, where I always post any news having to do with SEALAB, along with related info and other musings.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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