covediver
Contributor
John Potter is best known to divers around the world as the author of a series ofbooks, The Treasure Hunter’s Guide and its later incarnation the Treasure Diver’s Guide. Stauffer, now in his late 80’s, has recently released an autobiography, My First Nine Lives: Full Value Received, A Memoir (2012; ISBN 978-1480016699). Best known to divers as author of the Treasure Diver’s Guide, the book that is attributed as the inspiration to any number of treasure hunters in the 1960’s, this biography covers the period before he was an active diver. Despite a cover that shows Stauffer with a face mask perched on his forehead, the only mention of diving when he describes fishing from a Navy fast rescue boat off the coast of Korea near Pusan at the end ofthe Korean War in 1953. (He was a civilian working as an employee of a trading company whose main business appears to have been the importation of spirits and other non-essential items into Korea.) “By the time we returned, two exciting events had taken place. First, I hooked a monster king mackerel that needed the muscle of a big Navy chief to pull aboard; and second, I made a shallow dive wearing a UDT facemask and flippers. The water was too cold for me to stay in more than two minutes, but this was enough to kindle a flame in my adventure circuit that—a few lives later—would explode unto astring of wild adventures beneath two oceans on the other side of the world.”
The book describes nine episodes in his life from his childhood as the son of a company representative in pre-World War II Shanghai, his secondary education at a Rhode Island boarding school, education at Harvard, his service during WWII as a Naval Officer studying language without being deployed overseas, his return to post-War China to start a career as a company representative following in the footsteps of his father, his encounters with the early Chinese Communist government, his relocation to Hong Kong, and finally his time as an import-export company representative in Korea. At each phase of his early adult life the reader is brought into his adventures, which often involve consumption of copious amounts of alcohol and sexual conquest after sexual conquest.
The book reveals the privileged, if sometimes dangerous, lifestyles of Americans and other Europeans living in the international community in Shanghai at the close of the age of imperialism in pre-war China and in the period before the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Stauffer’s father was interred by the Japanese at the beginning of the war having stayed behind to look after business affairs in Shanghai after sending the family back to the States.) Attempts to re-establish the business and lifestyle in post-war China prior to an in the immediate aftermath of the Communist takeover prove difficult. After the author has some hair-raising encounters with the Red Chinese, Stauffer relocates to Hong Kong to continue his career as an international insurance companyrepresentative.
The book ends with his departure from Korea. “I was mildly dissatisfied to be leaving without seeing some pending projects through to completion,” he writes at the close of the book, “…But even in my wildest imagination could I have foreseen such events as winning the big one at Monte Carlo, wrestling a giant conger eel deep under the Mediterranean as it ripped a 60-pound grouper off my spear, drinking with Errol Flynn and Eva Gardner;…leading the first big scuba expedition off Spain…, salvaging 23 cadavers from the deep wreckage of a trawler lost in an Atlantic storm, or receiving a consignment of the Atocha’s treasure from world-famous treasure hunter Mel Fischer, in appreciation for starting him on the path to that wreck.”
I can’t really recommend this book to the scuba diving community. Its essentially a description of the formative years of an adventurer liberally sprinkled with reminiscences of episodes of inebriated testosterone.
The book describes nine episodes in his life from his childhood as the son of a company representative in pre-World War II Shanghai, his secondary education at a Rhode Island boarding school, education at Harvard, his service during WWII as a Naval Officer studying language without being deployed overseas, his return to post-War China to start a career as a company representative following in the footsteps of his father, his encounters with the early Chinese Communist government, his relocation to Hong Kong, and finally his time as an import-export company representative in Korea. At each phase of his early adult life the reader is brought into his adventures, which often involve consumption of copious amounts of alcohol and sexual conquest after sexual conquest.
The book reveals the privileged, if sometimes dangerous, lifestyles of Americans and other Europeans living in the international community in Shanghai at the close of the age of imperialism in pre-war China and in the period before the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Stauffer’s father was interred by the Japanese at the beginning of the war having stayed behind to look after business affairs in Shanghai after sending the family back to the States.) Attempts to re-establish the business and lifestyle in post-war China prior to an in the immediate aftermath of the Communist takeover prove difficult. After the author has some hair-raising encounters with the Red Chinese, Stauffer relocates to Hong Kong to continue his career as an international insurance companyrepresentative.
The book ends with his departure from Korea. “I was mildly dissatisfied to be leaving without seeing some pending projects through to completion,” he writes at the close of the book, “…But even in my wildest imagination could I have foreseen such events as winning the big one at Monte Carlo, wrestling a giant conger eel deep under the Mediterranean as it ripped a 60-pound grouper off my spear, drinking with Errol Flynn and Eva Gardner;…leading the first big scuba expedition off Spain…, salvaging 23 cadavers from the deep wreckage of a trawler lost in an Atlantic storm, or receiving a consignment of the Atocha’s treasure from world-famous treasure hunter Mel Fischer, in appreciation for starting him on the path to that wreck.”
I can’t really recommend this book to the scuba diving community. Its essentially a description of the formative years of an adventurer liberally sprinkled with reminiscences of episodes of inebriated testosterone.
