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Advent of Commercial Helium Diving
Excerpted from The History of Oilfield Diving: An Industrial Adventure
by Christopher Swann (Oceanaut Press)
Excerpted from The History of Oilfield Diving: An Industrial Adventure
by Christopher Swann (Oceanaut Press)
From 1956 until 1962 a company called Associated Divers dominated deep diving in California, in what were the first deep-water oilfields in the world. Day after day this formidable combination of former abalone divers and ex-US Navy construction divers worked at 220'/67M-240'/73M on air, and occasionally even at 270'/82M. Out of the maximum 20-25 minutes the divers spent on the bottom, they might have been effective for no more than the first ten, but to go down to such depths, to accomplish a series of tasks and come up again alive was a feat few divers were capable of pulling off once, let alone over and over again.
The problem was nitrogen narcosis, what Jacques Cousteau poetically referred to as "rapture of the deep." Since the oil companies were almost entirely dependent on divers, and since by 1956 nearly all the drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel was being done in over 200'/61M of water, there was a premium on divers who could do a job quickly and efficiently without drifting off into a state of oblivion.
Tolerance to the effects of nitrogen narcosis therefore became a selecting factor: until, that is, an abalone diver named Hugh "Dan" Wilson, asked himself why they were not using helium.
Wilson had a good understanding of science, acquired as a boy thanks to a neighbor who was a mineralogist, and at the Sparling School of Deep Sea Diving he had learnt what the US Navy had accomplished with helium. He knew that helium-oxygen mixtures made it possible to dive much deeper than with air, and he thought he could extend the bottom time in the 200'/61M –250'/76M range from Associated's 20 minutes to a full hour: all of it hard work.
Compared with an air diver befuddled by narcosis and high levels of carbon dioxide, a helium diver would have a clear head and be able to put out maximum physical effort. It all sounded fine but he was unable to sell the idea. The oil companies were not about to try someone they had never heard of. And what was this helium business anyway? Wilson decided he would have to make a demonstration dive.
First, he had to put together a set of gear. Wilson was on one of his many downswings in the abalone business, and money was short. This vetoed his original idea of buying a US Navy helium recirculator helmet and modifying it into something less cumbersome. Instead, he got Santa Barbara Radiator to knock a piece out of the front of his Japanese abalone helmet and solder in a bubble to take the second stage of one of the new Sportsways single hose scuba regulators. Breathing from a demand regulator would be less efficient than recirculating the helium through a carbon dioxide absorbent canister; but Wilson still expected to reduce gas consumption by about a third, and the design had the decided advantage of simplicity. To complete the arrangement he had a fitting made to clamp the Sportsways first stage onto a standard navy belly valve, with a second valve to route the gas either to the regulator or straight into the helmet on open-circuit.
Wilson about to descend. The scuba regulator first stage, clamped to the navy belly valve, is under Wilson’s left arm. (Collection of the late Hugh “Dan” Wilson)
Wilson realised that to make an impression he was going to have to go much deeper than the current working depth in the Santa Barbara Channel. He picked 400'/123M. Accordingly he obtained a dozen bottles of helium from a hospital supply company in Long Beach and proceeded to mix the gas: 20% oxygen, 80% helium for the first part of the descent; 10% oxygen, 90% helium for depth. All that remained was to make up the hose and find a crew.
By then Kenny Elmes, the owner of a local oilfield supply-boat company and of the fuel dock in the Santa Barbara Harbor, had become Wilson’s partner. With an infusion of cash from Elmes, Wilson chartered a large fishing boat and hired Glenn Miller - a local fisherman who was to become well known in the sport diving charter business - as skipper. He also hired the corpsman in charge of diving at the Point Mugu naval base. The rest of the crew consisted of the cave diver Jim Houtz, a chiropractor friend, an underwater photographer from the Brooks Institute of Photography, and most important, Jerry Ruse - referred to by Wilson as "super muscles" - to tend his hose. There was no decompression chamber and no air compressor. It was deep diving on a shoestring.
On November 3 1962, they anchored on the other side of the Santa Barbara Channel, in deep water off Santa Cruz Island. As Wilson was the only person on board familiar with heavy gear, he had to divide his attention between directing his helpers as they dressed him, including the crucial rigging of the abalone-style breast and back weights, and organising the rest of the preparations for the dive.
His plan was to decompress on the US Navy 410 partial pressure table, which he thought would provide a reasonable safety margin for a 400'/123M bounce-dive. The unknown factor was the breathing on demand: the navy tables were intended for recirculating gear.
As soon as his helmet was on, Wilson went over the side and down the weighted descending line. He had expected the water to be blue; instead, it was dark green, and it turned even darker green as he descended. Soon he was in near darkness.
Then he heard Ruse’s voice over the telephone: "You’re at the end of your hose. Let’s come up."
Wilson did not want to risk over-inflating his dress and blowing to the surface, so he deliberately kept himself heavy. It was at this point that Ruse’s muscles came into play. Hand-over-hand, foot by foot, he pulled Wilson up. At 140'/43M, the first decompression stop, Wilson happened to cross his arms over his breast lead: to his horror, it fell off in his arms. If he dropped it, he was finished. His crew’s inexperience and his failure to check the rigging of the leads had come close to killing him. All that the scuba divers who swam down could find to bring with them to tie it up was a length of fishing line.
Wilson Decompressing. Note the fishing line to stop the breast and back weights from falling off. (Collection of the late Hugh “Dan” Wilson)
At 50'/15M, as per the navy helium tables, Wilson switched to pure oxygen. Uppermost in his mind was the need to relax to avoid any possibility of oxygen poisoning. All hope of relaxation evaporated, however, when the huge torpedo shape of a bonito shark, attracted by his shiny brass abalone shoes, shot towards him. The brute veered off, came at him a second time, and veered off again. Only months before, a huge great white shark had come within four feet of him. Now, in a classic case of delayed reaction, he began to pedal like a frenzied Olympic cyclist, convinced the bonito shark was out to eat him. Then he started to hear clicking sounds, which he took to be a sign of incipient oxygen poisoning. On deck, Ruse assured him the shark was not going to make a meal of him and he calmed down and finished his decompression.
On the ladder, no one could get Wilson’s helmet off, even Ruse. The pressure at 400'/123M had driven sea water into the leather breastplate gasket, swelling it like a sponge and jamming the helmet in place. There was nothing for it but to undo all the wing nuts and remove the breastplate and helmet in one piece.
On the ladder after the dive, with Jim Houtz (next to Wilson) and Jerry Ruse (back to the camera). The helmet and breastplate, removed in one piece because of the swollen leather gasket, can be seen at the bottom of the photo. (Collection of the late Hugh “Dan” Wilson)
Back in the harbor, Wilson and his crew measured the hose along the breakwater. Nearly all 410’/125M had gone straight over the side. Because he had worn the biggest leads he could find, as well as his abalone shoes, to make himself heavy, he added a "stretch factor". He put Ruse on one end of the hose, himself and a second helper on the other; then they pulled what they thought was the equivalent of his weight fully equipped and measured the difference. Wilson asked whether everyone agreed he had gone to at least 400'/123M. Everyone agreed. "Okay, said Wilson, "Sign this: I went 400'/123M."
Continued in the next post
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