BSACDECADES
BSAC founder Oscar Gugen , who took Jim to the chamber on the night of his DCI
Experimental dive
By the early 1960s , Jim was at the vanguard of the growing British Sub-Aqua Club ; a founder member , Diving Officer and international adventurer with a beautiful Italian wife . So why did he leave the diving scene so suddenly , not to be heard of for another six decades ? Marisa prompts the answer , urging Jim to tell the story of the incident that led to him quitting the diving scene .
Jim was approached to try out an item of equipment for the Royal Navy . He describes the item in vague terms , but it seems to be a version of a DCP , an automatic decompression meter that derived its acronym from the Italian DeComPressimetro .
The original device was introduced in 1959 by Italian engineers , and consisted of a waterproof deformable chamber filled with gas and connected to a smaller rigid chamber through a semi-porous ceramic cartridge . The rigid chamber was equipped
with a bourdon tube to measure the inside pressure , and the mechanism was linked to a calibrated indicator to give the decompression status of the diver . Enclosed in a housing , it served as an analogue diving computer .
Jim had been trying out the device in a quarry dive to 160ft ( 48m ), but experienced severe back pain on leaving the water . He recognised the symptoms and returned to the water to carry out in-water recompression , a risky strategy that would not be attempted today . As the pain returned , he called Oscar Gugen for advice , and was told he ’ d have to visit the recompression chamber in Portsmouth .
Jim says : “ I just about made it to Oscar ’ s house in Barnes , then I passed out . He drove me in his big Ford down to the submarine training facility at HMS Vernon [ a shore establishment of the Royal Navy ] and I went in the chamber .”
From being paralysed from the waist down , he was fortunate to eventually make a recovery . What had caused the DCI ? “ I honestly don ’ t know ,” Jim says . “ It may have been my body or it may have been the DCP .”
What became of the prototype is not known , because Jim ’ s priorities lay in his recovery and return to normal life – but not the diving world . All the same , he had already played a central role in the early development of BSAC ; diving had even led him to his wife . He remains positive about his memories of diving , and the magic of the sea .
“ I enjoyed it all ,” he says . “ I ’ ve dived on wrecks , I ’ ve dived into the blue , where you can ’ t see the surface , you can ’ t see the bottom and you ’ re in the middle of the sea . You can lose your sense of which way is up , and which is down . So , you put hand over the valve of the regulator . You wait for the bubbles and you turn your body until you feel the bubbles hitting your hand . Whichever way the bubbles are going , that ’ s up !”
Wreck recovery at Hampstead Heath
38
Jim , centre , with fellow London No 1 divers