TRAVELSPECIAL
Diver Elfie Messerer at Giglio , Italy , in 1962
Warm water training in the Med
PHOTOS : REG VALLINTINE
Reg Vallintine [ from a 2013 interview ] the attraction of its azure water was self-evident . “ It was a delightful sea to dive in , though sometimes you have to search hard to find its treasures . For us , the Med had a lot going for it – good food and cheap living ; flamenco and sangria .”
Reg went on to manage a school on the Italian island of Giglio , where he was instrumental in the discovery of a wreck of Etruscan origin , which yielded many artifacts . At the time of its discovery , it was the oldest known shipwreck in the world ( dating from around 600 BCE ) and Reg went from being a curiosity to a local hero on the island .
Opening up the Sinai
While the Med was seen as the aspirational destination and the Caribbean was mostly the domain of expats and American travellers – the Red Sea was the stuff of expeditions .
By the late Sixties , BSAC ’ s magazine Triton was featuring stories from travellers who had accessed shore dives by camping in the desert in order to explore the dive sites of the Sinai . At this point Sharm El Sheikh was a small fisherman ’ s village ; Na ’ ama Bay was a virgin beach with no buildings or roads .
With so much potential , the Sinai was soon to attract entrepreneurial divers who wanted to explore its potential . One of these was Howard Rosenstein , who started operations for diver tourism at the small Israeli village of Neviot , in what is now the Egyptian district of Nuweiba – a year later he moved to Sharm and found even better diving there .
Keen to attract the British market , Howard made a promotional visit to the UK in 1973 and met with Bernard Eaton , Editor of Triton . He recalls : “ I developed good relationships with many of the leaders of BSAC from the 1970s . Dr Nic Fleming ( archaeologist and former BSAC Chair ) became a personal friend and spent his honeymoon with us in Sharm in the mid 70s . I met with Sir Alex Flinder , who was BSAC Chair when he visited Israel … and he gave me a lot of insight into the British diving community .”
Desert diving in the Sinai , 1970s
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PHOTOS : HOWARD ROSENSTEIN