Down to the Ships in the Sea

WITH dustjacket and NOT ex-library. pp. 256 illusts #0918 Diving

The author is no doubt one of the great hard-hat divers of the last century, travelling the work salvaging the mindane and the exotic, from all sunken cargo ships, to gold and othr treasures; he covered both world wars, and was a principle diver in the raising of the German fleet at Scapa Flow. Although much of the book is biographical, he also reveals the principles and practice of standard dress diving, and how it has developed over his half century of working. A superb book, one that you can’t put down, and because of its content, of historical value.
From the fly: Harry Grossett is probably the most experienced deep-sea diver in the world. He has been going down to the ships in the sea for half a century, and next year he will celebrate both his seventieth birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of his first dive. During his career he has been at the bottom of most of the Seven Seas. He has had to break the ice to go down, and he has walked in the beautiful submarine gardens of the shark- infested tropics. He has traveled all over the world to salvage gold and other cargoes and to render first aid to ships. He has been bitten by a conger eel, trapped in a sunken troopship, and buried under concrete. He has sawn off human limbs under water, and salvaged human bones, and twice he was nearly murdered under water at Hong Kong. During the First World War he was diving from a war-ship off the Dardanelles, and in the Second World War he was senior diver on the laying of the Accra Pipeline. Between the wars he played a leading part in the biggest salvage operation in history – raising the German Fleet at Scapa Flow. He is still diving today. This book is full of adventures, but it is more than a personal adventure story. The author reveals the principles and practice of deep-sea diving, and shows how it has developed during the last fifty years. He looks forward as well as back, and discusses how modern inventions like armoured diving dress and television may affect diving; and in a thoughtful analysis of submarine disasters he suggests how loss of life might have been prevented in the past, and how, by a change in Admiralty policy, it could be prevented in the future.