SCUBA's Last
Dive
by
Samuel G. and Debborah Lecocq
© 2006 Samuel G. Lecocq and Debborah
Lecocq
All Rights Reserved.
Once upon a time Gustav Dalla Valle was the export director
for North America representing Cressi Sub, an Italian
company that was one of the first manufacturers of
skindiving equipment. Gustav later went on to become the
founder and owner of Scubapro. Sam Lecocq had been hired by
Rene Bussoz, the founder of U.S. Divers Company to redesign
the Aqualung regulators from France and production of the
products in the U.S. Sam was appointed a short time later as
manager of U.S. Divers Company. Richard Klein was the
president of Healthways, a company that manufactured and
distributed sporting goods in Los Angeles, California.
Richard Kline asked Gustav and Sam to join him at Healthways
to manufacture a complete new line of Scuba diving
equipment. The multiethnic trio: an Italian, a Frenchman and
an American, didn’t even speak the same language.
Nevertheless, they embarked on an exciting commercial
venture that led to adventures at sea, as well.
To add to the challenge and excitement the three decided to
buy a boat and equip it for research and testing of the new
diving products they were designing. Sam found the perfect
boat, a 48-foot Jeffries powerboat with a 16-foot beam that
made it very stable. It had a large cabin and a spacious aft
deck. Sam went up to San Francisco to take a look at the
powerboat, bought it on the spot and cruised back down to
Los Angeles where they installed state-of-the-art equipment
for diving. They soon christened the boat, SCUBA, after the
new sport and the first double-hose regulator Sam designed
for Healthways.
The SCUBA had three large custom-made boarding ladders made
specifically to accommodate divers, an Ingersoll-Rand
Compressor, fathometer, radios and all the latest
electronics available in 1958. It had a large snack bar and
ample room for up to 30 divers. Sam, Gustav and Richard used
the boat during the week for trips to Catalina to test the
performance of Healthway’s new products, including the SCUBA
regulator. On the weekends it operated as “the first
year-round charter boat devoted exclusively to skin divers
and underwater sports enthusiasts”.
On a perfect morning in January, Sam headed to Catalina with
a group of divers to do some testing of the SCUBA
double-hose regulator and a new single-hose regulator he was
designing. With an eye to getting Navy approval for the
products, Sam had invited some guests to assist in the
open-water testing. One was his good friend, Navy Captain
Walter Miller, the director of the Pacific Missile Range at
Pt. Mugu, California, who brought three of his officers.
Also onboard was Sam’s younger brother, Gerard, on vacation
from France and his job as an engineer at Agfa, the giant
film manufacturer. Gerard had brought along all his
photographic equipment to document the events of the day. A
man more accustomed to flying small airplanes, Gerard was
eagerly anticipating his baptism at sea…his first ocean
dive. Sam’s wife, who also had very limited diving
experience, was looking forward to a day of diving.
The skipper on board was a retired Navy boatswain who had
been captain of the SCUBA since the first dive and knew the
boat and the Catalina channel very well. They enjoyed a
beautiful 27 mile crossing on an unseasonably warm morning
with calm, glassy seas and not a breeze. The first stop was
Eagle Reef, a sea mount about a mile off the east side of
Catalina Island. The top of the reef was about 30 feet below
the surface and it dropped off to about 200 feet. The
skipper dropped the anchor right alongside the reef and all
the divers geared up with full wetsuits and some of the
prototype equipment.
The dive teams formed up with the Navy officers as the first
team and Sam, his brother and his wife as the second. They
entered the water as a slight breeze came up. The water was
crystal clear, 100 foot visibility or more, which was
exceptional even for Catalina. Sam, Gerard and Barbara
proceeded down to 70 feet to test some regulators, planning
to pick up a couple lobsters for lunch on the ascent.
At the predetermined depth, everyone stopped and assessed
the equipment. Sam started to feel a slight current pulling
from shore towards deeper water, not an uncommon occurrence,
so they decided to continue exploring the reef. After ten
minutes or so the current became so strong it was nearly
impossible to swim against it, so Sam decided to ascend to
the surface and evaluate the sea conditions. He signaled to
his brother and wife to follow him and they met on the
surface.
Sam immediately realized they were in a difficult situation.
The SCUBA had drifted about 150 feet away from the original
position, though the anchor appeared to be holding. The
waves were four to six feet high and pushing the divers
rapidly out to sea. They tried to swim towards the boat, but
the current was too strong, and they couldn’t make any
headway. With the raging wind and the height of the waves,
the skipper onboard the boat didn’t appear to see the divers
as they began drifting farther from the boat into deeper
water. Sam looked for the other divers, the Navy dive team,
but it was impossible to see any divers, much less their
bubbles.
Sam decided the only way to survive was to inflate their Mae
West-type vests and drop all the equipment: weight belt,
tank and regulator. The regulators were all prototypes,
one-of-a-kind units which had cost thousands of dollars to
produce, but as he says now, “I knew that a complete set of
drawings were back at the research lab and I was more
concerned about losing our lives than losing the
regulators”.
As Sam recounts the story:
“We tried again to swim towards the boat, but the current
and the wind were too strong and we couldn’t make any
progress. We decided to hold on to each other and just drift
hoping the skipper would spot us and come pick us up. We
drifted for a time which felt like an eternity as we watched
the boat recede into the distance.
“But we had a guardian angel. Early that morning before we
started our dive, a 17-foot boat, skippered by Bev Morgan,
(designer of the Kirby Morgan full-face helmet some years
later) had stopped by on route to another dive spot. Bev and
the Meistrell brothers (owners of Dive N Surf dive shop in
Redondo Beach) who were also on board stayed long enough to
have a cup of coffee and then continued on to one of their
favorite abalone dive spots.
“Now in the midst of our peril, Bev Morgan’s boat appeared
again and went straight to the SCUBA. His boat appeared to
circle ours, searching for divers. The three of us began
waving and screaming to alert them to our position. Finally,
a giant swell pushed us high enough so they could spot us.
Their small boat had a hard time fighting the seas and was
taking huge waves over the bow, but Bev was a great skipper.
He managed to reach us, pick us up and took us back to the
SCUBA.
“We thought the adventure was over for the day, but it was
just beginning.
“On the way back to the SCUBA, we spotted the three Navy men
who had surfaced near the boat. Luckily, their team had
proceeded in the opposite direction from ours and the
current had pushed them towards the boat, not out to deeper
water. After boarding, I immediately asked why the skipper
hadn’t at least started the engine so he could come pick us
up. He replied that he was worried about the safety of the
divers because the surface visibility was so poor he was
afraid he might run over one of us.
“With all the divers on board, and having screamed at the
skipper in every language I knew, I ordered the skipper to
start the diesel engines and find a safe cove where we could
ride out the storm. I went forward with one of the Navy
officers to pull the anchor. Despite having a very powerful
winch and the skipper’s assistance with both engines, the
mighty anchor was lodged firmly in the giant boulders that
made up the reef. My only alternative was to cut the nylon
line attached to the anchor chain. Using our diving knives,
it took a few minutes to part the line and the boat was
free.
“I told the skipper to head to Catalina Harbor on the west
side of the island where I knew we could safely weather the
storm. The skipper engaged the engines and started to move
against the swells, which were about ten to twelve feet high
by that time. After a couple minutes, we realized that the
steering system was jammed and the helm couldn’t turn the
boat in either direction. The boat was drifting very rapidly
towards the island which was still about a mile away.
“One of the Naval officers immediately went down to the
bilge to check the steering. He discovered that one of the
cables had jumped a guide. I passed a large hammer and a
crowbar down to him hoping he could free the cable. We were
drifting fast towards the shore and I finally yelled to the
Navy man to get back on deck because it was too risky to
stay below decks.
“All the divers still had their wetsuits on. A couple of the
Navy divers didn’t have inflatable vests so I gave them life
jackets and passed another to the skipper and told everyone
to put them on. By that time the sea was ferocious, we were
only a couple hundred yards from shore and the wind was
blowing us toward the rocks. I yelled at everyone to jump
over the side. I was afraid if anyone stayed on board, when
the boat reached the shore it would overturn and kill them.
All the divers jumped in the water. I helped the skipper to
put on his life jacket and told him to follow me into the
water. We were in the water a few minutes struggling against
the high seas. By that time, the boat was close to the rocks
and pushed by the wind it was moving fast. Finally a huge
wave picked up the boat and threw the 48-foot vessel high on
the rocks. To my astonishment I watched as the skipper took
one giant leap from the bow of the boat to a boulder on the
beach without even getting his feet wet.
“We all regrouped on the beach, shaken, but unhurt and very
grateful to be alive. The skipper walked over to join us. I
asked why he had not followed my orders to abandon ship,
thinking he might have some notion from his military career
that a captain should never abandon his ship. He looked at
me with his big blue eyes and a weathered face that showed
all the years he had passed at sea and answered with a
smile, “Sam, I cannot swim.” I remembered he was a retired
Navy man who had been at sea for almost thirty years and
fought in the Pacific in World War II. I even recalled him
telling me that he was on a PT boat that had sunk right from
under his feet. So I learned it’s not always necessary to
learn to swim in order to survive at sea. In this case it
just took great timing and lots of luck.
“So there we sat on the rocks. For a couple of hours we
watched the waves pound on the boat, breaking it apart.
Finally we decided to walk a couple of miles to Isthmus
Harbor, the closest village. Before leaving, my brother and
I decided to approach the part of the ship that was dry on
the rocks. We were just curious and hoped that maybe we
could salvage some of our belongings. We spotted a couple of
small black bags. They looked like they might be the camera
bags my brother had brought on board. To our amazement the
bags did contain Gerard’s delicate cameras: in one bag was
his Rolleiflex camera and in the other the Leica. My brother
pulled the Leica out of the bag. The camera was soaked, but
a great believer in German design ingenuity Gerard decided
to take one more photo with the wet Leica. When he developed
the film back in L.A., amazingly, the only photo that wasn’t
damaged was that final photo of the SCUBA scattered on the
beach. Keeping his run of luck alive, Gerard was even able
to clean the cameras and they continued to work fine despite
the ordeal.
So, on the way to Isthmus Village, one of the park rangers
approached us in a pickup looking for a boat in distress
that had been reported in one of the coves. We told him our
story and he drove us to town. After radioing the Coast
Guard on the mainland we found out the storm was expected to
be very strong for at least the next few hours, maybe the
next few days, so we had little choice but to stay on
Catalina overnight. Captain Miller contacted the Naval base
at Pt. Mugu hoping that a helicopter could be sent to pick
us up. But after talking to the Naval air base, he agreed
with the airmen that we were all safe where we were and the
risk of picking us up by helicopter during gale force winds
was too great. The local people opened their homes to us
since there was no hotel and everything was closed for the
winter except for one little coffee shop.
“I realized that it was time to call my friend, Gustav Dalla
Valle. Just a couple of days before this great adventure, I
had sold my interest in the SCUBA to Gustav because I had
bought another boat on my own. Gustav and Richard Kline had
made a gentleman’s agreement that I would continue to use
the SCUBA for research and promotion of Healthway’s
equipment.
“I reached Gustav at home. By that time it was early
evening. I immediately told him we were still at Catalina,
that all the divers were safe, but the good boat SCUBA had
sunk. There was a long moment of total silence and I thought
we’d been disconnected. But Gustav was just getting a giant
breath of air, and with his great booming voice he started
to yell at me, swearing in French, English and Italian. By
the time he reached Italian I knew he was really mad and I
think I could have heard his voice traveling across the 27
miles of ocean even without the telephone. I moved the phone
away from my ear and waited for some calm. He finally
stopped, and after a moment, he asked me if everyone was OK
and what had happened. He was himself again, concerned about
all of us and his only question was: “Sam, did you take care
of the insurance payment last month?” I assured him I had,
that everything was in order, and I had even had the SCUBA
reappraised because of some new equipment we had installed
so it was fully covered. He asked how long I thought it
would take to make some new prototype regulators and he
invited me over to his house for dinner and some great wine
to tell him all about it.
“We all stayed on the island and had a great dinner with the
local people. The wind continued to blow all night, but by
morning a helicopter from Pt. Mugu arrived to pick up the
Naval officers. My brother, my wife, and I headed back to
the cove where the SCUBA had crashed. By that time, the sea
was calm and it was another beautiful day. When we arrived
back at the cove and spotted the beach from a trail high
above the water, we couldn’t believe our eyes. That
beautiful 48-foot boat was no more. Pieces of wreckage were
scattered all over the beach and only one part remained
recognizable, just the bow with the name SCUBA clearly
visible.
For more about the adventures and careers of Samuel Lecocq,
Gustav Dalla Valle, Richard Kline and many others look for
the upcoming book by Samuel Lecocq.
Scuba; Evolution, Intrigue and Controversy;
A first hand account of the development of the
self-contained underwater breathing apparatus from day one
to today.
By Samuel G. Lecocq and Debborah Lecocq
First editions of the biography of Samuel Lecocq will be
made available at Portage Quarry in Ohio on August 11, 12
and 13th, 2006 where Samuel Lecocq will be pleased to
autograph copies.
© 2006 Samuel G. Lecocq and Debborah
Lecocq
All Rights Reserved.
