DaleC
Contributor
The Silent World is the first book of a series by the authors that chronicle the conception of OC SCUBA and the early adventures of JYC and his companions. It has been reprinted many many times in both hardcover and paperback editions (photo is of a Perrenial Library paperback). The one I am currently referencing is a hardcover copy published in Great Britian by Hamish Hamilton Ltd. 1953. 148 pg's with 64 pg's of photographs.
I will offer a brief synopsis of the main chapters but will leave the details up to the reader. What can I add anyways. But first a condensed set of quotes from chapter one that always brings a smile to my face:
"One morning in June 1943, I went to a railway station at Bandolon onthe French Riviera to collect a wooden case expressed from Paris. In it was a new and promising device... We hurried to a sheltered cove which would conceal our activity from curious bathers and Italian occupation troops...My friends harnessed the three cylinder block on my back... I looked into the sea with the same sense of trespass that I have felt on every dive... I went down to sixty feet. We had been there many times without breathing aids, but we did not know what happened below that boundary. How far could we go with this stange device?"
and thus, the modern era of OC SCUBA diving was born.
Chapters:
Menfish.
JYC and Emile Gagnon finally put together the already existing technologies that make up the demand valve regulator/compressed air cylinder to invent a SCUBA rig and it is tested in 1943 occupied France. Background of JYC's early skindiving days. The teaming up of JYC, Frederic Dumas and Phillipe Thaliez.
Rapture of the deep.
The early fraternity of divers, spearfishing and exploring wrecks. Discovering the effects of Narcosis.
Sunken Ships.
Occupation and the Bombing of Toulon. Exploring and early filming of the wrecks.
Undersea Research Group.
JYC invents a job for he and his friends so they can keep diving. Meeting Maurice Fargues, Jean Pinard and Guy Morandiere. Aquiring boats. Experimenting with the effects of dynamite on divers and clearing mines after the war. Dumas rides a submarine.
Cave diving.
(no spoiler) Trouble exploring the Fountain of Vaucluse near Avignon.
Treasure below/Drowned Museum.
Two chapters detailing early shipwreck searches and the discovery the Argosy in the Mediterranean.
50 Fathoms Down.
(no spoiler) Tragedy during deep depth experiments. 396' on air.
The Submarine Dirigible.
The URG involvement with Picards Bathyscaphe experiments.
Sea Companions/Monsters We Have Met/Shark Close ups.
Encounters and beginning to develop a better understanding of larger forms of sea life.
Beyond the Barrier.
Some thoughts about the effects of 2+ atm's on divers.
Where Blood Flows Green.
Discussion of colour changes at depth and early underwater filming.
Epilogue.
Some people criticize JYC for some of his groups early disregard of the environment but what they did must be taken into account with the prevailing opinions/understanding of the day. If it were not for the evolution and popularization that SCUBA afforded Cousteau and others we might still hold many of those same values. In reading this, and other early diving accounts I am always struck by how much these pioneers were continually pushing the envelope of the unknown. They were literally "flying by the seat of their pants" and making things up "on the spot". At each step they had to confront what amounted to millenia of superstition and presumptions about the sea. In this book JYC gives us a glimpse of that audaciousness yet with a voice that is at times comical and very human. Modern diving owns a great deal to this inventor, adventurer, poet, educator, and it all starts here.
As you can probably tell I give this book 2 thumbs up!
