David Wilson
Contributor
Our previous thread focused on historical diving equipment manufactured by Cressi sub in Genoa, the capital of the northern Italian region of Liguria. We now follow the Mediterranean coast (see map above) to reach our next destination, which is the municipality of Rapallo in the Metropolitan City of Genoa. Rapallo is the seaside resort and port where Ludovico Mares founded the diving equipment company bearing his name in 1949.
While brothers Egidio and Nanni Cressi were Genoese born and bred, Ludovico Mares came late to this Italian city. For Mares' biography, I am indebted to Anton Percan's well-researched and highly readable blog at Tales from the History of Pula - Part 1 • Mares - Scuba Diving Blog, Tales from the History of Pula – Part 2 • Mares - Scuba Diving Blog and Tales from the History of Pula – Part 3 • Mares - Scuba Diving Blog. If you are at all interested in the man behind the diving company Mares, I urge you to take a look at this illustrated three-part blog dedicated to his life and work. I will reproduce here just the bare facts.
Ludwig Mareš, as he was first known, was born on 10 February 1898 in Pula, which was then (see map above) the major naval base of the empire and monarchy of Austria-Hungary and which is now the largest city in the county of Istria in the republic of Croatia on the Adriatic Sea. Ludwig's father, who hailed from the Czech-speaking northwestern part of Austria-Hungary, moved to Pula to work as a ship mechanic in the dockyard. Ludwig had a relatively blissful childhood, learning to fish with a slingshot made of sharpened umbrella wire and buying his first roller skates from the proceeds of selling surplus fish caught in the clear waters of the Pula Bay.
During World War II, he saw combat as a "hard-hat" diver in the Austro-Hungarian navy, returning in 1917 to the Pula navy yard where he worked as a diver until the end of the war in 1918. His fortunes declined in peacetime, however, what with his diving services being no longer in demand and what with his father's health deteriorating rapidly. Ludwig eked out a living for himself and his family by fishing with a slingshot and an arrow. Occasionally, he was employed at an iron works where he had access to various tools and metal parts. While there, he designed his first diving mask from circular glass and a car inner tube, using it to increase his catches, which he sold to provide for his family. Word spread quickly and soon many young men from Pula ordered and used masks manufactured and supplied by Ludwig Mareš at the iron works.
In the mid-1920s, Ludwig Mareš changed his name to Ludovico Mares and found employment as a diving instructor on the island of Brijuni where he taught diving to wealthy guests. Following World War II, he left Pula altogether with his wife Irma. After a brief stay near Trieste, he settled in Rapallo on the Ligurian coast. At first, Ludovico worked as a roller-skating instructor but, surrounded as he was by diving enthusiasts, he soon became more involved in sports fishing and improving diving equipment. In 1949, when he was in his early fifties, he founded the Mares Sub workshop and filed his first patents for harpoons and fins.
And there we leave it for today, What I have posted above is the fruit of many hours of labour; a labour of love nonetheless. I'll be back at the weekend with a review of one of Mares' early diving masks.