PETER JACKSON the Independent Diver

PETER JACKSON The Independent Diver The story of Henry Fleuss and the Self-Contained Diving Dress Introduction by Reg Vallintine: young Henry Fleuss went off to sea as an apprentice in Our next speaker is rather reticent about his past, hut we do the merchant marine, ending up some years later as an know that he made a pair of fins out of a pair of Wellington officer with the P&O Company. He travelled to many boots when he was ten, and manufactured oxygen sets while still parts of the world, including Ceylon where, in 1875, he at school in the 1950s. He is an engineer by training, and watched divers recovering cargo which had been lost worked at Siebe Gorman <& Co. at Chessington for a number overboard in the harbour at Point de Gaulle. of years. He is now is a professional designer of breathing apparatus. He is also our most avid diving book collector. The diving apparatus clearly interested Fleuss very much and he turned his mind to the problem of mak ing the diver independent by doing away with the air Henry Fleuss was granted a patent for his invention of hose^and pump. He set about finding the information an independent diving dress in 1880. We know, of which would enable him to do this and a few weeks course, that he wasn't the first to produce such a later in Calcutta, he bought some books on physiology device. That distinction probably belongs to Monsieur and chemistry, which he then studied in his spare time. de St. Simon Sicard of Paris who successfully demon He learned that, during respiration, oxygen is con strated a very similar apparatus in the river Seine when sumed and carbon dioxide is produced and so rea Fleuss was barely two years old. Flowever, there seems soned that if the diver were to carry with him a supply no reason to disbelieve Fleuss' claim that he arrived at of oxygen and alkali, which would absorb the carbon his invention independently and with no knowledge of dioxide, he could then dispense altogether with the any prior art. Such things happen all the time in the supply of air from the surface. world of design and development, often making it dif ficult, sometimes impossible, to establish with any cer Fleuss left the P&O Company in 1878 and set about tainty who really originated what and when. putting his ideas into practice. He proved to be very resourceful and practical, making much of the appara There are two interwoven stories here, really, one of tus himself, including a means of producing oxygen the diving dress and the other of the rescue apparatus. and of compressing it, using an ingenious hydraulic They share a common technology and, to a degree, a pump. At 27 years of age, he was young, energetic and common purpose and Fleuss worked on both at the confident and was not afraid to test his apparatus him same time. self, alone, underwater, even though he had no previ ous diving experience. Henry Albert Fleuss was born in Wiltshire in 1851. His father, an artist from Diisseldorf, was the drawing The apparatus was a bulky and, apparently, not very master at Marlborough College. At the age of sixteen, elegant contrivance, much like a standard diving dress 11 with helmet, weights and lead-soled boots. The helmet, inside of which were fixed two metal chambers, one at made from tinned copper, had a double wall, the space the front and one at the back. These were joined between forming a reservoir with a volume of about a around the sides by metal plates, one of which could quarter of a cubic foot. This was charged with oxygen, be removed to allow the diver to get into it. Each by means of a hand pump, to a maximum pressure of chamber was fitted internally with a vertical division sixteen atmospheres and could thus hold four cubic and a perforated false bottom and had a removable lid feet of oxygen. A screw valve, to one side of the front with two short pipes attached. The chambers were window’, allowed the wearer to admit oxygen into the filled with small pieces of sponge rubber soaked in a helmet and also facilitated charging the reservoir. A strong solution of caustic soda. screw plug in the crown allowed the reservoir to be purged of air. The double helmet was large and com The diver wore a leather ori-nasal mask which had plicated and must have been very difficult to construct. non-return valves in the sides and a flexible tube at the The Jacket, as Fleuss called it, was also a complicated front, leading to one of the pipes on the lid of the assembly. It comprised a standard corselet, to the front chamber. He inhaled from the helmet through 0* P i XX Fleuss’s first diving apparatus. 12 the non-return valves and exhaled through the flexible by the eminent physiologist, Benjamin Ward tube into the front chamber, where his breath passed Richardson, who showed a great interest in the inven down one side of the division, through the false bot tion and, together, they conducted numerous experi tom and up the other side. A flexible tube, leading over ments to prove its effectiveness, both under water and the shoulder, connected the outlet of the front cham in poisonous atmospheres. Richardson was clearly ber to the inlet of the back one, so that the exhaled impressed by Fleuss and his invention and saw great breath passed through this also, finally returning to the potential in it, particularly as a means of enabling res helmet via a non-return valve. The dress, being flexible, cuers to enter gas-filled mines. He wrote several papers acted as a counter-lung. on the subject for scientific journals and, in May 1880, presented a paper to the Society of Arts, at which There w’ere clearly some deficiencies in Fleuss’s appa Fleuss was present to demonstrate his invention in a ratus, principally the lack of any control over the par glass chamber filled with carbon dioxide. tial pressure of oxygen in the system. It was intended that the oxygen valve should be adjusted to give the Fleuss’s invention attracted considerable interest, par correct flow and would then require little attention, so ticularly from those who, like Richardson, could see its there was, at least, a continuous flow of oxygen into great potential as an aid to rescue work in mines. At the helmet. However, the method of determining the that time, of course, Britain was the industrial centre of correct flow was, to say the least, a bit vague. Fleuss the world, with a massive consumption of coal. The stated that too little oxygen was indicated by “an mining industry was huge, with an annual output of uneasy breathing” and too much by “feeling a pressure nearly a hundred and fifty million tons. It was a dan on the eardrums”. This was most likely just an indica gerous industry, with more than its share of accidents. tion of pressure in the diving dress relative to ambient Hundreds of men died underground through explo pressure but, crude as it was, this evidently sufficed, as sions, roof falls, fires and floods and there was a very the apparatus was used many times under water. pressing need for a portable and self-contained breath ing apparatus, without which any attempt at rescue was In 1879, Fleuss tested his apparatus in the diving tank often impossible. at the Royal Polytechnic in London. This was observed Fleuss’s first apparatus 13 Encouraged by so much professional interest and breathing bag which, in the first model, was mounted enthusiasm, Fleuss set about making a new apparatus, on the back of the metal box. of a simpler and more practical design than the div ing dress and more suited to use in the mines. It was Two formed tubes led over the shoulders to a junction carried on the back like a knapsack and comprised a piece, containing the non-return valves, from which two tinplate box, twelve inches square and four inches short corrugated hoses led to a full face mask. Attached deep, which housed the alkali chamber made from to the bottom o f the box, at waist level, was a copper Vulcanite with a perforated false bottom and three cylinder, twelve inches long and six inches diameter, vertical divisions. A Vulcanite lid, sealed with a sheet which contained four cubic feet of oxygen at a pressure rubber gasket, was clamped in place by metal rods of sixteen atmospheres. A valve in one end of the cylin which passed through holes in the outer box. The lid der allowed the wearer to control the flow of oxygen and had connections for the breathing tubes and for the was connected, via a copper pipe, to the inhalation tube. Second rescue apparatus 14 Fleuss soon improved the design by moving the more than likely, prevented a far greater one. The appa breathing bag to the wearer’s chest, where it was much ratus was being towed in a small boat which was cap less vulnerable to damage. He also placed the non sized by the wash from the Ryde steamer and it was return valves at the connections to the lid of the cham lost overboard. Fleuss had to build a new diving dress. ber and fitted two long corrugated hoses over the shoulders and into the sides of the facepiece, giving The new model used a knapsack arrangement, similar the wearer much greater freedom of movement.

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