Channel Swimmers Will Aid Admiralty Research

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27734, 11 August 1955, Page 5

Channel Swimmers Will Aid Admiralty Research

(From a Reuter Correspondent)

LONDON. More than 20 men and women from 15 countries taking part in the international cross-Channel swimming race from France to England in August will act as medical “guinea-pigs” for an Admiralty scientific research project. The experiment is to discover, the effects on the human body of prolonged expenditure of energy in cold seas, with a view to applying the lessons learned for the benefit of shipwrecked seamen or airmen forced down on the ocean. Particular attention will be paid tO u- e - fat distribution of the body, which is human insulation against cold. Physiologists will examine each swimmer before the race, and then follow them across the Channel in a naval motor-launch. In other motorboats following each competitor will be Royal Marine signallers with radiotelephone sets who can call the scientists’ launch to the scene whqn any swimmer gives up and is taken out of the water. A physiologist will then make a further examination of the swimmer. As competitors reach the English coast, whether under their own swimming power or by boat, they will be taken to a medical centre for a further examination. The scientists will have men and women from widely different climes and ways of life to investigate, as there are entrants from Mexico. Portugal, the United States. Syria, the Lebanon, Egypt, Greece, Turkey. Malta, New Zealand, Denmark; India, England, Ireland and Scotland. They are to start their swim between August 10 and 16, as weather conditions permit.

Survival at Sea The scientific records obtained will be related to other findings in longterm research on survival at sea. The object is to discover the oest equipment. clothing and methods for saving the lives, of seamen forced by disaster or enemy action or take to rafts or dinghies in the open sea. This is but one aspect of ‘personnel research” carried out by the Admiralty through a section of its Royal Naval Scientific Service based on the naval physiological laboratory, with the close cooperation of the British Medical Research Council and civilian scientists tn laboratories at Oxford University and Cambridge University. Close link& are maintained with scientists of other nations working on similar problems, particularly American naval

scientists and those of other North Atlantic Treaty nations. “Personnel research” is the study of man in relation to his working and living environment and to the increasingly complicated machinery which modern life demands. Nowhere is this more complex than in a modern warship, a mechanical and electronic marvel crammed into a steel hull. Its problems, human and mechanical, are multiplied many times over by the fact that the Royal Navy has to be ready to fight in any part of the navigable world from the Polar regions to the Equator. Its men fight in the air, in ships and under the surface in submarines. Added to this arg the problems of such vulnerable specialists as divers and underwater swimmers—or “frogmen.” Noise from machinery, gunfire, underwater explosions and blast up to the degree of atomic bombs add to the problems. Problems range from “tailor-made” seats for gunners or lookouts to avert strain and fatigue during long periods at their action stations, or air-conditioning of living spaces between decks for Arctic or tropical conditions, to protection against atomic radiation, escape from crippled submarines or resistance to underwater blast. The underwater physiology subcommittee in close liaison with the Admiralty diving committee studies the deep-sea diver’s enemies—oxygen poisoning, caisson disease known as “the bends” and nitrogen narcosis. It deals with deterioration of atmospheric conditions in submarines, and new methods of underwater escape. There is also the survival at sea subcommittee which will be particularly interested in the results of the crossChannel race. In close co-operation with the naval life-saving committee’it first tackled the problems of water and food requirements for shipwreck survivors under various conditions. Then it turned to the alleviation of weakening seasicknest of survivors on a storm-tossed raft. Next it carried out trials of the preservation of survivors soaked in Arctic waters when they swam to the shelter of an inflatable raft. Other subjects under investigation are the possibility of the use of radiant heat reflecting covers for a raft, and the possibility of maintaining body temperature by swimming. It is to this latter subject that the swimmers of 15 countries in the cross-Channel swim are to make their important contribution for the benefit of the seafarers of the world.