SUBMARINE CREWS

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 March 1934, Page 5

SUBMARINE CREWS

DAVIS ESCAPE APPARATUS. “The miracle of the sea” is the description applied to the* Davis submerged escape apparatus, which Sir Bolton Eyres-Morisell, First Lord of the Admiralty, said in the House of Commons this week was to be relied bn in future by the British Navy for the saving of life in sunken submarines. It was by means of the Davis escape apparatus that some of the members of the crew of the British submarine Poseidon, which sank after a collison with a Chinese steamer off the English Coast in June, 1931, were rescued.

For some considerable time every officer and man in British submarines has been provided with the escape equipment. It is, in effect, an artificial “lung,” devised after long experiment by R. H. Davis, the wellknown expert on deep-sea diving, and Professor Leonard Hill, the physiologist. The apparatus consists of a rubber bag strapped across the chest, with a clip fitting over the nose, and motorcycle goggles over the eyes. Through a mouthpiece the wearer breathes oxygen from the hag, and leading from this receptacle, through a small compartment filled with caustic soda, are two rubbes tubes, one for inhaling and the other for conducting the exhaled air back into the bag, the effect being that, it is regenerated and can be breathed again. The apparatus, weighing only a few pounds, can be fitted on in a few moments. It has special valves which maintain an equable pressure within the lungs and body of the wearer, irrespective of the variations in pressure to which he is. exposed when leaving a wreck at any considerable depth. Besides enabling him io breathe comfortably at almost any depth, it has enough buoyancy to keep him afloat for hours after he has regained the surface. The tremendous value to submarine crews of the Davis rescue gear was described by Commander H. M. Daniel in an article. “I was amazed at the ease with which I became accustomed to this new gear,” he wrote. Once fitted up, Commander Daniel states, it was easy to stoop, crawl, sit, or stand under the water if lead weights were provided. The oxygen could readily bo controlled according to the amount of energy expended. “To get some impression of what a man in a sunken submarine would experience, I closed my eyes and tried to picture a man groping his way blindly to the conning-tower with two . or three shipmates,” the commander graphically wrote. ‘‘But once the way out of the submarine had been gained, the weights would be released and the buoyant vest would rush a man upwards to the surface, fastei’ every second, until finally daylight and safety were reached.” There is sufficient oxygen in one of the outfits to last for 45 minutes. _= «. '