NEW DIVING WONDER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 18761, 27 December 1930, Page 9

NEW DIVING WONDER

FOR £10,000,000 TREASURE HUNT. An attempt to recover treasure estimated at £10,000,000, which has been at the bottom of Navarino Bay, Messenia, Greece, for more than 100 years, will be made in a few months. The treasure is contained in the ships of the Turkish-Egyptian fleet which were sunk in 1827 by the combined Russian, English, and French fleets. The flagship alone contained £200,000 in money and a far greater sum in precious objects. The treasure is thirty-two fathoms beneath the water, and hitherto all efforts to recover it have failed, because no diver could descend to such a depth and w’ork on wrecks. Now there is in existence a diving suit in which, it is stated, a man can do dowm 250 fathoms and work for ten hours without feeling any of the ordinary effects of diving, and this suit will be used in the venture off the coast of Greece. Surrey Inventor. This new diving apparatus is the invention of Mr Joseph Salim Peress, of Byfleet, Surrey (Eng.). Mr. Peress is of Persian origin, and when he began work on his invention ten years ago he had in mind the possibility of using the diving suit for recovering pearls from the virgin beds in the deeper waters of the Persian Gulf. He prepared with this end in view a suit which w’ould descend to 100 fathoms, but by experiment he claims that he found that, with slight alterations, the apparatus could be used for diving to a depth of 250 fathoms, and, with adjustments, even to 500 fathoms. The possibilities of such a suit are many. Wrecks which, up to now. have been inaccessible to divers can be examined and their bullion recovered. The amount of this bullion may be guessed by a brief survey of a few of the wrecks w’hich are believed to be sunk in 500 fathoms or less. There are the Persia and Arabia, submarined in the Mediterranean during the war with more than £1,000,000 in gold in them. Treasure Galleons. There are the Spanish galleons which, bullion-laden, were sunk in Vigo Bay. The Lusitania was said to have sunk with gold and jewellery valued at £1,200,000. The Merida carried to the bottom of the sea more than £250,000 in silver and £20,000 in jewellery. The remarkable diving suit which Mr. Peress has constructed in his workshop at Byfleet resembles nothing quite so much as a robot figure. It is made of a light alloy, containing a large percentage of magnesium, and has arms and legs three feet long. The diver inside can eat, drink, smoke, write, and move with perfect freedom. He can kneel, lie on his back, or face downwards, and rise without the slightest difficulty. The “hands” of the suit are like the larger antennae of a crab, and by their means the diver can pick up tin washers or dbins and shackle an eye to a spring. Cushion of Oil. The most efficient appartus in use hitherto has been a German-invented diving suit, which has been found to work well at a depth of seventy-five fathoms. Mr. Peress claims to have overcome the difficulty of working at a greater depth by placing between the moving members of the joints a cushion of oil which is non-compressible and readily displaceable, and at 200 Tathoms, when the pressure is generally regarded to be 5201 b. to the square inch, it is possible to move the joints with the greatest ease. When the apparatus is in use the diver is supplied with oxygen from cylinders carried on his back. Mr. Peress proposes to subject the suit to severe tests at Loch Ness, Scotland ,and he will work there at a depth of 135 fathoms —the greatest depth of the loch. After these experiments the company for whom Mr. Peress constructed the suit will make preparations to start operation in Navarino Bay.