Divers to Explore Submerged City

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 159, 8 July 1939, Page 5

Divers to Explore Submerged City

PAMPA. I lii.— An expedition of marine explo ■-.- revealed plans here recently for walking under 300 feet ot water, em.-ased in recently developed helium gas diving suits, along the ancient streets of a once-flourishing island city in the Lesser Antilles. Capl. Hubert Hall of Detroit .-aid the expedition hoped ij accumulate data concerning Si. James, former capital of St. Kitts' Island. The town has been a n 21 cent u rics —since an earthquake dropped it into the sea in 1680. Captain Hall fold Of th- plans for his expedition after he- had offered use oi' the helium diving suits to lhe Navy at Portsmouth, X. IL. for work at lhe sunken submarine Squalus. Max Gene Nohl, diver, ha- been down 120 feet in the new type, of deep sen contraption. Captain Hall said. No air lube is atim-hc'l—only a cable, the centre of which is a small telephone wire for communication. The equipment contains a supply of helium and oxygen and needs no life line to compressed air machines on deck. Captain Hall and his crew of seamen, navigators, deep sea photographers, artists, writers, divers and explorers will leave in the motorship Albee. De.-n-ribiiig the mysterious hue of (he submerged city, he explained: •‘When the sea is calm you can see in the crystal-clear water 300 feet below the dim outline of the coral-en-crusted walls of the ancient town that was a thriving community long before the revolutionary war, long before there was any United States.”