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Stars Beneath The Sea by Trevor Norton
Stars Beneath The Sea by Trevor Norton
Professors write boring books. That used to be one of life's certainties, but not any more. Breaking all the rules of professorship Trevor Norton, Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Liverpool, has written a delightful book called Stars Beneath the Sea, which he has subtitled The Extraordinary Lives of the Pioneers of Diving.
His choice of pioneers is somewhat quirky. For example, he deals in Chapter One with Guy Gilpatric, who earns his place as a pioneer of free-diving (alias spear-fishing) in the Med in the late 1920s and Ô30s.
Names of pioneers not all that familiar to today's diver splash through the book. Remember Henri Milne Edwards? I didn't, but thanks to Professor Norton I now know he led the first-ever marine biology underwater expedition off Sicily in 1844, diving with a kind of fireman's helmet held down by long stirrups for his feet and an air tube from a giant rocker pump tucked into it.
William Beebe, described by Professor Norton as looking like 'an alert egg', made record-breaking dives in his Bathysphere, but some of his other efforts were not very scientifically correct - he shot a whale shark with his revolver and would bring down flying fish with a shotgun from his boat.
Did you know of Horace Cameron Wright of the Royal Naval Physiological Laboratory? He tested bouncing bombs for the Dambusters, gauged the effect of underwater explosions on himself until badly injured, and acted as human guinea-pig for free ascents without equipment from 90m.
Cousteau appears as a sort of bit-part player in a chapter on the real pioneer of underwater archaeology, 'Didi' Dumas. Professor Norton has a nice sharp style of writing and he taught me a lot, which is what professors are meant to do, aren't they? Kendall McDonald |
| Stars Beneath The Sea by Trevor Norton, Century (0171 840 8400). Hardback, 282pp, £12.99. |
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