When asked to name three famous Belgians, many would suggest Georges Simenon, Eddie Merckx and Hercule Poirot, but they’d be wrong! Poirot was of course a fictional character.
Similarly, I was bemused to find an old girlfriend on a website devoted to famous Danes. That’s the problem with small countries. They have only a small population from which to draw their famous people.
The diving industry is pretty small, too. Asked to name famous divers, the man in the street would have a hard job getting past Jacques Cousteau. And many British divers will not have heard of all the people included in Bret Gilliam’s heavy tome Diving Pioneers and Innovators.
Peter Benchley would be one exception. The author of Jaws and The Deep was interviewed before his life was cut short by lung disease.
Intrepid cave-diver Wes Skiles died tragically on a shallow reef dive in Florida this summer, just as some of his marvellous Bahamas Blue Holes pictures appeared in National Geographic, or you might not have heard of him either.
Almost 500 near-A4 pages are filled by these informative and entertaining interviews with people who have made a difference to the world of diving. Most are American, but then, there are a lot more US divers than any other nationality.
Who is Dick Bonin? He started Scubapro. Bob Hollis? He founded Oceanic, was an Andria Doria wreck pioneer and a diving resort innovator.
Al Giddings? He could be called the Dean of underwater Hollywood. Zale Parry is the First Lady of Diving. And so it goes on – Howard Hall, Bob Ballard, Mike deGruy, Ron & Valerie Taylor, Bev Morgan, they’re all there. Luckily, they were still around to tell their stories.
Bret also gallantly lists those he would have included had they not been taken from us too early – the likes of Jack McKenney, Sheck Exley, John Cronin, Larry Smith and Rob Palmer.
The book is lush with photographs. Any one chapter could make a compelling feature in this magazine. The foreword is by Stan Waterman (another of the interviewees).
You haven’t heard of Bret Gilliam? Well, it’s fitting that he too was interviewed (by Lina Hitchcock) for this volume. Get a copy, enjoy it and be that much better informed about those who have had such a dramatic effect on the pastime we love. An important reference book.
John Bantin
New World Publications
ISBN: 9781878348425
Hardback, 490pp, US $60
