Snorkel feature of the month - November 2013

SCUBAHUB
SCUBAHUB
TBelow: Could
the elephant’s
swimming
technique have
inspired early
snorkellers?
Diving Manual. So we have George to thank
for today’s common version of the snorkel.
So where could the snorkel go from here?
Despite brief flirtations with Ping-Pong balls,
flavoured mouthpieces and even one
example of a radio that played through your
teeth when you chewed down on the
mouthpiece, the snorkel is really best when
stripped down to its bare essence. There
have been a few nice refinements over the
years such as drainage valves, wave guards
and the like, but on the whole snorkels have
remained pretty much the same design for
the past 5,000 years – a tube. I really don’t
think the design needs to change much –
they are diving’s equivalent of the invention
of the wheel. You can mess about with
materials and design, but the function
remains the same.
Torbet on the Tube:
Time travel by tube
BSAC is 60, but the history of the snorkel dates
back much farther, as Andy Torbet discovers
on a brief foray into the history of tube-assisted
swimming
SO IT’S BSAC’S 60TH AND IN KEEPING
with the historical theme I thought I would
take a look back at the noble art of
snorkelling.
What is clear from my research is that no
one can say with any authority when it was
that snorkelling was first invented. Such a
ubiquitous and simple act as breathing
through a tube is hardly the sort of thing to
have developed in a single place at a specific
time. And the other issue is how to define
snorkelling – if you lie in a river sucking
through a hollow reed does that count?
Certainly there are depictions on Cretan
pottery from around 3,000 BC which show
sponge divers using a short tube, probably
those handy reeds again, so if we accept
that definition we can say snorkelling has
been around for about 5,000 years.
We can say for sure that during the life of
Aristotle (384-322 BC), snorkelling existed in
some primitive form. He mentions in his
‘Parts of the Animals’ that sponge divers
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used “instruments for respiration” which
resemble an elephant’s trunk and used in
the same way an elephant does when it
crosses a deep river. Now I don’t know if
you’ve ever watched an elephant crossing
a deep river but they stick the end of their
trunk up out of the water, effectively as
a prehensile snorkel.
Moving forward a few centuries, the
famous polymath Leonardo Da Vinci
produced sketches of a leather hood, which
had a tube extending to the surface, and
held aloft by being attached to a float.
There were no pumps or bellows involved –
it was simply a full-face mask and snorkel
combo. I’m not sure if he ever built and
tested it, as his drawings have the ‘diver’ a
good metre underwater and the likelihood
is the water pressure, even at this shallow
depth, would not have allowed the guinea
pig to draw a breath from the surface air.
I’m also not sure why he didn’t make the
tubs rigid, as we do now, rather than use a
WLeonardo Da Vinci’s
fanciful snorkel design
If you want to be reminded just how
effective this simple invention is, just try
snorkelling without a snorkel. You will have
to lift your head clear of the water at
frequent intervals, completely breaking your
interaction with the underwater world. The
whole experience that we fell in love with
becomes fatally compromised; it’s much less
comfortable and less practical. Clearly, we
need our snorkels.
A while ago, I spent three months
snorkelling the length and breadth of Great
Britain, at all altitudes, in all weather, in
strong currents and freezing temperatures.
Sometimes I was carrying out long
snorkelling sessions up to three times a day,
day after day. In all that time, my snorkel
required no back up, no maintenance, no
refills and never broke down.
So until they invent Oxy-gum I think the
snorkel will be with us for a while yet.
Happy Birthday BSAC!
RTop: Complicated
designs never stood
the test of time
TLeft: Today,
snorkelling with
dolphins is a
popular dream
Leonardo da Vinci
floppy tube held up by a float. Mind you,
the man was a genius whereas I’ve done no
end of stupid things – even to the point of
making a living from it – so who am I to
judge?
The word ‘snorkel’ seems to have come
into existence in 1936 when a Dutchman
called Jan Wichers built a tube for use by
early submarines to allow them to vent off
engine gases to flow out and fresh air to
flow in without the need to surface. In
fact it was originally called a Schnorkel
but BSAC’s own George Brookes
changed it to a more Anglo Saxon
‘snorkel’ when he wrote the first
RAbove: Vintage snorkellers
from York SAC
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