The Birth of BSAC

60YEARS
60YEARS
Inthebeginning...
ou’d think the story would start with
Jacques Cousteau and Emile
Gagnan’s invention of the
Aqualung, but it isn’t that simple.
Cousteau first tested the Aqualung
off Toulon in 1943, but by then a
generation of British adventurers had started
their own underwater explorations. In 1939,
cave divers Graham Balcombe and Jack
Sheppard used a home-made respirator
made from bicycle parts to dive in the sump
at Swildon’s Hole, Somerset. In the hot
summer of 1939, a young George Brookes
(later to be BSAC’s second Chairman) used a
modified service gas mask to breathe
‘compressed’ air from a bicycle inner tube
on a foray to the River Mole in Dorking.
In other words, there was a small but
significant appetite for adventure
underwater, and Britain’s would-be
‘frogmen’ were more than ready for the
advent of the demand valve.
Y
The founders
96
BSAC celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2013, so
to set the scene SCUBA offers this account of the
inspirational characters who helped shape the
club in its early years. Story by Simon Rogerson
Oscar became a British citizen in 1948
and bought an Aqualung from France in
1950. At that time, you didn’t need any
qualification to use diving kit – you bought
it, read the instructions and then you were
on your own. Fascinated by the possibility of
staying underwater for prolonged periods,
Oscar became convinced that a new club
was needed to help people use the
Aqualung safely; he began looking for a
journalist to help him publicise the venture.
Initially, he was going to work with
Kendall McDonald – who would go on to
be BSAC Chairman – but after an initial
meeting Kendall was unwell for a period
and Oscar instead sought advice from
another young journalist, Peter Small. Small
was a science journalist with a fascination
for the sea – at the age of 19 he had been a
captain in the army and had subsequently
been a founder journalist of New Scientist
magazine. He had first dived with an
Aqualung in 1952 and was an instant
convert to the efficiency of the demand
valve, and the freedom afforded by the selfcontained nature of the apparatus.
By 1953 one or two diver-training
establishments had already sprung up,
notably Captain Trevor Hampton’s eccentric
school in Warfleet Creek, where trainees
were tied to a rope and told to jump into the
water while Hampton stayed above the
water. Oscar managed two dives in the chilly
creek (there were no wetsuits at this point –
early divers generally wore jumpers), but
Peter and his girlfriend Sylvia Gregg
completed the entire course. They decided to
return to London and set up a diving club.
However, there was competition on the
horizon. A businessman called Harold
Penman had also trained at Warfleet Creek
and was setting up ‘The Underwater
Explorers Club’. Oscar suggested they
merge the two groups but Penman’s
stipulation that the club be a ‘proprietary’
one ended any notion of a partnership.
Oscar attended the first meeting of
Penman’s club on 30 September and was
made an honorary member, but the lines
had been drawn and the first two British
diving clubs were to be rivals.
Oscar had specifically chosen 15 October
1953 for BSAC’s inaugural meeting
because the BBC was showing a
documentary about the diving section of
the Royal Marines, which would be
screened at the close. It was held at
London’s Waldorf Hotel and chaired by
Peter, while Oscar set out his vision for the
club’s identity. The three central points
were that the club should be non profit
making; that it should be controlled by and
for its members and that no officer should
serve more than three years.
Much of the
information for
this feature was
taken from
The Club by Reg
Vallintine, the
official history of
BSAC.
Buy The Club
online at www.bsac.com/shop
Members' price: £15.95
A training system
RAbove: Members of London number one branch at play in the Fifties
SBelow: Co-founder Oscar Gugen, the club’s driving force in the early days
UBelow right: Co-founder Peter Small, the ideas man
PHOTO: MIKE BUSUTTILLI
Among these ‘divers in waiting’ were two
very different men. Oscar Gugen was of
Austrian and French descent, and had
spearfished with the ‘gogglers’ of the South
of France as a young man. When the war
came, he sided with France, but fled to
England when the German invasion pushed
through. He managed to reach Plymouth,
but spent the rest of the war interred on the
Isle of Man. Nevertheless, he became an
anglophile, and particularly admired the
post-war club culture that was emerging in
Britain. He joined a company that made
jigsaw puzzles, and expanded the business
by importing swimming goggles and fins
from France.
Who was at that first meeting? Much of
this information has been lost, and it is not
currently clear whether there are any
surviving members from that historic
evening. But we do know that Colin
McLeod, a director of the sports store
Lilliwhites was there, as was Jack Atkinson,
a no-nonsense ex-RAF Flight Sergeant, who
became the club’s first Diving Officer. In
total, 50 enthusiasts turned up, of whom 20
signed up for membership on the spot.
Next, the club’s founders had to turn their
attention to the issue of training. Right from
the beginning they were convinced that the
most important rule would be a ban on solo
diving. Colin McLeod and Jack Atkinson
agreed that the training system should
mirror the RAF’s pattern of incremental
advances: ‘elementary’ to ‘service’ to
‘operational’, which translated to Third,
Second and First Class Divers. Jack began
planning his instructor training programme
and provided diving bulletins, which were
eventually replaced by the first edition of
The Diving Manual, in 1959.
Much of the club’s early success seems to
be down to the complimentary talents of its
co-founders. Oscar was determined and
resolute in his vision of British club culture,
while Peter was brimming with enthusiasm
and brought many ideas to the table. When
the popularity of diving started to spread, it
was his idea to form the first branch (the
London Branch number one) and that the
existing committee should change into a
general committee, which lives on today as
BSAC Council.
As diving’s popularity began to spread,
more branches were established, as the first
enthusiasts moved across the country and
evangelised the sport in their own areas.
Oscar teamed up with George Brookes and
raced around the country in a Ford Cortina
to address interested groups at local
swimming pools. Their MO was simple but
effective: Oscar would explain the aims and
rules of the club, and the athletic George
would treat them to a demonstration of the
equipment in the pool. If they committed to
forming a new branch, Oscar would provide
them with sets of fins, masks and snorkels
before arranging training sessions.
Meanwhile the rival Underwater Explorers
Club was running informal training sessions
at the Lansdowne Club in London’s Berkley
Square and was hoping its own proficiency
awards would be recognised worldwide.
After an initial publicity drive, Harold
Penman had amassed several hundred
g
97
60YEARS
g members, some of whom preferred the
casual approach to BSAC’s more ordered
structures. However it soon became clear
that ‘easy-going’ would only get the UEC so
far – on its 1955 expedition to the sunken
city of Salamis in Cyprus, the participants
could only manage to transport one
Aqualung to the site, and most of the
survey had to be done on snorkel.
What happened to the Underwater
Explorers Club? Penman ran into financial
difficulty and because he had been sole
proprietor, the club was dissolved. It seems
that most of the members simply migrated
to the newly formed branches of BSAC.
Neptune – the first club magazine
The first issue of the club magazine,
Neptune, appeared in September 1954.
Peter Small was obviously the right man for
this job and became editor, passing on his
duties as club secretary to George Brookes.
In the first issue, Peter wrote: “The
magazine should be the main platform to
members and there should be no
censorship.”
Then as now, the club magazine recorded
deaths of prominent members: the first
issue carried the sad news of the death of
BSAC’s first honorary member, Commander
Jimmy Hodges, who had served as a military
diver during the war (prior to the invention
of the demand valve, military divers such as
the legendary ‘human torpedoes’ were
issued with oxygen rebreathers). He had
died of oxygen poisoning on an expedition
led by the Austrian filmmaker Hans Hass,
who was regarded by many to have a
standing equal to that of Cousteau.
Britain had its own diving manufacturer in
the firm of Siebe Gorman, which had
manufactured the original helmets for
commercial divers. The company had even
come up with its own demand valve in
1940, but the then managing director had
not seen the potential for amateur diving,
saying it was only suitable for “looking at
girls in swimming pools”. Eventually, the
company decided to produce an Aqualung
under licence from Cousteau and the first
Much of club’s early sucess seems to be down
to the complimentary talents of its co-founders
model – the Ess-Gee Mark 1 – became
available in 1950. It consisted of a single
cylinder with a working pressure of 120
atmospheres. The demand valve was a
single stage with twin hoses and no purge,
so when water leaked in the diver had to
roll to the right and blow hard. A similar
apparatus was launched by the diving
manufacturer Heinke, who took care that
their design had enough differences not to
infringe Siebe Gorman’s product.
Not all kit was so expensive. In the postwar period, surplus German oxygen sets
from U-boats and tanks became available
for 30 shillings (£1.50). Fins had been
patented in the 1930s by a Frenchman who
had seen Polynesian islanders using them,
but they were not imported into Britain until
1946, when Colin
McLeod began selling
them at Lilliwhites. A
few enterprising divers
followed a now
legendary article in
Practical Mechanics
magazine, which
described how ex-RAF
cylinders (known as
‘tadpole’ bottles) and
Calor gas valves could
be used to create a
homemade Aqualung.
We know that some of
the early BSAC
members experimented
with such DIY sets.
The neoprene wetsuit had been
invented in California in 1951, but
the first wetsuits were not available
until the mid-50s and they were
expensive. BSAC member Syrl
Williams and two friends bought a
gallon of latex and tried brushing it
onto a jumper, but the latex
soaked right through the loose
RAbove: Pool training at
Hatfield
PRight: Primitive wetsuits
began to appear towards the
end of the Fifties
98
weave of the fabric. Various permutations of
this experiment were tried until they
persuaded an affable Diving Officer, John
Egett, to put on a vest and long underpants
and then be painted in latex. Again, the
latex soaked through the fabric and dried on
his skin, resulting in an early example of fullbody waxing when the dried latex had to be
stripped off.
BSAC makes a point of celebrating its
milestones, a tradition that goes back to the
club’s fifth anniversary in 1958. In that year,
Oscar had stood down as Chairman in order
to work on the formation of a European
Diving Federation. His place was taken by
George Brookes, who considered the club’s
origins and the ethos that would drive BSAC
for a further 55 years: “We were born of
Oscar Gugen’s
inspiration and Peter
Small’s original
thinking,” he said. Their
legacy has proven to be
a steadfast and
inspirational foundation
for BSAC and the British
diving movement.