Identifier: pearlitsstoryits01catt (find matches)
Title: The pearl ; its story, its charm, and its value
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Cattelle, Wallis Richard, 1848- (from old catalog)
Subjects: Pearls
Publisher: Philadelphia, London, J.B. Lippincott company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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Text Appearing Before Image:
Helmets have been used to a certain extent
in all parts of the world. Many of them were
clumsy affairs, abhorred by all native divers,
and were a bad introduction to the dress
used in the large operations of big fisheries such
as those of Australia and the Pacific coast of
this continent. In the seas about Australia,
modern appliances are being rapidly introduced.
The Australians use them if possible, wherever
they fish. On their own coast all diving is now
done in dress; but among some of the islands of
the Pacific, where they are extending their
interests, native prejudice is still able to hinder
the use of it.
Probably the chief reason for the general us
of the dress on the Australian coast so early
was that the shallows were soon exhausted,
and naked diving was not successful beyond a
depth of fifty feet. With the dress, a diver can
work at much greater depths, remain under
water an hour or two, and work all the year
round. In fisheries like those of Ceylon, where the
banks are seldom over forty feet deep and well
known, being fished over and over again at one

188
Text Appearing After Image:
METHODS OF FISHING

season of the year only, at comparatively short
intervals (four to six years), the necessity for
dress-diving is less and the naked native diver
will probably survive for many years although
modern innovations are gradually creeping in
even among the fisheries controlled by Orientals.
The dress consists of a rubber suit all in one
piece, which the diver gets into through the
neck; leaden-soled boots, corselet to which the
helmet is screwed, and chest and back weights.
The diver dresses and steps on to the ladder
hanging over the boats side. The air-pipe, life-
line, and helmet are attached, the man at the
air-pump is set to work, and last of all the face
glass is screwed up.
A plunge, a splash, and he drops swiftly
through the heaving billows to the quiet depths
below, his life in the hands of the tender he has
left in the boat. This man must feel the diver
constantly by the life-line, keep him supplied
with air and be ready for any of the emergen-
cies always liable to arise. Only an alert man
of good judgment and quick action should tend
the life-line, though the most successful diver,
a Japanese, on the Australian coast some years

189

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