Scuba Keepsakes
Scuba Keepsakes
Let’s face it I’m old and because of that I have had a lot of time to accumulate not only memories but also artifacts from the number of places visited. Fortunately, my wife who only snorkels, understands my passion and allows me to display these items discreetly in various corners of our family room.
Some time ago, I noticed an advertisement that showed a shelf design in the shape of a small row boat along with the information where you could send in for the plans to build it. When the detailed plans arrived, I immediately modified them resulting in a larger version that was almost the size of a real rowboat. I have seen ones that are for mounting on a wall but I wanted one that could sit on the floor and have enough room for most of my collection.
In order to explain the various articles, let's look at each shelf one at a time.
The top shelf concentrates on the various bottles I have run into while diving. Some I was looking for while others just happened to pop into view while searching for other items.
The second shelf contains a variety of items that I acquired while searching various locations. The Buffalo, NY coin pile supplied me with not only some of the bottles on the first shelf but the spread of square nails. This is a project I put together seeing there were so many of them laying on the bottom where we were searching for the main interest, coins. In addition to the nails, we also would find a brass key once in a while. There are six of them on this shelf.
One of the many things I'm proud of are the dishes, cup and saucer from a wreck I was able to dive in the Gulf of Mexico. An interesting note is that they have the Wedgewood mark on the bottom.
The next shelf has a variety of items starting with a native carving that I purchased while diving the wrecks of Truk Lagoon in the Pacific. Some brass spikes lay in front that were picked up while diving a Confederate barge that was in the shallows off the coast of the Florida Panhandle. While on the subject of sunken wrecks, it's not much to look at, but I brought up one of the ballast stones from the Spanish Galleon, Atocha while working with Mel Fisher off the Southern Coast of Florida.
The round green glass globes are what the fishermen, in the past, used for floats on their nets that now have been replaced with cork or wood. The Lensatic Compass was used while I was diving in Lake Erie, to take shore bearings to mark the location of a wreck or other objects we found. This was the only means we had prior to GPS.
Finally, there is the Starfish and Fan Coral that I will probably get some negative comments on and rightfully so but these items have been in my possession for over 40 years and the environmentalists were not as active then as they are now. Since then I have been taking photos rather than souvenirs.
OK, for all you military fans, here are some artifacts that will interest you. We did a number of dives off the coast of North Carolina where there are thousands of shipwrecks. While most are recorded sinking's from the 1800s and earlier, there are a number of WWII wrecks that were supplied to us courtesy of the German U Boats. Mixed in with ones from WWII are a few from WWI which was where some of these munitions came from.
In the foreground are various prehistoric shark's teeth that are millions of years old. They were found on the West Coast of Florida by the city of Venice. You can catch a charter boat that will take you for a two-tank dive in about 25 feet of water where you can find teeth this size on a regular basis. Occasionally you may find one as big as your hand but these are really scarce. There are smaller teeth all around which are contained in the glass located in the back right hand corner. Finally, there is a whale rib, from the same location, to fill out the display.
A great guide to identifying the various prehistoric shark's teeth you might find as well as what type of shark they were from, to their reason for being. I have used Kelley's Guide to Fossil Sharks as a reference.
The bottom shelf is filled by a few more of those controversial items that are a no-no in today's diving. The Queen Conch was obtained in the West Palm Beach area and was not found diving but, from the back of a restaurant that served conch. The shell was already dead when I obtained it. They just cut a small notch in the back to release the meat from the shell and toss the rest.
The larger Helmet Conch was found while diving in the Gulf with a business associate of mine. We were swimming along and only a small portion of the shell was visible sticking out of the bottom. We excavated the shell and brought it to the surface. I think it's one of the most beautiful shells I have ever found.
The small piece of coral was found in the Florida Keys following a storm where numerous pieces of dead coral were laying on the bottom, so I thought one piece would look nice on my shelf.
Looking around the room, there is the type case I featured in another of my blogs, filled with a number of artifacts found in the Buffalo, NY area along with a few of the coins that were the main items of interest.
To end my displays of the Buffalo, NY area, that the locals have named The Coin Pile, I have mounted the nautical map of that section of Lake Erie where it empties into the Niagara River. The enlarged portion depicts the location of just where the Coin Pile is located. I dove it so many times and have gained so many artifacts from that location that I just had to show interested visitors where it was.
If you had an opportunity to read "Scuba Pioneer", I had talked about the porthole I recovered from a sunken tugboat in Lake Erie. I cleaned it up, replaced the glass, inserted an old treasure map and have it hanging on the wall in our family room.
There are some items that my wife will not tolerate in the house and one item she drew the line at was the largest anchor I retrieved from the break wall in Lake Erie. It was displayed in a photo from 1962, along with a few others my buddy and I found. This one is the only one I kept and brought down to Florida. The remainder, I either sold or gave away. It now has a home in a section of my back yard.
Over the 60 plus years I have been diving, photography has always been one of the ways I can add to my memories of the places I have been fortunate to dive along with the subject matter that wandered by my lens. I'm not a professional by any means but to fortify my memories with a picture is all I need. Sure, it may not have the proper lighting technique or cropped the way some other photographer thinks it should be, but it's all I need to take me down that memory lane to those days when I was younger and had the opportunities to witness what is displayed in my office.
Now the most treasured possession related to diving does not sit on a shelf or hang on the wall but is in the form of a letter and a photograph.
Back in 1979 I learned the horrible news of Jacque Cousteau's son Philippe being killed in a plane crash. I had been a long-time member of the Cousteau Society and followed their adventures with a passion. I immediately sent a Mailgram to the Cousteau's expressing my feelings as a father knowing what it must be like to lose a son as they had.
Shortly after I received a letter from Madame Cousteau thanking me for my concern and along with the letter was an autographed photo of Jacques. Now it may not have been a personally autographed photo but it will always be my favorite artifact that I did not gain from the sea but from one person that has made so many countries and people aware of what the oceans have to offer and how we must protect them as much as we can.
What more can I say!
George