Word: wookey
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When Senior Commissioned Boatswain George Wookey of the British navy went over the side of the experimental diving ship H.M.S. Reclaim, he knew he was headed for a trying experience. The Reclaim was anchored in a cold Norwegian fiord, and on the bottom, at 600 ft. below the surface, was a steel table. Boatswain Wookey's job was to descend to the table in an ordinary diving suit and stay there for a specified time. If he accomplished this and survived, he would break the diving record by a wide margin...
Boatswain Wookey, a ruddy, biggish man, made his dive in standard diving equipment (a rubberized fabric suit with a round helmet), but behind him stood the calculations of many scientists who had scheduled every minute and foot of the dive. A crew of engineers and pathologists helped him into the water or watched instruments in the hold of the Reclaim...
When Boatswain Wookey was lowered into the water, he was breathing ordinary air, but when he reached 40 ft., the pump began supplying a mixture of oxygen (8.5 parts) and helium (91.5 parts). Going down was comparatively easy. In spite of the 273 Ibs. of pressure on every square inch of his body (39,312 Ibs. per sq. ft.), he felt fine. "I felt no more effect from the helium," he says, "than I would from nitrogen at shallow depth. My mind was clear. I did the job I was sent down to do." His token job, to prove that...