Word: wookey
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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...
Narrow Margin. The scientists on board the Reclaim had figured on his staying at 600 ft. for exactly three minutes. Wookey stayed two minutes longer to untangle his air tube. This threw the dive off schedule and threatened Wookey's narrow margin of safety. As his shipmates began to haul him up, a sudden chill struck through him. "It was the most intense cold," he said, "that I ever felt. That cold gets into your guts, and you feel you can't stand...
Slowly, with many stops, he rose toward a submerged decompression chamber that hung 220 ft. below the surface. It was open at the bottom, with compressed air keeping the water out. Inside waited Able Seaman George Clucas, an expert diver, to give Wookey aid and comfort while he finished the long decompression process...