In the painting of “White Horse and Griffin” I placed a diving helmet in the window of The Whitby Bookshop next door. It was there to symbolise attempts by divers off the coast to find the fabled bell of Whitby Abbey. During the 16th century dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, the Abbey’s valuables and its bell were plundered. The ship carrying its treasures sank near Black Nab and local folklore tells that on quiet nights the tolling of the bell can be heard from the depths of the sea. The original artwork was produced with soft B pencils on coloured paper.

The Siebe Gorman 12-bolt diving helmet is one of the most iconic divers’ helmets in the history of deep-sea diving. The copper helmet with its brass fittings was first developed around 1840 by the well-known Victorian submarine engineer, Christian ‘Augustus’ Siebe (1788-1872). From his London workshop at 5 Denmark Street, Soho he produced the world’s first practical ‘closed’ 12-bolt diving dress that included a helmet with a detachable bonnet and removable front window. From 1840 to about 1975, the company produced almost 20,000 diving helmets, but only about 1500 now remain, and some are still used by diving enthusiasts today.

Recognizable features of the helmet include the guarded oval side windows, a front ‘spitcock’, rear air inlet valve and an adjustable exhaust valve. Ropes of the heavy lead weights are placed over hooks on the side of the helmet to help keep it in place and to weight the diver. Many later helmets are also fitted with a diver telephone system. The stiff lower corselet has removable ‘brasses’ held in place with wingnuts to clamp the rubber collar of the suit for a watertight seal. Various other straps are placed over the protruding lugs. The ‘standard’ diving helmet weighs approx. 41 lbs. (19 kg.) and a complete diver’s outfit weighs about 176 lbs. (80 kg.), but underwater, the diver weighs almost nothing.

While wearing this legendary helmet a diver traditionally wore a knitted, red woollen hat for warmth and protection. The helmet was in use worldwide for many underwater projects such as the construction of dams, bridges, docks and harbours, ship repair, salvage work, clearance of sunken wrecks and even the recovery of treasure. Although diving was hard, dangerous work exploits made some divers famous in their own lifetime. In 1885, diver Alexander Lambert recovered many boxes of gold bars from the sunken wreck of the SS Alphonso XII off Grand Canary. In the early 1900s, diver William Walker spent several years diving under the flooded foundations of Winchester Cathedral, carrying out repairs and saving the building from collapse. During clandestine WW1 exploits, Royal Navy divers such as ‘Dusty’ Miller entered sunken German U-Boats to retrieve vital documents, and in 1956 RN diver George Wookey made a record dive to 600ft. (183m) wearing the military version of this legendary diving helmet (a record which remains unbroken today).

No other design of copper diving helmet has enabled divers to achieve so much in the history of deep-sea diving.

(Dr. Mike Burchett, Historical Diving Society)