Dive

By Willard Manus

Dive, a nautical themed collection of works by WILLARD MANUS, a Los Angeles-based novelist, playwright and journalist. His best-known novel is MOTT THE HOOPLE, the book from which the British rock band of the 1970s took its name. Other popular books of his include THE PIGSKIN RABBI and THIS WAY TO PARADISE–-DANCING ON THE TABLES, a memoir of the thirty years he spent in the Greek islands. Among his recent theatre credits are FRANK AND AVA (winner of a best-play prize at the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival); JOE AND MARILYN: A LOVE STORY; BIRD LIVES!; PREZ–-THE LESTER YOUNG STORY; and MARLENE. Manus also co-wrote the screenplay of FRANK AND AVA. He reviews plays for TOTAL THEATRE.COM and publishes the online arts magazine, LIVELY-ARTS

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willard Manus
• Release date: Feb 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005332693

Willard Manus

WILLARD MANUS is a Los Angeles-based novelist, playwright and journalist. His best-known novel is MOTT THE HOOPLE, the book from which the British rock band of the 1970s took its name. Other popular books of his include THE PIGSKIN RABBI and THIS WAY TO PARADISE–-DANCING ON THE TABLES, a memoir of the thirty years he spent in the Greek islands. Among his recent theatre credits are FRANK AND AVA (winner of a best-play prize at the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival); JOE AND MARILYN: A LOVE STORY; BIRD LIVES!; PREZ–-THE LESTER YOUNG STORY; and MARLENE. Manus also co-wrote the screenplay of FRANK AND AVA. He reviews plays for TOTAL THEATRE.COM and publishes the online arts magazine, LIVELY-ARTS

Book preview

Dive

WILLARD MANUS

Dive by Willard Manus published by Willard Manus 248 Lasky Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90212

ISBN: 9781005332693

© 2021 Willard Manus

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

For permissions contact: [e-mail]

Chapter 1

20,000 DIVERS UNDER THE SEA

Feature by Willard Manus

No ordeal is more terrifying than that of the sponge-divers and no labour is more arduous for men, wrote Oppian back in the third century B.C.

No one living today is more cognizant of that observation than Torrance R. Parker, a former commercial diver (and head of Parker Diving Services). Parker, born on an Oklahoma farm, first learned to dive in the 1940s on a Greek sponge boat working out of Tarpon Springs, Florida. His mentors, divers from the Aegean islands of Kalymnos and Symi, had been recruited in the first part of the 20th century to fish for sponges in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now Parker has written a book about sponges and the sponge trade, 20,000 DIVERS UNDER THE SEA. He not only deals with his personal experiences as a sponge-diver but goes into the history of the sponge itself. A primitive animal that survives by taking in water through the tiny pores of its body's outer membrane, the sponge has lived under the sea as far back in time as 600 million years ago.

It is likely that sponges were first discovered after having broken loose from their shallow water holding ground by ocean surges generated by storms at sea, Parker writes. Now known as rollers, they are sometimes cast ashore after traveling many miles along the bottom, often with the rolling motion wearing away their outer skin, exposing their inner skeleton as if having been professionally cleaned. Sponges, as mentioned in writings of the Old Testament, were probably discovered this way.

Back in the days of Oppian and Aristotle, naked divers began bringing up sponges from the Aegean seabed. (The divers, their boats, crewmen and equipment are depicted on Greek pottery dating from 600 B.C.). The divers used a heavy stone to help them descend rapidly and with less exertion...Divers of Symi and Kalymnos acquired the reputation of being the best deep-water divers in the world, often working at depths of 102 feet, explains the author.

In the mid-19th century, when the eastern Aegean began to be depleted of the golden fleece of the sea, the Greek divers began to search for new grounds. In 1840 they sailed in a fleet hundreds of miles across the Mediterranean in boats designed and built by them. Reaching the desolate North African coast, they discovered the world's largest sponge grounds lying in waters offshore Libya near the small coastal town of Derna, a slave port.

The sponge trade was revolutionized in 1863 with the introduction of underwater breathing equipment: a rubberized canvas suit and metal helmet which took compressed air from a surface vessel. The impact of this technology--called the machine by the Greeks--was enormous. Divers could now stay below for an hour or more at a time--and at unheard-of depths--and bring up vast amounts of sponges. People began to get rich out of the sponge trade.

There was a downside to