Debborah Lecocq and Samuel G. Lecocq

Once upon a time Gustav Dalla Valle was the export director for North America representing Cressi Sub, an Italian company that was one of the first manufacturers of skindiving equipment. Gustav later went on to become the founder and owner of Scubapro. Sam Lecocq had been hired by Rene Bussoz, the founder of U.S. Divers Company to redesign the Aqualung regulators from France and production of the products in the U.S. Sam was appointed a short time later as manager of U.S. Divers Company. Richard Klein was the president of Healthways, a company that manufactured and distributed sporting goods in Los Angeles, California. Richard Kline asked Gustav and Sam to join him at Healthways to manufacture a complete new line of Scuba diving equipment. The multiethnic trio: an Italian, a Frenchman and an American, didn’t even speak the same language. Nevertheless, they embarked on an exciting commercial venture that led to adventures at sea, as well.

To add to the challenge and excitement the three decided to buy a boat and equip it for research and testing of the new diving products they were designing. Sam found the perfect boat, a 48-foot Jeffries powerboat with a 16-foot beam that made it very stable. It had a large cabin and a spacious aft deck. Sam went up to San Francisco to take a look at the powerboat, bought it on the spot and cruised back down to Los Angeles where they installed state-of-the-art equipment for diving. They soon christened the boat, SCUBA, after the new sport and the first double-hose regulator Sam designed for Healthways.

The SCUBA had three large custom-made boarding ladders made specifically to accommodate divers, an Ingersoll-Rand Compressor, fathometer, radios and all the latest electronics available in 1958. It had a large snack bar and ample room for up to 30 divers. Sam, Gustav and Richard used the boat during the week for trips to Catalina to test the performance of Healthway’s new products, including the SCUBA regulator. On the weekends it operated as “the first year-round charter boat devoted exclusively to skin divers and underwater sports enthusiasts”.

On a perfect morning in January, Sam headed to Catalina with a group of divers to do some testing of the SCUBA double-hose regulator and a new single-hose regulator he was designing. With an eye to getting Navy approval for the products, Sam had invited some guests to assist in the open-water testing. One was his good friend, Navy Captain Walter Miller, the director of the Pacific Missile Range at Pt. Mugu, California, who brought three of his officers. Also onboard was Sam’s younger brother, Gerard, on vacation from France and his job as an engineer at Agfa, the giant film manufacturer. Gerard had brought along all his photographic equipment to document the events of the day. A man more accustomed to flying small airplanes, Gerard was eagerly anticipating his baptism at sea…his first ocean dive. Sam’s wife, who also had very limited diving experience, was looking forward to a day of diving.

The skipper on board was a retired Navy boatswain who had been captain of the SCUBA since the first dive and knew the boat and the Catalina channel very well. They enjoyed a beautiful 27 mile crossing on an unseasonably warm morning with calm, glassy seas and not a breeze. The first stop was Eagle Reef, a sea mount about a mile off the east side of Catalina Island. The top of the reef was about 30 feet below the surface and it dropped off to about 200 feet. The skipper dropped the anchor right alongside the reef and all the divers geared up with full wetsuits and some of the prototype equipment.

The dive teams formed up with the Navy officers as the first team and Sam, his brother and his wife as the second. They entered the water as a slight breeze came up. The water was crystal clear, 100 foot visibility or more, which was exceptional even for Catalina. Sam, Gerard and Barbara proceeded down to 70 feet to test some regulators, planning to pick up a couple lobsters for lunch on the ascent.

At the predetermined depth, everyone stopped and assessed the equipment. Sam started to feel a slight current pulling from shore towards deeper water, not an uncommon occurrence, so they decided to continue exploring the reef. After ten minutes or so the current became so strong it was nearly impossible to swim against it, so Sam decided to ascend to the surface and evaluate the sea conditions. He signaled to his brother and wife to follow him and they met on the surface.

Sam immediately realized they were in a difficult situation. The SCUBA had drifted about 150 feet away from the original position, though the anchor appeared to be holding. The waves were four to six feet high and pushing the divers rapidly out to sea. They tried to swim towards the boat, but the current was too strong, and they couldn’t make any headway. With the raging wind and the height of the waves, the skipper onboard the boat didn’t appear to see the divers as they began drifting farther from the boat into deeper water. Sam looked for the other divers, the Navy dive team, but it was impossible to see any divers, much less their bubbles.

Sam decided the only way to survive was to inflate their Mae West-type vests and drop all the equipment: weight belt, tank and regulator. The regulators were all prototypes, one-of-a-kind units which had cost thousands of dollars to produce, but as he says now, “I knew that a complete set of drawings were back at the research lab and I was more concerned about losing our lives than losing the regulators”.

As Sam recounts the story:

“We tried again to swim towards the boat, but the current and the wind were too strong and we couldn’t make any progress. We decided to hold on to each other and just drift hoping the skipper would spot us and come pick us up. We drifted for a time which felt like an eternity as we watched the boat recede into the distance.

“But we had a guardian angel. Early that morning before we started our dive, a 17-foot boat, skippered by Bev Morgan, (designer of the Kirby Morgan full-face helmet some years later) had stopped by on route to another dive spot. Bev and the Meistrell brothers (owners of Dive N Surf dive shop in Redondo Beach) who were also on board stayed long enough to have a cup of coffee and then continued on to one of their favorite abalone dive spots.

“Now in the midst of our peril, Bev Morgan’s boat appeared again and went straight to the SCUBA. His boat appeared to circle ours, searching for divers. The three of us began waving and screaming to alert them to our position. Finally, a giant swell pushed us high enough so they could spot us. Their small boat had a hard time fighting the seas and was taking huge waves over the bow, but Bev was a great skipper. He managed to reach us, pick us up and took us back to the SCUBA.

“We thought the adventure was over for the day, but it was just beginning.

“On the way back to the SCUBA, we spotted the three Navy men who had surfaced near the boat. Luckily, their team had proceeded in the opposite direction from ours and the current had pushed them towards the boat, not out to deeper water. After boarding, I immediately asked why the skipper hadn’t at least started the engine so he could come pick us up. He replied that he was worried about the safety of the divers because the surface visibility was so poor he was afraid he might run over one of us.

“With all the divers on board, and having screamed at the skipper in every language I knew, I ordered the skipper to start the diesel engines and find a safe cove where we could ride out the storm. I went forward with one of the Navy officers to pull the anchor. Despite having a very powerful winch and the skipper’s assistance with both engines, the mighty anchor was lodged firmly in the giant boulders that made up the reef. My only alternative was to cut the nylon line attached to the anchor chain. Using our diving knives, it took a few minutes to part the line and the boat was free.

“I told the skipper to head to Catalina Harbor on the west side of the island where I knew we could safely weather the storm. The skipper engaged the engines and started to move against the swells, which were about ten to twelve feet high by that time. After a couple minutes, we realized that the steering system was jammed and the helm couldn’t turn the boat in either direction. The boat was drifting very rapidly towards the island which was still about a mile away.

“One of the Naval officers immediately went down to the bilge to check the steering. He discovered that one of the cables had jumped a guide. I passed a large hammer and a crowbar down to him hoping he could free the cable. We were drifting fast towards the shore and I finally yelled to the Navy man to get back on deck because it was too risky to stay below decks.

“All the divers still had their wetsuits on. A couple of the Navy divers didn’t have inflatable vests so I gave them life jackets and passed another to the skipper and told everyone to put them on. By that time the sea was ferocious, we were only a couple hundred yards from shore and the wind was blowing us toward the rocks. I yelled at everyone to jump over the side. I was afraid if anyone stayed on board, when the boat reached the shore it would overturn and kill them. All the divers jumped in the water. I helped the skipper to put on his life jacket and told him to follow me into the water. We were in the water a few minutes struggling against the high seas. By that time, the boat was close to the rocks and pushed by the wind it was moving fast. Finally a huge wave picked up the boat and threw the 48-foot vessel high on the rocks. To my astonishment I watched as the skipper took one giant leap from the bow of the boat to a boulder on the beach without even getting his feet wet.

“We all regrouped on the beach, shaken, but unhurt and very grateful to be alive. The skipper walked over to join us. I asked why he had not followed my orders to abandon ship, thinking he might have some notion from his military career that a captain should never abandon his ship. He looked at me with his big blue eyes and a weathered face that showed all the years he had passed at sea and answered with a smile, “Sam, I cannot swim.” I remembered he was a retired Navy man who had been at sea for almost thirty years and fought in the Pacific in World War II. I even recalled him telling me that he was on a PT boat that had sunk right from under his feet. So I learned it’s not always necessary to learn to swim in order to survive at sea. In this case it just took great timing and lots of luck.

“So there we sat on the rocks. For a couple of hours we watched the waves pound on the boat, breaking it apart. Finally we decided to walk a couple of miles to Isthmus Harbor, the closest village. Before leaving, my brother and I decided to approach the part of the ship that was dry on the rocks. We were just curious and hoped that maybe we could salvage some of our belongings. We spotted a couple of small black bags. They looked like they might be the camera bags my brother had brought on board. To our amazement the bags did contain Gerard’s delicate cameras: in one bag was his Rolleiflex camera and in the other the Leica. My brother pulled the Leica out of the bag. The camera was soaked, but a great believer in German design ingenuity Gerard decided to take one more photo with the wet Leica. When he developed the film back in L.A., amazingly, the only photo that wasn’t damaged was that final photo of the SCUBA scattered on the beach. Keeping his run of luck alive, Gerard was even able to clean the cameras and they continued to work fine despite the ordeal.

So, on the way to Isthmus Village, one of the park rangers approached us in a pickup looking for a boat in distress that had been reported in one of the coves. We told him our story and he drove us to town. After radioing the Coast Guard on the mainland we found out the storm was expected to be very strong for at least the next few hours, maybe the next few days, so we had little choice but to stay on Catalina overnight. Captain Miller contacted the Naval base at Pt. Mugu hoping that a helicopter could be sent to pick us up. But after talking to the Naval air base, he agreed with the airmen that we were all safe where we were and the risk of picking us up by helicopter during gale force winds was too great. The local people opened their homes to us since there was no hotel and everything was closed for the winter except for one little coffee shop.

“I realized that it was time to call my friend, Gustav Dalla Valle. Just a couple of days before this great adventure, I had sold my interest in the SCUBA to Gustav because I had bought another boat on my own. Gustav and Richard Kline had made a gentleman’s agreement that I would continue to use the SCUBA for research and promotion of Healthway’s equipment.

“I reached Gustav at home. By that time it was early evening. I immediately told him we were still at Catalina, that all the divers were safe, but the good boat SCUBA had sunk. There was a long moment of total silence and I thought we’d been disconnected. But Gustav was just getting a giant breath of air, and with his great booming voice he started to yell at me, swearing in French, English and Italian. By the time he reached Italian I knew he was really mad and I think I could have heard his voice traveling across the 27 miles of ocean even without the telephone. I moved the phone away from my ear and waited for some calm. He finally stopped, and after a moment, he asked me if everyone was OK and what had happened. He was himself again, concerned about all of us and his only question was: “Sam, did you take care of the insurance payment last month?” I assured him I had, that everything was in order, and I had even had the SCUBA reappraised because of some new equipment we had installed so it was fully covered. He asked how long I thought it would take to make some new prototype regulators and he invited me over to his house for dinner and some great wine to tell him all about it.

“We all stayed on the island and had a great dinner with the local people. The wind continued to blow all night, but by morning a helicopter from Pt. Mugu arrived to pick up the Naval officers. My brother, my wife, and I headed back to the cove where the SCUBA had crashed. By that time, the sea was calm and it was another beautiful day. When we arrived back at the cove and spotted the beach from a trail high above the water, we couldn’t believe our eyes. That beautiful 48-foot boat was no more. Pieces of wreckage were scattered all over the beach and only one part remained recognizable, just the bow with the name SCUBA clearly visible.

For more about the adventures and careers of Samuel Lecocq, Gustav Dalla Valle, Richard Kline and many others look for the upcoming book by Samuel Lecocq.

Scuba; Evolution, Intrigue and Controversy;
A first hand account of the development of the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus from day one to today.
By Samuel G. Lecocq and Debborah Lecocq

First editions of the biography of Samuel Lecocq will be made available at Portage Quarry in Ohio on August 11, 12 and 13th, 2006 where Samuel Lecocq will be pleased to autograph copies.

© 2006 Samuel G. Lecocq and Debborah Lecocq
All Rights Reserved.