Comment

Comment by Dive Diva on October 30, 2009 at 2:45pm

By the 1960's, several Gulf Coast divers had designed and built their own hats. Walt Daspit, who was motivated by Joe Savoie to design and construct his own hat, wrote the following:

"The first guy that came out with a lightweight diving helmet was Joe Savoie. We were working on one of McDermott's barges with Chuck Gage and we saw Joe. Joe was explaining to us what he was going to build. He was going to use an Aqualung, which was a sterile diving dress that was used at the time. It was a front entry and you would wrap up tight and you would stay dry. Joe was going to put a neck ring on it...He wanted to build a helmet out of a race car crash helmet. Then he was going to attach the faceplate visor and a neck ring and tie it. He was explaining that to us and drawing it... He made a very good helmet but it took him a while to evolve it into something." (Walt Daspit, personal communication, 2002).

Comment by Bill Gardner on October 30, 2009 at 8:04am

Wonderful**I haven't seen this before, can you tell me what publication its from? Thank you in advance. Bill