200 Feet Deep Working Diving in Hood Canal –
Serious SCUBA Saves the Day!

200 Feet Deep Working Diving in Hood Canal – Serious SCUBA Saves the Day!
Written by Tory van Dyke

Ed Forsyth, the owner of COMMERCIAL DIVERS, INC, Portland, Oregon, successfully bid a diving contract for the U.S. Navy in 1978. The job was located just outside the U.S. Navy Submarine Base in Bangor, Washington, on the world-famous Hood Canal. The canal is over 85 miles long, two miles wide, and 400 feet deep.

The diving contract called for Ed and his dive team to install six, seventeen-foot-long, 75-pound, underwater sonar beacon antennas into six previously installed sonar power base unit sockets, located 150 feet apart, in two hundred feet of water, on the bottom of Hood Canal. These were to be used by the submarines for sonar navigation while entering and exiting the Submarine Base underwater.

The sonar power sockets had been installed by another underwater contractor some months earlier. Each socket had a receiver opening to accommodate the underwater antenna base. These openings were twenty-four inches deep and eight inches in diameter.

The key to the successful completion of this contract was the ability to rapidly locate each antenna socket base. Eddie had the coordinates for each sub-aquatic sonar socket base, but this was in the era prior to GPS technology. Therefore, each socket coordinate location had to be shot in to the dive boat on location in the Hood Canal, from two land positions on the shore, using surveyor transom equipment, one socket location at a time.

That was the problem of the job Ed had to solve. It was location, location, location. The government contract required surface-supplied, lightweight, hardhat-style, umbilical diving apparatus, with underwater radio communications to the diver for safety purposes, according to government diving regulations. In other words, “You must keep the diver on a leash for his own safety.” The infamous last words of a surface-supplied diver in trouble underwater are: “Get me out of here!” At that point, in many cases, his diver tenders pull up his lifeline to find a lifeless diver attached to the end.

If you have ever experienced the rare opportunity of SCUBA diving 200 feet deep in Hood Canal, then you may realize the monumental task facing Ed and his dive team to successfully complete this mission in a timely, cost-effective manner. Government contracts are always awarded to the lowest bidder. How sharp was Eddie’s pencil when he bid the job, and how savvy was his thinking in solving this deep-water dilemma?

Ed Forsyth bought COMMERCIAL DIVERS, INC. in 1960 from retiring Deep-Sea diver Harold Maiken. Harold had been running the diving corporation since 1940. He had spent over twenty years competing with Fred Devine Diving and Salvage for diving work in and around the Columbia River system. These two outfits did most of the commercial diving work in the Portland/Vancouver area, and up and down the river on the Columbia River system, including the coastal ports.

Ed went to work for Harold Maiken when he got out of the Army, after the Korean War. He had trained and worked as a Deep-Sea diver in the Army harbor clearance unit. He worked on diving jobs as a tender for Tommy Amerman, Harold Maiken’s top SCUBA commercial diver. Ed worked on diving jobs with Paul Mark, Bud Sanders, and Ken Dye, and he also worked in the office doing books and accounting. Ed was the natural choice to buy the operation and Harold sold it to him.

Ed Forsyth kept very busy with various diving jobs, completing many diving contracts during the sixties and seventies. He and his team worked in the now decommissioned Trojan Nuclear Power Plant at Rainier, Oregon, on the Columbia River, for PGE, replacing spent fuel rod cores, as one of the more noteworthy jobs in the seventies. Ed used Paul Mark and Bud Sanders for many of his contract jobs, sending them out on missions around the Pacific Northwest.

Ed sent Paul Mark and Ken Dye to the Arctic Ocean on a salvage job during the Alaska Oil Pipeline construction project in the middle seventies. A barge spilled a load of the huge oil pipes, destined for the oil pipeline construction job at Prudhoe Bay, into the Arctic Ocean.

The weather time window was closing fast, as the entire region would be ice covered in less than two weeks. Ken and Paul worked in shifts around the clock, using SCUBA equipment and wearing wet suits, while ice breaker tugs kept the sea ice broken up for the diving salvage job. Eddie flew up and helped work the last few days of the job, providing some relief for Ken and Paul. All the pipes were located and recovered, but none of them were allowed to be used on the pipeline construction job. The pipe steel integrity had been compromised by their quick visit to Davy Jones’ Locker.

The submarine sonar navigation deep dive job in Hood Canal took place in the fall of 1978. Ed Forsyth, Paul Mark, and several other top divers worked on the project. It was Ed’s job to locate the sonar antenna bases, with the goal of finding one base unit per day, and for the dive team to install one antenna in that base that same day.

Ed ordered and purchased a twin-valve, manifold assembly, aluminum 80 cubic foot cylinders, double package, from Tom Hemphill at his UNDERWATER SPORTS, INC. dive shop in Hazel Dell, Washington, on old Highway 99. Ed regularly got his SCUBA tanks filled at Tom’s shop.

His diving success plan was simple. Early in the morning, get out on the water of the Canal with the dive skiff, loaded with all the equipment, like descending lines, marker buoys, and SCUBA gear; have all the survey transom personnel set up on the beach in two locations, and shoot the coordinate marks for that day’s location deep dive to 200 feet.

Once in position, the skiff crew would drop the 50-pound clump-weighted descending line to the bottom and Eddie would roll into the water, fully suited up in his SCUBA gear, and quickly descend. He would reach the bottom in total darkness. Using a powerful underwater diving headlamp, Ed would make a circle pass around the descending line, using a fifteen-foot-long nylon line attached to the clump weight, searching for the underwater sonar socket. Once he located the socket, he would tie off to it with the search line. Mission accomplished! He would make the ascent to his first in-water decompression stop. After completing his decompression, Ed would surface and get back into the dive skiff.

His dive bottom time target at 200 feet was to be less than ten minutes, leaving him with a 3-minute and 30-second ascent time to his first in-water decompression stop at 20 feet for I minute, followed by a final stop at 10 feet for 4 minutes. Total decompression time, including the 60 feet per minute rate of ascent from depth was 8 minutes and 30 seconds, which left him with plenty of air remaining in his twin 80’s.

An unforeseen problem came up with the sonar sockets on the bottom. Since they had been installed on the bottom more than a month prior to this job, the 24-inch-deep anchor sockets had filled up with dead crabs. They got stuck in there without the ability to escape. These had to be removed to allow the placement of the underwater antenna bases. The solution was a high-pressure water hose and nozzle to be sent down with the diver installing the underwater antenna, to flush clear each underwater socket base before the antenna installation.

Depth, darkness, cold water, fast tidal currents, and extreme nitrogen narcosis all worked to complicate the diver’s working conditions. Eddie’s quick-find method of underwater socket location using SCUBA worked very well, and that was the secret key to success in completing this contract, because the government regulations allowed for only surface-supplied diving equipment to be used on this job. Early morning dives, before government inspectors arrived on the job site, allowed Ed to successfully use his SCUBA ace in the hole, out of sight and out of mind.

The first day of the job on location found Ed and his team setting up all the equipment and getting things in place on the material barge and the crew’s work boat, called the MANUAL LABOR. That evening the crew made their way back to the motel in Port Townsend. Ed and Paul cruised over the water of the Hood Canal with the MANUAL LABOR and tied off to Ralph Watson’s commercial fishing dock and pier, just off Main Street in downtown Port Townsend.

Ralph Watson was a N.A.U.I. SCUBA Instructor in Port Townsend. In addition to his commercial seafood business, Ralph operated a small dive shop and air fill station for SCUBA divers. Ed had Ralph fill his twin 80’s during the job.

That evening, a strong Northeast wind came up and sank the MANUAL LABOR, as waves crashed over the exposed stern transom. Paul had warned Ed not to tie the boat up with the stern section exposed to the sound, but Ed disregarded Paul’s advice. Ed and Paul returned early in the morning to find the dismal sight that their work boat was resting on the bottom, at Ralph Watson’s Commercial Seafood Pier.

Ed had to call Konrad Schweiger, the owner of the dive shop, SCUBA UNLIMITED, in Milwaukie, Oregon, on McLoughlin Boulevard. Konny was a commercial diver who had worked with Ed on numerous dive jobs. Ed asked him to come up and dive on the sunken MANUAL LABOR. Unfortunately for Ed and his dive crew, all their diving equipment had been left on board the now sunken boat.

Ed arranged for a large mobile crane, equipped with a boat picking sling, to get on the location. As soon as Konny arrived, he suited up and took the plunge to set the sling under the MANUAL LABOR on the bottom, in less than twenty feet of water. The crane raised the boat to the gunnels, and they started pumping out seawater immediately to de-water the vessel.

All the systems had to be dried out and the necessary mechanical components had to be serviced to get the boat running again, with fresh fuel and oil. Unforeseen difficulties and consequences from adverse weather conditions make diving jobs and routine plans more challenging to say the least. Eternal vigilance is the price of safety at sea.

Finally, the first dive was made by Ed using his twin eighties SCUBA outfit, and all went very well. He was able to locate the first socket quickly and that was the biggest obstacle of the job to overcome. The surface-supplied divers, equipped with Kirby-Morgan Band Masks, wet suits, fins, bailout bottles, and diving headlamps, had merely to flush out the sockets of dead crabs, and then place the long antennas into the deep sockets of the sonar bases.

Paul Mark said the long antennas were difficult to tip up into position vertically to get them to drop down into the base sockets because of the tidal currents pushing against the long mast-like objects of the antennas, and the restriction of the surface-supplied diver’s umbilical hose assembly dragging against the diver’s every working movement.

The divers worked solo, and quickly learned to use the tidal currents to assist them in tipping the antennas into the base sockets, by pre-positioning the antenna at the base socket, with the tip of the mast pointing into the direction of the prevailing tidal current. The current then worked in the favor of the diver, by pushing him and the amtenna up into vertical position for the drop down into the base socket. It was a wrestling match underwater to get those long antennas vertical enough to drop down into the 24” deep receiving base sockets.

With the base of the antenna positioned on the receiver socket, the diver quickly swam to the top of the antenna. The strong tidal current worked to get the antenna vertical enough to drop down into position, while the diver had to overcome his surface-supplied umbilical line drag from the current. It required very strong legs and strong fin kicks to succeed.

One of the prerequisites to be a diver on Ed’s crew was that you had to be a genuine water gorilla. A water gorilla is a man who can do virtually anything underwater, no matter how difficult the environmental working conditions may be. Deep, black water, nitrogen narcosis, extreme pressure, severe cold water, fast tidal currents, you name it, and the water gorilla super diver can overcome them all! Fortunately, most commercial divers in the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest are water gorillas. Cold water working divers must be resilient, resourceful, strong, courageous, optimistic, intelligent, determined to succeed, and about half-crazy. You do not want to get body-slammed by a Pacific Northwest Water Gorilla! It is better and safer to stay at home and watch Direct TV, or Jeopardy at 7:00 PM.

From the 1976 movie, “Outlaw Josey Wales” —
“Now remember, things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.’”

The job from that point onward, after the boat sinking and salvage, the dead crabs filling up the deep-water sockets, and the war with the tidal currents to get the antennas to drop down into the sonar socket bases, went well.

The surface-supplied divers worked on a planned 30-minute maximum underwater bottom time at 200 feet of depth. The decompression was planned using surface decompression on oxygen in the topside recompression chamber located on the material barge. Depending upon the diver’s actual bottom time, decompression schedules were modified as necessary.

Variables in underwater and topside environmental conditions, and the difference in each diver’s experience level and tolerance to nitrogen narcosis, had some on the team finishing faster than others. The topside diving supervisor adjusted the decompression times accordingly.

The tidal current volume and velocity are influenced by the lunar new moon and full moon cycles, with the major flood tides and run-out minus tides occurring twice a month, approximately every two weeks. Timing the work to take place between these two major cycles eliminated the major tidal currents at 200 feet of depth.

A typical 30-minute bottom time at 200 feet, using the surface decompression oxygen tables, left the diver with stops at 40 feet for 8 minutes, 30 feet for 14 minutes, and 20 feet for 23 minutes, followed by a 5-minute maximum surface interval transition for equipment removal topside, then back to 40 feet of depth equivalent inside the chamber. Breathing pure oxygen, via the oral-nasal face mask inside the chamber, a recompression stop of 36 minutes was followed by a slow two-minute ascent rate to topside surface pressure.

Total decompression time for the dive to 200 feet for 30 minutes equaled roughly 1 ½ hours. That still left the diver time enough to return to the beach at Port Townsend for a steak dinner. Each diver ran his own decompression stops and times inside the chamber, as the topside team monitored him and the air compressor from outside, while securing equipment and making things ready for the next day’s diving operations.

It is important to realize just how difficult it is to dive 200 feet deep in Hood Canal using surface-supplied diving equipment. The umbilical lifeline, communication, air-hose assembly acts as a giant bowstring, gathering the entire force of the tidal currents sweeping into and out of the Hood Canal twice a day. A short 30-minute window of slack water between the tides allows for reduced current drag on the diver’s long air-hose assembly, which gives him the best possible advantage for success. Ed’s dive team worked in the slack water time between the tides, but each long antenna still had to be raised upward in order to drop down and make the fit into the antenna base receiver. According to Paul Mark, this was the most difficult aspect of the job.

After Ed and his dive team completed this contract, making it look so easy because of their success, the US Navy determined to install six more underwater antennas into the remaining sonar sockets. If Ed and his team could do it, then certainly the Navy could do it. However, the US Navy was unable to locate and install even one sonar antenna in the submarine sonar navigation system in their two-week-long mission! No doubt, they restricted themselves to using surface-supplied diving equipment only, thereby losing Ed’s creative SCUBA advantage, of which they were entirely ignorant.

Another key and very important factor in the success of Ed’s dive team was the use of underwater lighting, in the form of powerful divers’ headlamps, mounted above the diver’s hard-hat or SCUBA mask. Without any light to illuminate the total darkness at 200 feet of depth in Hood Canal, the diver is essentially engaged in an endless game of playing blind man’s bluff. Your target goal might only be a few feet away from you on the bottom, but you will never see it. Instead, you are relying on mere chance and luck to stumble across your target, virtually by accident. The U.S. Navy, in 1978 and before, was notorious for black water diving with no lights, which resulted in consistent underwater mission failures. Your government at work. Private, commercial contract divers have been using underwater lights to see and work on their jobs for decades. It is literally the difference between night and day. Underwater lights are essential for underwater work success. Without them, the old saying applies, “He does his best work in the dark.”

Having been a US Navy Deep Sea Diver, I can attest to the inept and burdensome regulatory processes involved in all Navy Diving Operations, from the chain of command to U.S. Navy Diving Regulations. It does not surprise me one bit that the Navy failed to complete their underwater mission assignment.

Private diving contractors live and thrive by the wisdom and savvy of their own ingenuity, always incorporating adapt, improvise, innovate, and overcome profiles in their success arsenal of achievement weaponry to complete difficult and sometimes almost impossible underwater diving contracts.

Ed Forsyth used his years of outstanding diving experience, plus wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, to successfully complete the extraordinarily difficult diving contract, using his ace in the hole, SCUBA diving equipment.

Diving in Hood Canal at 200 feet of depth is arduous, challenging, dangerous, and intimidating, even for the most well-seasoned and experienced commercial diving veteran. Ed’s hand-picked, chosen team of divers did a superlative job in completing their diving missions. However, their jobs would have been virtually impossible, without Ed first going to the bottom and locating each sonar sensor base, using his twin eighties SCUBA equipment.

A twenty or thirty-minute working bottom time at 200 feet of depth is nothing to sneeze at for sure. Working deep dives at extreme water depths require that you do the time soaking out in the chamber topside. You could say, spend the dime, or in this case twenty or thirty minutes, and you do the time. Relax, take your time, but hurry every chance you get, because at extreme exposure depths, every second counts!

The government regulations prohibiting the use of SCUBA diving equipment on most commercial diving jobs makes the work harder to successfully accomplish in many cases, necessitating huge cost increases and big corporation involvement. Many smaller commercial diving corporations have grown up over the years to gargantuan size thanks to excessive government regulations, all in the name of safety and insurance liability. Unfortunately for the divers involved, the high risks remain and become exacerbated in many cases, due to the surface-supplied diving equipment regulations.

SCUBA diving equipment is safe, secure, lightweight, versatile, and very cost effective, and divers like Ed Forsyth, Paul Mark, Tommy Amerman, and Bud Sanders made decent livings working underwater on the Columbia River and elsewhere using SCUBA diving equipment. They succeeded as working SCUBA divers where surface-supplied divers could not, and the conflict continues to this day.

• • •

Written by Tory van Dyke, from a story related to him by Super Diver Paul Mark, for the Northwest Diving History Association. www.divinghistory.org

Copyright © August 20, 2023. All rights reserved.