In 1930 Salvage Ship Artiglio entered the SS Egypt.
In May 1922 P&O’s steamship Egypt sunk forty miles off the coast of France with a treasure of gold worth more than a million pounds sterling in her strong room.
David Scott wrote the book “Seventy Fathoms Deep” about the divers of the Salvage Ship Artiglio. On this page you find impressions how the Salvage team used Atmospheric suits made by Neufeldt und Kuhnke and also used their Observation chambers. Again artist Mr. Charles Daigneault managed to draw the observation chamber used by Alberto Gianni and others. He achieved a realistic effect to show how these pioneers dived with oxygen rebreathers to the wreck of the Egypt. Mr. Daigneault used some of Lee Bishop’s pictures for a background. Mr. Lee Bishop kindly allowed me to put these pictures available for you. Lee Bishop actually dived the wreck in the 2001 expedition. The story was published in Diver magazine in 2001 but is no longer online.
Additional information about the history of the Salvage Ship Artiglio can be found at the Artiglio foundation here:
http://www.premioartiglio.it/
I would like to thank all people who helped to make this page! A special thanks to Charles Daigneault for his great artwork. Lee Bishop for the wreckpictures from SS Egypt!
Sorima = Societa Ricuperi Marittimi (Marine Salvage Company)
Therebreathersite was founded by Jan Willem Bech in 1999. After a diving career of many years, he decided to start technical diving in 1999. He immediately noticed that at that time there was almost no website that contained the history of closed breathing systems. The start for the website led to a huge collection that offered about 1,300 pages of information until 2019. In 2019, a fresh start was made with the website now freely available online for everyone. Therebreathersite is a source of information for divers, researchers, technicians and students. I hope you enjoy browsing the content!