equatorjournal: Famed aviator and explorer Amelia Earhart after a dive off Block Island, Rhode Islan
equatorjournal: Famed aviator and explorer Amelia Earhart after a dive off Block Island, Rhode Island, in 1929. “On the bottom of the submarine is an unusual contrivance. It is an airtight chamber. By making the air pressure equal to that of the water one may step gayly forth into the Atlantic Ocean with never a drop coming into the chamber. The phenomenon is that of the inverted tumbler only so far as the pressure of the imprisoned air will allow. Yes, I walked out of the strange door into the green sea and swam through it into the sunlight. — Amelia Earhart, The Fun of It (1932) “Aviation pioneer; first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean (1928); author; early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment; conducted two hardhat dives and became the first woman to exit from a submerged submarine in July 1929. She flew to Block Island (Rhode Island). On the first dive, she was lowered into the water in a hardhat suit owned by Frank Crilley. However, the dive was aborted before she reached the bottom due to a leak in the suit. The suit was repaired and on the next day, Earhart reached a depth of 7.5 m (25 ft) where she walked on the bottom with Crilley for over 20 minutes before she got cold and headed back to the surface after seeing only a milk bottle and a clam shell. She later dove in the submarine, which was undergoing U.S. Navy tests in Great Salt Pond Harbor, before exiting through a hatch in the floor of the diving compartment at a depth of 4.5 m (15 ft) clad only in a swimsuit. Although meant as a media stunt, Amelia Earhart’s hardhat dives took place 14 years before Simone Cousteau became the first female scuba diver in 1943, approximately 25 years before Dottie Frazier became the first female commercial diver, and 46 years before Donna Tobias became the first female hardhat diver in the U.S. Navy in 1975. Earhart disappeared with navigator Fred Noonan during a circumnavigational flight of the globe aboard a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra on July 2, 1937…”https://www.instagram.com/p/CIjLi3ugwY0/?igshid=4dtafehcsvs9 -- source link