John Lethbridge’s Diving Engine

I’ve been sketching again in Newton Abbot, this time it’s the replica of John Lethbridge’s Diving Engine in Newton Abbot Museum.

John Lethbridge was a Newton Abbot wool merchant who invented a diving machine in 1715 which was used to salvage valuables from wrecks. It was an airtight oak barrel with a tiny window and sleeves for the arms, which enabled the diver to go to depths impossible to dive otherwise. The frustration of divers who could see wrecks full of treasure below them in clear water, and yet be unable to reach the valuables, was finally relieved. Here’s Lethbridge:

I can move it about 12 foot square at the bottom, where I have stayed many times 34 minutes. I have been 10 fathoms deep many a hundred times, and have been 12 fathom, but with great difficulty.

If you are trying to fathom what 10 fathoms is, it’s about 18 metres. He recovered the Dutch Slot ter Hooge, which had sunk off Madeira with over three tons of silver on board as well as many others and became fabulously wealthy.

It’s interesting to think how people who make breakthroughs in technology are people of their time and place. Would he have been successful without knowledge of cider barrels? John Lethbridge dug a deep hole in his back garden in Wolborough Street and filled it with water to test his diving engine. Surely the neighbours thought he was mad? The modern word has been created by dreamers and schemers and adventurers and different-thinkers. Lethbridge was one of them. He’s buried in St Mary’s (Wolborough) Church. I must pay a visit.

Part of my Postcards from Newton Abbot series of postcard-sized ink and watercolour sketches.

Ink: Platinum brun sepia pigmented ink
Pen: Sailor Fude de Mannen fountain pen
Watercolour: Derwent Graphitint watercolours

More Postcards from Newton Abbot