Recreational scuba diving in Britain is a postwar story. It began with a few enthusiasts, a diving school in Devon and a club that is still running.
The first dive school
Trevor Hampton, a former RAF test pilot, ran what is described as the UK’s first dive school at Warfleet Creek in Dartmouth. Two members of the Royal Air Force Sub-Aqua Club, Oscar Gugen and Peter Small, visited it. Ten years after Jacques Cousteau’s first aqualung dives, they came back to London with a plan.
The British Sub-Aqua Club
The British Sub-Aqua Club, known as BSAC, was founded in London in October 1953. The inaugural meeting took place on 15 October at the Waldorf Hotel. The club says the aim was a non profit, democratic body that would make diving easier and promote marine conservation.
Accounts of the meeting differ. One BSAC history says 100 divers attended, and another says 22 enthusiasts joined together to form the first branch. Either way, the London branch, number one, was formed on 4 May 1954, and others followed soon after in places including Manchester, Merseyside, Bristol, Bournemouth, Brighton and Torbay.
Gugen and Small
Oscar Gugen was a businessman who ran a company importing diving fins and goggles from France. Peter Small was a science journalist who wrote one of the early British diving guides, Your Guide to Underwater Adventure, published in 1956.
Small died in December 1962, aged 35, during a deep diving experiment led by the Swiss diver Hannes Keller. BSAC gives an annual Peter Small Award in his memory, for the most worthwhile and ambitious BSAC project in British waters.
Finding the Mary Rose
BSAC divers took part in exploration of the waters around Britain. In 1971, members of the Southsea branch, led by Alexander McKee, located the wreck of the Mary Rose.
Diving today
BSAC says it has around 1,100 local clubs and about 400 diving schools worldwide, and most of its instructors are volunteers. Clubs now sit alongside commercial dive centres, and other training agencies are widely used in Britain. This piece does not cover those.
What this means for you
Cold water, tides and visibility all matter when you dive in British waters. Our scuba diving safety guide covers what to ask, and our scuba diving page lists dive centres.
Sources
- British Sub-Aqua Club, Wikipedia
- BSAC key milestones
- BSAC celebrates 70 year history of UK scuba diving
- Celebrating 70 years of BSAC, Divernet
- Peter Small Award, BSAC
- Oscar Gugen, Wikipedia mirror
The details on Oscar Gugen come from a Wikipedia mirror, so they are less certain than the BSAC material. This covers BSAC only, and not other training agencies or the commercial dive centres.