Page 6. MAINE COASTAL NEWS December 2011 PROFILE: SHIPWRECK DIVER - BRADFORD LUTHER, JR.


FAIRHAVEN, MA – One of the most popular topics for most readers of maritime history involves shipwrecks. One does not have to add anything to these stories as most of them are horrible accounts of human suffering. What is even more fascinating is finding the wreck and obtaining souvenirs. As far back as I can recall I remember hearing about shipwrecks from my uncle, Bradford Luther who lives in Fairhaven, MA. I remember walk- ing through his home and out in the barn where there were photographs with captions explaining about each disaster and hundreds of artifacts that he and others had brought to the surface.


Luther explained how he got involved in shipwreck diving, saying, “I was always fas- cinated diving, but I couldn’t see the bottom of the ocean when we were swimming around. When we got our swim goggles then I could see the bottom, but I could only stay down a


short time. When I came out of the Coast Guard in 1950, they were advertising in “Popular Mechanics” to get fins and a mask, rather than the goggles, because sometimes when I went more than 15 feet down, my eyes hurt. I didn’t know why until I finally got a book on the physics of diving and found out the pressure between the goggles and the eyeballs were not the same as the pressure outside. With the mask, since it covered your nose, you could very easily pressurize the mask. The next thing was a snorkel and then eventually tanks.”


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In between the snorkel and tanks came a surface driven compressor. Luther said, “This was more like a compressor that you painted cars with. It had a lot of volume, but not much pressure. It all worked pretty good, but you were limited. You always had a line to the surface that you had to drag around. One of the first wrecks I really remember using this on was in 1952. I had to go down on a British freighter that was off of Martha’s Vineyard. She was rammed and sunk by a German tug in World War I. She was loaded with war goods. They did their salvage on it and eventually had nothing to do with it anymore. A salvager asked me if I could go down and un-snag a cable that was hooked to the prop. It was in 80 feet of water and that was pretty deep for me in those days. I got another 100 foot more of oxygen hose and added it on. They had a breather bag that was part of my mask that went around the back of the neck, so when I was exhaling, the air that was coming down that I wasn’t using, went and filled the bag up. So when I inhaled I pulled the air that was in the bag plus what was coming down the hose. I had a big canvas suit, just like a hard hat diver, but you had to be very careful when you went in as the air came out of the suit and the creases didn’t pinch your skin. It would cut you just like a knife. I went down the cable and it was wrapped around a big deck gun on the stern.”


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Luther pulled on the message line, but there was some confusion as to the message and he came to the surface. Then another problem occurred. Luther added, “As I got up around 30 feet, I found that my suit was filling full of water. It was leaking badly. It is still warm and I didn’t think too much of it until I got up to the ladder and then I said how am I going to crawl up that ladder with a ton of water in my suit. So I took my knife out and cut a hole in each leg. I liked that wreck so much


The schooner MEXICAN ashore on the North Shore of Massachusetts.


from just what I had seen, I got my boat and went down there, grappled into it, and started looking at that thing.”


This freighter is the PORT HUNTER. Another interesting story regarding her hap- pened years later. Luther said, “There was a 15-year-old kid, he was getting ready to put himself through college, because he had found the trench candles on her. In World War I they used these candles in the trenches to heat meals and see with. He glued those onto plaques with the PORT HUNTER sticker on them and sold them to the tourists and put himself through college. One-time he found a barrel of what he thought was cheese, big wedges in wooden barrels. The barrel had pretty well gone to pieces, cheese lasts no matter where it is, so he thought it might be good. He brought it to the surface, set it on the back of the boat for about 15 minutes, and then burst into a huge flame. It was phospho- rus and it will not ignite as long as it is in liquid. He was very lucky that he was able to push it over the side. Every time that I went out there with a bunch of divers that had never been there before, I said don’t pick up any bits of cheese or anything that looks like it.” “I was happy when I bought my first tank,” said Luther. “That open up a whole new world, but it was frustrating to have to ship your tank to Boston to have it filled.” One job Luther did was assist the com- mercial fishing boats when the got netting or


Continued on Page 20.


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