People of Helicon - Paul, a family story beneath the surface

Sometimes an email arrives that reminds us exactly why we do this.

Just before we launched the new Siebe Gorman Type-D Professional Diver, Danielle and I received a message from a gentleman called Paul.  Paul wasn’t simply interested in buying another dive watch.  For his family, the name Siebe Gorman has a meaning stretching back generations.

Paul’s late father, Bill, was what Paul affectionately describes as an “old school hard hat diver”.  Bill’s extraordinary working career as a diver stretched from the 1930s until his retirement in 1967.

He began working with Dorman Long, involved in bridge construction and maintenance on the Thames, before his career eventually took him overseas.  By the early 1960s, Bill was working in Aden, Yemen, as a deep-sea diver on marine operations associated with the oil refinery.

And throughout that long career, according to Paul, his father worked exclusively with Siebe Gorman diving equipment.  Paul sent us a treasured photograph of Bill taken in Aden, believed to date from around 1963.

It is the sort of photograph that stops you in your tracks.  There is no recreation, costume or carefully constructed historical display here. This is a professional diver wearing the equipment to do the job for which it was designed.

And there is another lovely connection.

Paul remembers being just two or three years old when another photograph was taken of his father standing on the deck of the dive barge in Aden.  More than six decades later, those photographs remain part of the family's history.

Paul has subsequently acquired a couple of Siebe Gorman six-bolt helmets, although their provenance is unknown.  More importantly, however, he still has some of his father’s original equipment.  Among these treasured pieces are Bill’s original Siebe Gorman diver’s knives, his heavy woollen diving pullover and long woollen socks.

The same type of pullover can be seen being worn by Bill in Paul’s original photograph.  These aren’t museum pieces acquired decades later.  They are objects his father actually used.

Paul has also been giving us something of an education in traditional hard-hat diving.  And one particular lesson was too good not to share.  Look closely at many traditional Siebe Gorman helmets and you may notice a small valve on the diver’s left side, roughly at cheek level.  It has the wonderfully descriptive name of a “spit cock".

Anyone who has worn a diving or snorkelling mask knows how easily the glass can mist with condensation.  For a scuba diver, there are techniques for clearing a mask underwater.  A hard-hat diver obviously couldn’t simply remove his helmet.   Instead, the spit cock allowed the diver to admit a small amount of water into the helmet. The diver could take the water into his mouth and spit it across the inside of the faceplate, helping to clear the condensation and restore his view.

It’s also the sort of tiny detail that brings the realities of working in this equipment to life in a way that a museum label rarely can.  Then something rather special happened.  Paul originally contacted us because he had heard about the forthcoming Type-D.

He wrote:  “I have a deep and personal appreciation of the Siebe Gorman brand.”

After telling us about his father, he added that he would love the opportunity to purchase one of our new watches.  For Danielle and I, that was an incredibly meaningful message to receive.

We have spent years researching, designing and developing the Type-D, but neither of us can manufacture a connection to history like Paul’s.  His family’s relationship with the name existed long before Helicon Watches did.  When our private VIP pre-order opened, we therefore made sure Paul received an invitation.

He initially chose the Patina Brass Type-D.  Then came another email.  Choosing between the colours was proving rather difficult (we know that feeling!).  Paul decided he wanted a second Type-D, this time in Abyss Blue.  We were also able to reserve two particularly early numbers for him: no.3 in Patina Brass and no.2 in Abyss Blue.

There’s something rather wonderful about that!  A man whose father spent more than three decades working underwater using Siebe Gorman equipment will soon have two of the earliest examples of the modern Siebe Gorman Type-D.

When we embarked upon the Siebe Gorman project, we knew we were dealing with something very different.  This wasn’t simply a historic name that looked good on a watch dial.  Behind it are nearly two centuries of diving history, engineering and human stories.

People like Bill were part of that history.  They weren’t wearing diving equipment because it was collectible, fashionable or nostalgic.  Their lives depended upon it.  That places a responsibility on us when using the Siebe Gorman name today.

We can’t recreate that world, nor would we pretend that a modern wristwatch is the same thing as the professional equipment upon which divers like Bill relied.  What we can do is remember it, celebrate it and allow some of those extraordinary stories to be heard by another generation.

And occasionally something happens that connects the old story with the new.

Paul wrote something to us that we particularly treasured:

Thank you, Paul.  Thank you for choosing our watches, but much more importantly, thank you for trusting us with your father’s photographs, possessions and story.  And thank you to Bill, and to the generations of working divers like him, whose extraordinary lives gave the Siebe Gorman name its meaning in the first place.

When Paul’s Type-D watches are finally on his wrist, we suspect they’ll mean rather more than simply telling the time.

Welcome to People of Helicon.  The watches are ours. The stories are yours.