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Siebe Gorman Salvus

 

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Siebe Gorman Salvus


 
 


The Salvus is a light oxygen rebreatherRebreather

A rebreather is a type of breathing set that provides a breathing gas containing oxygen and recycles exhaled gas....
 for industrial use (including by firemen and in coalmine rescueMine rescue

Mine rescue is the specialized job of rescuing miners and others who have become trapped or injured in underground mines, of...
) or in shallow divingScuba diving

Scuba diving is the term used to describe the use of a self-contained breathing set to stay underwater for periods of time g...
. Its duration on a filling is 30 to 40 minutes. It was very common in Britain during World War IIWorld War II

World War II, or the Second World War, was a worldwide conflict fought between the Allied Powers and the Axis Powers ,...
 and for a long time afterwards. Underwater the Salvus is very compact and can be used where a diver with a bigger breathing set cannot get in, such as inside cockpitsCockpit

-|||-||}A cockpit was a pit used for cockfighting, where owners would pit fighting birds against each other for the purpo...
 of ditched aircraftAircraft

An aircraft is any machine capable of atmospheric flight....
. It was made by Siebe GormanSiebe Gorman

Siebe Gorman Ltd was a British company which developed diving equipment and breathing equipment and worked on commercial div...
 in LondonLondon

London is the capital city of England and of the United Kingdom....
.

Its arrangement can be seen from the image. It is a pendulum-type system with one breathing tube. This type is the Neck Salvus: there was another type, for use on land only, where the counterlung (= breathing bag) hung by his left hip from the cylinder and canister pack. That pack is a metal plate (probably aluminiumFacts About Aluminium

Aluminium or aluminum is the chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol Al and atomic number 13...
), with a webbing sheet stuck to one side to protect its user's diving suit or overallOverall

An overall is a type of garment which usually used as protective clothing when working, but they have sometimes been items o...
. The absorbent canister and the cylinder are fastened to it by a strap that can be unbuckled. It has no plastic in its construction.

The mask has an inner mouth-and-nose mask to cut down on dead-space. It does not have a shutoff valve. It has a wooden plug fastened to it by a light chain; that plug fits into the breathing tube entry inside the mask to stop debris from entering, but is not a watertight seal. The mask and its tube unscrews from the canister and can be replaced by a tube ending in a mouthpiece. The mouthpiece tube has a shutoff valve at the mouthpiece. The Salvus mouthpiece also has an attached noseclip. A pair of industrial-type eyes-only goggles was included with the set when it came. That mouthpiece has an outer flap that goes outside the lips and is extended into straps fastened behind the neck.

(That makes the mouthpiece much securer against coming out or leaking. In a test when diving with an open-circuit aqualungAqua-lung

Aqua-lung was the original name for the first open-circuit SCUBA diving equipment, developed by Emile Gagnan and Jacques Cou...
 that had that sort of strapped-in mouthpiece, the diver went limp as if unconscious, to test the mouthpiece, and as a result he rolled belly-up, and his cheeks inflated, and the mouthpiece tried to float out, but its strap and outer flap kept it in and watertight.)

The breathing bag makes the diver very stern-heavy, but that can be cured by putting 6 pounds of diver's weights (e.g. a pair of lead-shot-filled ankletAnklet

An anklet, ankle chain, or ankle bracelet, is an ornament worn around the ankle....
s) inside the wetsuit chest. The Salvus has no provision to connect to a buoyancy device; but the Salvus can be worn with a separate diver's lifejacket (not a stab jacket) which has its own small inflation cylinder.

There is a small water catchment sump and drain on the underside of the canister. Its cylinder pressure gauge is on a flexible metal tube and fits in a circular webbing pouch threaded on the waist harness strap.

The bag tube unscrews from the canister pack. The diagonal strap clips onto a corner of the side-pack. The cylinder has a constant-flow valve and a bypass. The thread on top of the cylinder is the same as on a blowtorch oxygen cylinder but the opposite gender, for easy refilling by decanting.

It was designed in the early 1900's.

War-surplus Salvuses were much used by early sport divers in Britain and Australia in the 1950's before aqualungFacts About Aqua-lung

Aqua-lung was the original name for the first open-circuit SCUBA diving equipment, developed by Emile Gagnan and Jacques Cou...
s became readily affordably available.

The coalmine rescueMine rescue

Mine rescue is the specialized job of rescuing miners and others who have become trapped or injured in underground mines, of...
 on 7-9th September 1950 at Knockshinnoch Castle Colliery near New CumnockNew Cumnock

New Cumnock is a town in Ayrshire in Scotland, in a coalmining area....
, AyrshireFacts About Ayrshire

Ayrshire is a region of south-west Scotland, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde....
, ScotlandScotland

Scotland is a nation in northwest Europe and one of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom....
 when 115 trapped miners were equipped with Salvuses to bring them out through a gas-filled mine passage.

External links

  • (the bag-on-hip industrial-only type, scroll down to the bottom of the page)