(Captain)Trevor HamptonAFC (28 November 1912 – 21 February 2002) was one of the United Kingdom's firstscuba divers and helped to developsport diving in the UK.
Trevor Arthur Hampton was born inBirmingham on 28 November 1912. He was an apprentice at theAustin Motor Company and raced motorcycles on theIsle of Man. He was an avid fan of boating and sailing and at the age of 23 bought a 27-foot (8.2 m)yacht but had to give it up because his wife was chronicallyseasick. He joined theRAF before theSecond World War becoming a pilot on aWellington bomber. He later became a seniortest pilot, raised to the rank offlight lieutenant and received theAir Force Cross. While in the RAF atLossiemouth in Scotland he started diving, making a crude open-circuitscuba set from agas mask and ex-RAFaircrewoxygencylinders.
AfterWorld War II he bought a boat took up sailing again but had to give it up because of a knee injury. He set up business as amarine surveyor andyacht broker atWarfleet Creek inDartmouth, Devon inEngland. He readJacques Cousteau's bookThe Silent World and bought a Cousteau-typeaqualung fromSiebe Gorman, which had just started making them. He then took several courses on diving.
In 1948 his first book, "Alone at Sea". about his solo sail to Spain, was privately printed.
In 1953 a young man asked him foraqualung training, and he took £5 for a 3-day training course. This proved to be his next career and as a result, he started theBritish Underwater Centre, where he trained many people and some of the first members of theBritish Sub-Aqua Club (BSAC) in aqualung, oxygenrebreather diving andstandard diving dress diving. Over the years he trained around 3000 people.
For much of the time, up until the 1960s he used aSiebe GormanMark IV Amphibian oxygenrebreather to train divers with in oxygen diving, until in the 1960s he sold it to one of his divingtrainees. After that he bought aCressi-Sub sport diving oxygen rebreather from Italy, but after a year its breathing bagperished, and he replaced it with aSiebe Gorman British naval type breathing bag, which was still as good at 2005. After he sold that to a diving trainee, he used emergency escape rebreathers which he had adapted to give a longer dive duration.
He did various commercial diving jobs down the years, including on building theAvon Dam and theBrixham Breakwater.
At the Brixham Breakwater job he had a narrow escape: He found a small hollow under the breakwater and moved some bags ofcement in to fill it. When he tried to swim out again he found that bags of cement carelessly slung from above had blocked his exit. He had to fight his way out with air running low.
He described an incident when a team of trained Britishnaval divers searched for an object lost underwater and did not find it; they then let Captain Hampton have a look, and at once he found it directly under the naval divers' boat, at the center (which had been a blind spot) of their circular search pattern.
He kept yachts and boats in Warfleet Creek, Dartmouth. He assumed the titleCaptain, although he had not been in theRoyal Navy or a large commercial ship, because of his many long voyages in small and middle-sized boats.
He andJohnny Morris made aBBC film "Master Diver".
In 1956 he published "The Master Diver and Underwater Sportsman".
He sold his diving school in 1976, at the age of 63, but the buyers did not have his success and it closed down.
Several times heretired and then drifted back into working.
He died aged 89 on 21 February 2002 evening by bursting of a tripleaneurysm, despite emergency surgery inTorbay Hospital.
He was survived by his second wife Gwynn, son Gara, and daughter Jill, and two grandsons, Tom Hammerton and Ross Warne.
Trevor Hampton taught these famous people (and others) to scuba dive:-
Oscar Gugen andPeter Small decided to form Britain's first diving club, and were trained to scuba dive by Travor Hampton. Afterwards in 1953 they founded theBritish Sub-Aqua Club (BSAC). Oscar made only two dives, but Peter and his girlfriend Sylvia Gregg successfully completed the course.
Later, disagreement developed between Trevor Hampton and the BSAC because:-
