Frédéric Dumas (14 January 1913 – 26 July 1991) was a French writer. He was part of a team of three, with

Jacques-Yves Cousteau Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (, also , ; 11 June 191025 June 1997) was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful open-circuit self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA), called the A ...

and Philippe Tailliez. Tailliez coined for them in allusion to (

The Three Musketeers ''The Three Musketeers'' () is a French historical adventure novel written and published in 1844 by French author Alexandre Dumas. It is the first of the author's three d'Artagnan Romances. As with some of his other works, he wrote it in col ...

). They had a passion for diving, and developed the

diving regulator A diving regulator or underwater diving regulator is a pressure regulator that controls the pressure of breathing gas for underwater diving. The most commonly recognised application is to reduce pressurized breathing gas to ambient pressure and ...

with the aid of the engineer

Émile Gagnan Émile Gagnan (1900 – 1984) was a French engineer and, in 1943, co-inventor with French Navy diver Jacques-Yves Cousteau of the Aqua-Lung, the diving regulator (a.k.a. demand-valve) used for the first Scuba equipment. The demand-valve, or re ...

. Dumas participated with Cousteau in the discovery of

deep sea The deep sea is broadly defined as the ocean depth where light begins to fade, at an approximate depth of or the point of transition from continental shelves to continental slopes. Conditions within the deep sea are a combination of low tempe ...

reliefs and flora and fauna of deep sea life and in bringing it to the attention of the general public.

Biography

Frédéric Dumas was born on 14 January 1913 in

Albi Albi (; ) is a commune in France, commune in southern France. It is the prefecture of the Tarn (department), Tarn Departments of France, department, on the river Tarn (river), Tarn, 85 km northeast of Toulouse. Its inhabitants are called ...

, France.

A pioneer of underwater

fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment (Freshwater ecosystem, freshwater or Marine ecosystem, marine), but may also be caught from Fish stocking, stocked Body of water, ...

on the

French Riviera The French Riviera, known in French as the (; , ; ), is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. There is no official boundary, but it is considered to be the coastal area of the Alpes-Maritimes department, extending fr ...

, he met Philippe Tailliez and

in 1937 and his exploits served as a subject in Cousteau's first film (Eighteen meters deep), made in 1942. He performed also in Cousteau's second film, (Wrecks) in 1943, the first featuring Aqua-Lungs developed in 1941 by Cousteau and

. On October 17, 1943 he was the first to exceed a depth of with a Cousteau-Gagnan regulator to . On the same dive, he was also the first scuba diver to suffer the effects of nitrogen narcosis. Cousteau, J. Y., with Dumas, Frédéric (1953). ''

The Silent World ''The Silent World'' () is a 1956 French documentary film co-directed by Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle. One of the first films to use underwater cinematography to show the ocean depths in color, its title derives from Cousteau's 1953 book ' ...

'', New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. Library of Congress 52-5431 Dumas was a dive leader aboard the RV ''Calypso'', and co-author or actor in many films and stories from the Cousteau team. In 1953 he co-authored with Cousteau their first book '' The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure''. In 1956 he was one of the principal architects of the ground-breaking film ''

'', in which his

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

with the

grouper Groupers are a diverse group of marine ray-finned fish in the family Epinephelidae, in the order Perciformes. Groupers were long considered a subfamily of the seabasses in Serranidae, but are now treated as distinct. Not all members of this f ...

Ulysses () is famous. From 1945 to 1965, Dumas was also a civilian collaborator in the

French Navy The French Navy (, , ), informally (, ), is the Navy, maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the four military service branches of History of France, France. It is among the largest and most powerful List of navies, naval forces i ...

's (GERS, Group for Underwater Studies and Research), which was set up by Cousteau and Taillez. After the death of Maurice Fargues in 1947 it was renamed to (CEPHISMER, Expert Centre for Human Diving and Underwater Intervention). In 1946, Cousteau and Dumas dove into the karstic spring of

Vaucluse Vaucluse (; or ) is a department in the southeastern French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. It had a population of 561,469 as of 2019.

, the largest in France (with an average flow of 22 m³ / second and ranked fifth in the world with 110 m³ / second during snow melt), hoping to explain its annual flooding. Fargues was the operation's surface commander, in charge of the guide rope which allowed Cousteau and Dumas to communicate with the surface. When Cousteau and Dumas became affected by carbon dioxide poisoning due to a faulty

compressor A compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume. An air compressor is a specific type of gas compressor. Many compressors can be staged, that is, the gas is compressed several times in steps o ...

setup, Fargues saved their lives by pulling them back up to the surface.Matsen, Brad (2009). ''Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King'',

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

Pantheon Books Pantheon Books is an American book publishing imprint. Founded in 1942 as an independent publishing house in New York City by Kurt and Helen Wolff, it specialized in introducing progressive European works to American readers. In 1961, it was ...

. In 1947 he set a depth-record with in the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

. Dumas was one of the major players in the rescue of Professor

Jacques Piccard Jacques Piccard (28 July 19221 November 2008) was a Swiss oceanographer and engineer, known for having developed submarines for studying ocean currents. In the Challenger Deep, he and Lieutenant Don Walsh of the United States Navy were the fi ...

bathyscaphe A bathyscaphe () is a free-diving, self-propelled deep-sea submersible, consisting of a crew cabin similar to a '' Bathysphere'', but suspended below a float rather than from a surface cable, as in the classic ''Bathysphere'' design. The floa ...

, the FNRS II, during the 1949 expedition in

Dakar Dakar ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Senegal, largest city of Senegal. The Departments of Senegal, department of Dakar has a population of 1,278,469, and the population of the Dakar metropolitan area was at 4.0 mill ...

. Thanks to this rescue, the

could use the bathyscaphe's sphere in creating the FNRS III. In 1950, he invented what he called the (safety collar), the first buoyancy compensator, already fitted with a compressed-air reserve separate from the main cylinders. He was a founding member of the Sea Research Society and served on the Society's Board of Advisors. In 1972 Dumas participated in the creation of the research/professional degree of Doctor of Marine Histories. After he retired from the GERS, he devoted himself particularly to

undersea archaeology Underwater archaeology is archaeology practiced underwater. As with all other branches of archaeology, it evolved from its roots in pre-history and in the classical era to include sites from the historical and industrial eras. Its acceptance ...

and was chairman of the

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

committee A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly or other form of organization. A committee may not itself be considered to be a form of assembly or a decision-making body. Usually, an assembly o ...

of the Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (CMAS or World Underwater Activities Federation). Frédéric Dumas died on 26 July 1991 in Toulon at the age of 78.

Museum

Opened in 1994, the Frédéric Dumas Diving Museum is in a 13th-century Roman tower made available by the municipality of Sanary-sur-Mer where Cousteau had a Villa and that bills itself as an historical city of diving.

Publications

* Deep-water Archaeology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1962).
Épaves antiques. Introduction à l'archéologie sous marine méditerranéenne
Paris. (1964).

References

External links

*
Historical diving city
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dumas, Frederic 1913 births 1991 deaths French non-fiction writers French underwater divers Sportspeople from Albi Underwater diving pioneers French male non-fiction writers History of scuba diving 20th-century French non-fiction writers 20th-century French male writers