Among the animal sounds, smells of food, shrieks from carnival rides and the automotive mayhem at the grandstand, one exhibitor at this year’s Clark County Fair will show off some serious salvage gear employed at one point by the U.S. Navy.
Throughout the course of the fair, which runs from Aug. 5 to Aug. 14, recent Clark County transplant Bradley “Mitch” Mitchell will exhibit his collection that ranges from diving helmets, water cannons and a hand-cranked diving pump.
Mitchell has exhibited his collection over the years at the Seattle Aquarium as an expression of his passion for gear that evokes images of fantastical works of fiction from the turn of the 20th Century.
“This is Jules Verne, the guy out on the ocean floor wrestling the octopus,” Mitchell quipped.
The gear is real and served a number of practical purposes like “(salvaging) sunken vessels, building bridges, building dams, building harbors,” Mitchell said.
He added in wartime, the gear he has would have been employed on missions like securing the port of Cherbourg during the invasion of Normandy in World War II.
Born and raised in Seattle, Mitchell said his interest in the gear came at an early age.
“From the time I was 5 years old, I used to see them on the Seattle waterfront. I grew up … got some kind of income and I started buying them,” Mitchell said.
He spent his professional career in heavy machinery operation before he retired. Mitchell relocated from Kirkland to Clark County earlier in the year.
Mitchell said his collection began around 1998 or 1999. He started doing exhibits at the Seattle Aquarium in 2004 after a volunteer who had scuba gear asked Mitchell to bring his “heavy” gear along.
“I immediately said ‘no’ because it’s too much work to move it,” Mitchell said. “I ended up doing it.”
Though all the gear has a decent amount of heft to it, one in particular — a Navy diving pump dating back to 1893 — weighs more than a quarter of a ton.
Mitchell said he is interested in “anything that’s in good shape from 1837 to 1980.” He noted much of the modern-day technology is based on the same ideas first used more than 150 years ago.
“The principle’s the same (but) you don’t need the big support crews,” Mitchell said.
The most common questions Mitchell gets when exhibiting are how much the gear weighs and how deep a person can dive with it. Fully-suited, the gear is about 190 pounds, he said, and is designed for up to 250-foot depths.
There are instances of pushing the gear past that extreme. Mitchell mentioned Frank Crilley, a Navy diver in the early 20th Century, who dived to 312 feet in 1915 on a salvage operation for the USS F-4 submarine located more than a mile off of the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii.
“You talk to hard-hat divers today and say ‘you ever go to 300 feet,’ and a lot of them, not all of them, say ‘no, I cut it off at 180 (feet),” Mitchell said.
Mitchell has been down 60 feet in the water with the gear.
“It’s like being inside a bubble looking out,” he said.
Mitchell said the gear he collects usually doesn’t turn up at antique stores. To find pieces, he goes through private collectors whom he has created an extensive network with over the years.
“You got to be connected and it takes a long time,” Mitchell said.
After exhibiting in Seattle for years, Mitchell hopes to get established in Clark County with his first exhibition in the area. He said the Navy divers who take on operations of more than 100 feet under the sea require fortitude.
“It’s real interesting, the self-sacrifice, extreme danger,” Mitchell said. “It’s serious work, physically (and) mentally.”
Mitchell can be reached by email at navy1954markv@gmail.com.
For a full schedule of offerings at the Clark County Fair, go online to clarkcofair.com.
It will be held at the Clark County Fairgrounds at 17402 NE Delfel Road in Ridgefield.
