Jump to Content

Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Torrance R. Parker Collection on Commercial and Deep Sea Diving
Collection # 73  
View entire collection guide What's This?
Search this collection
Collection Overview
 
Table of contents What's This?
Description
The collection contains business and personal correspondence; records of ship salvage and underwater construction work; diving logs, reports and manuals; survey and other diagrams; clippings and articles; rare diving equipment catalogs; maps; decompression tables and calculators; samples of permits, invoices, receipts, bids and contracts; interviews and profiles; brochures and fliers; periodicals; approximately 500 photographic prints; and a book collection consisting of 322 volumes, many of them rare, that document the history and practice of deep diving and related topics. Torrance R. Parker collected these resources over the course of his sixty-eight years as a deep diver, including a fifty-six-year career working as a commercial diver and nearly forty years as owner of the Parker Diving Service, Inc. of San Pedro, California; as a diver, researcher and compiler of resources concerning the history and practice of commercial, fishery, and military diving; and as author of two books on these subjects.
Background
Torrance R. Parker (b. July 4, 1928) owned a commercial diving business, Parker Diving Service, Inc., in San Pedro, California for nearly forty years, from 1947 to 1985, and worked as a diver for sixty-eight years. During this time, he participated in all aspects of deep diving work, including commercial diving, which refers to construction, salvage, maintenance, repair, and inspection of underwater engineered structures; military diving, including stints as an army diver and army diving trainer; and abalone fishery diving, including work as a sponge diver while still a teenager, when he learned this trade from Greek practitioners in Tarpon Springs, Florida. At the end of the War, in order to work in the field of commercial diving, Parker moved to San Pedro, California, attending the Sparling School of Diving and Underwater Welding in nearby Wilmington to learn newly developed underwater construction techniques including welding and burning. In 1947, he went on to found Parker Diving Service, Inc. (initially, Parker Diving Service was incorporated). Like most commercial diving businesses at the time, Parker Diving Service began as a sole owner diving company; at 19, Parker owned the newest diving company on the harbor, and also became the youngest diver in the Pile Drivers and Divers Union Local 2375. In 1948, Parker married Tina Carreon, and they had six children, Kimberly, CynDy, Torrance (III), Timothy, Mellissa, and Dulce. From 1950-1952, during the Korean War, Parker was trained in Army diving methods to work as an instructor and diver at the Army’s diving school in Fort Eustis, Virginia, as well as to provide diving services to their 3rd Port complex. Parker Diving Service is now the oldest continuously operating commercial diving company in California. Parker sold the company in 1985, but continued working as a consultant and diver with Parker Diving Service until 1995. Upon retirement, he authored 20,000 Jobs under the Sea: A History of Diving and Underwater Engineering (1997). He subsequently developed and built the “20,000 Jobs under the Sea” exhibit for the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in San Pedro; the exhibit depicts the history of both commercial and fishery diving and includes that of Southern California’s earliest divers. Beginning in 1997, Parker conducted a survey of the Gulf of Mexico’s pre-World War II deep-water sponge grounds unworked since 1939 – a diving project that took three years to accomplish. He wrote a deep and thorough account of sponge diving from ancient Greece to its current epicenter in Tarpon Springs, Florida, 20,000 Divers under the Sea: A History of the Mediterranean and Western Atlantic Sponge Trades with an Account of Early Deep Diving (2013).
Extent
6 cubic feet; 322 books
Restrictions
Copyright restrictions apply. Please inquire in writing to the Museum Director or Archivist. The material may not be used without permission.
Availability
Prior arrangement with the Museum Director or Archivist.