20,000 Jobs Under the Sea: A History of Diving and Underwater Engineering

Commercial diving is often glamorized in fiction, movies, and television. Divers are depicted as hairy-chested men, rugged individuals doing extremely dangerous work, and so on. To some degree this reputation is deserved, but it does not accurately represent the true and full story of the diving profession. Few books have been written that tell the real story of the men and jobs that helped build America's ports, harbors, dams, and other underwater structures. Whether a person lives in St. Louis or San Francisco, chances are that a commercial diver has helped make his or her life better by helping construct a power dam, reservoir, or dock facility for cargo ships. The author of this book, 20,000 Jobs Under the Sea, was a commercial diver for nearly a half century and can tell this story from the inside out. In addition, because of his work with other divers, he was able to get access to their stories and photographs in a way that would have been difficult for an outsider. Torrance Parker focuses his book on the history of commercial diving in southern California since the late 1800s. However, the book is in fact a profile of how commercial diving helped coastal development everywhere man has moved to establish centers of trade and commerce.