Stamps on Snorkeling & Scuba Diving
Bahamas 1965
The 5/- definitive stamp, depicting Williamson Film Project (1914), is one out of a set of fifteen stamps issued in 1965. The same stamp design was released with a overprinted decimal value of $1.00 in 1966, and finally released with the actual decimal value in 1967.John Ernest Williamson (1881-1966) was a pioneer of undersea photography and was active in motion pictures for nearly 50 years.
His father, Charles Williamson of Norfolk, Virginia, was a sea captain who had invented a tube, which, when suspended from a specially outfitted ship, facilitated communication and airflow down to depths of 250 feet.
In 1912, John Williamson realized that his father's invention could be adapted for undersea photography. Artificially illuminated photographs of the depths of Chesapeake Bay taken in 1913 produced such captivating results that Williamson was inspired to attempt motion pictures. To facilitate the tube's new purpose, he designed a special attachment: an observation chamber with a large funnel-shaped compartment, fronted by a large, thick glass window 5 feet in diameter. He called this device the "Williamson Photosphere." With this new equipment, Williamson and his brother George set out for The Bahamas, where the sunlight can penetrate 150 feet deep in clear water, greatly enhancing photographic possibilities. In March 1914, near Nassau, Williamson shot the first-ever underwater motion picture and called it "Thirty Leagues under the Sea". Released in 1914, the film demonstrated how the Bahamians depended on the ocean's ecosystem to support their own. His equipment made possible the shooting of the first undersea fiction movie, the 1916 film version of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.
In 1939 the Photosphere was turned into the world's first undersea post office, named "Sea Floor Bahamas".
