Victor Berge

Background

After his father died at a young age, he eventually went to sea, where he spent the next forty years diving in the Pacific.

Career

Two books chronicle his life, "Pearl Diver" (1930), which covers his life up to 1930 or so, and "Danger is My Life" (1954), which chronicles his life up to that point, and through World World War II (when he was captured and imprisoned by the Japanese). After the war he returned to Sweden, where he died in 1974 in Stockholm. In line with his instructions, he is buried in Ockelbo.

Danger Is My He invented the diving mask "now used in salvage operations all over the world" (the mask), and "one of the few men to have survived a fight with a giant squid" (see illustration on this page by Armstrong Sperry, from the August 1930 issue of Saint Nicholas Magazine for Children (Volume 57, Number 10, p 751), which accompanied the story, "The Terror of the Deep", co-authored by and Henry Wysham Lanier).

Also, according to the Swedish Historical Diving Society, the Summer 2004 edition of their magazine (Dykarledaren sommaren 2004) included a discussion of, and a VHS video tape discussing him is available. Below, an early (Circa 1940) Berge shallow dive mask.

Manufactured by the Ohio Rubber Company, this version features a "free flow" regulator, as opposed to the converted aviation regulator seen on other examples.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Danger is My Life

    (Light wear to boards. Content is clean and bright. DJ has...)

  • Pearl diver;: Adventuring over and under southern seas,