Max Gene Nohl was afraid of deep water.
It's an unlikely beginning for a Wisconsin kid who would eventually descend farther beneath the surface than any diver before him. Nohl didn't simply conquer the fear. He turned it into a fascination that took him 420 feet beneath Lake Michigan while people across America listened to his voice on the radio.
Nohl was born in Milwaukee in 1910 and studied engineering at MIT. Diving became his obsession, but he wasn't satisfied with the equipment available during the 1930s. Working with Milwaukee physician Edgar End and others, Nohl helped develop equipment and breathing techniques designed to let divers descend deeper while reducing the dangers caused by extreme pressure.
In December 1937, Nohl climbed into the frigid water of Lake Michigan near Milwaukee. He was breathing a helium-oxygen mixture, an important departure from the compressed air that divers traditionally used. His goal was 350 feet, already deep enough to make history.
Then Max Nohl decided 350 feet wasn't enough.
He kept descending. The end was topside with decompression tables that reportedly extended only to 375 feet. His diver was heading beyond them, so the doctor began working with a slide rule to calculate how to bring Nohl back without killing him.
From DESCO:
In 1935 Max begins his salvage operations on a sunken steamship, the "John Dwight". The Dwight was a prohibition rum runner that came to a mysterious and violent end off Martha’s Vineyard. The local newspapers found it to be good copy and kept up on the progress.
This brought Max to the attention of a Hollywood producer John D. Craig, who was interested in the possible salvage of the torpedoed Cunard liner, the "Lusitania," which lay in 312 feet of water off the Irish Coast.
Max called Craig (who was in Boston at the time) to see if he would like to come down to the site, check out his diving gear, and shoot some film of the salvage. Craig agrees and ultimately ends up pitching in on the Dwight salvage by helping out with diving duties. Max had hoped to salvage the cargo and cash assumed to be onboard. The safe proved to be empty and seawater had entered the scotch which was ruined. Max had another close call when the mooring line parted and the dive boat went adrift, dragging Max off the wreck.
His dress snagged and was torn, allowing the suit to fill to his ears. He just managed to keep his face high enough to breathe while they hauled him up.
Nohl finally stopped at 420 feet.
Getting there was only half the job. Coming back too quickly could allow nitrogen bubbles to form in his body, causing decompression sickness, paralysis, or death. Nohl, therefore, had to make carefully calculated stops during the long ascent while End and the surface crew waited.
America could listen.
A microphone inside Nohl's helmet carried his voice to the surface, and NBC broadcast portions of the dive nationally. Imagine radio listeners in 1937 hearing the voice of a Wisconsin engineer coming from hundreds of feet beneath Lake Michigan, somewhere humans weren't supposed to be hanging around.
When Nohl finally emerged, he had established a world record for diving-suit descent.
His achievement wasn't some one-day stunt followed by a return to a sensible desk job. Nohl kept inventing, diving, filming, and dreaming about places beneath the water that most people would never see. He experimented with self-contained diving equipment before modern scuba became commonplace and became involved in underwater photography and filmmaking.
One obsession remained tantalizingly close to home. The Dutch freighter Prins Willem V sank in Lake Michigan off Milwaukee in 1954 after colliding with another vessel. Nohl became deeply involved in efforts to reach and salvage the wreck, developing equipment and spending years pursuing the project.
He wouldn't get to finish it.
Nohl died in 1960 at only 49. Other divers eventually reached and worked the wreck he had pursued, but by then Wisconsin's remarkable underwater pioneer was gone.
There is something wonderfully Wisconsin about his story. Nohl didn't need a tropical ocean, an exotic expedition, or some distant corner of the world to find adventure. Lake Michigan was sitting right there.
The frightened boy became an engineer, the engineer became a diver, and the diver kept going after the planned stopping point disappeared above him, while a doctor on the surface worked a slide rule to figure out how to bring him home alive.
Years later, Nohl described what had happened inside him with six perfect words: "Fear transformed into fascination was urging me downward."
At 420 feet beneath Lake Michigan, it finally stopped urging him.
And Max Nohl started the long trip home.
