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Pioneering submariner passes away
Don Siverts built a submarine in his own backyard
by Mark McDermott
Published September 25, 2008
t was a meeting that changed ocean-going history.
The year was 1955, and Don Siverts had just arrived in Redondo Beach from Montana. He went straightaway to the Dive N’ Surf shop, owned by diving legends Bob and Bill Meistrell and Bev Morgan, and made a pitch. Siverts was an artist who – like the Missouri-born Meistrell’s – had spent a landlocked childhood dreaming of the ocean’s depths.
Siverts proposed becoming the fledgling shop’s in-house artist, and he would indeed subsequently create Dive N’ Surf’s famed oval-encased wave logo. But something else in that initial conversation is what really caught the Meistrells’ attention.
“He said he wanted build a submarine, too, and that perked us up,†said Bob Meistrell. “We immediately fell in love…He was a big part of our success.â€
As Siverts’ son, Curt, said in an interview this week, his father and Bob Meistrell were both self-taught, country kids who possessed an insatiable curiosity and a knack for figuring things out.
“They were both kids who’d been caught with milk buckets over their heads trying to cross a lake at a young age,†said Siverts.
Don Siverts passed away Sept. 18 after a battle with cancer. He was 78. Siverts was an illustrator, diver, underwater photographer, inventor, adventurer, treasure hunter, husband, father, and grandfather. But he will be remembered most widely as an audacious submariner who was among the first people in the world to build his own submarine. His first 11.5 ft. “Snooper†was built in his backyard garage in Torrance and launched, with much fanfare, in King Harbor in 1969.
According to his son, Siverts developed the bends after a diving accident in the early 1960s. He had become an accomplished diver – “He was one of the finest divers in the world,†Meistrell said – but was now unable to dive to much depth. One day in 1965, a friend rented a submarine and took Siverts along on the dive.
“He said, ‘This is definitely the way to go,’†his son said. “The next day, a 3-ft. piece of pipe was delivered to our house in Torrance. They pushed it off a truck into our front yard. Neighbors came out and asked, ‘What is that?’ He said, ‘That’s my submarine.’â€
Most of the submarine’s components were handmade. One of his neighbors, retired North American Rockwell engineer Gene Miller, helped with the machining work and made the sub’s propeller. Four years later, Snooper was completed. The two-man, two-horsepower submarine was powered by golf cart batteries. Its launch was attended by local dignitaries, including Redondo Beach Mayor William Czuleger.
Press accounts at the time marveled at the little submarine’s appearance.
“Not much longer than two bathtubs and looking more like a sophisticated toy than a sea-going vessel, Snooper went into the water amid cheers of about 200 persons attracted by the launching,†the Los Angeles Times reported on Sept. 21, 1969.
But Snooper was no toy. Sivert’s submarine could dive 1,000 ft. and last up to 30 hours underwater. It had 10 viewing portholes and was eventually outfitted with a maneuverable arm and a camera system. Over the course of the next four decades, Siverts would make several thousand dives in the submarine, operating a business called Undersea Graphics that inspected outflow systems and other pipelines, performed search and rescue operations and, on a few very special occasions, hunted for sunken treasure. Snooper also became a movie star. Among the sub’s roles was as the submarine that averts a nuclear disaster in the Charlton Heston thriller Gray Lady Down.
Siverts motivation wasn’t essentially commercial in nature. He wanted to explore, and his business allowed him to fund his journeys to the underwater world. The Meistrells, who became partners in the submarine, were kindred spirits. They had set themselves three goals in life before ever arriving in California – to own a submarine, to go deep-sea diving and go treasure hunting. Siverts’ invention made two of those goals possible.
“He wanted to dive deeper and stay longer,†Bob Meistrell said. “We were just going to explore the ocean, the three of us.â€
Siverts and Meistrell became close friends and fellow adventurers, one steering the submarine and the other peering out the portholes yelling directions.
“The bottom guy is the eyes, the top guy is the driver,†Siverts told the LA Times in 1986. “We rely on teamwork, but we still run smack into things all the time. We find a lot of stuff we’re looking for by barging right into it.â€
Siverts and his son later took part in one of the great modern discoveries of sunken treasure when they took part in the 1996 search for the S.S. Brother Jonathan, a 210-ft. wooden ship that sank in Northern California in 1865. Siverts, operating a later iteration of Snooper, a one-man vessel that replaced the original vessel in 1991, found the location of 1,200 coins from the ship valued at more than $5 million. A complex court case followed when a state agency claimed rights. The dispute went all the way to the Supreme Court, and in the end the Siverts claimed a share of the treasure that enabled them to do little more than reclaim costs.
“By the time everything was said and done we basically broke even,†Curt Siverts said. “And the motto on the whole thing was ‘Don’t quit your day job.’ But it was the best history lesson.â€
Siverts did indeed hold a day job – at Hitco Engineering in Gardena – for 32 years. He was largely self-taught as an engineer and inventor, having studied art in college. He studied at Whitman College and the Chicago Art Institute before serving in the Korean War. Following his military service, he attended The Art Center in Los Angeles.
Meistrell described Siverts as a “genius†who possessed a photographic memory and an unbounded imagination.
“He had a magical mind, no doubt about it,†Meistrell said. “I mean, nothing was too tough. He could do anything.â€
Siverts met his wife of 49 years, Jayne, while at the Art Center. He is survived by his wife and two children, who also live in the area: his daughter Lisa and her husband Mike Lesinski and their daughters Kayla and Hanna; and his son Curt and his wife Monica and their children Clare, Hanson and Malia.
His son will continue the family business, and his grandson Hansen has shown a strong interest in submarining, as well. A fourth Snooper is currently under construction – in the family’s backyard, naturally.
A celebration of Siverts’ life will be announced at a later date. ER
Pioneering submariner passes away
Don Siverts built a submarine in his own backyard
by Mark McDermott
Published September 25, 2008
t was a meeting that changed ocean-going history.
The year was 1955, and Don Siverts had just arrived in Redondo Beach from Montana. He went straightaway to the Dive N’ Surf shop, owned by diving legends Bob and Bill Meistrell and Bev Morgan, and made a pitch. Siverts was an artist who – like the Missouri-born Meistrell’s – had spent a landlocked childhood dreaming of the ocean’s depths.
Siverts proposed becoming the fledgling shop’s in-house artist, and he would indeed subsequently create Dive N’ Surf’s famed oval-encased wave logo. But something else in that initial conversation is what really caught the Meistrells’ attention.
“He said he wanted build a submarine, too, and that perked us up,†said Bob Meistrell. “We immediately fell in love…He was a big part of our success.â€
As Siverts’ son, Curt, said in an interview this week, his father and Bob Meistrell were both self-taught, country kids who possessed an insatiable curiosity and a knack for figuring things out.
“They were both kids who’d been caught with milk buckets over their heads trying to cross a lake at a young age,†said Siverts.
Don Siverts passed away Sept. 18 after a battle with cancer. He was 78. Siverts was an illustrator, diver, underwater photographer, inventor, adventurer, treasure hunter, husband, father, and grandfather. But he will be remembered most widely as an audacious submariner who was among the first people in the world to build his own submarine. His first 11.5 ft. “Snooper†was built in his backyard garage in Torrance and launched, with much fanfare, in King Harbor in 1969.
According to his son, Siverts developed the bends after a diving accident in the early 1960s. He had become an accomplished diver – “He was one of the finest divers in the world,†Meistrell said – but was now unable to dive to much depth. One day in 1965, a friend rented a submarine and took Siverts along on the dive.
“He said, ‘This is definitely the way to go,’†his son said. “The next day, a 3-ft. piece of pipe was delivered to our house in Torrance. They pushed it off a truck into our front yard. Neighbors came out and asked, ‘What is that?’ He said, ‘That’s my submarine.’â€
Most of the submarine’s components were handmade. One of his neighbors, retired North American Rockwell engineer Gene Miller, helped with the machining work and made the sub’s propeller. Four years later, Snooper was completed. The two-man, two-horsepower submarine was powered by golf cart batteries. Its launch was attended by local dignitaries, including Redondo Beach Mayor William Czuleger.
Press accounts at the time marveled at the little submarine’s appearance.
“Not much longer than two bathtubs and looking more like a sophisticated toy than a sea-going vessel, Snooper went into the water amid cheers of about 200 persons attracted by the launching,†the Los Angeles Times reported on Sept. 21, 1969.
But Snooper was no toy. Sivert’s submarine could dive 1,000 ft. and last up to 30 hours underwater. It had 10 viewing portholes and was eventually outfitted with a maneuverable arm and a camera system. Over the course of the next four decades, Siverts would make several thousand dives in the submarine, operating a business called Undersea Graphics that inspected outflow systems and other pipelines, performed search and rescue operations and, on a few very special occasions, hunted for sunken treasure. Snooper also became a movie star. Among the sub’s roles was as the submarine that averts a nuclear disaster in the Charlton Heston thriller Gray Lady Down.
Siverts motivation wasn’t essentially commercial in nature. He wanted to explore, and his business allowed him to fund his journeys to the underwater world. The Meistrells, who became partners in the submarine, were kindred spirits. They had set themselves three goals in life before ever arriving in California – to own a submarine, to go deep-sea diving and go treasure hunting. Siverts’ invention made two of those goals possible.
“He wanted to dive deeper and stay longer,†Bob Meistrell said. “We were just going to explore the ocean, the three of us.â€
Siverts and Meistrell became close friends and fellow adventurers, one steering the submarine and the other peering out the portholes yelling directions.
“The bottom guy is the eyes, the top guy is the driver,†Siverts told the LA Times in 1986. “We rely on teamwork, but we still run smack into things all the time. We find a lot of stuff we’re looking for by barging right into it.â€
Siverts and his son later took part in one of the great modern discoveries of sunken treasure when they took part in the 1996 search for the S.S. Brother Jonathan, a 210-ft. wooden ship that sank in Northern California in 1865. Siverts, operating a later iteration of Snooper, a one-man vessel that replaced the original vessel in 1991, found the location of 1,200 coins from the ship valued at more than $5 million. A complex court case followed when a state agency claimed rights. The dispute went all the way to the Supreme Court, and in the end the Siverts claimed a share of the treasure that enabled them to do little more than reclaim costs.
“By the time everything was said and done we basically broke even,†Curt Siverts said. “And the motto on the whole thing was ‘Don’t quit your day job.’ But it was the best history lesson.â€
Siverts did indeed hold a day job – at Hitco Engineering in Gardena – for 32 years. He was largely self-taught as an engineer and inventor, having studied art in college. He studied at Whitman College and the Chicago Art Institute before serving in the Korean War. Following his military service, he attended The Art Center in Los Angeles.
Meistrell described Siverts as a “genius†who possessed a photographic memory and an unbounded imagination.
“He had a magical mind, no doubt about it,†Meistrell said. “I mean, nothing was too tough. He could do anything.â€
Siverts met his wife of 49 years, Jayne, while at the Art Center. He is survived by his wife and two children, who also live in the area: his daughter Lisa and her husband Mike Lesinski and their daughters Kayla and Hanna; and his son Curt and his wife Monica and their children Clare, Hanson and Malia.
His son will continue the family business, and his grandson Hansen has shown a strong interest in submarining, as well. A fourth Snooper is currently under construction – in the family’s backyard, naturally.
A celebration of Siverts’ life will be announced at a later date. ER