Trevor Hampton

Trevor Hampton, diving instructor, motorcyclist, canoeist, pilot and yachtsman: born King's Norton, Warwickshire 28 November 1912; married Gwynne Harding (one son, one daughter); died Torbay, Devon 3 February 2002.

A single career was not sufficient to satisfy the adventurous instincts of Trevor Hampton. He was a champion motorcyclist, long-distance canoeist, test pilot and yachtsman. But he really made his mark in the world of diving, as Britain's first recreational scuba instructor.

Born in King's Norton, Warwickshire in 1912, he became a student apprentice with the Austin motor company, during which time he raced motorbikes for the New Imperial Motor Cycle Company, and took part in the famous Isle of Man Tourist Trophy Race. His TT bike was his only significant worldly possession, but, after leaving Austin in the early 1930s, he sold it and bought a folding rubber canoe with the proceeds.

Accompanied by a friend, he paddled from London down the Thames, and across the English Channel to France. Their seven-hour journey was the first Channel crossing by unaccompanied canoeists. When they reached France, they decided to keep going and pushed on up the Seine to Paris. Hampton later walked solo across the Pyrenees, finally ending up in Barcelona, from where he worked a passage back to England.

By 1937, he was working as a manager for the motorcycle manufacturer OK Supreme. Then, aged 25, he decided to retire and bought a 27ft steel cutter with the intention of sailing around the world. This particular ambition was never realised, partly because of the outbreak of the Second World War. By then, he had already taken a short-service commission in the RAF.

Although trained as a fighter pilot, at 28 he was too old to serve as one, and was posted to Bomber Command to fly Wellingtons. After failing a hearing test, he was taken off the bombers and became a test pilot, with a particular reputation for daring. He never baled out, despite some close calls when his life was undoubtedly in danger. Once, a wing engine dropped off during take-off, and on another occasion the engine of his spitfire blew up when he was at altitude. "You didn't get medals for baling out as a test pilot," he recalled years later. He left the RAF as a Flight Lieutenant.

It was during his RAF days that he first became interested in the idea of using gas masks and oxygen cylinders from aircraft to explore underwater. He adapted the hardware into a makeshift breathing apparatus. Enthused by Jacques Cousteau's landmark book, The Silent World (1953), Hampton contacted the British diving manufacturer Siebe Gorman, which was at the time making the first aqualungs (the device invented by Cousteau and Emile Gagnan which started scuba diving as a sport) under licence. In 1953, he became the firm's Devon and Cornwall representative, and demonstrated the system to friends by carrying out a shallow dive in front of Dartmouth Yacht Club. It was the first aqualung dive in British waters.

His diving school evolved almost by accident. Several days after that first dive, a young man asked if Hampton could teach him how to dive. They agreed a fee of £5, and Britain's first dive school was born. Soon after, Hampton changed his fee to five guineas because he thought it sounded "more genteel". The school was based at his home in Warfleet Creek, Dartmouth, and became known as the British Underwater Centre.

As the business expanded, Hampton found himself popular with celebrity clients, including Arthur C. Clarke, David Attenborough, Johnny Morris, of Animal Magic fame, Richard Dimbleby and the naturalist Tony Soper, with whom Hampton made a rare foray out of the UK when they visited the Bahamas. Clarke, still to write 2001: a space odyssey, was interested in experiencing conditions of weightlessness.

In the days before wetsuits were available, Hampton's students carried out training in woolly jumpers and rugby shirts, with perhaps a latex hood. Hampton's diving philosophy was recorded in his book The Master Diver and Underwater Sportsman (1955), which was still in demand in the early Eighties.

Up to the sale of the business in 1976, Hampton had trained some 3,000 students in the use of compressed air diving, including many of Britain's leading sport divers. Despite the fact that he also taught the two founding members of the British Sub-Aqua Club (now Britain's biggest diving club), his philosophy of self- reliance underwater was not taken up by mainstream training agencies, who preferred the Mediterranean system of diving with a partner.

Hampton remained at his idyllic waterside cottage in Warfleet Creek for the rest of his life. He has written an autobiography which has yet to be published.

Simon Rogerson