Four underwater hunting equipment manufacturers operated in the Mediterranean city of Nice in 1941: Douglas, Fusido, United Service Agency and Watersports. The mainly English sounding nomenclature was likely designed to appeal to affluent British visitors who frequented Nice’s Promenade des Anglais coastal route. The men behind these companies were not only experienced spearfishing practitioners but also talented inventors and product designers.
United Service Agency was founded by White Russian expatriate Alec Kramarenko and American resident Charles H. Wilen. The former is perhaps better known than the latter, due to Alec being referenced in Guy Gilpatric’s famous tome The Compleat Goggler. During the late 1930s, Alec developed and patented a set of diving goggles, a spring-action speargun and a breathing tube topped with a shut-off valve. He is seen right wearing his underwater hunting “monogoggle”, which resembled swimming goggles, enabling underwater vision and excluding the nose.
United Service Agency, whose name was likely chosen to have the same initial letters as the United States of America, also used “Le Fusil Américain” [The American Gun] as a brand name to identify its full range of spearfishing products, which included diving masks, breathing tubes, swim fins and webbed mitts as well as spearguns.
|
|
|
The company’s 1952 catalogue below left listed all these items. Some of these early United Service Agency underwater accessories might have looked a trifle eccentric by modern standards, as witness the “Nageoire Américaine” swim fin below centre with its “one-size-fits-all” design, and the “Super Aquascope” snorkel-mask below right with its complex hose system, but later models had more conventional specifications.
__________________