Bill Clark’s diving suit and other diving apparatus are on display at DiMillo’s Restaurant and Lounge on the Portland waterfront. Contributed / South Portland Historical Society

If you’ve been to DiMillo’s Restaurant on the Portland waterfront, you may have noticed the antique diving suit on display in the front lobby. Let’s take a look at the submarine diver who owned that suit, Bill Clark. Born in South Portland in 1927, William Augustus Clark III became more familiarly known to his friends, and to anyone in waterfront circles, as “Clarkie.” His father, William Clark Jr., was a lighthouse keeper – first at Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth as a third assistant keeper in 1915; he later served as the second assistant keeper at Petit Manan in 1936, then as first assistant keeper at Halfway Rock lighthouse from 1936 to 1939, and finally was promoted and served as the principal keeper at Ram Island Ledge from 1939 to 1942.

The Clark family lived at 128 Ridgeland Ave. in South Portland (although numbered 110 Ridgeland Ave. in those days). With his father working as a lighthouse keeper, though, Clark grew up around the water. When he was only 14 years old, Clark took his first “dive” at Clark’s Pond on Westbrook Street – using only a pail for a helmet and a hose that a friend held up so that he had a source of air, he made his first successful attempt at walking underwater.

For high school, he attended New York Military Academy in Cornwall, New York, and, in June 1944, enlisted in the U.S. Navy where he served for a year during World War II. He attended Salvage Diving School and learned the skills that he would need for his subsequent career in diving.

Clark married Margaret Lombard in 1946 and together they raised five children – Katherine, Dorothy, Carol, William, and Christopher.

After taking on a number of diving gigs for some Portland-area companies, he decided to establish his own business, General Marine Construction Corp., in 1954. The types of jobs that Clark and the company took on were varied – including diving on wrecks in the harbor, inspecting water mains and pipelines, and assisting with construction and repair of piers and wharves.

In 1958 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was in Portland to deepen the harbor, General Marine Construction was hired to perform blasting on the harbor floor to clear any ledge that was in the way – Clark was reported as diving during the project to inspect the bottom of the harbor. In 1962, the company was in the news when Portland Water District hired them to replace all of the bolts in the 2,500-foot water line between Little Diamond and Peaks Island.

In 1970, when a water main under the Kennebec River broke, there were some city residents in Bath who had no water at all and most other residents were under a conserve water order, while General Marine and others were on site repairing about 36 feet of pipe under the water – not an easy job at the bottom of a river. In 1974, the company was in the news again when they were hired by New England Telephone to lay phone cable across the Kennebec River to enlarge the capacity for toll calls from the Wiscasset area.

One of the dangers of diving in deeper waters is when a diver comes up too fast. The farther down the dive, the higher the pressure will get – the change in pressure, if it happens too fast upon resurfacing, can lead to a case of “the bends” or decompression sickness. Clark experienced this a number of times throughout his career.

He was in the news in 1961 when he was working on a water main off Long Island. He was 110 feet below the surface, replacing bolts in the water main so that the Navy could again pump water to the fuel depot on the island. Upon resurfacing, Clark suffered a severe case of the bends and was transported to the Naval Shipyard where they put him in a decompression chamber.

In spite of the dangers he faced throughout his career, Clark survived and retired from diving in 1976. After his retirement, he kept busy working as an inspector on the waterfront, and working for Cianbro Corp. and the Army Corps of Engineers. He died in 2005 and is buried at Brooklawn Memorial Park in Portland.

South Portland Historical Society offers a free Online Museum with over 17,000 images available for viewing with a keyword search. You can find it at sphistory.pastperfectonline.com and, if you appreciate what we do, feel free to make a donation by using the donation button on the home page. If you have photographs or other information to share about our community’s past, we hope you will reach out to us. South Portland Historical Society can be reached at 207-767-7299, by email at sphistory04106@gmail.com, or by mail at 55 Bug Light Park, South Portland, ME 04106.

Kathryn Onos DiPhilippo is executive director of the South Portland Historical Society.