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Water Wings
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In the mean time, a preview of this story is shown below. It's about the first half.
Somewhere in the North Sea
The line arcing off the boat kinked between deck and water. Eric, watching for just that, yelled to the crew uncoiling the stiff hose, "Hold it! Back it up!" Then the kink swelled a bit. Eric screamed, "Back it up! Back it up now!"
Before the offending line could be pulled back up onto the deck, the kink burst.
"Shit!" Eric yelled. "Get the bell up! Now! Get it up!"
The crew who had been manning the air pump left their now useless post and manned the capstan to raise the bell. Putting their backs into it, they pushed its arms for all they were worth.
Eric watched as the collapsed air line came up out of the water at a fast pace. He had brought the details for a diving bell along with the location of the wreck, due north of Castle Point and west of St. Olef's Bay, back from a strange town in Germany called Grantville and was able to convince a local merchant to fund the salvage effort.
The air line was made of two layers of waxed leather. The book called for rubberized canvas, with the outer layer sewn over the seamless inner layer. No one, outside of Grantville, knew what rubberized meant. It had to be water-proofing. It must really be something because they had absolutely no luck using canvas to make the high pressure air line. Two layers of leather worked. It had to be doused down with hot water before it was lowered away to keep it from cracking and it made a large coil that filled the free deck from rail to rail. The coil barely left room for the air pump and the capstan for lowering the diving bell in the middle.
"Belay that!" the captain called.
"But, sir," Eric protested. "We've lost air."
"I am aware of that, Mister." ...
That ends the preview. Probably in the middle of a sentence. Sorry.