The Lyons Maritime Museum located in downtown Saint Augustine, Florida was opened in 1990 by Leon Lyons. The Helmets Of The Deep Store is an off-shoot of Leon Lyons’s best-selling book, Helmets Of The Deep. With our inventory of contemporary & antique diving helmets, nautical items, and diving equipment, you’re bound to find something of interest. The mariner at heart will feel right at home.
Welcome, To My World, Of The Deep-Sea Diving Helmet.
The photos in my Maritime Gallery are very likely the largest collection of its kind on this planet – could there be another larger collection out there in the Galaxy!!!
It has been 34 years since I acquired my first helmet, 1974, and as of today a few more do find their way into my collection. It has been a rewarding experience and still is, for the folks I do meet, and the friendships I’ve made in the field of collecting the old and new styles of heavy dive gear. It has been a very passionate collecting affair.
A joke I tell my friends is that when I have to get a medical checkup now and then, and they have to draw some blood, no luck; for the only thing flowing through my veins are diving helmets!!!!
You will notice a wide array of all types of diving accessories, necessary for the diver to use and wear when going down to the deep sea. These are the kinds of tools and parts that other collectors did not bother to acquire at one time, now they go after everything, realizing how hard it is to find these things, or stuff, as some people will acknowledge it to be. Not until you point out certain facts will they truly appreciate and understand what they are looking at.
A Virtual Living Diving Maritime Museum
In 1990, I followed a dream to open a Maritime diving museum, so folks could see what the men had to use to work within the oceans, rivers, and lakes. A large assortment of things from ships, sextants, binnacles, steering stations, telegraphs, shipyard models, bells, and many other artifacts complement the dive gear. I still have an extensive collection with me today in old St. Augustine, Florida.
It has been a rewarding experience to have the museum, but five years, seven days a week, was too much. So I retired the museum and brought it all into my home. Being back in the single-stage again these last few years, it came to mind that I would re-open the museum again, but in my home, and people would have to call me to make an appointment to see it. It works a lot better that way, and I now call it a Virtual Living Diving Maritime Museum. All I need to complete it would be a nice big 30-foot diving tank !!!!!
Helmets Of The Deep Store
The museum is a constantly changing landscape. The procurement and selling of items is a non-ending affair for me. I thought it would be nice to have a website dedicated to things I’d like to sell, so I had one made. I called my website, you guessed it, Helmets Of The Deep Store. It includes contemporary and antique nautical and diving-related items. But that’s not all you’ll see; we have many hard-to-find antique items, rare pieces of historical culture, and vintage commercial items that are non-maritime related. Peruse the store, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Leon Lyons
