Margaret Naylor
Anne Margaret Mary Therese Naylor (10 July 1893 – 16 August 1967), known as Margaret Naylor, was the first woman deep-sea diver. Born in 1893, she worked for the British government during World War I, later joining the Ministry of Information’s Office of Propaganda in Enemy Countries (Crewe House committee).
By 1919 she was secretary to Kenneth Mackenzie Foss, a retired Indian Army colonel who held a salvage licence for a sunken Armada ship in Tobermory Bay, believed to be the Florencia, a flagship carrying gold coins. Foss allowed Naylor to dive the wreck, even though she had no prior diving experience. The dive was about 70 feet down.
The first dive nearly failed when her suit’s telephone stopped working and the surface team began pulling her up. At the ladder, a boot jammed, pulling at her helmet, but she freed her boot and continued the ascent. Naylor kept diving and proved herself.
Her work was reported in Popular Science Monthly in August 1920 and in The Daily News in 1922. In 1924, after Foss was injured, Naylor led renewed salvage efforts on the wreck. In June 1924 her helmet leaked and she almost drowned. She worked with Foss again in 1928 on another salvage attempt.
Naylor married Royal Navy Paymaster-Commander McKenzie Leash in 1925, and they lived in Sussex until her death in 1967.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 05:09 (CET).