Evelyn Dudas – Pioneering Technical Diver & Custom Suit Manufacturer
Evelyn Bartram Dudas is considered by many to be the the most famous women wreck diver in history. Since 1965 Evelyn has been diving the North Atlantic wrecks. She was the first woman to dive the Andrea Doria in 1967, while accompanying John Dudas, who recovered the main compass and brass binnacle cover from the then intact wheel house. She was very frustrated by the lack of proper scuba equipment for women. In 1965 she decided to design, assemble, and sell women’s wetsuits in the incongruous setting of an old barn on her family’s ancestral property in Westtown. After the untimely death of her husband in 1982, as a result of a diving accident, she continued to expand Dudas Diving Duds into a full service dive shop while raising four children as a single parent. Her full service recreational and technical dive shop is still active near West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Evelyn returned to the Doria again in 1992 and sought further training in Trimix with Billy Deans and Full Cave with Tom Mount. Evie is hobbled by osteoporosis that she thinks is due to improper decompression in her early diving years. She is a fighter and a survivor, not allowing physical challenges to get in the way of her diving pursuits. She has become an avid cave diver and teaches DPV classes both in open water and overhead environments. Photography is still a passionate hobby of hers. Worldwide travels to wrecks in Truk, Bikini, Vanuatu, Grenada, North Carolina, the St. Lawrence River and Tobermory occupy much of the traveling she does now. As an active open water NAUI instructor Evie teaches kids camps in the summer.
Evie is an inaugural inductee into the Women Diver’s Hall of Fame, a member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Explorers Club and program manager of Keystone Diver’s Association. Evie is a diving legend and mentor to many and is still very active in diving well into her sixties.
– Renee Power
