The Tribune

By LARRY SMITH

REPORTS of Sylvia Munro’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

In my Tribune column on Wednesday I wrongly referred to her as “the late Sylvia Munro”, but I received an earful yesterday which convinced me otherwise.

My column recalled, among other things, the exploits of Sylvia’s father, John Ernest Williamson, a pioneer of undersea photography who died in Nassau in 1966 at the age of 85.

Williamson was active in motion pictures for nearly 50 years.

His father had invented a deep-sea tube, made of a series of concentric, interlocking iron rings, which stretched like an accordion.

Suspended from a specially outfitted ship, this shaft into the sea facilitated easy communication and plentiful air down to depths of up to 250 feet.

In 1912, young Williamson, then a journalist, realized that his father’s mechanism could also be used to obtain undersea photographs or even motion pictures.

To facilitate this he designed a special observation chamber with a large glass window, and took this equipment to the clear waters of the Bahamas.

With his brother George, J.E. Williamson formed the Submarine Film Corporation, and in the spring of 1914 they shot their first one-hour feature – titled Thirty Leagues under the Sea – in the Bahamas. The Williamson Photosphere became a fixture in the Bahamas for decades, used for the production of many undersea movies — one of which was Jules Vernes Twenty-Thousand Leagues under the Sea shot in the Bahamas in 1916 in partnership with Universal Pictures. By the 1940s the photosphere had become a tourist attraction and then gradually faded from view.

Sylvia was born in 1929 and featured in a couple of undersea movies filmed by her father, when she was known as “the little captain”. She became a teacher after graduating from Queen’s College, and married Charles Munro Jr in 1947. Charles was an Olympic sailor who owned a boatyard and several other businesses in Nassau and died a few years ago.

In the 1950s Sylvia launched the Munro pre-school located on William Street, which closed last year.

Her sister, Nikki, lives in Harbour Island.

Her son Charles is chief pilot at Bahamasair. Another son, Larry, is a pilot for Southwest Airlines in the United States.

Her daughter Cynthia is a retired teacher now living in Florida.

The famous Williamson Photosphere is still in the possession of the family and now stored at the Antiquities Monuments and Museums Corporation on Collins Avenue.