A class J-826 British minesweeper may soon be the unlikely star of a new marine exhibition at the Brittany port of Concarneau: the story of a sailor, far ahead of his time, who left the deck of his boat for the depths of the sea and became a legend.
The warship, built for the Royal Navy in the US shipyard at Seattle in 1942, became in 1951 the Calypso, the oceanographic base of Commander Jacques-Yves Cousteau. He soon moved from discovery to defence of the aquatic environment, but his relentless campaign to show the damage caused by man was given a huge boost by the chance juxtaposition of two cinematic events.
In 1956 the cinema-going audience became fascinated by the fictional adventures of the Nautilus in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Then at the Cannes Film Festival, Director Louis Malle won the Palme d’Or for his movie, The Silent World. It included the first moving pictures in colour of the sea bed, shot by Cousteau and his almost suicidally reckless team of divers on the Calypso, in the clear waters of the Indian Ocean. They were at home in their environment because they had pioneered spectacular advances in technology, creating diving equipment that for the first time was independent of the mother ship, and a camera that could stand up to being operated far beneath the surface while remaining waterproof.
For twenty years Cousteau used his star status on French and Belgian television to promote the environmental protection of underwater reefs and endangered sea mammals, founding the Cousteau Society in 1974 to add momentum to the campaign. In 1995 he opposed the decision of President Chirac to restart French nuclear tests in the Pacific. But some believe Cousteau had lost touch with the developments in technology that enabled other directors to steal a march on him. While his crew was still sending rushes back to studios, satellites, remotely operated vehicles and miniaturised cameras had allowed others to capture and transmit underwater images without taking disproportionate risks.
The Calypso soldiered on until 1996, one year before Cousteau’s death, when it was involved in an accident and left helpless in La Rochelle harbour. There it remained until October last year, a rotting hulk and the object of a protracted lawsuit between Cousteau’s daughter and son-in-law on the one hand, and his widow Francine on the other. Francine finally won, and on her instructions the Calypso was taken to Concarneau, the first stage in a huge fund-raising exercise that eventually should see one history’s famous vessels restored to her former glory.
From our January 2008 e-newsletter
