by Brad Matsen
After nightfall, the bathyscaphe finally slipped beneath the sea, surrounded by a glowing corona from its lights that dimmed to a bright haze as it descended to only 200 feet for the first test dive. Sixteen minutes later, Cousteau watched as the sea brightened and the top of the balloon broke the surface. On the ship, cheers erupted but the celebration didn’t last long. For five long hours, with Piccard and Monod sealed inside the sphere, L’Elie Monnier’s divers pumped gasoline into the sea. Finally, the crane could lift the bathyscaphe. On deck, with movie cameras rolling under floodlights, the crew opened the hatches to free the exhausted men inside. Cousteau never forgot what he saw.
“A high leather boot came out, followed by a bare shank, another boot and leg, bathing trunks, a naked belly, and the bespectacled wild-haired pinnacle of Professor Auguste Piccard,” Cousteau wrote later. “His hand was extended, clutching a patented health drink with the label squarely presented to the cameras. Professor Piccard ceremoniously drank the product of one of his sponsors. The bathyscaphe was back from the deep.”
Cousteau’s delight at watching the world’s greatest science showman perform at the end of a grueling dive was replaced two days later by abject disappointment. During the next test, an unmanned descent to 4,600 feet over an undersea canyon, the thin metal balloon holding the gasoline chambers was bent and crumpled beyond repair. After struggling through the night to release ballast and pump off gas, divers finally lightened the bathyscaphe enough to bring it out of the water, but there would be no more diving on that expedition.
Cousteau was crestfallen that he would not make a dive to test his grappling claw and harpoon cannon, but he also knew that Piccard was not going to stop working on the bathyscaphe. It was only a matter of time before he and his engineers made one that worked. He turned L’Elie Monnier homeward for Toulon also knowing that joining Piccard on his first expedition to explore the abyss signaled his acceptance into the top rank of ocean exploration.
After the publicity from the bathyscaphe expedition and the rest of the attention Cousteau was getting from the press, he hired his father as a full-time business agent. Eugene Higgins had died leaving Daniel without a job, so he was happy to divide his time between Sanary-sur-Mer, Paris, and Torquay. After his first trip to Sanary, he was known simply as Daddy because of his command of English, his relationship with JYC, and the genial, fatherly presence he brought to every situation. He had an agent’s soul, with great intuition for who was worth his son’s time and who was not. He gracefully deflected those he decided were not part of the way forward, aware that one never knew if they would be of use to his son’s career later on.
One of the first introductions Daddy brokered for JYC was with a young woman named Perry Miller, a United Nations cultural attaché scouting in Europe for new films to feed the energetic postwar documentary boom in the United States. Miller was pretty, adventurous in the style of a Hemingway heroine, and independent at a time when magazine ads were celebrating housewives in bouncy petticoats.
When Miller met Cousteau during a visit to Paris, she instantly recognized an animal spirit in him, a magnetism that she and almost every other woman he had ever known would find impossible to resist. She knew that not every attractive woman JYC charmed would become his lover, but there was no question that in the first two minutes after meeting him most would decide, at least theoretically, that they would. Smitten by Cousteau and convinced that he radiated the unmistakable scent of stardom, Miller went back to New York determined to help Americans fall in love with this brave, charismatic Frenchman. Daddy gave her prints of Par dix-huit mètres de fond, Épaves, and two other short films, one from the Tunisian expedition, the other a navy training film about escaping from a sunken submarine using a breathing lung. At a gala evening in New York in early 1950, Miller premiered Cousteau’s films, along with several others from her European trip. The next day, a Life magazine editor who had been at the screening called to ask if he could take another look at the ones of the French fellow who breathes underwater.
In November 1950, Life ran a seven-page spread of photographs. Most had accompanied Dugan’s Science Illustrated story, but in Life they were printed many times larger and seen by many more people. Under the headline “Underwater Wonders,” Dumas wrestled an octopus, the Undersea Research Group team swam downward from the light above and into the depths, and shipwrecks once thought lost forever came alive again. In an inset photograph on the first page, Cousteau and his underwater movie camera evoked a scene straight out of Jules Verne. The article ended with five increasingly large close-ups of a menacing shark. The final caption, under an image of a shark’s gaping mouth filling the frame, was “Cousteau bumped the shark’s head with his camera and got this frightening nose-to-nose close-up. The shark retreated, and divers rose as quickly as possible.” Cousteau was quoted as saying he had seen forty-three sharks in a single month of diving. None of them showed the slightest inclination to attack him, probably, he said, because he carried cupric acetate as a shark repellant.
The rest of the Life issue, which had a paid circulation of more than ten million and a readership estimated at five times that number, featured the UCLA homecoming queen Allyn Smith on the cover, news reports on a plane crash in the Alps that orphaned nineteen children in a single Canadian family, a U.S. jet fighter pilot shooting down the first Russian Mig over the Yalu River that divides China and Korea, the assassination of Venezuelan dictator Delgado Chalbaud, and the murder of five family members by an estranged husband in New Jersey. The photo essay on Cousteau and his divers led the features section, followed by articles on the annual celebration of the Marine Corps birthday; a new discovery about the cause of high blood pressure; hair dyes that could be used safely at home; and the mysterious British billionaire, Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, his art collection, and his control of the oil exploration in Arabia.
Niblets Sweet Corn bought the ad on the back cover of the issue, and I.W. Harper Kentucky bourbon the inside back cover. On the inside front cover, the Forstmann Woolen Company ran a full-page illustration of an elegantly wool-clad model against backgrounds of yellow, purple, and red fabric. Other products touted in the issue included General Motors airplane engines, Lucky Strike cigarettes, Schlitz and Budweiser beer, Playtex Fab-Lined girdles, Revere movie cameras and projectors, and television sets by Zenith, Spartan Town and Country, General Electric, Truetone, and the Capehart-Farnsworth Corporation. On television, Americans were watching What’s My Line?, Your Show of Shows, Hawkins Falls, Truth or Consequences, The Jack Benny Show, and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.
The day after the issue of Life hit the newsstands, Perry Miller got a call from someone who said he was from Universal Pictures in Hollywood. Who did he have to talk to about rights to the underwater movies he had read about in Life? Miller referred him to Daniel Cousteau. A week later, Jacques Cousteau accepted Universal’s offer of $11,000 for exclusive U.S. rights to his first four documentaries.
10
CALYPSO
AFTER FOUR YEARS OF expeditions aboard L’Elie Monnier, Cousteau wanted a new ship. He remained grateful for the converted German patrol boat that had been his first command but it was just too small and poorly equipped to take him into the future. L’Elie Monnier had nowhere near enough stowage, a single engine that made it clumsy in close quarters, and limited deck space, which made launching and recovering teams of divers a nightmare. He wanted a bigger boat, with twin engines, a shallow draft for working around reefs, and accommodations, fuel, water, and cargo capacity for months instead of weeks.
At a meeting with the admiral in charge of the Undersea Research Group, Cousteau stood at attention and delivered the precisely worded request that he, Simone, Tailliez, and Dumas had written out the night before after dinner in Sanary-sur-Mer.
“Our team is ahead of everybody in putting a man in the sea,” Cousteau said. “The national interest is to keep us in the lead with a new type of undersea research vessel built to the specia
l needs of Aqua-Lung divers.”
With a trace of sympathy for what he apparently took to be a naive and grandiose plan, the admiral turned Cousteau down flat. “As a lieutenant commander, you have no chance of getting a vessel. My advice is to return to routine duty. Work for advancement,” the admiral told him. “Become an admiral. Then you might get your ship.”
The following day, Cousteau went to another admiral who was even less sympathetic than the first. Not only was giving him his own ship out of the question, but since Cousteau had served seventeen of his eighteen years in the navy assigned to sea duty, it was time he did some staff time ashore.
Cousteau snapped to attention in front of the second admiral’s desk. “With your permission, sir,” Cousteau said. “From now on, I have one goal—to give my country an undersea exploring vessel. I request three months’ furlough to look after personal affairs.”
The admiral shook his head. Cousteau, he said, you are almost forty years old, no longer a young man. You have a solid career in the navy. This will ruin you, but I will grant you the furlough as I would to any other officer seeking to begin a business in civilian life.
Cousteau had no idea how to build a business around the exploration of the world’s oceans, but banks were pouring money into the reconstruction of cities and the resurrection of industry, so he thought his timing might be right. He convinced naval architect Andrew Mauric to design the vessel he wanted gratis, took the plans to the French National Bank with the support of the French Film Board, and came away with enough money to make a movie but not to build a ship. Cousteau left the disappointing meeting with the bankers intent on borrowing enough from well-heeled friends to finance the ship, but not feeling especially optimistic about his prospects.
Cousteau’s frustration increased after a succession of contacts from his father, Daniel, failed to pan out. Putting money into a new business built around a band of sailors who had learned how to breathe underwater was not attractive compared with the construction, manufacturing, and production of consumer goods. Through Simone’s father, Cousteau approached the board of Air Liquide, his partners in the promising but still nascent Aqua-Lung business. They offered only to supply tanks, compressors, and other equipment once Cousteau found his ship. Cousteau pointed out that movies, books, and news stories of the exploits of a team of underwater explorers using Aqua-Lungs was going to sell more Aqua-Lungs. Still no.
Calypso (PRIVATE COLLECTION)
Dumas and Tailliez weren’t having any luck either. A few friends said they might contribute to an expedition but none could stand the cost of an entire ship. At a particularly dark moment, when Cousteau was thinking he would be better off staying in the navy, Simone reminded him of an encounter with a British couple they had had at the bar of the Alpine ski resort at Auron after fleeing Paris in 1940. The woman had offered Simone half of her last cigarette—a grand gesture because tobacco was scarce. The couples segued from drinks into dinner, during which they talked about nothing but their shared passion for the ocean, their mutual fascination for the fantasies of Jules Verne, and the possibility that they were living in a time when those fantasies might become real. When they parted, the Cousteaus and their new friends agreed to get in touch after the war if their dreams of exploring the ocean survived.
Incredibly, Simone found the name, address, and telephone number of the couple from Auron in her address book. The man answered the phone as though he had been waiting for the call. When Cousteau told him he had developed the Aqua-Lung, explored the Mediterranean with it for four years, and was trying to raise money for a ship that would open the oceans of the world to him, the man invited them to come to London as soon as possible. He had a wealthy friend, Loel Guinness, who might be interested in making a contribution.
Loel Guinness, a lawyer descended from an Irish goldsmith, was the younger brother of the founder of the famous brewery in Dublin. He had inherited a fortune from his father, and lived the life of an international socialite until the war began. Then he had learned to fly, joined the Royal Air Force, and flew in the Battle of Britain. He was looking forward to a postwar life as a gentleman adventurer. In London, Cousteau told Guinness about the bad luck of the automobile accident that had ended his aviation career but then opened the way for his current fascination with the sea. He talked about the drop in the numbers of fish and the deterioration of the bottom of the Mediterranean off the south of France, and wondered aloud if the ocean, long thought to be impervious to destruction by man, might be more fragile than everyone believed. Guinness said that he, too, was obsessed with the possibilities that would arise from the exploration of the seven-eighths of the earth’s surface covered by the sea. Apart from the coming to grips with the human impact on the sea, both men agreed that a dedicated research ship would no doubt open the ocean to exploration and enable the exploitation of the vast mineral and petroleum resources it contained.
For Cousteau, asking for money from a man he didn’t know was tantamount to shameless begging. Simone, however, insisted that enlisting Loel Guinness in the grand adventure of underwater exploration was really offering the likeminded Irishman a chance to enjoy his wealth while contributing to scientific enlightenment. She was right. After he and Cousteau spent the better part of a day getting to know each other, Guinness said he believed the Aqua-Lung and a ship equipped to tend divers and produce movies could change the world.
Instead of building a new ship, however, Guinness had a better idea. Why not buy a much bigger, better ship from among the thousands being offered for sale as war surplus? In Malta alone, Guinness knew of a fleet of 115-foot British Fairmile-class torpedo boats in perfect condition and available for a few thousand dollars. Go to Malta, pick out a Fairmile, and I’ll loan you the money to buy it, Guinness said. Cousteau was stunned by the generosity, but said he had no idea when he could repay him. Guinness said he wasn’t worried about getting repaid. If Cousteau found the right ship, Guinness said he would lease it to him for one pound a year in perpetuity. He put two conditions on the lease. Cousteau could tell no one but his wife who paid for the boat, and he could never again come to Guinness for money. Like so many other people who fell under the spell of Cousteau’s charm and ambition, Guinness was willing to help him, but as a businessman, he knew where to draw the line.
Two weeks later, Cousteau flew to Malta with naval architect Henri Rambaud to look at ships. He chartered a launch, cruised among dozens of anchored Fairmiles in the harbor at Valletta, studied their high-speed lines, and went aboard one of them to inspect the accommodations, deck space, engines, and stowage. Too small, Cousteau thought. Even with Guinness’s blank check in his pocket, he didn’t want to spend money on a boat that was less than ideal for tending scuba divers and underwater film crews.
On his way to shore, resigned to returning unsuccessfully to France, Cousteau spotted a much larger boat he recognized from his own navy service as a minesweeper. It was about 130 feet long, with a big, low afterdeck that would be perfect for diving, a solid wood hull, and, he could tell from the depth markings on its bow, a relatively shallow draft. Cousteau could see that unlike the idle Fairmiles, the minesweeper was in service as some kind of ferryboat.
When he landed, Cousteau walked back to the loading dock and went aboard. Its captain and owner, a transplanted Greek fisherman, was happy to show him around. The boat revealed signs of neglect, but most of it was cosmetic—blistered paint, rust streaks down its gray hull from the metal fittings and rigging straps. The decks and hull looked good, the caulking between planks still tight and sealed. The bilges weren’t completely dry, but Cousteau knew that every wooden ship leaked a bit and this one wasn’t taking water beyond normal limits. The pumps were obviously working. The engine room was hardly up to military standards of order and cleanliness, but Cousteau could see that the engines, propeller shafts, and stuffing boxes were being well maintained. Some of the interior bulkheads had been removed to make room for passenger benches and cargo stowage, and the dec
ks cleared for carrying a few cars, but he saw the potential for refitting the former minesweeper as a comfortable research ship.
The ship was one of a series of minesweepers built at the Ballard Marine Railways in the Norwegian section of Seattle, Washington, in 1942 and 1943. Before the war, the little shipyard had been turning out halibut and salmon boats during boom years, and staying alive with repair work when fishing was bad. As in every other small yard in the Pacific Northwest, the shipwrights at Ballard Marine were experts in building with wood. With abundant supplies of cedar, cypress, spruce, and fir in the coastal forests, there was no better place on earth to build wooden ships.
Minesweepers were built of wood simply because metal hulls would set off the magnetic triggers of mines by accident before their crews were able to detonate them intentionally. The hull of BYMS-26, its U.S. Navy designation, was made of Port Orford cedar, a type of wood especially prized by boat builders and mariners because it was easy to work, strong, and highly resistant to rot. Actually a member of the cypress family, Port Orford cedar was unique to the forests along the Pacific in Northern California and Oregon, rising in dense stands to heights of 200 feet. It was straight-grained, which meant that long boards could be milled from the logs, greatly simplifying bending and fastening planks for boat building.
