by Brad Matsen
Powered by two 1,200-horsepower Pratt and Whitney Wasp engines mounted on a high wing, the PBY-6A had a range of 2,500 miles while cruising at a sedate 125 miles per hour. It had a top speed of about 190 miles per hour. It was not pressurized, but equipped with an oxygen system that gave it a 25,000-foot ceiling. Designed for a crew of eight, the later models of the PBY could carry twice that many people or up to 15,000 pounds of cargo. After World War II, retired military PBYs were snapped up by airlines serving coastal towns and villages without runways, medical emergency aircraft companies, firefighting teams, and private owners. For as little as $50,000, they got a yacht that slept four and could also fly.
The stars of the two episodes on the Nile River were Flying Calypso and its dashing pilot, Philippe Cousteau, against background shots from the cockpit and the pair of enormous glass observation blisters on the sides of the plane. The hypothesis, delivered again in the basso profundo voice of the show’s writer Ted Strauss, was that after thousands of years of natural existence, human beings were affecting the course, condition, and future of the great river.
“Not only are ancient cultures and animal sanctuaries being threatened by extinction, but men are learning that technological triumphs,” Strauss intoned, “sometimes create problems greater than the ones they seek to solve.”
From there, the film was a natural history travelogue, with shots of the beautiful gold-and-white Flying Calypso over the Great Pyramids, cruising low over the sinuous, muddy river, dodging whirlwinds of insects over Lake Victoria and stampeding herds of animals below it. They rendezvoused with a convoy of Cousteau Land Rovers and headed inland for a catalog of African animals on the savanna, the same giraffes, hyenas, lions, gazelles, and the rest that everyone watching had already seen dozens of times. Somehow with a Cousteau it was better.
Backed by a symphony orchestra playing George Delarue’s romantic score, Strauss’s narration gave the PBY the same almost human personality that had worked so well for Calypso for twenty-five years. The camera spent a lot of time showing viewers how things worked, with shots of both Cousteaus and other crew members peering out into the wind of the open observation blister looking as if they were having every bit as wonderful a time as they did on their famous little ship.
During the sequences shot on land, Philippe was the central character, making decisions and interviewing locals and foreign engineers working on the Aswân Dam about the changes they had witnessed in the river. To end the show, Philippe recorded the concluding voice-over narrative, written by Strauss and usually reserved for his father: “Modern engineers, impatient for quick solutions, cannot foresee the consequences of the changes they impose,” Philippe said. “Perhaps we have mastered the river. We have yet to master ourselves.”
On the afternoon of June 28, 1979, Philippe Cousteau brought the Catalina out of a shallow left turn onto a northerly heading to line up with a straight stretch of the Tagus River where it flows through Lisbon and into the North Atlantic. The flight was a test hop after the plane had undergone repairs on a hydraulic pump and a routine hundred-hour maintenance check at a shop run by the Portuguese navy. As he ran through his approach checklist, Philippe savored the singular act that separates aviators from ordinary people. Almost anybody can get a plane into the air, but only a well-trained pilot can land one. He reached up and forward to a set of four control levers, set the angles of the propeller blades for maximum efficiency, reduced power, and toggled another lever to lower his wing flaps into landing position. He scanned his instruments to be sure he had fuel flow, hydraulic and oil pressure, the right engine rpm, the right rate of descent. He tapped each of three red lights on the instrument panel indicating that his main and nose wheels were safely stowed in their compartments for a water landing. If he had been approaching a runway on land, he would want those lights to be green to indicate that the wheels were down and locked. Like most pilots, Philippe repeated his final checklist once more under his breath, just loud enough to transmit into the headphones of the man sitting to his right in the copilot’s seat. Flaps …pressure …three reds.
In the cabin behind Philippe and the copilot, six other men crowded around the two observation blisters toward the rear of the plane to watch the landing. The noise of the engines and the wind howling through the open windows made it impossible to talk. Below them, they watched what had been toy houses in a playroom village transform themselves into the waterfront of Lisbon as Philippe leveled off for touchdown. Skiffs and sailing smacks hugged the shore. To alert them that the plane was landing, Philippe had buzzed the river at full power before circling back for his approach into the wind. Philippe held the nose of the plane just above the horizon as it bled off speed to 75 miles per hour and settled slowly to the water. He checked one last time to be sure the river was clear ahead of him, then reached up and cut the power just as the middle of the hull skimmed the surface.
The last sensation Philippe Cousteau felt was his plane shudder, signaling its return to earth. Then nothing.
Everyone else was thrown clear. The man in the copilot seat crashed through the windshield. The others went through the glass of the observation blisters. All were cut and bruised; a few had broken bones. Boatmen who saw the plane stand on its nose and flip over fished the survivors out of the water. Flying Calypso sank in minutes, its wings sheared from the hull as it tumbled, the heavy weight of its engines dragging the wreckage down into the slow-flowing brown water. Only Philippe was missing.
For two days, they looked for his body. By the end of the first day, the family had arrived from Los Angeles: Cousteau; Simone; Philippe’s wife, Jan, with their daughter, Alexandra, and pregnant with their second child; Jean-Michel; PAC’s son, Dr. Jean-Pierre Cousteau; and several friends who traveled with them for support. Dozens of journalists flooded into Lisbon to report on the search. Overcome with emotion, the Cousteaus could do nothing but wait in seclusion in a villa owned by Air Liquide while a Portuguese military helicopter searched the shoreline downstream and thirty navy divers groped in zero visibility along the bottom of the muddy river. It didn’t take long to find the cockpit. Philippe was not in it. When they hoisted the wreckage onto the salvage barge, it was obvious that something catastrophic had happened to the left front side of the plane’s nose. Unlike the rest of the wreck they recovered, the metal on the pilot’s side was torn and wrinkled, unrecognizable as part of an airplane. The fear set in that whatever had happened in the crash had so terribly destroyed Philippe’s body that his remains would never be found.
Finally, on the morning of the third day, Dr. Cousteau, who was handling communication with the world outside the villa, took a phone call from the chief of police. Divers searching under the waterfront wharves had found Philippe pinned almost invisibly against pilings by the current. There wasn’t much left that looked like a man, the policeman said. He had consulted with aviators on the scene who seemed to think that the left engine had broken loose on impact and slammed into the cockpit right where Philippe was sitting. No one had any idea what caused the crash. Perhaps it was a nose wheel door that had somehow come open and pitched the plane forward when it struck the water at 80 miles per hour. Or the plane might have hit a sandbar or some other submerged object. It was impossible to know for sure. Someone, the chief concluded, had to come to the city morgue to identify the body. Jacques Cousteau choked out loud as though keeping himself from vomiting and left the room. A moment later, he called back to Jean-Michel. You must do it, Cousteau said. I cannot.
Philippe’s funeral was at Lisbon’s Saint-Louis-des-Français church and his burial at sea from the Portuguese corvette Baptista de Andrada. With the family and a camera crew aboard the warship, Cousteau took the body of his son 25 miles out into the North Atlantic and sent it into the embrace of his beloved ocean.
Afterward, on the dock at the navy base, Cousteau spoke for the first time about his son’s death to the crowd of several dozen journalists representing the major papers and news organizations of t
he world. “Nothing is changed in our program,” he told them, shocking some of the reporters and many of Calypso’s crew who read their stories. Cousteau’s opening remark seemed brutally crass in light of the fact that he had just buried his son. Everyone who knew Cousteau understood that he was not a man to dwell on the failures and tragedies of the past. He was a master at moving on without reflection or regret. But this was Philippe.
“Our upcoming expeditions will proceed as planned,” Cousteau said. “What was a tragedy for my son was a miracle for his copilot. The propeller that killed Philippe saved the life of the copilot, who was tossed, uninjured, to the surface. That is fate. We must accept it and go on. I have another problem now. Philippe, of course, was to take over and continue my work when I am gone. There must be someone to run the society. There must be continuity.”
After that day, Cousteau refused to talk publicly about Philippe ever again. Six months later, he wrote a letter to his dead son and published it in one of his reports to the members of the Cousteau Society.
Mon cher Philippe:
I will always remember that day when you joined our Conshelf Two expedition. I was impatient to show you our Village under the Sea before it became too dark. Hastily, we submerged. I kept your hand in mine, to guide you. I felt strangely proud, not of what we had achieved, but because our dreams were always shared so intimately.
Three years ago, I found myself sitting near you in the cockpit of your Catalina. I looked at you, my guide in the sky as I had been your guide in the sea. I saw your shining face, proud to have something to give back to me, and I smiled because I knew that pursuing rainbows in your plane, you would always seek after the vanishing shapes of a better world.
I love you, JYC
19
MOVING ON
AFTER LISBON, SIMONE RETREATED to the familiar routines of Calypso, which were all she could bear of the world. She got very little comfort from her husband anymore, so the pain of Philippe’s death was best endured alone at sea. Aboard her ship, Simone enjoyed the privacy of her stateroom behind the wheelhouse when she wanted it, and the camaraderie of the galley at mealtimes if she chose to eat and drink with the crew. The Venezuelan government had chartered the ship to sample the ocean at the mouth of the Orinoco River, a three-month job without the hectic pace of film production. There were cameras aboard, as always, and Cousteau appeared for two days to shoot a few scenes, but the mission of the voyage was straightforward and relaxed.
Away from Calypso, Cousteau threw himself into a maelstrom of plane trips and meetings, editing the last three episodes of the Odyssey series in Los Angeles. He continued negotiations, on which he and Philippe had been working, to change Calypso’s home port from Monaco to Norfolk, Virginia. There was no question in Cousteau’s mind that closer ties to the United States were in the best interest of his family, the society, and his other enterprises. Norfolk was the home of the American fleet and countless shipyards, and was one of the best-protected harbors in the world. It was only 150 miles from Washington, D.C., the heart of international environmental advocacy. For Cousteau, perpetual motion was as much of a balm to the agony of losing Philippe as Calypso was for Simone. In a single month that fall, he was in Norfolk, Paris, Los Angeles, Norfolk, Paris again, Monaco, Venezuela (to look in on Calypso and Simone), and, again, Los Angeles.
Before Philippe died, Jean-Michel had accepted his life on the fringes of his father’s enterprises. He had carefully used the Cousteau name to build a business for himself as a popular lecturer to audiences of environmentalists, marine scientists, and divers. His father continued to turn to him for advice on creating exhibits, including the early stages of a plan to build a Disneyland-like ocean park in France. After Philippe died, there was no question that Jean-Michel would return to his father’s side and do whatever needed to be done. The moment he heard about Philippe, Jean-Michel knew it was time to close ranks, to come together. His father told him he could not go on. His work was over. Jean-Michel said, “JYC, I’m in. Don’t say another word. It’s all taken care of.”
Jean-Michel and Jacques Cousteau (PRIVATE COLLECTION)
Jean-Michel, with his wife, Anne-Marie, and their children, Fabien and Céline, moved to New York to run the Cousteau Society and Calypso’s expeditions. When Cousteau introduced Jean-Michel in his new role, he said, “He is an architect but also a teacher of marine biology and an ecologist. He cannot replace Philippe, but he has other talents. He is a much better administrator than either Philippe or I could ever be.”
Jean-Michel punctuated his father’s estimation of his abilities with his own remarks to the press as he packed up to leave Los Angeles. “With the death of Philippe we’ve lost a talent I don’t have,” Jean-Michel told reporters. “Philippe was full of poetry and dreams, he was a beautiful storyteller, a talented filmmaker. His world was in the air. How can we reinstate that perspective? I’m not a balloonist, not a pilot. I’m an ocean person. The society will always be marked by his absence.”
Editing the film for the last three episodes for PBS was very nearly more than Cousteau could bear, because his lost son was in so many frames. Jean-Michel took over much of the work. For “Lost Relics of the Sea,” they cut previously shot footage into a catalog of shipwrecks in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. He edited “The Warm-blooded Sea: Mammals of the Deep” from a decade of film and a script by his new writer, Susan Schiefelbein of the Saturday Review. Her story began with a poignant encounter with fur seals and their pups, the icons of a campaign against the hunting of marine mammals, and traced the evolution of seals, whales, and dolphins. Cousteau and actor Robert Wagner narrated, with a classically inspired orchestral score. Shots of Philippe swimming with a tame dolphin, Jean-Michel in the water watching dolphins feed on a school of menhaden, and Japanese fishermen slaughtering dolphins to keep them out of their nets were combined, indicting the film’s audiences as much as entertaining them. Time is running out for the seal pups, was the message, and it is running out for all of us, their relatives, too.
“Why can we only point accusing fingers and never hold up a mirror?” Cousteau asked in his narration.
PBS, ARCO, and Robert Anderson started feeling uneasy about continuing the Odyssey series for another season after those two shows. The final episode, “Clipperton: The Island That Time Forgot,” left no doubts that they were finished with Jacques Cousteau. Philippe had led a six-week expedition to Clipperton in 1970 when he was trying to distance himself from his father with his own production company. He shot thousands of feet of film of accompanying scientists examining the unique coral reef ecology surrounding the isolated island, 700 miles southwest of Acapulco, but never produced a finished film. Ten years later, Cousteau and Jean-Michel used Philippe’s footage as background for their own graphic investigation into the story of a lighthouse keeper on Clipperton who had brutalized a harem of women and children until they rebelled and killed him with a hammer. When Cousteau returned to the island to shoot scenes for the Odyssey episode, he brought back one of the surviving children, who described the murder on camera and erected a cross at the scene of the crime.
Despite Cousteau’s heroic attempts to soldier on, his subconscious betrayed him in “Clipperton.” He and Jean-Michel edited Philippe’s underwater shots into scenes that echoed and amplified the human tragedy that had taken place on the island. Sardines fleeing upward from a shark attack below are finished off near the surface by tens of thousands of blue-footed boobies. Swarms of crabs scuttle to the tide line in a frenzy to grab the sardines dropped by the birds. Moray eels wriggle ashore to eat the crabs. Even the water itself is deadly. A freshwater lagoon is filled with decaying plants, poisoning the water with chemicals that eat through the divers’ suits and masks, burning their eyes and skin. In the narration, Cousteau says, “My skin was attacked as if immersed in acid. It became intolerable. When we surfaced from the inferno and took our masks off, the bad smell we had carried with us was suffocating. Our yellow tanks were bleached by hy
drogen sulfide, the metal parts of our Aqua-Lungs were black as coal, and our red eyes leaked tears for the rest of the day.”
The Los Angeles Times television critic pointed out that the underwater scenes were, if anything, more melodramatic than those of the survivor of a night of murder arriving back on a remote island and kissing the ground as he stepped ashore. Other critics were far less kind. The New York Times ignored all three of the last episodes of The Jacques Cousteau Odyssey. The Washington Post pointed out that Cousteau was among the most celebrated explorers and most famous entertainers of all time, and had suffered an unimaginable tragedy with the loss of his son. He was entitled to a rest. PBS programming executives agreed with the Post.
A month after Cousteau finished the last episode for PBS, he moved his editing studio from Los Angeles to Paris as part of another major change in the way he produced television shows. Until then, he had steadfastly clung to shooting film because of the higher resolution, better color, and his familiarity with it after sixty years of using movie cameras. The technology of video recording had improved so much, however, that he could no longer justify the intermediary step of physically assembling film before transfer for electronic presentation on television. Cousteau told anyone who asked him that he was moving his production studio to Paris so he could use the European Phase Alternating Line (PAL) video system, which operated on 50-cycle current. It produced crisper images than the American National Television System Committee (NTSC) format used in the United States, which operated on 60-cycle current. Leaving Los Angeles also meant leaving memories of Philippe, who had firmly set his anchor on the California coast.
