Jacques Cousteau (18 page)

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 decks 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.

With a double hull of one-inch-thick planks, 6-inch frames on 18-inch centers, and 8-by-8-inch deck timbers,
BYMS-26
was strong enough to survive all but a direct explosion of a mine or artillery shell. The ship displaced 270 tons, was 136 feet long, 24 feet 6 inches wide, and drew 8 feet of water when fueled and loaded. It had accommodations for a crew of thirty-two, with armament of one 3-inch cannon and two 20-millimeter machine guns. Two 800-horsepower General Motors diesels could drive it at a top speed of 15 knots.

The Ballard Marine Railway and a half-dozen other yards around the United States built eighty of the BYMS minesweepers, which were then given to Britain for use in defending the harbors of the empire from attack. In the Royal Navy,
BYMS-26
became
J-826
, according to the British numbering system for minesweepers. It was assigned to the port of Valletta, Malta, where it saw action during the frantic late stages of the German and Italian collapse in 1944. In 1946, the war over, the Royal Navy sold
J-826
to a fisherman who converted it to carry passengers, cargo, and cars between the islands of Malta and Gozo. He took off the cannons, guns, and the minesweeping gear, scrubbed the navy numbers from its bow, and renamed his boat in honor of the mythical water nymphs of the Mediterranean Sea:
Calypso
.

Calypso’s
owner told Cousteau that every boat in the world is for sale at the right price. He named his. The next day, Rambaud inspected
Calypso
and confirmed Cousteau’s own assessment. Its hull and decks were seaworthy and in need only of minor repairs and paint. Its engines and auxiliary generator had quite a few hours on them and were due for overhaul, but they wouldn’t have to be replaced. Cousteau cabled Loel Guinness in London; Guinness said buy it.

Cousteau returned to Toulon, where he asked for and was granted a three-year furlough from the navy. He retained his rank, would return to active duty in time of war, but was otherwise free from all military obligations. Dumas, who had been released from his brief
service in the army after the war, signed on with Cousteau and his new ship. Tailliez wavered, first deciding to leave the navy, then reversing himself. He loved and respected Cousteau but there was no question that even as his superior officer, Tailliez was increasingly overshadowed by his friend. Better, Tailliez thought, to continue to command the Undersea Research Group, cooperating with Cousteau but moving away from him to make his own way. Auguste Piccard had sold his first bathyscaphe to the French navy after the failures during test dives off West Africa, and Tailliez would be in charge of refitting it using the same steel ball but improved gasoline and ballast tanks. To lead the Undersea Research Group through a challenge like that was much more attractive to Tailliez than leaving the navy to work in Cousteau’s shadow. Tailliez harbored no ill feelings, but he knew that expecting Cousteau to restrain himself from taking command of everyone around him was as futile as asking a fish to walk.

Cousteau, Dumas, their wives and children, and newly hired engineer Octave Leandri went to Malta to bring
Calypso
to the shipyard in Antibes. One of the engines ran a little rough, but otherwise the ship was sound. Turning a war-worn minesweeper into an oceanographic research ship was going to be expensive, not the easy, simple escapade of three passionate divers on another lark, but an undertaking that would require all of their cash and more. Before work actually began, Cousteau asked for financial advice from a friend, Claude-Francis Boeuf, who had experience raising money for large-scale expeditions.

Boeuf told Cousteau that every explorer he had ever known was always short of cash. Exploration itself produced knowledge but rarely a profit. Cousteau explained that his plans included producing movies, writing books and articles, and, with the publicity they created, selling Aqua-Lungs. Boeuf said the movies, books, and articles—no matter how successful—wouldn’t pay for the operation and maintenance of a 130-foot ship and its crew. He suggested that Cousteau form a nonprofit corporation that would own the ship, manage expeditions, and receive the royalties from films, books, and articles. Most important, a nonprofit corporation could accept tax-deductible grants from individuals, science foundations, and private companies.

The first grant to Campagnes Océanographiques Françaises—
French Oceanographic Expeditions—was
Calypso
itself, on the one-pound-a-year lease from Loel Guinness. The second was cash from the Cousteaus, who mortgaged their house in Sanary and sold some of Simone’s jewelry to begin refitting the ship. Since the first diving expedition to the
Dalton
wreck, Cousteau had known that he had a gift for enlisting collaborators and raising money, but he was startled at his own success in the first few months after he formed COF. Marseille industrialist Roger Gary, who had attached himself to Cousteau during the
Dalton
expedition, wrote a big check and persuaded his brother-in-law, the Marquis Armand de Turenne, to match it. Dumas pitched in some of his own money and talked friends into getting in on the ground floor of the world’s first private oceanographic research corporation.