Jacques Cousteau (41 page)

—Cousteau’s fund-raising mission in the United States and the event in Seattle are described in contemporary newspaper accounts and confirmed in a November 2005 interview with an official of the Bullitt Foundation. The foundation made a donation of $3,500 to the Cousteau Society.

—Cousteau’s preoccupations in the fall of 1977 are reconstructed from the timeline in Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Alexis Sivirine,
Jacques Cousteau’s “Calypso”
(New York: Abrams, 1983), an account of the ship’s voyages. According to that account, the pollution survey voyage began on July 27, 1977. In late October or early November, the crew of
Calypso
dove off the coast of Otranto, Italy, on the wreck of the Yugoslavian freighter
Cavtat
, which had sunk three years before while carrying 300 tons of tetraethyl and tetramethyl lead.

—Cousteau’s interview with James E. Lalonde and Richard Strickland appeared in the November 2, 1977, edition of the
Seattle Weekly
.

—The details of the Mediterranean survey are from the film “Mediterranean: Cradle or Coffin?,” an episode in
The Jacques Cousteau Odyssey
series, which first aired on PBS on May 27, 1978; from a Cousteau Society background paper on the expedition and the television production; and from a report on the expedition in the November/December 1977 edition of
Calypso Log
.

—Confirmation of Philippe Cousteau’s presence in Los Angeles recovering from a leg injury suffered in the crash of his gyrocopter on Easter Island and the activities of Jean-Michel Cousteau are from an interview with Fabien Cousteau in the spring of 2006.

—The beginning of Cousteau’s affair in 1977 with Francine Triplet, who would become his second wife in June 1991, is established in an interview Francine gave to
E: The Environmental Magazine
in June 1999, in which she states: “I spent twenty years of my life with him …” Cousteau died on June 25, 1997, which therefore dates their relationship to 1977. The date of their meeting may also be inferred from the ages of their two children (Diane, fourteen, and Pierre-Yves, twelve) at the time the relationship became public knowledge after the death of Simone Cousteau in December 1990. Additionally, Jean-Michel Cousteau, in an interview
in April 2008, states that during the autumn of the Involvement Day campaign (1977), his father was reported to have attended the event in Houston while accompanied by Francine Triplet.

—That Cousteau was rarely aboard
Calypso
by 1977 is confirmed in interviews with former crewmen André Laban and Marc Blessington, and Fabien Cousteau.

—Cousteau’s praise of Simone in her role as
La Bergère
is well known, but this specific statement at the end of the Prelude is taken from “Soul of the
Calypso,”
by Samuel G. and Debborah Lecocq, which appeared on the Web site
http://www.portagequarry.com
in March 2006. Samuel G. Lecocq sailed with Jacques and Simone Cousteau aboard
Calypso
on several occasions.

—Cousteau’s statement that marriage is archaic is from an interview by Sara Davidson for the
New York Times Magazine
, published September 10, 1972.

—The meeting of JYC and Simone in 1936 at her parents’ apartment in Paris is confirmed in an interview with Fabien Cousteau, and in many published accounts, including Leslie Leaney, “Jacques-Yves Cousteau: The Pioneering Years,”
Historical Diver
no. 13 (fall 1997).

—Descriptions of Simone Cousteau are drawn from early photographs.

—The details of Cousteau’s automobile accident and injuries in 1936 are from Leaney, “Jacques-Yves Cousteau;” Axel Madsen,
Cousteau: An Unauthorized Biography
(New York: Beaufort Books, 1986), 13—20; and other sources.

—Descriptions of St.-André-de-Cubzac, the Dordogne and Garonne rivers, and the Gironde Estuary are from several visits to the region by the author in fall 2005.

—Historical facts on Bordeaux, St.-André-de-Cubzac, and Aquitaine are from the author’s visits to museums and libraries in the region; accounts in Delie Muller and Jean-Yves Boscher,
Bordeaux: Aspects of Aquitaine
(Bourdeaux: Editions Grand Sud, 2003); and tourist brochures for St.-André-de-Cubzac.

—Facts about Daniel Cousteau’s service to James Hazen Hyde are from Madsen,
Cousteau;
Richard Munson,
Cousteau: The Captain and His World
(New York: Paragon House, 1989); and accounts in many magazines about the birth of Jacques Cousteau.

—Cousteau’s birth in St.-André-de-Cubzac is confirmed by the author’s interviews with an administrator at the village hall and reliable local records. The town house across the street from the church is now a pharmacy, but Cousteau’s birthplace is commemorated by a plaque on the building.

—Cousteau’s memory of swaying in a hammock on a train is from many interviews and both the Madsen and Munson biographies.

—The description of Eugene Higgins and his high-life activities are from his obituary in the
New York Times
, July 30, 1948.

—The story of Cousteau’s first dive into the Vermont lake at the order of Mr. Boetz is recounted in many places, but confirmed in the June 1985 issue of the
Calypso Log
, the publication of the Cousteau Society.

—The clips of Cousteau’s earliest attempts at filmmaking were part of a Turner Broadcasting special,
Cousteau: The First Seventy-five Years
, June 1985.

—Information on the several generations of Pathé movie cameras and the history of the Pathé brothers and their company is from several Internet collectors’ sites, including
http://www.moviecamera.it/pathee.html
. Cousteau’s camera was undoubtedly the hand-cranked model introduced in 1923. A version with a spring drive was produced in 1926, so by the time he photographed Simone at their first meeting in Paris in 1936 he was probably using that model.

—The accounts of Georges Méliès’s discovery of the stop trick and other special effects are from a variety of sources, including Elizabeth Ezra’s
Georges Méliès
and
Landmarks of Early Film
, vol. 2,
The Magic of Méliès
(DVD).

—The account of Cousteau being shipped off to boarding school is from several sources, including an interview with him that was the basis for a
Time
magazine story, “Poet of the Depths,” which appeared on March 28, 1960. As recited by Cousteau himself many times, the story is presented solely as one of rescue by the discipline and challenges of the Alsatian boarding school, but it is obvious from peripheral facts, including the departure of his brother from the household, the numbing rituals of French education at the time, and the absence of his father, that he was very much a frustrated teenager and not a young filmmaker conducting an experiment when he broke the school windows.

—The account of the meeting of Cousteau and Philippe Tailliez, and Tailliez’s insistence that Cousteau swim regularly as part of his recuperation, are from Philippe Tailliez,
To Hidden Depths
(London: Kimber, 1954); and from a biographical article by John Christopher Fine that appeared in
Historical Diver
no. 18 (1998).

—The physical details of water and the oceans are taken from
The National Geographic Atlas of the Ocean
, with thanks to its editor, Dr. Sylvia Earle, and the fantastic team of contributors to this essential work.

—Cousteau’s comment about his hunger for new developments in skin diving are from Jacques-Yves Cousteau, with Frédéric Dumas (and James Dugan),
The Silent World
(New York: Harper and Row, 1953), 5.

—The presence of precursory gill slits in embryonic chordates was confirmed in an interview with biologist Dr. Tierney Thys.

—John Guy Gilpatric was born in the United States in 1896, set an airplane altitude record of 4,665 feet when he was sixteen years old, flew for the Lafayette Espadrille in World War I, and became a legendary spearfisher who influenced diving pioneer Hans Hass as well as Tailliez, Cousteau, and Dumas. Gilpatric went on to become a journalist and wrote a famous series of books in which the central
character is Mr. Glencannon, the ship’s engineer of the SS
Inchcliff Castle
. He also wrote the first book on free diving,
The Compleat Goggler
. Gilpatric died in 1950 by his own hand after first ending the life of his terminally ill wife.

—Cousteau’s impressions on his first dive are from
The Silent World
, his book published in 1953 chronicling his early years as an underwater explorer.

—Dumas’s account of meeting Philippe Tailliez is quoted by Cousteau in
The Silent World
.

—An explanation of atmospheric pressure and breathing can be found in many standard sources, but mine is informed by an interview with diving master Phil Nuytten in Vancouver, British Columbia, November 2005.

—Cousteau’s exploration of ways to extend his time underwater is from
The Silent World
, 10.

—The survey of pre-Cousteau self-contained underwater breathing apparatuses is from Peter Jackson’s article in
Historical Diver
no. 13 (fall 1997), 34—37.

—The description of the Rouquayrol-Denayrouze apparatus is from the Miller and Walter translation of Jules Verne’s
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
, 105—6.

—The account of Cousteau’s near-disastrous experiments with an oxygen re-breather is from
The Silent World
, 10—11.

—Cousteau’s experiments with the surface-feed Fernez diving apparatus and his and Dumas’s brushes with death while testing it are from
The Silent World
, 11—12; and Leslie Leaney, “Jacques-Yves Cousteau: The Pioneering Years,”
Historical Diver
(fall 1997).

—The insistence of Cousteau’s commanders that he continue his diving and underwater photography is from
The Silent World
, 11—12.

—The history of the Williamson brothers and their pioneering work in underwater cinematography is from Thomas Burgess, “The Men Who Made Undersea Films,” in
Take Me Under the Sea
(Salem, Oreg.: Ocean Archives, 1994), 163—244, and other sources cited in that essay.

—The purchase of the Kinamo 35 mm camera and Veche’s building the underwater housing for it is confirmed in Tailliez,
To Hidden Depths
, 30—32; and Leaney’s article. The description of the camera and housing is from scenes included in
Cousteau: The First Seventy-five Years
(June 1985), a Turner Broadcasting special honoring Cousteau.

—The details of shooting
Par dix-huit mètres de fond (Sixty Feet Down)
are from Tailliez,
To Hidden Depths
, 30—32.

—The premiere of
Sixty Feet Down
before a gathering of German officers and Vichy French officials in occupied Paris is reported in an article by John Lichfield in the
Independent
(London), June 26, 1999, “20,000 Lies Under the Sea: The Fishy World of Jacques Cousteau.”

—The description of the scuttling of the French fleet on November 28, 1942, and the list of ships destroyed is from Cousteau’s
The Silent World
, 25—26; and Tailliez’s
To Hidden Depths
, 32—33.

—The epigraph is from an interview with Sara Davidson that appears in a profile in the
New York Times Magazine
, September 10, 1972.

—Biographical information on Émile Gagnan is from Phil Nuytten’s article on the invention of the Aqua-Lung in
Historical Diver
(winter 2005).

—The descriptions of the changes in states of matter among liquid, gas, and solid are from Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, “Science Is Fun,”
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/Airgases/airgases.html
, July 2006.

—The account of Cousteau’s first meeting with Émile Gagnan is from an interview with Phil Nuytten and his article “Emil Gagnan and the Aqua-Lung,”
Historical Diver
(winter 2005).

—The details of the single-stage regulator are from an interview with engineer and dive historian Phil Nuytten, July 2006; from Nuytten’s article in
Historical Diver
(winter 2005); and from Cousteau’s
The Silent World
, 12—13. Dive master John Chatterton reviewed my description of the mechanism in the regulator for clarity and accuracy.

—Since Air Liquide had contributed both Gagnan’s time and the original design for the natural gas regulator, the corporation owned the patents to the prototype Aqua-Lung.

—The descriptions of Cousteau’s Villa Barry in 1941 and 1942 are from Cousteau,
The Silent World
, 11—12; and Tailliez,
To Hidden Depths
, 31—32.

—The account of the arrival of the Aqua-Lung, the first test in the Mediterranean at Bandol, and Cousteau’s comparison of a scuba diver and a helmet diver are from Cousteau,
The Silent World
, 1—5.

—The account of Georges Commeinhes’s dive off Marseille on July 30, 1943, is from Daniel David, “The Modest Pioneer,”
Historical Diving Times
, the newsletter of the Historical Diving Society in Great Britain, summer 1997.

—Philippe Tailliez’s observations on the joy of swimming with the first Aqua-Lung are from his
To Hidden Depths
, 35.

—Cousteau’s remembrance of the eight years of goggle diving with Tailliez and Dumas is from
The Silent World
, 5.

—Cousteau’s recollection of scavenging for food and the caloric price of scuba diving is from
The Silent World
, 15.

—The account of the dive on
Dalton
and Cousteau’s remembrance of Dumas’s appetite for loot from the shipwreck is from Cousteau,
The Silent World
, 15—17 and 30—33; and Tailliez,
To Hidden Depths
, 44—45.

—The location of
Dalton
off Planier Island is confirmed on a map in
To Hidden Depths
, 39—40. Tailliez reports that it sank on February 18, 1928; Cousteau reports that it went down on Christmas night, 1928.