Jacques Cousteau Biography
 |
| Jacques Cousteau |
Filmmaker, Photographer (1910–1997)
Jacques Cousteau was a French undersea
explorer, researcher, photographer and documentary host who invented diving and
scuba devices, including the Aqua-Lung. He also conducted underwater expeditions,
produced films, and television series, including the Undersea World of Jacques
Cousteau.
Synopsis
Born on June 11, 1910, in
Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France, Jacques Cousteau co-invented the Aqua-Lung, a
breathing device for scuba-diving, in 1943. In 1945, he started the French
Navy's undersea research group. In 1951, he began going on yearly trips to
explore the ocean on the Calypso. Cousteau recorded his trips on the TV
series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. In 1996, the Calypso
sunk. Cousteau died on June 25, 1997, in Paris, France.
Early
Life
Jacques-Yves Cousteau was
born in the village of Saint-André-de-Cubzac, in southwestern France, on June
11, 1910. The younger of two sons born to Daniel and Elizabeth Cousteau, he
suffered from stomach problems and anemia as a young child. At age 4, Cousteau
learned to swim and started a lifelong fascination with water. As he entered
adolescence, he showed a strong curiosity for mechanical objects and upon
purchasing a movie camera, he took it apart to understand how it operated.
Jacques Cousteau's
curiosity notwithstanding, he did not do well in school. At 13, He was sent to
boarding school in Alsace, France. After he completed his preparatory studies,
he attended Collège Stanislas in Paris and in 1930, Cousteau entered the Ecole
Navale (French Naval Academy) at Brest, France. After graduation, as a gunnery
officer, he joined the French Navy's information service. He took his camera
along and shot many rolls of film at exotic ports-o-call in the Indian and
South Pacific oceans.
ADVERTISEMENT
In 1933, Jacques Cousteau
was in a major automobile accident that nearly took his life. During his
rehabilitation, he took up daily swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. A friend,
Philippe Tailliez, gave Cousteau a pair of swimming goggles, which opened him
to the mysteries of the sea and began his quest to understand the underwater
world. In 1937, Cousteau married Simone Melchior.
They had two sons,
Jean-Michel and Phillipe. Both sons, in time, would join their father in
underwater world expeditions. Simone died in 1990 and one year later, the
senior Cousteau married Francine Triplet, with whom he had a daughter and son
(born while Cousteau was married to Simone).
Famed
Explorer
During World War II, when
Paris fell to the Nazis, Jacques Cousteau and his family took refuge in
the small town of Megreve, near the Swiss border. For the first few years of
the war, he quietly continued his underwater experiments and explorations. In
1943 he met Emile Gagnan, a French engineer who shared his passion for
discovery. Around this time, compressed air cylinders were invented and
Cousteau and Gagnan experimented with snorkel hoses, body suits and breathing apparatus.
In time, they developed the
first aqua-lung device allowing divers to stay underwater for long periods.
Cousteau was also instrumental in the development of a waterproof camera that
could withstand the high pressure of deep water. During this time, Cousteau
made two documentaries on underwater exploration, Par dix-huit mètres de
fond ("18 Meters Deep") and Épaves
("Shipwrecks").
During the war, Cousteau joined
the French Resistance movement, spying on Italian armed forces and documenting
troop movements. Cousteau was recognized for his resistance efforts and awarded
several medals, including the Legion of Honour from France. After the war,
Cousteau worked with the French navy to clear underwater mines. Between
missions, he continued his underwater explorations performing various tests and
filming the underwater excursions.
In 1948, Cousteau, along
with Philippe Tailliez and expert divers and academic scientists, undertook an
underwater expedition in the Mediterranean Sea to find the Roman shipwreck Mahdia.
This was the first underwater archaeology operation using self-contained diving
apparatus and marked the beginning of underwater archeology.
In 1950, Jacques Cousteau
leased a one-time British minesweeper and converted it into an oceanographic
research vessel he named Calypso.
Literature,
Cinema, TV and Later Expeditions
After struggling for
financing to conduct his voyages, Cousteau soon realized he needed to attract
media attention to make people aware of what he was doing and why it was so
important. In 1953, he published the book The Silent World, which was
later made into an award-winning film.
This success allowed him to
finance another expedition to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean sponsored by the
French government and the National Geographic Society. During the rest of the
decade, Cousteau conducted several expeditions and brought more attention to
mysteries and attractions the underwater world.
In 1966, Jacques Cousteau
launched his first hour-long television special, “The World of Jacques-Yves
Cousteau” on the ABC television network. In 1968, he produced the television
series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, which ran for nine
seasons. Millions of people followed Cousteau and his crew traversing the globe
presenting intimate exposés of marine life and habitat. It was during this time
that Cousteau began to realize how human activity was destroying the oceans.
Jacques Cousteau also wrote
several books, including The Shark in 1970, Dolphins in 1975, and
Jacques Cousteau: The Ocean World in 1985. With his increased celebrity
and the support of many, Cousteau founded the Cousteau Society in 1973, in an
effort to raise awareness of the ecosystems of the underwater world. The
organization quickly grew and soon boasted 300,000 members worldwide.
In the 1980s, Cousteau
continued to produce television specials, but these had a environmental message
and a plea for stronger protection of oceanic wildlife habitat. In June 1979,
tragedy struck when Cousteau's son, Philippe Cousteau, was killed in a plane
crash. According to a 1979 article by The Associated Press, Philippe had
been flying the plane during a test flight, and when he attempted to land, the
plane clipped a sandbank and crashed into Portugal's Tagus River.
On January 8, 1996, Calypso
was accidentally rammed by barge and sank in Singapore Harbor. Jacques Cousteau
tried to raise money to build a new vessel, but died unexpectedly in Paris on
June 25, 1997, at the age of 87. His estate and the foundation fell into
dispute among his survivors. Most of the legal disputes were settled by 2000,
when his son, Jean-Michel, disassociated himself from the Cousteau Society and
formed his own organization the Oceans Futures Society.
With affection,
Ruben
