Scuba Diving club, Southern California

Sea Sabres

The Calypso

The stories she could tell!

© The Cousteau Society

She's an explorer, an adventurer, a well-worn traveler. Her tales, told through the camera, speak of the world's oceans and the marvelous creatures that live therein. Her story is one of brave men and women who worked her decks and sailed her to every continent. She is Calypso, the ship known and loved by television audiences all over the globe.

When she was launched in Seattle, Washington, USA, during World War II, no one suspected that she would become one of the most famous ships ever. She  was built to serve as a minesweeper for the British, to clear explosives from ports and harbors. Christened J-826, she was lowered into the water on March 21, 1942.

J-826 was assigned to the Mediterranean Sea, where, after the war, she was sold and her name changed to Calypso. She became a ferry, carrying people and cars between the island of Malta and the very small island of Gozo.  In the ancient Greek poem, the Odyssey, Calypso was the name of a sea nymph who held the hero Odysseus in thrall for seven years. Gozo is, by tradition, the island where Calypso once lived.
While Calypso was shuttling people between islands, Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a French Navy officer with a great curiosity about the sea. Cousteau and a friend, engineer Emile Gagnan, had recently invented the AquaLung®, which let people swim freely under the water for the first time.  Cousteau was eager to share the wonders he was discovering, so he built a movie camera that would work underwater. His award-winning film, The Silent World, gave people their first glimpse of the amazing variety of life beneath the ocean.

While he was diving and filming in the Mediterranean, Cousteau dreamed about exploring other seas from a ship especially equipped to document the ocean. Soon he found Calypso. She looked a bit worn, but she was sturdy and easy to maneuver. With financial help from a wealthy Englishman named Loël Guinness, Cousteau purchased the ship and began to transform her into an expedition vessel. Cabins for a crew of 27, room for camera equipment and dive gear, a laboratory and work areas were laid out. New navigation instruments were installed. At the very front of the ship, a "false nose" was added with an underwater observation chamber with eight portholes. The new Calypso set sail on her first expedition to the Red Sea and into the pages of history. Over the years, Calypso  carried the Cousteau teams more than a million miles.

When Cousteau and Calypso first began exploring together, there was little awareness of how pollution, over-fishing and coastal development could threaten the vast oceans. The ship's adventures, as documented in television films, brought the world's attention to the devastating effects of human carelessness and Calypso came to symbolize the Cousteau mission to protect the Water Planet for future generations.
In January 1996, Calypso was severely damaged in a barge-maneuvering accident in the port of Singapore where she had been waiting to depart on expedition to the Yellow River. Water rushed in and the much-loved ship sank. Raised from the muddy bottom, she was transported to the historic port city of La Rochelle where she will reign as a centerpiece of the prestigious Maritime Museum.  There she will continue to educate and inspire new generations of the planet's citizens.
The Cousteau Society's expeditions continue with Calypso's sister ship, Alcyone, launched in 1985.

Specifications
Length: 139 ft. Draft: 10 ft. Width: 25 ft.	Passengers: 25 Speed: 10 knots	Propulsion: 2 580-hp diesel engines Yumbo hydraulic crane for submersible Underwater viewing chamber in nose

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Posted July 23, 2003