Scuba diving has not had a hero since the irreplaceable Jacques Cousteau died. Some graybeards still point to
Mike Nelson, but he was a fictitious 1960s TV hero, not flesh and blood, unless you consider the actor who played
him, Lloyd Bridges. Besides, the last episode of Sea Hunt aired 49 years ago, in 1961.
Cousteau himself has been dead nearly 14 years but he left a profound legacy for every last soul on our water
planet. For us divers, he was extraordinarily special, a man whose every TV production we welcomed into our homes.
In fact, I fantasized that one day Jacques would invite me to join the Calypso crew and sail the oceans. Of course, I
never got that invitation, but I did get to meet with him once, as a direct-mail fundraising copywriter, drafting letters
for him to sign to acquire new members for the Cousteau Society. He was committed, full of hopes and dreams,
surely inspiring to write for. We raised a lot of money for his work, but from the outside, I slowly watched the Society
crumble in the 90s. It’s a sad story, one of many tales told in Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King, the excellent new book by
Brad Matsen.
Cousteau struggled through the last years of his life – he wasn’t finding buyers for his films, and his family was in
uproar when he revealed he had kept a mistress in France, with whom he had two children, while his wife lived aboard
the Calypso. While Matsen reveals the Captain, warts and all, he brings to life his two exceptional accomplishments: the
development of diving gear, and his enormous talent for making films that brought the oceans and its creatures into
the collective conscious of mankind. One has no doubt that had there been no Jacques Cousteau, who charmed Ted
Turner, the National Geographic Society and others to bring his work to television, our oceans would be in far worse
shape. It was no easy task, and Matsen brings us the inner details of negotiating contracts, preparing for voyages and
going to sea for Cousteau’s film adventures.
Divers will especially appreciate the first third of the book, which focuses on the young Cousteau and his burning
desire to capture the sea on film. In the late 1930s, he began filming with an 8mm camera inserted into a fruit jar.
Two years later, as a member of the French navy, he worked with others to develop an existing demand regulator and
a rebreather, and during most of World War II, he invented and further refined
diving apparatus after the French recognized its military potential. After the war,
he and his companions, Phillippe Talliez and Frederic Dumas, joined an August
Piccard bathyscape expedition, and eventually his photos made it to Life magazine,
which led to an $11,000 contract for four documentaries, and a gift from a member
of the Guinness family to help him refit an American minesweeper, which he
rechristened the Calypso. Matsen goes into great detail about Cousteau’s development
of diving and photography equipment, his outfitting the Calypso, and the traumas
and joys of his next decades aboard his beloved crafts. It’s a great tale of the
sea.
Matsen’s book (hardbound, 320 pages) is a must-read for any diver. You can
order the book via Amazon (it’s also available on Kindle) by going to Undercurrent and clicking on our Sea King book review, and whatever profit
Undercurrent accrues from the sale will go to support saving our seas.
- - Ben Davison