Editor’s note: Photo, Oliver Bernard, via Wikimedia.
The Calpyso, with Capt. Jacques Cousteau at the wheel, took generations of would-be explorers across the oceans and up rivers to discover the marvels of the murky world below.
Now, nearly 20 years after Calypso sank after a collision with a barge in Singapore, squabbles between Cousteau’s surviving family and a French boatyard that is threatening to sell the ship for scrap seem to be coming to a head.
In 1950, Cousteau leased Calypso, a decommissioned Royal Navy minesweeper, and had the 400-ton wooden vessel refitted as a state-of-the-art oceanographic research laboratory and film studio.
The ship was the setting for his documentary series, “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau,” which aired on television between 1968 and 1976.
Click here for the full report by The Guardian.
This post originally appeared here.
