Calypso in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean

Jacques Cousteau · 1955 CE · Earth

Calypso in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean — Jacques Cousteau · 1955 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Finish the work begun on the 1954 campaign and build up important photographic archives, on a voyage from Marseille through the Red Sea to the Seychelles and Assumption Island.

Historical context

The aqualung that Cousteau and Émile Gagnan built in 1942 and 1943 let a free diver stay an hour at about eighteen metres, but colour died with depth: on the Undersea Research Group's charts red was virtually black at forty feet, about twelve metres. From 1951 Cousteau used Calypso, a former minesweeper, as a base for diving, science and filming. In 1954 she worked in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean; in March 1955 she left Marseille to finish that work. The footage of both voyages became Le Monde du silence, whose scenes of dynamite and of sharks killed around a whale were later held against it.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Calypso leaves Marseille

    1955 CE

    In March 1955 Calypso, a former wooden minesweeper whose bow has just been strengthened and refitted for underwater work, sails from the Old Port of Marseille for the Indian Ocean with ten crew, Cousteau and some fifteen oceanographers.

  2. Through the canal

    1955 CE

    At Port Said Calypso enters the Suez Canal for the Red Sea, retracing the route of the long campaign she had sailed the year before.

  3. Reefs in colour

    1955 CE

    Down the Red Sea, where Calypso's divers had first worked in 1951 and 1952 around islands such as Abu Latt, colour is the problem: a few metres down, the sea has already filtered out the reds.

  4. The Farasan Bank

    1955 CE

    Further south the route passes the Farasan islands, the goal of Calypso's first true expedition, which sailed from Toulon in November 1951 with divers and scientists aboard.

  5. Out through the Gate of Grief

    1955 CE

    After trials at the Zubair islands, Calypso leaves the Red Sea by the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb and makes a brief supply stop at Aden before heading for the Seychelles.

  6. Landfall at Mahé

    1955 CE

    Calypso reaches the Seychelles and then calls at Madagascar before the last and longest stop of the voyage.

  7. Six weeks at Assumption

    1955 CE

    On Assumption, a small coral island south of Aldabra, the expedition spends six weeks studying cetaceans, many kinds of sharks and sea turtles in exceptionally clear water.

  8. Home to a Palme d'or

    1955 CE

    Calypso returns to Marseille at the start of the summer of 1955 with the last of the material that becomes Le Monde du silence, shown at Cannes the following spring.

Outcome

Six weeks of work at Assumption and a return to Marseille in the summer of 1955; with the footage of 1954 the voyage became Le Monde du silence, co-directed by Cousteau and Louis Malle, winner of the Palme d'or in 1956 and of an Academy Award in 1957, and later criticised for its scenes of dynamite and of sharks killed around a whale carcass.

Jacques Cousteau

Naval officer and film-maker who co-invented the aqualung and turned a converted minesweeper into a floating laboratory and film studio.

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