PORTRAIT
BETWEEN THE SKY AND SEA
Cousteau was born in the town of
Saint-André-de-Cubzac , in the wine-growing Bordeaux region , just a few kilometres away from the lowsloped Atlantic coast . Wild and deserted , it would reveal vast spaces of yellow sand in its low tide . This is how little Jacques-Yves , the youngest son of a local lawyer , first discovered the sea .
Sickly and diagnosed with enteritis at the age of 7 , the boy always demonstrated a thirst for adventure however . His family constantly moved around from place to place . The Cousteaus thus came to live also in the United States where the boys mastered perfect English .
Jacques-Yves was never short of ideas for keeping himself occupied . Particularly fond of mechanics , Cousteau designed a battery-powered typewriter at the age of 12 . Getting by with electronics , the young man started working and saving up for his first camera . Back as a child , Captain Cousteau was a passionate swimmer and diver . Once he almost lost his life trying to prove to his American friends that he would make it to the bottom of the deepest lake . Jacques- Yves ’ s choice of a naval career thus came naturally . Few people knew , however , that the National Naval Academy graduate was dreaming of soaring in the skies .
An accident got in his way of becoming a pilot . At the age 26 , Cousteau was seriously injured in a car crash . His legs and spine were particularly damaged , a lung punctured and his right arm paralyzed . Sea water helped the young man recover from his injuries . Constant swimming and diving restored his limbs . At that time he invented goggles and made up his mind as to his future vocation . « I will embrace it and blend in its waters ...» — the future Commander was referring to the sea .
© Institut Audiovisuel de Monaco
Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the Princely family , the 50th anniversary of the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco , 1960
60 YEARS UNDER THE WATER
He was nicknamed the Odysseus of
our times . But if the Greek Odysseus was crossing the oceans by the will of the gods , Cousteau chose this path in the crucial year 1936 . Aviation was not an option for the young officer , so he turned to the sea . Cousteau was now busy with inventions unveiling the ocean ’ s mystery to man . After designing goggles , he came up with the scuba diving idea , letting a man breathe under the water . He then created
UNDERWATER RESIDENCES , OR RATHER , SCIENTIFIC LABORATORIES , WERE CAPTAIN COUSTEAU ’ S LONG CHERISHED DREAM .
a deep water bathyscaphe , the « diving saucer », and even tried to establish a proper underwater colony .
It did not all happen overnight . Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan started working on scuba diving equipment back in the ear-
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