French boatyard seeks to sell Jacques Cousteau’s boat
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.
