Eight crimes or what they hate Jacques-Yves Cousteau

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Researcher of the deep sea and author of documentaries about the ocean, inventor of scuba gear and "impresario of scientists", winner of three "Oscars" and a member of the French Academy, and also an anti-Semite, killer of small sperm whales, coral reef detonator and hater of humanity. Even twenty years after his death, Jacques-Yves Cousteau continues to evoke polar reactions - from reverence to passionate hatred. Samizdat understands how a sailor in a red cap rose to the heights of glory, how he went to the bottom and why he stubbornly did not notice that he was drowning.

2014, Northern Ireland. A man named Paul receives for Christmas a box of DVDs of films by Jacques-Yves Cousteau, which he adored as a child. In a nostalgic rush, he sits down to review them - and is horrified. “It's not easy to shock me, but these films should be flagged as Adult Only or even banned altogether,” he wrote angrily on Tripadvisor. Paul retells several episodes that particularly struck him. The most heartbreaking: in pursuit of a group of sperm whales, Cousteau's ship touches a young individual with a screw and maims it. After several unsuccessful attempts, the team members finally manage to finish off the animal. Sailors tie the corpse of a sperm whale to a ship, lure a flock of sharks onto it and film how predators devour their prey. Then, discussing which sharks are aggressive creatures, the members of Cousteau's team throw harpoons at them, pull them onto the deck and finish them off.

“After that, I want to throw out the whole box of discs: it's just nauseous,” concludes Paul. Other forum users agree with him: "It's good that I didn't see this episode as a child", "Yeah, and also a protector of marine life", "It seems that this will make me re-evaluate the entire legacy of Cousteau …"

The figure of Jacques-Yves Cousteau is indeed much more controversial than his on-screen image of the kind-hearted and wise explorer of the ocean. It is even strange that the uncompromising and grasping in the life of Cousteau remained in the memory of the audience not as a sea wolf, but as a sweet grandfather with a kind smile.

1932, Indochina

French naval training ship Jeanne d'Arc is sailing around the world. Twenty-two-year-old artillery officer Jacques-Yves Cousteau is on board with a Pathe hand-held video camera - he bought it with pocket money as a teenager. For him, a recent graduate of the nautical school, this is his first real voyage, but much more than his official duties, he is attracted by the exotic landscapes and the pearl divers, whom he films. One afternoon, in the midst of the heat, he witnesses a strange scene. Vietnamese fishermen dive from their boats without stones, harpoons or other special devices - and emerge with fish caught with their bare hands. The swimmers explained to the interested Frenchman that "while the fish have siesta, they are very easy to catch."

In later interviews, Cousteau enthusiastically said that that conversation became a turning point in his life. Having fallen in love with diving as a teenager, he saw for the first time that this activity could be beneficial, and decided to improve his already outstanding diving skills. True, the classes had to be postponed for several years: it was not immediately possible to convince the naval authorities that diving would be useful for naval purposes, and the service did not leave time for training. All this time, Cousteau did not leave dreams of the inexhaustible wealth of the sea. Returning to France in the late 1930s, he took up scuba diving again, firmly believing that this occupation has a great future.

1943, Paris

Members of the Vichy collaborationist government, which came to power after the Nazi occupation of France, and officers of the German commandant's office watch a unique film. The documentary "At a depth of 18 meters" is dedicated to spearfishing and was filmed below sea level - previously this was simply technically impossible. The authors of the film are the enthusiastic divers Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his colleagues in the fleet Frédéric Dumas and Philippe Tayet, who jokingly called themselves “Musketeers of the Sea”. The film was received with a bang and received a prize at the First Congress of Documentary Films.

To shoot underwater in an era when even the usual swimming goggles were a rarity, the "musketeers of the sea" had to invent literally everything on the go: from the design of breathing apparatus and diving suits to protective boxes for video cameras. The most brilliant development of Cousteau, who led a small film crew, was scuba gear - a light, safe and effective breathing apparatus for underwater breathing. He created it during the filming of At a Depth of 18 Meters in collaboration with French engineer Emile Gagnan, and tested it after the premiere. Cousteau was very pleased with the result of the test dives: unlike the bulky diving suits that existed at that time, the scuba diving made it easy to move under water in any direction. “It was like in a daydream: I could stop and hang in space, not leaning on anything, not tied to any hoses or pipes. Before, I often dreamed that I was flying with my arms-wings spread. And now I was floating, in fact, I imagined in my place a diver with great difficulty, with his bulky galoshes, tied to his long intestine and dressed in a copper cap Crippled in a foreign country! " - recalled Cousteau in their joint book with Frederic Dumas "In the world of silence."

The film crew also did not refuse spearfishing. So, for the first time diving with scuba diving, Cousteau at a depth unattainable for an ordinary diver caught a dozen lobsters, and boiled and ate them on the shore on the same day. He later recalled that in Nazi-occupied France in 1943, neglecting so many free calories would be a waste of money. However, Cousteau was clearly not the person who was affected by all the horrors of the war: it was rumored that he was rescued by the patronage of his older brother. Pierre-Antoine Cousteau has long supported fascism and during the occupation headed the far-right weekly Je suis partout. In addition to anti-Semitic propaganda, this edition also published rave reviews for the film by Cousteau the Younger; in Paris, it was believed that the shooting was funded by the Germans, although there was no direct evidence of this either then or now.

Be that as it may, the official naval salary of Cousteau was small, and during the years of occupation he had to feed not only himself, but also his family: his young wife Simone and two young sons. In addition, in Marseille, where he was sent back in 1941, it was difficult to find housing. In a letter to Philip Taye, Cousteau complained that they had to huddle not even in a boarding house, but in an annex to a boarding house on the outskirts of the city. “Comfortable apartments will appear only when we throw out all these filthy Jews who have flooded everything out the door,” he summed up.

It is difficult to say whether Jacques-Yves Cousteau was as convinced an anti-Semite as his brother: according to journalist Bernard Viollet, who discovered and published this letter from Cousteau in 1999, the oceanographer's words were a typical manifestation of “ordinary anti-Semitism, in which France at that time I was just swimming. In addition, there is reason to believe that he supported the Resistance and conducted intelligence activities against the Italians - apparently, for this, after the end of World War II, he was awarded the Military Cross. One thing is for sure: whatever his political views, for the sake of his favorite business - scuba diving and filming a movie - he was ready to cooperate with anyone without hesitation.

1949, south of France

After the war, Cousteau showed one of his underwater films to Admiral André Lemonnier, then head of the French Navy headquarters. The admiral was impressed and quickly realized that the footage could be used for underwater reconnaissance. As a result, Cousteau finally managed to get an underwater research group in the French navy. It was created in Toulon, and the team was led by the "Musketeers of the Sea." In parallel with the service, the friends did not hesitate to offer their services to everyone they could convince: for the government they cleared the French bays from unexploded bombs, and for the oil magnates they explored hydrocarbon deposits in the Persian Gulf. These orders helped keep the small team afloat, but for Cousteau, earning was never an end in itself. His dream was to develop oceanography - the science of the world's oceans and its inhabitants.

Cousteau's research reached a new level already in 1950, when he had his own ship at his disposal - a decommissioned minesweeper of the British Navy, which Jacques-Yves called "Calypso". The money for the ransom and re-equipment of the Calypso was given by the Irish millionaire Thomas Guinness, an acquaintance of Simone Cousteau's acquaintances, who liked the bold idea of enthusiastic divers. Having received a three-year leave in the navy without pay, Cousteau plunged headlong into work. Having graduated only from the nautical school, he never called himself a scientist, but this did not stop him: in the fifties, Cousteau actively participated in the work of scientific institutes and even created new ones. So, in 1953, he created the Center for Advanced Marine Research in Marseille (they made submarines for research there), in 1954 he joined CNRS - the French National Center for the Development of Science - as a captain of an auxiliary ship, and in 1957 became director Oceanographic Museum of Monaco (he held this position for about thirty years). At the same time, Cousteau's approach to ocean exploration was pragmatic to the point of predation. “For scientific purposes,” he could allow members of the Calypso crew to break off pieces of coral reefs or stun fish with dynamite. The researcher explained that although the use of dynamite in commercial fishing is prohibited by law and is considered an act of vandalism, it is the only way to "accurately record all species that inhabit the area."

Cousteau's team blows up corals with dynamite and catches dead fish

1965, Cote d'Azur

American TV producer David Wolper arrives at Cape Ferrat to process a new video made by Cousteau and his team. Six "oceanauts", including Captain Cousteau himself and his 24-year-old son Philippe, spent three weeks at 100-meter Mediterranean depth in the habitable submarine station "Precontinent-3". The researchers breathed in a mixture of oxygen and helium, experimented with growing edible plants under artificial light, and of course filmed the underwater world.

This was the third attempt by Cousteau to prove that people can live under water. All three were successful, and each next was more daring than the last. On the first expedition in 1962, the "oceanauts" spent a week at a depth of 10 meters in a giant cistern dwelling called "Diogenes." Operation Precontinent 2 in 1963 lasted a month; two underwater houses were at a depth of 11 meters and 27.5 meters. The first of them, in the form of a starfish, was intended for life, the second for research. It was much more comfortable there than in the "Diogenes": air-conditioned air entered the five-room "star" house from the surface, from the windows of the wardroom one could watch the fish swimming by, and champagne was served to the table (though, due to the pressure did not bubble).

These fantastic projects could rival space exploration in both the hype and cost. By the way, Cousteau convinced French oil companies to partially finance the project. The researcher collected another part of the funds by signing a contract for the creation of a documentary film about the "Precontinent-2" expedition. The resulting 93-minute film "A World Without Sun" in 1964 won the second Oscar in Cousteau's life.

The director hoped that history would repeat itself with "Precontinent-3", but could not find a distributor in Europe for the new film. Therefore, in the end, the films shot during the expedition became part of the National Geographic TV project, which was produced by David Volper. He also offered Cousteau a new idea: "to go around the whole world in your ship for an American TV series." As part of an agreement with the world's largest television network, American Broadcasting Corporation, Cousteau pledged to shoot 12 hours of television programs about his adventures in three years. The project was named "The Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau".

It seemed that the world was just waiting for documentary series about the ocean depths: Cousteau's show beat all popularity records, and he himself, three years after his television debut, became the fifth in the top 250 of America's main TV stars. His collaboration with ABC lasted nine years instead of the planned three, after which he continued to make documentaries about the sea for the Public Broadcasting System and cable television. Calypso's travels from Alaska to Africa were followed by millions of viewers. A whole generation - the so-called first generation of color televisions”- saw the underwater world through the eyes of Cousteau.

In the 1960s, the director and oceanographer achieved everything he dreamed of. His sons grew up and supported him in all his endeavors, especially the youngest, Philip, who was like his father both in his passion for the sea and in his love for the camera. Cousteau himself was known and loved on all continents. Even governments listened to his opinion. The authority of Cousteau - then director of the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco - was enough to convince Charles de Gaulle to abandon the organization of a nuclear waste dump in the Mediterranean. Life seemed to justify his approach to business: assertive, passionate, uncompromising. This approach took him to the top, and Cousteau was not going to stop. He did not yet know that the way further is the way down.

1972, Paris

The French government is ending funding for the construction of an experimental submarine called Argyronete. It was supposed to consist of two parts: a "dry" one, which could accommodate a team of six people, and an "underwater house", where four divers-explorers could independently live up to three days, leaving it to study the seabed, diving to a depth of three hundred meters, and return back, while not suffering from pressure drops. The idea of this submarine was promoted by Cousteau since the mid-1960s. The project was a continuation of the three "Precontinents", and Cousteau hoped to finance the new expeditions of "Calypso" from the funds received from the sale of the patent. The first stages of work on the Argyronete cost 57 million francs and ended after the leading sponsors - the French oil companies - realized that the sub was inadequately expensive.

Twice Oscar-winning filmmaker, brilliant inventor and world-renowned explorer of the underwater world, Cousteau believed that he would become a star in the business world, but his first project, which had nothing to do with the media, failed. After the failure of the Argyronete, Cousteau, angry with the French government, moved his headquarters to the United States. He had to sell more and more films to fund new expeditions. The French public, predictably, did not approve of the move. “They pointed the finger at us and said: 'The Yankees are on sale,'” Jean-Michel Cousteau later said.

At first, life was going well for two headquarters. Cousteau spent more and more time not on the Calypso - his wife Simona, daughter and granddaughter of admirals, who adored the sea, reigned there - but on international flights and executive trips. During one of them, he met a young flight attendant Francine Triplet, who became his mistress. Friends on the side of the charismatic and passionate Cousteau have been before. Simone knew about them, but preferred to turn a blind eye to these connections. According to the recollections of the members of the Cousteau team, there was something like an unspoken agreement between the captain and his lawful wife: he got the whole world with his temptations, and she got Calypso.

It turned out differently with Francine. She took a place in the heart of Cousteau for a long time, becoming not just one of many, but his constant partner. True, at public events where they appeared together, Cousteau, year after year, introduced her as his niece, and hid the novel from Simone. 1979 was a fateful year for the family. In a plane crash, Cousteau's youngest and beloved son, Philippe, was killed, whom he himself and his crew members predicted to be the successor of the 69-year-old captain. Simone had not yet had time to recover from this blow when Jacques-Yves confessed to her that he had a second family, in which his daughter Diana had just been born.

In business, things were no better. In the same 1979, Cousteau began negotiations for the creation of a large Oceanographic Center with an amusement park and a giant cinema in Norfolk, Virginia. The construction took more than six years. The city authorities hoped that the fame of Cousteau would help attract tourists to the city, but not all residents supported the idea: many believed that budget funds should be spent on something more useful for the city. Having invested about a million dollars in preparing and studying the project, the authorities surrendered in 1986. The center was never built.

Despite the setback, Cousteau did not abandon the idea of a large entertainment and educational park, which he saw as a gold mine. In a new project - Parisian "Ocean Park Cousteau" - he invested 12 million francs of his own money; another 2.4 million was invested by his son Jean-Michel. The rest - more than one hundred million - was given by the City Hall of Paris and French firms, which were counting on dividends from the world fame of Cousteau. A five thousand square meter park in the heart of the city reproduced the seabed on which visitors could stroll; to create a holistic impression on the walls, documentaries shot from "Calypso" were projected. Opened with great fanfare in 1989, the Cousteau Ocean Park attracted half the number of visitors it had planned. As a result, the park declared bankruptcy in 1991, and finally closed in November 1992. The elder Cousteau blamed Jean-Michel for the collapse: in an interview with Nouvel Economiste, he bluntly stated that it was "not a failure of the park, but a failure of my son." And he drew the line: "If a guy was born from your sperm, this does not mean that he has the necessary qualities to replace you."

5

1988, Paris

Despite the downturn in business and research, Cousteau's credibility as an animal advocate is peaking. The famous anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss recommends Cousteau for admission to the French Academy, the most prestigious scientific institution in the country, because he "defended the oceans." The recommendation was heard, Cousteau was accepted, granted with a crystal sword with nautical patterns and, like all academics, was officially proclaimed "immortal" (because they create for eternity).

Over the past fifteen years, Cousteau has gradually become an increasingly zealous conservationist. In 1973, the researcher founded the Cousteau Society in the United States, the idea of which was to combine oceanographic research and the preservation of seas and oceans - in particular, marine mammals and coral reefs, which Cousteau mistreated in his youth - for future generations, and the French twin organization "Fondation Cousteau" (since 1992 - "Team Cousteau"). By the late 1980s, Cousteau was perceived not only as "the most famous Frenchman in the world," but also, in the words of one of his biographers, journalist Axel Madsen, as "the conscience of the planet."

In 1988, shortly after his election to the Academy, he traveled to Washington. There, at that moment, the Convention on the Regulation of the Exploitation of Antarctic Mineral Resources was being discussed. If this document was adopted, Antarctica would become a world quarry: the Convention allowed the countries - parties to the treaty to extract minerals there. The 79-year-old ocean explorer has spent a week in endless meetings with government officials from the Press Club to the Senate. As a result, the Convention was not adopted, and three years later - again not without the participation of Cousteau - the Madrid Protocol on the Protection of Antarctica was signed. This document, supported by representatives from 45 countries, banned the development of minerals in the Antarctic region and declared the protection of the Antarctic environment to be an important factor influencing international decision-making in this geographic area. The Madrid Protocol is still in force and is considered one of the most significant victories of the "green movement" in the world.

Defending the Earth from the harmful influence of people, Cousteau went so far as to agitate against humanity. For the first time this idea sounded in 1988 at a speech to the US Environmental Protection Agency: the oceanographer wondered what would happen if the world's population reached 15 billion people, and came to a disappointing conclusion: even if the problems of hunger and access to drinking water were solved, this will only highlight the problem of lack of living space. In an interview with the UNESCO Courier in 1991, Cousteau spoke out even more harshly. Without political will and investment in education, it is not worth fighting suffering and disease, he said, or we could jeopardize the future of our species. “The world's population needs to be stabilized, and for this we have to kill 350 thousand people every day. It's so awful to think about it that you don't even need to say it. But the overall situation we are in is deplorable."

Bile and harsh Cousteau was not only in relation to humanity in general, but also to members of his family. When Simone died of cancer in 1990, he did not grieve for long: after only six months, he formalized his relationship with Francine. And one of the last major events in his life was the lawsuit against his own son in 1996. Then the elder Cousteau deprived the junior Cousteau of the right to use the family name in his own business projects. He was forced to rename the "Resort Cousteau", opened in Fiji in the previous summer, the "Resort Jean-Michel Cousteau." A year later, in 1997, the elder Cousteau died quietly of a heart attack just two weeks after his 87th birthday. His organization, the Cousteau Crew, and his fortune came under Francine's control.

6. Cousteau in the ceremonial uniform of the French Academy with an award - a crystal sword, decorated in a nautical style

Final

2020, Turkey

Former minesweeper and research ship Calypso rotting at a shipyard near Istanbul. The captain's widow, Francine, who now leads the Cousteau Crew, has promised many times to have it repaired and floated out, but the case has died out. Evil tongues say that she had no intention of rebuilding the ship on which her rival once reigned.

In 2016, a fictional film about the biography of Cousteau, "The Odyssey", was released - an attempt to show the famous researcher as a complex and controversial person, which remained almost unnoticed. In 2019, National Geographic announced plans to release a documentary about the famous French submariner. The Cousteau team has given permission to use their archival material, but will closely monitor what exactly gets on the screen.

Cousteau's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have become hostages of his cause: they all head commercial and non-profit organizations involved in the protection of the seas, underwater research and video filming. Between themselves, the two lines of the Cousteau family do not support relations. Speaking about the great ancestor, they prefer to emphasize his contribution to the preservation of the oceans, and describe their relationship with him with restraint and respect. “This is not to say that Jacques Cousteau was a simple person or that it was easy to live with him,” says his son Jean-Michel in a 2012 interview, “but he was incredible.”