French shipyard threatens to sell Jacques Cousteau's boat

French shipyard threatens to sell Jacques Cousteau's boat After a long legal battle a French court has given Cousteau’s widow Francine a deadline to collect the boat otherwise it will be auctioned off It was the ship that launched a thousand childhood dreams. The Calpyso, with Commander 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 it sank following a collision with a barge in Singapore one year before Cousteau’s death, squabbles between the commander’s family and a Brittany boatyard threaten to scupper the ship for good. In December, after a long legal battle, a French court gave Cousteau’s second wife, Francine, a deadline of Wednesday to remove the Calypso from its dry dock and settle a €273,000 (£194,300) bill for renovations or face having the 43-metre vessel auctioned off. Pascal Piriou, head of the Piriou shipyard in Finistère, said he wanted to be shot of the Calypso and would seek a legal order allowing him to sell the historic ship after years of bitter disagreements with Francine Cousteau. French media reported the pair had fallen out over whether the vessel was to be renovated for display or returned to working order. “I think we could find some rich people who might be interested and ready to come up with the money,” Piriou said. “There’s an enormous amount of work to be done (on it), but it’s doable,” he added. However, as Wednesday’s deadline approached – and passed – Francine Cousteau appeared unperturbed by the threat. A statement from Equipe Cousteau, the family organisation, read: “Equipe Cousteau is serene and confident and will bring about a happy ending to this episode that will be announced as soon as possible.” It is the latest in two decades of ignominious internecine squabbles and rows between parties all seemingly anxious to preserve not just the Calypso but the memory of her legendary captain, too. Cousteau was to sea adventure what David Attenborough would later be to dry land. He was among the first to send up warning signals that from all he could see underwater mankind was recklessly poisoning its planet. Jacques-Yves Cousteau, a former naval officer, earned several medals, including the Légion d’Honneur, for his wartime role with the French resistance. Afterwards, he worked with the French navy clearing mines, while developing, and eventually patenting with a partner, the aqualung, the forerunner of the modern-day Scuba. In 1950, Cousteau leased the Calypso, a decommissioned Royal Navy minesweeper, then being used as a passenger ferry in Malta, from a member of the Guinness brewing family and had the 400-tonne wooden vessel refitted as a state-of-the-art oceanographic research laboratory and film studio. Aware that he needed money to finance his voyages, Cousteau published a book called The Silent World, which was later made into an Oscar-winning documentary. The book financed his next adventure and the Calypso became his roving headquarters and international trademark for nearly half a century. His documentary series, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, aired on television between 1968 and 1976. Andrew Mueller on the heroic influence of Jacques Cousteau On land, Cousteau’s private life was as colourful as his ocean-roving adventures. His first wife, Simone, with whom he had two sons who frequently travelled with him on the Calypso, died in 1990, unaware he had a secret second family with Francine, a former Air France stewardess. Cousteau later married his mistress, but after his sudden death in Paris in 1997 at the age of 87, relations between the widow and his eldest son erupted into more or less open warfare. Francine retained control of the Cousteau Foundation, set up to raise awareness of underwater ecosystems, while Jean-Michel Cousteau formed his own organisation, the Ocean Futures Society to carry on his father’s work. Cousteau’s second son, Philippe, died in a plane crash in 1979. The Calpyso sat at the bottom of Singapore harbour for 17 days after its sinking in 1996, before it was raised and moved to Marseilles where it was left to rot for two years. It was then transferred to a maritime museum at La Rochelle on France’s west coast and from there to the dry dock for repairs to restore it to its former glory. The arguments over its future continued unabated and spread outside the family. As long ago as 2003, Patrick Schnepp, director of the museum that hoped to make the Calypso the centrepiece of a permanent exhibition, told the Guardian he would like to see the Calypso taken out to sea and scuttled for good. “The whole affair disgusts me. Everything that’s not broken is rotten, and everything that’s not rotten is broken,” Schnepp said. On Wednesday, Pascale Bladier-Chassaigne of the Sea and River Heritage Foundation said the Calypso was unique and as it is possibly the best known boat in the world it should be saved. “This boat is mythical because it belonged to Commander Cousteau who was himself an extraordinary man,” Bladier-Chassaigne told the Guardian. “It would be extremely sad and a great shame not to preserve it.” Source: The Guardian / 12 March 2015