Calypso

“Everything that's not broken is rotten, and everything that's not rotten is broken."

- Patrick Schnepp, Director La Rochelle Maritime Museum

I remember seeing the surface of the sea from underneath. Looking up at the mercurial waves through a forest of kelp and shimmering schools of fish. I didn’t have a scuba suit or even need to hold my breath, although sometimes I still did. I could exist in this world because of a man whose love of the oceans and desire to share that fascination created a television show about exploring what hid under the waves from 1968 to 1975. Or from when I was seven until I was fourteen; prime explorer hero worship years for a boy.

The man was Jacques-Yves Cousteau, or just plain Jacques Cousteau to us Americans. Mr. Cousteau created a show called “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” which weekly took us beneath the waves to visit rivers of jellyfish, rolling foothills of seals, and mountains upon mountains of uncountable varieties of fish. Had men not landed on the moon in 1969, my all time boyhood dream job would have probably have stayed an oceanographer an not switched to astronaut.

Aside from the man with the eagle-beak nose and the red wool cap, the main thing I remember from these weekly sojourns into the briny main was his stout and faithful ship; the Calypso.

The Calypso was born a wooden minesweeper, made from Oregon pine and handed off to England during World War II, mines being much cozier with iron than the soft woods of the Pacific Northwest. After the war she made some coin as a ferry, but her true calling, and claim to fame, was on television opposite Get Smart and I Dream of Jeannie. You had to be something special to draw a preteen boy away from the Barbaras Feldon and Eden. She was.

Years later when I did go to sea is it any wonder that it was on a white ship, like the Calypso?

Jacques is long gone. He passed in 1997 at 87. But the Calypso is still around, although barely. Legal wrangling between his widow and the grandson of the original purchaser, who leased it to Mr. Cousteau for one franc a year, has left the once proud ship in a state of limbo. At this point, she sits in a warehouse, in pieces, waiting for one side or the other to quit picking at the corpse.

There is a saying that goes something like, “A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.” I don’t know who said that but maybe we should apply it to the Calypso. A ship like the Calypso should neither rot nor reside indoors on dry land. I say let’s sink her and make her a habitat for the sea life that was brought into our childhood homes once a week.