Somewhere beyond the sea
The Indiana Jones of the ocean + soothing movies to kill a Friday afternoon
Dear listeners,
This summer, I did one of the Frenchest things I could possibly do: I took a really, really long vacation. Well, kinda - in true American style I brought my laptop along to WFH for most of it - but for five glorious weeks my partner and I relaxed on the beautiful beaches of Maui. I watched beautiful sunsets, I drank approximately one million mai tais, and, as is my nature, I gave myself homework. Since our trip was so long, I figured it was finally time to check off something which had been lingering on my bucket list for over a decade: I finally got certified as a scuba diver!
Prior to World War II, 70% of the planet was off-limits to most human beings. While some cultures with long traditions of free-diving could explore the sea using sheer athletic conditioning (check out the amazing pearl diving grannies of Jeju Island!), most people needed a way to access fresh oxygen underwater. For about 2,000 years, your best option was a diving bell, a.k.a. the Pirates of the Caribbean technique:
The diving bell worked, but its limitations are pretty obvious - you’re not exactly gliding around coral reefs and swimming with dolphins, here. For 1500 years, inventors around the world continued riffing on the idea of a diving bell, making improvements here and there without shaking up the fundamental idea. Then, right around the end of the 18th century, a French inventor grew obsessed with the idea of truly exploring underwater. Not only did he succeed, he launched two straight centuries of French innovation in the world of diving!
1784 engraving explaining Sieur Freminet’s curious underwater peregrinations.
In 1772, residents of Le Havre observed a very curious sight: a man dressed in a bizarre, full-body suit, dragging a heavy tank behind him, walking straight into the sea! The man in question was one Sieur Freminet, the first to combine the idea of a wetsuit with a tank of compressed air. He called the ensemble his machine hydrostatergatique, a name which unfathomably failed to catch on, and while he may have looked like a space alien or a monster, by golly, his idea worked. For the next ten years, Sieur Freminet walked into the waters of Le Havre. (Meanwhile, the entire ancien régime collapsed and The Great Fear spread throughout the countryside. No wonder he wanted to just bail on life above land.)
Patent application for Paul Lemair D’Augerville’s scuba prototype
In 1828, a French dentist named Paul Lemaire d’Augerville tackled the next big problem with underwater diving: buoyancy. Anybody can sink - coming back up to the surface is the tricky part! First, d’Augerville connected the air tank to a metal face mask, then to a sort of inflatable life jacket. The air tank could provide oxygen to breathe, but it could also inflate the jacket when it was time for a diver to return to the surface. Considering the stakes, you had to make absolutely sure that the seal on that face mask was totally watertight. Luckily for d’Augerville, he knew just the trick: dental sealant! If it was watertight enough for a dental filling, it was watertight enough for a face mask. Strapping on his contraption like a backpack, d’Augerville could sink down as deep as 65 feet below the ocean’s surface and hang out for up to an hour before inflating his little jacket and heading up. It was, essentially, the world’s first scuba suit - but it would take another 150 years of (usually French) innovation before the idea really caught on.
Self portrait, Louis Boutan, one of the world’s first underwater photographers.
At the beginning of the 20th century, underwater diving went from “eccentric hobbyist obsession” to “widespread curiosity” to “military strategy.” As countries began acquiring submarines, the science of transporting human bodies up and down the ocean’s depths took on new urgency. Early submarines were unpredictable and unreliable, so crew members often found themselves fleeing to the surface from leaking vessels. Even after crew members were rescued, they experienced mysterious illnesses, ranging from fuzzyheadedness to death. The characteristic stomach cramps lent a moniker to this strange condition: “the bends”.
The deeper a diver (or distressed submariner) went below the ocean’s surface, the greater the pressure, dissolving the body’s nitrogen gas into blood and tissue. When divers or submariners raced up to the surface too quickly, the gases tried to expand back into bubbles - ouch. Scientists figured out how to prevent decompression sickness (slow down, buddy) and how to treat it when it occurred. All of a sudden, one of the most painful mysteries of underwater diving was solved. During World War One, British divers now had the technology - and the know-how - to salvage through German submarine wreckage in search of enemy intelligence, diving to the ocean floor and safely returning with ciphers and maps in hand. Ten years later, a Frenchman followed their lead, splitting his time between diving and spying on the Germans. After the war’s conclusion, he’d become the most famous diver of all time.
After the Fall of France in 1940, 31 year old navy man Jacques Cousteau had nowhere to go. With the entire French armed forces receiving “armistice leave” Jacques had time to pursue his true passion in life: scuba diving. Determined to show the rest of the world just how wondrous the so-called “inaccessible” oceans could be, Jacques teamed up with two others to produce the first French underwater documentary, Par dix-huit mètres de fond. The German Occupation didn’t make it easy: wartime rations put strict quotas on film. Despite the production troubles, the documentary dazzled French audiences. But you don’t have to take my word for it - watch for yourself!
In 1943, the crew decided to make another film based around shipwrecks. If you thought producing a movie was hard in 1941, when the Germany army was winning, try making one in 1943, when the German army is hoarding any precious resource it can get! Completely unable to find film spools, Cousteau purchased hundreds and hundreds of cameras, then painstakingly glued the film strips together by hand. But that wasn’t the most impressive innovation of the production. This movie wasn’t just an opportunity to entertain and educate audiences, it was a chance for a bunch of passionate amateurs to play around with new gear they’d hacked together. 1943’s Épaves features Cousteau wearing a prototype of his own invention: the Aqua-Lung.
In 1943, most divers had to choose between two options: they could use surface air or they could use pure oxygen tanks. Surface air was easy: literally a tube reaching up to the surface, like the world’s longest snorkel, but it meant you were literally tethered and couldn’t do cool stuff like explore shipwrecks. Pure oxygen allowed you to move around, but you had to keep your dives very short and you might get lung damage. Jacques Cousteau couldn’t handle pure oxygen very well, and besides, he needed more time underwater if he was going to film an entire movie. One day, Jacques’s father-in-law, the owner of an industrial gas supplier, gave him a call. One of his employees had been tinkering around with a device to help industrial workers escape flooded mines. Perhaps it could be helpful? Jacques met with the engineer, Émile Gagnan, and the two of them produced a marvelous machine: the Aqua-Lung. The Aqua-Lung wasn’t tethered to the surface, rather, it was a Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, or SCUBA. The Aqua Lung allowed divers to carry ten times as much compressed air, and used a regulator to supply the diver with gas at the right pressure to protect their lungs. All of a sudden, divers could swim deeper, longer, with minimal equipment. When Épaves premiered in 1943, general audiences were marveling at the sunken ships, but diving hobbyists were marveling at the equipment on screen.
When Cousteau wasn’t busy innovating the world of cinema and underwater diving, he was active in the French Resistance. Cousteau’s neighbor was none other than François Darlan, a French admiral who competed with Charles de Gaulle for the leadership of the Resistance. At Darlan’s request, Cousteau led a group of résistants against the Italian intelligence service, for which he received multiple medals and commendations. After the war’s end, Cousteau continued to serve the French navy. Combining his two great passions, Cousteau pioneered the art of underwater espionage (!!!). When he wasn’t busy inventing James Bond technology, however, he spent his time patenting the Aqua-Lung, putting it into production, and creating the movie that would change his life.
After the war, Cousteau established himself as the Indiana Jones of the oceans. He leased a ship named Calypso and set out conducting research expeditions around the world, including underwater archaeological digs and sunken ship scouting. In 1955, Cousteau and his crew welcomed a landlubber on board: the aspiring filmmaker, Louis Malle. Over the next two years, Louis filmed the Calypso crew exploring the world’s oceans, but unlike Cousteau’s prior films, this one was in startling Technicolor. For the first time, the world could see the beautiful rainbow hues of coral reefs and tropical fish. The audiences went wild.
Le Silence du Monde premiered at the Cannes film festival, where it won the Palme d’Or, a.k.a. Best In Show. Following its success at the festival, Le Silence du Monde hit theaters worldwide, earning $3 million at the box office - in 1956 dollars! Later that year, it even took home the Oscar for Best Documentary. Suddenly, Cousteau and Malle were breakout stars, and the Calypso and her crew’s distinctive dress code were iconic:
Following the release of Le Silence du Monde, scuba diving exploded in popularity. Suddenly, diving clubs found themselves with a problem: after a century of evangelizing their hobby, they suddenly had too many new divers! These new divers were poorly trained and unsure how to handle risky situations. Numerous societies began creating training and safety protocols, from the L.A. County Parks and Rec Department to the YMCA. In 1966, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors created a certification system which is now used to train recreational divers all around the world - including, as it turns out, a certain beach in Maui. Thousands of years after the first brave explorers stepped into a diving bell, it’s easier than ever for the average person to explore ponds, lakes, rivers and oceans. In 2019, PADI certified one million brand new scuba divers! And in 2021, they certified yours truly.
I’ll close out this very long newsletter with a tip of a red beanie to the many, many French innovators who helped make this photo possible:
Bisous,
Diana