Captain Jacques Cousteau

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 20:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1982, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

This week our castaway is the distinguished oceanographer and marine explorer, Jacques Cousteau.

Presenter0:37

Captain Custo, you are no stranger to desert islands. I'm sure you must have visited many.

Presenter0:43

Yes, that is true, some of them very small.

Presenter0:47

And a few of them larger. Could you endure loneliness?

Presenter0:51

For a long time? No, I would not.

Presenter0:54

I like to get away from stupid people. Right, yes. But I love the company of brilliant people.

Presenter1:04

So I'm a social animal. I don't think I could resist very long on a desert island. How much does music mean to you? A tremendous amount. I have sacrificed almost everything in my life except music. I have sacrificed my family to a certain extent. I've sacrificed all my friends. I have sacrificed my privacy.

Presenter1:25

But uh there's something I don't want anybody to touch is uh

Presenter1:29

A minimum amount of time to uh

Presenter1:33

Get closer to my friends the thousands of records that I have home.

Presenter1:38

Have you any musical skill yourself? Do you play the piano? Do you sing?

Presenter1:45

Now you have chosen your eight records. Did you find that very difficult? No. But I I am not sure that that I made the best selection because I uh like uh so many records that uh

Presenter1:56

I I had to make her just, you know, a folder on and

Presenter2:01

picked up eight that I like, but uh I could pick uh uh twenty sets of eight that I like as much as these. What's the first one you have there?

Captain Jacques Cousteau2:06

And I guess

Presenter2:09

I've chosen this one deliberately because Pagani sings my Mediterranean and it has for me a tremendous meaning because the tragedy of the Mediterranean today is perfectly sung by Pagani when he not only sings the beauty of the Mediterranean but also the tragedies of the Mediterranean, which I seen all these religions come out, emerge. And these religions could have brought peace to the world instead of that. They have fought each other and was a source of war. And he is a Jew, Pagani, and he suffers from this. He bleeds when he sings.

Captain Jacques Cousteau2:56

Vis du patent et de l'Ajrill.

Captain Jacques Cousteau3:02

I'm playing a new easy fool as old.

Captain Jacques Cousteau3:07

Puete blue jets hol entre nour de ce fu la mour, entre nour de ce fil la mour.

Presenter3:22

Pagani, my Mediterranean.

Presenter3:25

What part of France do you come from, Captain Cousteau?

Presenter3:28

Originally from uh a small village twenty four kilometers from Bordeaux. My grand grandfather was mayor of Bordeaux. My father was a lawyer, my grandfather also.

Presenter3:43

That's my origin. But on uh my mother's side they were wine glowers.

Presenter3:48

And a Cilar. As a child you moved about quite a bit, I believe. Oh, a lot. From the age of uh

Presenter3:55

One really. As early as that. As a child, I believe you were not very robust.

Captain Jacques Cousteau3:58

The

Presenter4:03

I was a very strong baby until the age of one. And then for some reason, because the nutrition principles of that time were pretty inadequate, some stupid doctor kept me into a kind of um malnutrition for uh almost six or seven years, during which of course I grew but uh remained uh weak and thin.

Captain Jacques Cousteau4:03

I think it was a

Presenter4:31

And after that on the contra I picked up again.

Presenter4:34

Is it true that you were an unruly boy, that you were expelled from school? It is. I was not a difficult boy, but I was a crazy boy.

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I had seen movies where um gangsters shot bullets through a window and it made just a small hole. It didn't break the window.

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So I uh tried

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in a big staircase where there were thirty or forty windows,

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I gathered some pebbles and I tried to throw the pebbles strong enough so that it would not break the window, but make just a little hole. But I never succeeded, and all the windows went down.

Presenter5:17

But it it was a scientific experiment.

Captain Jacques Cousteau5:20

Yeah.

Speaker 45:20

Yeah.

Captain Jacques Cousteau5:21

It's unsight.

Presenter5:23

Then you went to a naval school. Whose idea was that? I'm very proud of having been there because it taught me discipline, it taught me uh the sea and uh also a formidable amount of technology. Now your first job as a naval officer was to go round the world. Now that must have been very satisfying. That was for all my promotion, the uh nineteen thirty promotion of the Naval Academy. All of us, we were a hundred and twenty. We all went on board the Gendarg around the world, yes, for one year. And after that, as I um came out number two, they give, according to the your rank, uh the choice of the places that are available. And I choose the Far East. Yes. And I had two years in the Far East and uh Japan, China.

Captain Jacques Cousteau5:47

Yes.

Captain Jacques Cousteau6:15

Yes.

Presenter6:21

Indochina, Vietnam, etcetera. You'd been very impressed in in China by watching the

Presenter6:27

Underwater fishermen. That was in Vietnam. In Vietnam. Yes. Local fishermen. We who are making hydrography and uh to the maps. Yes, maps.

Presenter6:38

And a native

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noon when uh it was really hot.

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went overboard without a ripple in the water, and just sank slowly, with no apparatus, no masks, nothing.

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He came back with one fish in each hand.

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And uh we were amazed and I asked him how he did it and he said, Well, I know this place that's where this fish, this kind of fish, come to sleep.

Presenter7:09

And while they sleep I go very sorry and I just catch them.

Presenter7:13

So that was a revelation for me that such things could exist under the keel of my ship and so it triggered my curiosity.

Presenter7:25

Well let's have your second record. What's next on the pile there? I have chosen uh a fantasy chromatique of Bach.

Presenter7:33

Because it's a rarity and uh it fascinates me that Bach has written this because it's as romantic as Chopin or Lis and uh that's not Bach's style. So I wonder when he wrote this if he was deeply in love or if he just was anticipating what would come later. I really wonder.

Presenter8:59

Part of Bach's Frontesie Chromatique, played by Rein Giannoli.

Presenter9:05

Now, perhaps inspired by those Vietnamese fishermen, you began to do some goggle diving. Yes. But I had been trained to dive without goggles.

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When I was ten years old in an American summer camp,

Presenter9:19

In Vermont. Yes. Lake Harvey.

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I was in a summer camp for boys and uh I had a German instructor that

Presenter9:28

I hated and he hated me.

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So uh to punish me he had uh assigned me to clear the bottom of the lake under the diving springboard.

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And it was a big job because uh it was uh, I don't know, ten feet thick with branches and debris of all sorts, and I had to clean the bottom.

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So that's where I learned really to dive. I was ten years old.

Presenter9:58

Ah, that made it much more fun. But I already knew how to die very well.

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Well then you tried to develop the equipment.

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In order to go deeper, in order to stay longer.

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If you wish I was I became an inventor by necessity.

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And or by an inner urge to go deeper and to go further. When the war started, you were in the Mediterranean zone.

Presenter10:26

You did some naval intelligence work. There's a story that you got into the Italian naval headquarters and photographed their code book, which must have been a very satisfying thing to do. Where did you get that star? I have my sources. Is it accurate?

Captain Jacques Cousteau10:35

Who told you that?

Captain Jacques Cousteau10:37

Where did you get that star?

Presenter10:42

Yes, well you made yourself a considerable nuisance to the Italians. But that was at the end of the war, because during all the beginning of the war until the Germans invaded France and until they invaded the south of France.

Speaker 210:46

Well, you made yourself a considerable nuisance to the attackers.

Presenter11:00

I still was in the Navy and um I participated into the Atlantic search for the Graf von Spade, a German battleship, and I also made some operations against the Italian Navy in the Mediterranean. I was on board ships and I was making war on board warships.

Presenter11:19

So uh I knew what it was to see a torpedo pass a few feet from your boat. Yes. Uh at night. It's phosphorescent, it's beautiful. In a way You were also working on the aqua lung.

Speaker 411:29

In a way.

Presenter11:37

Yes. Was this a fairly new idea? Where did you come across it? It was not a very new idea. It was a very old idea, as a matter of fact. But all the people in the eighteenth century who imagined such machines did not have the appropriate materials and the appropriate facilities and the compressors and whatever. So it was theoretical but impractical. So my only merit

Presenter12:11

For inventing the aquarium is to write first at the right time when it was possible to make such an apparatus. But the principles were not so

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You were also making your first underwater films, uh another part of your cover activities.

Presenter12:28

It's always the same, necessity. And you know, evolution is governed by chance and necessity. I think uh we are too. Yes. Sure, you're right. Our fate is just the same. And so uh after I had uh made this goddamn aqualac and I used it.

Presenter12:49

I wanted to show my friends what I was seeing, so I wanted to photograph.

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To photograph underwater I had to put a camera in a in housing.

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When I did that I wanted to go deeper, so I needed a submarine, so I had to invent a submarine.

Presenter13:04

Etc. And from one step to another, chance and necessity brought me along.

Captain Jacques Cousteau13:08

Chanson

Presenter13:11

Great. Let's have another record. What shall we have? Summertime, beautiful song, and I insisted to have the recording by Ella Fitchard because her voice is fabulous.

Captain Jacques Cousteau13:14

Yeah.

Speaker 413:31

Summer time.

Speaker 413:34

And the living disease facial

Speaker 413:48

And the cotton is high

Presenter14:01

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

Presenter14:05

When the war was over, Captain Cousteau, you founded the Underwater Research Group. Were you getting full cooperation and encouragement from the French Navy? That group was part of the Navy. Yes. C'est le Groupe des Tues de Rocherche Submarine de Toulon.

Speaker 414:22

Yeah.

Presenter14:22

When uh just the day after liberation, I joined my harbor, Toulouse.

Presenter14:31

and I was immediately reactivated.

Presenter14:34

But at that time I had developed the aquarium.

Presenter14:37

and I had made one film.

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No two films, right?

Presenter14:42

but one on sunken ships.

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So I thought that after the war we would have a tremendous job to do to clean.

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the harbours from all the wrecks, the s scattered fleet of a French navy, the mines that uh had been laid all along the coastlines, etcetera.

Presenter15:02

and that it would be the interest of the Navy to um develop a special diving unit. So I went to see the chief of staff showing my film.

Presenter15:12

That's when I understood.

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The strength, the power of images, of video and of audiovisual, if you wish.

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And as soon as the chief of staff saw that film, he said, What do you want?

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You want to make a group?

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Do it. You're in charge.

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Splendid. And and uh that's the power of audiovisual.

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You discovered means of of photographing the ocean bed miles down.

Presenter15:42

How are you working on that?

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You know, it's not that difficult to photograph miles down than to photograph at night.

Presenter15:49

just in total darkness, that's all. And the pressure you have to put your cameras in housings to transist the pressure. But that's really you know, I don't have any merit in this. The thing that um I try to do well

Presenter16:02

is to do good films, but to have exposure on the film.

Presenter16:07

by bringing lights in the night.

Presenter16:11

This is not difficult.

Presenter16:13

Just that nobody had done it before. When did you decide, and and why, to to leave the navy?

Captain Jacques Cousteau16:15

Yeah.

Presenter16:21

I have uh left the navy after twenty seven years of uh duty when I was elected director of the oceanographic institute in Monaco. That's a very prestigious house that was created by Prince Albert of Monaco and has been for decades the uh biggest institute in Europe. And I'm still director of this. After uh

Presenter16:50

twenty five years now. Good. But when I uh accepted to be elected there, I uh accepted only if I could bring in my best friend as deputy director so that I could carry on my explorations. And the board of directors agreed.

Presenter17:07

So thanks to their vision,

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and their understanding.

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I can direct this institute and benefit from the scientific input of this research and at the same time carry my expeditions over the world.

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That's an exceptional situation. Another record.

Presenter17:28

Ah, this one is special.

Presenter17:30

They're all special. Yes. Daphne of the Dooms, a kind of opera that was written by Harry Parch. Harry Parch is an American composer that lived in Mexico and invented all the instruments of the orchestra.

Presenter17:46

There's no instrument there, traditional instrument, it's all new.

Presenter18:24

The World of Harry Potch and its Daphne of the Dunes.

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One of your most interesting, I suppose, and and important experiments was your undersea village.

Presenter18:36

I couldn't care less about the undersea village. What was interesting is the saturation diving principle that the villages were helping.

Presenter18:46

Perform

Presenter18:48

The principle is that a diver leaving the surface and working at a sizable depth cannot stay very long and has to go through tedious steps of decompression to avoid the bands and even death. So an American Navy doctor imagined that if people could stay

Presenter19:11

under water in a shelter, they would, after a certain number of hours, become completely saturated for the surrounding pressure.

Presenter19:23

Once they would be saturated they could stay indefinitely.

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And the decompression time, even if it was big,

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would not increase after saturation.

Presenter19:34

so that economically it would allow

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The form

Presenter19:40

Very important tasks underwater and have the same duration of decompression. I'll give you an example. When my people went through Conchel 3, they lived twenty-one days at a depth of one hundred meters, working at one hundred and twenty meters every day, several hours, which nobody could do from the surface. And after these twenty-one days, they needed three days and a half of decompression. You realize what it means.

Captain Jacques Cousteau20:00

Tableau.

Captain Jacques Cousteau20:12

That is what it

Presenter20:13

But

Presenter20:14

If they had been only a few hours down there instead of twenty one days, they would also have needed these three and a half days of decompression.

Speaker 420:24

Yeah.

Presenter20:24

So that saturation diving as we call it.

Speaker 420:24

So

Presenter20:27

Is the only way to perform industrial

Presenter20:32

or agricultural works under water of some size. It's the only way to do it. You've also experimented under the ice in the Antarctic.

Presenter20:43

Oh yes, but that's fun. That's fun. Oh yes.

Presenter20:46

Nothing scientific about that? Sure, we also have uh fallouts, scientific fallouts, but the thrill is to uh penetrate uh an alien environment that you think is almost impossible and to see that it's just as easy as anywhere else.

Presenter21:05

I'm I'm glad you found it so. To me it seems an exceedingly hazardous operation. Less than you think. Less than you think. We took all the precautions. We never take crazy risks. We always take calculated risks.

Presenter21:18

Record number five

Captain Jacques Cousteau21:19

Motherfucker.

Presenter21:21

far less dangerous than going on a motorbike. Here that's um Saint Francis preaching to the birds. I love it because I love animals very very much. And uh Willem Kemp at the piano is master.

Presenter22:42

Saint Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds, the France List piano composition played by Wilhelm Kempf.

Presenter22:50

Now most of your work is serious scientific investigation, but there is a lighter and more romantic side, diving for sunken treasure.

Presenter22:58

Yes. It is not uh one of our most important goals, but it's one of the applications of diving, and I wanted to see on several occasions what could be done.

Presenter23:11

Soon after the war we went to Maldia in Tunisia and uh found the remains of a wreck that had been already salvaged to a certain extent by the grandfather of my wife with helmet divers. But there were a lot of things left there which were brought to the Museum of Tennis. After that in Greece we uh worked with the uh Greek scientist archaeologist on several wrecks. You brought up thousands and thousands of amphoras, clay jars. Yes. Is there ever anything in them that can be recognized? Oh yes. In some of them there are remains of oil, some remains of resins of nuts. And in a few, if you analyze, the liquid that is there still has some of the components of wine. The alcohol is gone. But the tannin and the number of components of wine can be analyzed when you found an amphora that is still sealed, which is very rare. But some of them are. What were they sealed with? Wax? Pudzolan. The cork is in putzolan, which is a lava. And it's uh waxed, yes.

Presenter24:37

We've got to record number six.

Presenter24:39

That's one of my favorites. It's Bacchianos Basileios number five from Villa Lobos. It's simple melody but beautiful, played by Al Meida on the guitar and sung by Saliteri contralto.

Presenter26:00

Bacchianas Brasileeras, number five, by Vira Lobas, sung by Sally Terry, with Lorindo Almeida playing the guitar. Now there have been many films, lots of television programmes, a lot of books. What is the main project now that occupies you?

Captain Jacques Cousteau26:20

Oh yes.

Presenter26:23

I'm dedicating all eyes of my life to that uh activity. With, of course, more films, but now I'm involved in uh a year long expedition in the Amazon.

Presenter26:36

As soon as I finish this, I'm going to devote my film activities to.

Presenter26:42

Try to convince people that they have to do something about

Presenter26:46

The uh

Presenter26:48

Destruction of all nuclear weapons.

Presenter26:51

and another film about the problems of the third world, and another film about cancer.

Presenter26:57

Another film about the real situation of the environment in the world. So films that there are no more beautiful little fish.

Presenter27:05

But that are dealing with the fate of mankind. Oh, sure.

Captain Jacques Cousteau27:13

Can be a good

Presenter27:17

You've just produced an enormous and fascinating book, The The Cousteau Almanac. It must be the world's biggest paperback and and quite fascinating. As a matter of fact, it's very heavy heavy, yes. And uh some people joke about it, saying that I came to write this book in order to provide ballast for my ship. But that's not true. It was an enormous job originating from one of my associates, Mose Richards, in America. And during three years we had fifteen people working, either for research or for writing.

Captain Jacques Cousteau27:22

Yeah, it's mostly.

Speaker 227:25

There

Presenter27:57

After that we submitted this to um our advisory panel to um take away the mistakes, because there were mistakes, scientific mistakes. So we took them out. After that we submitted it to the uh redactor of the National Academy of Sciences before it was published.

Presenter28:19

And in spite of all these precautions, I still find some mistakes. In a book that size I'm not you cannot trust authorities.

Captain Jacques Cousteau28:24

No, see that.

Presenter28:28

There must be millions of facts in it. You can't get them all. No. Record number seven.

Presenter28:35

Ah, that's a demonstration of how can I say.

Presenter28:40

A Kobe C on a

Presenter28:42

And is he all

Presenter28:44

Yeodi Menuin was a sheer environmentalist, by the way, very active. Yes, indeed. And also a fantastic violinist.

Captain Jacques Cousteau28:49

Very active.

Presenter28:54

Plays uh Caprice number twenty four of Paganini, variations that are absolutely fabulous.

Presenter30:04

Yehudi Menwin playing variations from Paganini's Caprice number twenty four.

Presenter30:10

Now, Captain Cousteau, you are on this desert island.

Presenter30:14

What sort of castaway would you make? I I think you'd be very good. You could build a shelter of some sort. I would be miserable. You'd be miserable. I hate mosquitoes, and there are plenty of those. I don't like sunburns. I don't like suntan.

Captain Jacques Cousteau30:22

I hate

Presenter30:32

I like company.

Presenter30:34

I would try to make the best to survive, but I would spend my days waving a handkerchief for somebody to pick me up. Would you try to escape? Would you try to make a craft of some sort?

Presenter30:46

Certainly. Not a submarine, but a at least floating up.

Presenter30:52

And while you're there, could you cook?

Presenter30:55

I'm not interested in food.

Presenter30:58

So I would eat foods.

Presenter31:00

I don't like them. I would be miserable, my friend. I'm sure. I don't know why I'm here.

Speaker 431:05

I don't know

Captain Jacques Cousteau31:05

Uh

Presenter31:08

All right. We'll arrange to rescue you. And in the meantime, what's your last record? Well, that's a contrast.

Presenter31:18

That's a real social one, a rock record, because I like rock as well, by my friends Crosby and Nash.

Speaker 431:34

The dusty light is fading

Speaker 431:40

The longer night of waiting

Speaker 431:46

Passing the point

Speaker 431:49

And missing them all

Presenter31:56

Out of the Darkness by Crosby and Nash. If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've played us, which one would you select?

Presenter32:04

I would take the uh Fantasie chromatique of Bach. Right. And you're allowed to take one luxury to the island, any one object that would give you pleasure to have with you. Nothing of any practical use. Being miserable as I would be

Presenter32:20

I would like to touch something all day long. I would have a stone that

Presenter32:26

It was given to me.

Presenter32:29

Surprising one. It's reddish, it has uh no shape.

Presenter32:33

But it's very, very smooth. Yes. Very oily. And uh I asked him what it was. He said, I give it to you. I found this in the stomach

Presenter32:44

of a fossil of dinosaur.

Presenter32:47

They were using the stones to make a better digestion of the terrible things they were eating. I I think they they didn't have good restaurants at that time. I shouldn't use it for that purpose, but And your book, one book? Oh, that I would not hesitate. Les Essays de Montaigne. The Essays of Montaigne. Yes, because in this book

Speaker 432:48

Are you

Captain Jacques Cousteau32:57

I shouldn't use it for the

Captain Jacques Cousteau33:08

Yeah.

Speaker 433:09

Uh

Captain Jacques Cousteau33:09

Yeah.

Presenter33:10

You learn how to behave. Right. And thank you, Jacques Cousteau, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 233:26

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.