Dalton

The Dalton was the first shipwreck that Jacques Cousteau and the Sea Musketeers explored. It was steamship that had crashed into an island and descended into the shallow waters of Marseille. Cousteau’s brother was now an editor of a pro-occupation magazine, and had managed to obtain special licenses for Cousteau and his team to film underwater in the island. The team dove on the Dalton for weeks, bringing back artifacts from the shipwreck. The perfume that Cousteau brought back to Simone still smelted faintly of flowers.

Other than the Dalton, Cousteau and his team also explored other shipwrecks around the area. The Ramon Membru was a Spanish cargo ship that crashed into the rocky shores in 1925. It was then pulled out to sea, where it caught fire and sank. The tugboat Polyphéme was also one of the shipwrecks that the men explored. Of the all of the footage they filmed, the men cut it down to produce a short film named Épaves.

Épaves

Épaves, or Shipwrecks, was a thirty minutes long film that Cousteau and the Sea Musketeers produced in 1943. Although there was no plot, the mere footage of men swimming around looming shipwrecks was enough captivated all who watched it. The first group of people to watch the film were French navy officers, who were at once interested in the prospects of the Aqua-Lung in the military. 3 years later, the film was awarded the special prize from the Center for the Arts, Literature, and the Cinema at the First International Film Festival.

With the patent for the Aqua-Lung granted in 1945, as CG45 (C for Cousteau, and G for Gagnan), the admiral of the French Navy put Cousteau and Tailliez in charge of the Groupe de Recherches Sous-Marine, or the Undersea Research Group. Tailliez was appointed the commander of the group, and Cousteau, the deputy commander. The two men then hired Dumas as adviser and chief diver.