In 1958, the Undersea Research Group finally completed two submarines, Hull Number One, and Hull Number Two, bring them to even deeper waters. Jacques Cousteau was aware of the design flaws with Piccard’s bathyscaphe, and made sure to avoid them. The first test dive with the empty Hull Number One showed that the submarines were capable of traveling down 3270 feet into the ocean. Cousteau was pleased with the results and decided to conduct more research to push the limits of his submarines.

Cousteau was suddenly hit with news of his brother’s death just one year later. Though Pierre-Antoine had been an extreme leftist during the years of war, Cousteau merely kept his distance from his brother. Before Pierre-Antoine entered politics, he was Cousteau’s only friend during a period where Cousteau had nobody else. Cousteau stayed by his brother’s side until he breathed his last.

In the same year, Cousteau was invited to speak at the World Oceanographic Congress in New York, and after  convention, Cousteau and his team promptly returned to testing their new submarines.

The test dive with Hull Number One had yielded promising results, but the submarine was lost in the ocean floor. The design of Hull Number Two, which was later renamed to La Souscope Plongeant, the Flying Saucer, had been improved several times, and the final test dive took Cousteau and his colleague 1000 feet below the surface.

Conshelf

Cousteau was getting increasingly well known and successful, and was invited to work with US Navy Commander George Bond to set up underwater basecamps to allow divers to basically live underwater until their research was complete. The Continental Shelf I, or better known as Conshelf I, expedition involved only 2 divers. They would live for a week in a air-tight cylindrical room at 37 feet.

Conshelf II

(Photo courtesy of Tigerloaf.files.wordpress.com)

Although the underwater habitat was small, it contained the basic necessities for the divers to do their research. Aqua-Lungs were accessible in their rooms should there be an emergency need to reach the surface. However, that concern was unnecessary; the divers and even those who visited them in their underwater homes thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Cousteau’s ambitions pushed the team to come up with subsequent similar expeditions, the Conshelf II and Conshelf III. For Conshelf II, he aimed to design a habitat that would be home to the divers for one entire month, working at deep waters of 60 feet.

Though he was preoccupied with his underwater homes, Cousteau was still filming. Malle had returned to France to make movies there, and his closest assistant Pierre Goupil overtook the job. World Without Sun was released in 1964 to critical acclaim, earning Cousteau his second Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Most importantly, the film featured the Conshelf habitats Cousteau and Bond were working on, enabling Cousteau and his team to secure more funds.

In 1965, a 20-foot steel sphere was slowly lowered into the ocean. 6 men participated in Conshelf III. Philippe Cousteau, Cousteau’s younger son, was one of them. Certain complications caused the operations to stop midway, trapping the 6 men in the pressured sphere.

When asked by a reporter if she was worried for her son, Simone replied,

“I have six sons in there, and I am thinking about all of them.”

Technical difficulties were quickly fixed, and the men stayed underwater for 27 days straight. The 1-hour footage of life in the sphere was quickly picked up by CBS, who broadcasted it as The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau in 1968.

The documentary was picked up for another 12 episodes. It was Cousteau’s first chance at filming an entire television series, and Cousteau, Simone, Philippe, and their crew continued to toil hard to obtain the footage.