Les Mousquemers (late 1930s: Cousteau in his late 20s)

In 1936, Cousteau was appointed as gunnery officer by the navy In Toulon. To rehabilitate his injury, he swam daily at Le Lourillon Bay near Sanary-sur-Mer as suggested by a fellow officer, Philippe Tailliez. Tailliez lent Cousteau his Fernez goggles, fins & snorkel and he entered the water. His life changed as he fell in love with the sea. He started devoting time reading about the ocean, swimming and hunting underwater.

At a social gathering party, Cousteau met Simone Melchior in 1936 and got married in July 12, 1937 at St.-Louis-des-Invalides where they settled in Sanary-sur-Mer. They had two sons, Jean-Michel, born in 1938, and Philippe, born in 1940. They welcomed Tailliez and other officers to their coastal cottage as frequent guests.

Cousteau focused on designing & making a housing for an underwater waterproof camera. It worked at 20 feet of water.

In 1938, Frederic Dumas joined them after seeing Tailliez hunt. Cousteau, Tailliez and Dumas called themselves Les Mousquemers, the sea musketeers. They spent their time tinkering with Cousteau’s camera, and thinking of means to dive deeper and remain underwater longer. They tried greasing oneself or wearing a suit of rubber to preserve heat but both did not work. He investigated the effects of water pressure on divers.

In 1939, Cousteau explored other underwater pioneer experiments to figure out how to breathe underwater. They built a self-contained breathing apparatus in Leon Veche’s machine shop but the air gushed out from the tank in powerful bursts when they opened the valve underwater. They wanted longer and deeper dives. He added and improved on the pioneering Le Prieur apparatus and called it rebreather. They were able to swim freely and breathe underwater, however they faced dangerous problems.

“The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man, it is to know that and to wonder at it.” – Jacques-Yves Cousteau