The 38 day trip to the Red Sea was not exactly as smooth sailing as Jacques Cousteau had hoped, but Calypso held her own. Upon reaching the Red Sea, divers, equipped with the Aqua-Lung, collected samples of creatures and sediments from different depths and areas. Many of the creatures that the crew had collected were completely new to science. Also, Dumas and Cousteau took the opportunity and filmed some underwater footage of the Red Sea. The expedition was overall deemed as a success. Encouraged, Cousteau continued to travel to wider areas, hoping to film more documentaries to bring to the world.

Grand-Congloue

On one of his dives, one of Cousteau’s team discovered a collection of jars on the ocean floor. Reminded of the scale of the Mahdia shipwreck, Cousteau realised that if they were to undercover and film a shipwreck the scale of that of Mahdia, he could easily obtain funds from museums and maybe even National Geographic Society themselves. Cousteau himself did a dive, and came back up to the surface with a few cups laying on the seafloor.

It was revealed that the cups were most possibly dated back as long as 200BC.

Within a week, Cousteau obtained funding from the Borely Museum in Marseille, the city of Marseille, as well as National Geographic Society.

The expedition would take close to a year to finish, ending in 1953.

By then, Cousteau was already working with an editor to publish a book about the invention of the Aqua-Lung and his accounts of ocean exploration. The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure was published in the same year the Grand-Congloue expedition was completed. It was a roaring success. In less than a year, close to 500 000 copies have been sold, and the book was being translated into more than 20 languages.