Les Mousquemers

Frédéric Dumas, or Didi as he was affectionately known, was also a diver and hunter living on Le Mourillon Bay. One day while on the beach, he caught sight of Tailliez in the water. Breathing using a tube he held in his mouth, wearing rubber fins, and sporting weights tied around his waist, Tailliez was one the strangest sights Dumas had ever seen.

Dumas waited for Tailliez to come back from the water before introducing himself. He was interested to know how it was possible for Tailliez not to come up for air. The two bonded quickly over the topic of underwater breathing equipment, and from that day on, Dumas was part of Tailliez and Cousteau’s team, otherwise known as Les Mousquemers – The Sea Musketeers.

Together, they shared Cousteau’s dream of making filming underwater possible. They researched solutions to keep their bodies warm while diving, and explored the different methods to keep the camera dry and working in the water.

Scuba

However, firstly, the team had to come up with a way to allow them to breathe for extended periods underwater. At that time, many scientists have already invented ways to do that. In 1934, Yves Le Prieur, also a French Navy officer, had invented an apparatus made of cylinder of compressed air and a regulator that could be manually adjusted by the diver to control the amount of air being pumped through the valve. This was known as the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, or simply known as scuba.

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

The Le Prieur apparatus finally allowed humans to walk on the ocean floor freely. However, the cylinder of air only gave the diver 20 minutes of underwater exploration. Filming underwater would require much more than that. Cousteau and his team were interested in improving on the design of this current model and with luck, befriended Leon Veche, a fellow French Navy officer. Veche owned his own machine shop that provided the Sea Musketeers with all the parts they needed to make their version of underwater breathing apparatus. The team came up with many alternative designs to the Le Prieur breathing apparatus, and personally tested all of them. Together with Jean-Michel, Cousteau’s first child born in 1938, Simone, who was then pregnant with her second child, would accompany the team down to the beach to watch them try out their new equipment. Everyone was excited to see what their dreams had in store for them. However, this came to a sudden stop with the surrender of Poland in 1939.