Authors: Brad Matsen
A few days before the new year, after Paris had observed one of the most cheerless Christmases in its history, the navy officer and the engineer met in a workshop cluttered with valves, meters, tanks, and tubing in various stages of assembly. Gagnan, a quiet man with a distinctly formal demeanor, showed Cousteau to a separate inner office and motioned him to a plain wooden chair. He sat behind his desk, lit his pipe, and asked what he could do to help. For the better part of an hour, Cousteau took Gagnan through his experiences with re-breathers, surface-feed systems, and breath holding, pointing out the flaws in each. Finally, he asked the big question. Did Gagnan know of any way to simply carry ordinary compressed air in a tank that would flow into a diver’s mouthpiece only when the diver took a breath? Gagnan turned to a shelf behind his desk, picked up a brown, rectangular box, and handed it to Cousteau.
“Maybe something like this,” Gagnan said.
Cousteau examined the object in his hand. It was a hard, black, Bakelite casing about 7 inches by 5 inches by 3 inches, with a hollow tube about an inch and a half long and a quarter of an inch in diameter protruding from one side and a threaded metal fitting from another. Gagnan let Cousteau hold the thing for a long minute, then took it back and removed several screws to open the housing. He explained that the device was a demand regulator for reducing the pressure of compressed natural gas to feed it to an internal combustion engine in place of a gasoline carburetor. It dispensed a measured dose of gas: the
rubber diaphragm over the exhaust tube closed in response to the drop in pressure inside the regulator, then opened again when the pressure on the other side equalized. One tube from the casing could be connected by a hose to the carburetor manifold, the threaded valve to the tank of natural gas. “Same kind of problems, you know,” Gagnan said. “You have to reduce the pressure of the gas to feed it to an engine.”
Cousteau and Gagnan were not the only inventors trying to find a way to safely breathe compressed air underwater. Their most threatening competitor was Georges Commeinhes, the son of the inventor of a breathing apparatus for firefighters who had a workshop in Saint-Maur on the outskirts of Paris, a dozen miles from the Air Liquide laboratory. Commeinhes built his fireman’s rig with two tanks of compressed air at 2,000 pounds of pressure, a two-stage demand regulator, a single breathing hose, and a one-way exhaust valve on the mouthpiece. The French navy had been using it since 1935 and in 1939 had asked Commeinhes to adapt it for use underwater, but the war had slowed his research to a crawl. As a naval officer, Cousteau was familiar with the firefighting apparatus. He also knew that Commeinhes was working on a compressed air system for diving. Commeinhes had heard rumors from the Riviera that Cousteau was trying everything he could get his hands on to find a way to swim free and breathe underwater for long enough to work, hunt, and make movies. Both men understood that whoever was first to solve the puzzles and file the patents would be first to market with a dazzling invention that could be worth a fortune. Cousteau also knew that finding a way to breathe underwater and swim free would instantly make him an unstoppable force as a filmmaker.
On an unseasonably warm afternoon in January 1943, a half-dozen people gathered along an isolated back eddy of the Marne River east of Paris to watch Cousteau and Gagnan test their underwater breathing system. Simone was there, along with one of Gagnan’s colleagues from Air Liquide and a storekeeper and his family from a nearby crossroads. Gagnan steadied the heavy backpack of three steel tanks as Cousteau waded from the low bank into the river. When he was knee deep, Cousteau bent from the waist and put his head underwater. Except for Gagnan’s grip on his arm, the world above disappeared. He
crouched with his face in the water under the weight of the tanks, each of them wrapped with an outer layer of wire for additional strength. They had decided on three tanks because the point was eventually to give Cousteau enough time to remain submerged for an hour at 60 feet. One or two of the standard industrial cylinders would not carry enough air at the 110 atmospheres, or about 1,600 pounds of pressure, at which it would remain a gas. The three tanks weighed 50 pounds on the surface but less than nothing underwater because of the buoyancy of the gas. They had linked them through a manifold to a slightly modified version of Gagnan’s natural gas regulator, which drew air equally from the tanks. Gagnan had designed a safety valve on the manifold that stopped the air flow when there were only 300 pounds of gas pressure left in the tanks. When a diver could not draw a breath because the reserve valve was closed, he could pull a metal rod to release the remaining air, which would give him enough time to reach the surface before running out completely.
Cousteau felt the weight of the tanks, sensed the rubber mouthpiece clamped between his teeth, and felt the single hose leading from the regulator rubbing on his shoulder. The water was murky, but he could see the mud of the bottom, and he was breathing just fine. He nodded vigorously, the signal that he was ready to submerge completely. Gagnan took his hand from Cousteau’s arm. Cousteau stretched out on his belly, pushed away from the bank, and sank beneath the shimmering surface of the Marne. The shock of the bitterly cold water banished any other sensations for the first few seconds, but then Cousteau heard the strange sound of his own breathing. He heard a rasping rush of air as he inhaled through the hose, the gurgling of a cloud of bubbles as he exhaled through the exhaust valve in his mouthpiece, and the snap of the diaphragm of the regulator as it responded to the changes in pressure as he breathed. It was working.
Cousteau glided away from the shore and let himself sink feetfirst to the bottom, where his moment of elation dissolved in a cloud of bubbles as air flowed freely whether he inhaled or not. He could breathe, but the bubbles from the exhaust valve on his mouthpiece obscured his vision, as it had with the Fernez system. Free-flowing air was also too wasteful for the system to be practical. Cousteau bounced his way into deeper water, performed a “stroke of the loins” to put his head down and his feet up, and most of the bubbles disappeared. But then he could
barely draw a breath. Experimenting with several other positions, he confirmed that the system let him breathe easily and did not free-flow only when he was perfectly horizontal. Like a test pilot, Cousteau reviewed his results to order them carefully in his mind. With his work done, he noticed again that the water was freezing cold. A few seconds later, he surfaced, waved to the anxious-looking people on the bank, and dog-paddled to shore, where Gagnan helped him from the river.
Gagnan could not swim, so he didn’t test the system himself, but on the drive back to Paris, he relived the first dive of the self-contained breathing apparatus as Cousteau described it in detail. Gagnan rode in silence for a few minutes, envisioning a diver with his head up, and the mouthpiece above the level of the regulator. With the diver’s head down, the mouthpiece would be below the level of the regulator. The problem must have had something to do with the difference in water pressure in different positions. Then, as though a light had clicked on, Gagnan had the answer. If a diver could inhale easily and the air did not free-flow when he was horizontal, all they had to do was relocate the exhaust port from the mouthpiece to the same level as the diaphragm, which would mean that the pressure on each would always be equal. It didn’t matter if the diver was horizontal or not; it mattered only that the regulator and the exhaust valve were in the same plane. In Gagnan’s workshop, he and Cousteau substituted a mouthpiece venting into a second hose running to an exhaust valve mounted inside a metal shield on top of the regulator. Gagnan considered the two-hose solution to be less than elegant, but it worked.
A week after the test dive in the Marne River, Cousteau’s furlough ended. He had no choice but to return to Toulon with Simone and their sons. Cousteau, Gagnan, and Air Liquide knew that the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus was a breakthrough with enormous commercial potential, especially in sales to the navy. Scientists, too, might buy the equipment, which could revolutionize underwater research. Beyond that, the two inventors of scuba saw only limited applications for amateurs. Military and scientific sales would certainly be enough to justify an investment in production lines and a distribution network, so they began the yearlong process of filing for patents immediately. The apparatus they described in their application included the entire assembly of tanks, harness, regulator, double hoses, exhaust port, mouthpiece, and the reserve air valve. They called it
Scaphandre Autonome
, or Aqua-Lung. Gagnan promised Cousteau that he would ship him a working prototype by late May or early June.
Back on the Mediterranean, the Cousteaus decided to live communally with Dumas; Tailliez; Tailliez’s wife and newborn child; Claude Houlbreque, a former sailor on
Dupleix
who had been a cinematographer in civilian life; and Holbreque’s wife. Together, they rented Villa Barry, a sprawling turn-of-the-century home with a vegetable patch and a garden of pines, in the seaside village of Bandol, two miles from Sanary-sur-Mer. Wartime shortages and the other hardships of the occupation were growing steadily worse on the Riviera, but sharing food-gathering chores, meals, and companionship at Villa Barry made life a little more bearable. Cousteau and Tailliez had orders to report for muster in the morning at the navy base and to keep their eyes open for unusual activity among the occupation troops. Otherwise, their days were their own.
In early June 1943, Gagnan charged the three tanks of the improved Aqua-Lung with compressed air, crated it up, and put it on a southbound freight train as part of an Air Liquide shipment. The crate, marked as scientific equipment, arrived in Toulon ten days later and was transferred to a local train for the brief trip to Bandol. When a messenger brought the word of its arrival to Villa Barry late on a warm afternoon, Cousteau drove to the station alone to avoid attention from the Italian troops in the rail yard. He was back home at dusk, and unloaded the crate into the workroom at the back of the villa. After a dinner of beans, bread, butter, and agonizing anticipation, the household gathered to look at the invention that Cousteau had told them was the stuff of wild dreams.
For weeks, they had talked about it whenever the topic of conversation turned to diving. Cousteau had explained the simple mechanism of the regulator, the strength of the new steel tanks that allowed the air inside to be compressed to many atmospheres, and the intricacies of the intake and exhaust valves that would allow a diver to breathe easily in any attitude underwater. Together, they speculated that hunting fish and lobsters was going to be as easy as plucking vegetables from a stall table in the market. Most of all, Cousteau insisted, the Aqua-Lung meant the end of experiments with dangerous gases and holding their breath to shoot film underwater.
Early the following morning, before the sunbathers were out, the household trooped in pairs through the pine garden to a quiet inlet with a gently sloping beach out of sight of the sentries in the city center. Dumas carried the Aqua-Lung, but when they reached the water, he helped Cousteau into its harness and followed his instructions for double-checking that the air was turned on, the tanks were secure, and the two hoses were firmly attached to the regulator. As the best free diver in France, Dumas would stay on shore to be ready if something went wrong. Simone, in mask, fins, and snorkel, would swim out to watch over her husband from above and signal to Dumas if he got into trouble. Cousteau spat into his mask and rinsed it in the sea, a trick
Les Mousquemers
had learned for keeping it clear of mist. He fitted the mask tightly to his face, covering his nose and eyes to his brow, clamped the mouthpiece between his teeth, looked around for a moment at his friends, and waddled into the water. When Cousteau was chest deep he stopped and lay facedown to gauge his buoyancy with the tanks of air on his back. He and Gagnan had designed the Aqua-Lung to be slightly buoyant in seawater because adding weight was simple and subtracting it was impossible. Dumas waded out and cinched a belt around Cousteau with 5 pounds of lead, but it wasn’t enough. He added two pounds more, stepped back, and watched his friend sink slowly into the crystal clear water.
Cousteau breathed effortlessly, delighted by the distinctive whistle of air when he inhaled, the rippling of the bubbles over his head when he exhaled, and the snap of the regulator as it released each breath. He let his arms stream along his sides, fluttered his legs, and glided slowly over the sloping sand. The light danced down from the surface and flashed off the bottom until it gave way to a canyon full of dark green sea grass. Cousteau coasted to a stop. He exhaled until his lungs were nearly empty to find out what that did to his buoyancy. As expected, he sank slowly until he inhaled and began to rise toward the surface. Taking a single breath from his tanks turned him from a negatively buoyant object into a positive one. His lungs, he realized, were a sensitive ballast system. He steadied himself with his arms and swam smoothly down to about 30 feet. Cousteau felt a squeeze in his ears and sinuses, but no other effects of the pressure and no change that he could sense in the flow of air. The regulator was operating efficiently at 2 atmospheres of pressure.
Cousteau smiled into his mouthpiece as he reached the bottom of
the little canyon, greeted by a flashing school of bream, round and flat as saucers. He hung on to one of the rough, limestone walls and did a quick check of his equipment, patting his harness and weight belt, shrugging his shoulders to be sure the tanks were riding well, and adjusting his mouthpiece. Cousteau looked up at the surface, which was shining like a rippled mirror. Directly above him, Simone was a small, silhouetted doll against the dazzling sheet of light. The doll waved at him. He waved back.
Cousteau held on to his rocky anchor and studied his bubbles on their way to the surface. They swelled and flattened into mushroom shapes identical to jellyfish as they rose through the water. Since the bubbles flowed from the regulator behind his head, the water in front of him was clear, which gave him a moment of elation as he thought about diving with his camera.