Calypso was originally a wooden-hulled minesweeper built for the British Royal Navy by the Ballard Marine Railway Company of Seattle, Washington, USA. She was a BYMS (British Yard Minesweeper) Mark 1 Class Motor Minesweeper, laid down on 12 August 1941 with the yard designation BYMS-26 and launched on 21 March 1942. She was commissioned into the Royal Navy in February 1943 as HMS J-826 and assigned to active service in the Mediterranean Sea, reclassified as BYMS-2026 in 1944, laid up at Malta and finally struck from the Naval Register in 1947.
After World War II she became a ferry between Malta and the island of Gozo, and was renamed after the nymph Calypso, whose island of Ogygia was mythically associated with Gozo.
The Irish millionaire and former MP Thomas Loel Guinness bought Calypso in 1950 and leased her to Cousteau for a symbolic one franc a year. Cousteau restructured and transformed her into an expedition vessel and support base for diving, filming and oceanographic research.
Calypso carried advanced equipment, including one- and two-man mini submarines developed by Cousteau, diving saucers, and underwater scooters. The ship was also fitted with a see-through "nose", an observation chamber three metres below the waterline, and was modified to house scientific equipment and a helicopter pad.
A barge accidentally rammed Calypso and sank her in the port of Singapore in 1996. She was raised, and towed to France. After a time in the port of Marseilles, she was towed to the basin of the Maritime Museum of La Rochelle in 1998, where she was intended to be an exhibit. A long series of legal and other delays kept any restoration work from beginning. At one time it was rumoured that Calypso had been sold to Carnival Cruise Lines for the symbolic sum of one Euro. Carnival stated that they intend to give the vessel a 1.3 million dollar restoration, and then likely moor her in the Bahamas as a museum ship. See this blank">cyber diver news page for details of this plan and developments. At the end of 2006, most of the equipment had been removed from her upper decks, and she was unprotected from the elements. It was unclear what would become of this historic vessel.
Francine Cousteau has managed to organise the ship's restoration.http://www.cousteau.org/calypso.html On October 11, 2007, the transfer of the ship to _Concarneau started, where she will be restored at the Piriou Shipyard and transformed into a permanent exhibit. .
Calypso or Kalypsó/Kālypsō (Greek: Καλυψώ, English translation: "I will conceal"), was a naiad and a daughter of Atlas who lived on the island of Ogygia in Greek mythology. Her name has also been listed among the list of the Nereids, which would make her a daughter of Nereus. The latter classification in accord with her islands' proximity and association with the sea, as opposed to inland water.
She delayed Odysseus on her island Ogygia (which is thought to be modern day Gozo) for seven years of sexual imprisonment, because she was in love with him. Athena asked Zeus to spare Odysseus of his torment on the island, as he wanted to go to his homeland. Zeus sent Hermes, the messenger of the Gods, to tell Calypso to release Odysseus. As Zeus was the Lord of the Gods, she was unable to refuse him, although she wished to. Odysseus eventually returned to his homeland of Ithaca, to be with his beloved wife Penelope who waited for him at home, even though Calypso had promised him immortality if he stayed.
According to Hesiod, Calypso bore Odysseus two children: Nausithous and Nausinous. The island of Gozo, part of the Maltese archipelago, has a long tradition that links it with the mythical figure of Calypso.
"Calypso" is a song written by John Denver in 1975 as a tribute to Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his research ship Calypso. The 45 rpm single (backed with the song "I'm Sorry") reached the number one position on the Billboard Hot 100 on the week ending September 27, 1975. The song was featured on Denver's 1975 album Windsong.
John Denver was a close friend of Jacques Yves Cousteau, and wrote another song about him but died shortly before the song was planned to be recorded. Calypso is the name of Jacques Cousteau's famous research boat that sailed around the world for oceanic conservation, but sunken shortly before Cousteau died.
A filk song exists in Star Trek fandom (and has been quoted in Chapter 8 of Diane Duane's Star Trek novel The Wounded Sky), based on John Denver's Calypso, but adapted to the voyages of the Enterprise: "To sail on a dream in the sun-fretted darkness, to soar through the starlight unfrightened alone. . . ."
