shipstamps.co.uk

Class and type: British Yard Minesweeper
Mark 1 Class Motor Minesweeper
Name: HMS J-826
Builder: Ballard Marine Railway Company, Seattle, Washington, USA
Laid down: 12 August 1941
Launched: 21 March 1942
Commissioned: February 1943
Recommissioned: BYMS-2026 (1944)
Decommissioned: 1947
Renamed: Calypso (1947)
Reclassified: Research vessel
Refit: for Cousteau (1950)
Fate: sunk and raised (1996)
Status: Being refurbished under the direction of the Cousteau Society

Displacement: 360 tons
Length: 139 feet (42 m)
Beam: 25 feet (7.6 m)
Draft: 10 feet (3.0 m)
Decks: Three
Installed power: 2× 580 hp (430 kW) diesel engines
Speed: 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Crew: 27 in Captain's Quarters, Six Staterooms & Crew Quarters
Notes: Photo & Science Labs
Underwater observation chamber
Helicopter landing pad
Yumbo 3-ton hydraulic crane
Minisub storage hold


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 made from Oregon pine.

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.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau's Calypso (1950–1997)

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 meters below the waterline, and was modified to house scientific equipment and a helicopter pad.

Calypso sinking (1996) & death of Cousteau (1997)

On 8 January 1996, a barge accidentally rammed Calypso and sank her in the port of Singapore. On 16 January, she was raised by a 230-foot crane, patched and pumped dry before being put in shipyard.

The next year, Jacques-Yves Cousteau died on 25 June 1997.

Calypso was later towed to Marseilles, France, "where it lay neglected for two years." Thereafter 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. Francine Cousteau managed to organize the ship's restoration. A dispute arose between Francine Cousteau, the widow of Jacques Cousteau, and Loel Guinness, grandson of the original purchaser.

When this dispute was discovered by the sponsoring Mayor of La Rochelle, it added to the air of uncertainty and hesitancy over funding the restoration. When the mayor subsequently died, the city of La Rochelle withdrew as a source of funding the restoration. Calypso remained in disrepair.

Various web sites.

Cambodia SG1256, Hungary SG3263, Korea (N) SG1966, Mongolia SG1317, Rumania SG5007.

The fate of the CALYPSO,the boat in which the celebrated French marine explorer Jacques Cousteau sailed the world, is uncertain as the owners have been ordered by court to remove it today from the shipyard where it has been docked for repairs for the last eight years.
The boat was taken in 2007 to the Piriou Shipyard, in Concarneau in Brittany, to be renovated and transformed into a quayside museum, at the cost of around a million euros.
But work stopped in 2009 following a disagreement between the shipyard and the Equipe Cousteau, whose president is Francine Cousteau, second wife of Jacques.
The Equipe Cousteau accused the shipyard of making mistakes, while the shipyard maintains that the owners changed their minds about the future use of the CALYPSO and wanted it to be made seaworthy again. That would have necessitated a much more complicated renovation and added 8 million euros to the cost.
A legal battle ensued and on 9 December the Equipe Cousteau was told to have the boat removed from the shipyard by 12 March, and to pay Piriou the 273,000-euro cost of repairs already undertaken, as well as compensation for the time it remained in dock.
Shipyard boss Pascal Piriou recently told journalists he intended to get a court order allowing him to sell the boat if it was not removed from the shipyard by 12 March (2015).
“It must be possible to find wealthy people who would be interested in putting money into this project”, he said of the renovation costs, adding “it’s a huge amount of work, but it could be done.”
Pirou said he will make a statement on the CALYPSO on Friday.
The Equipe Cousteau website says the organisation hopes to find a “happy outcome to this episode, which it will make known as soon as possible.”
Yann Mauffret, boss of the nearby Guip shipyard in Brest, says he has been contacted by the Equipe Cousteau about the CALYPSO.
Pascale Bladier-Chassaigne of the Fondation du Patrimoine Maritime et Fluvial, which deals with matters concerning France’s maritime heritage, hopes that there will be a buyer for the CALYPSO.
“It would be a real shame not to find someone to take this on”, she said, adding that there was a real need to develop the idea of involving philanthropists or business sponsors for such projects.
The CALYPSO was built as a minesweeper in 1942 in the United States, before being bought by Cousteau.
In 1950 he began sailing the world’s oceans, making extraordinary documentaries and highlighting the damage caused by humans to the sea. He denounced what he called the “shameful rape of the seas, born of a mistaken idea of progress.”
He continued for 40 years, though the CALYPSO was shipwrecked off the coast of Singapore in January 1996, the year before he died.
http://www.english.rfi.fr/visiting-fran ... ritage-row.

Wikipedia gives: The Cousteau Society announced in 2016 that a solution had been found to allow the ship to return to service with new engines. In 2017 a fire damaged new wooden parts of the Calypso at a shipyard near Istanbul, Turkey, where her refitting had been in progress .

Congo (Kinshasa) 2013 650 FC
Mali 1998 460F sg?, scott988a
Romania 2010
Guinea 2007 5000 fg
Hungary 1979 3fo sg3263, scott2599
North Korea 1980 40ch sgN1963, scott1933
had 2014 150 Fr. sg?, scott?
Niger 1998 500F sgMS?, scott?
Rumania 2010 postcard
Djibouti 2020 250Fd sg?, Scott 2072, and 1000 Fd sgms?, Scott 2074a.
Tristan da Cunha 2022 £1.60 sg?, Scott? (More on this issue is given at: viewtopic.php?t=18198

Calypso (Cousteau)

Mongolia 1980, S.G.?, Scott: 1139.

Sierra Leone 2015 3500 Le sgMS ?, scott? (the diving saucer on the top stamp is the DENISE)
Niger 2015 200f sg?, scott? (the submersible is the ANOREP 1 built in 1966) and 700 f, sg?, scott? (in the margine again the ANOREP 1.)

The Cousteau Society, custodian of oceanographer Jacques Cousteau's legacy and the owner of the CALYPSO, his famous research vessel, have announced that they have secured the means to restore her and take her back out to sea.The wooden-hulled, 300 grt CALYPSO started life as a minesweeper. Her keel was laid in Seattle, Washington at the start of World War II, and she was provided to the British Royal Navy for operations in the Mediterranean. She was decommissioned at the end of the war and served briefly as a mail boat before purchase and transfer to Cousteau. Cousteau refitted the boat for oceanographic research and brought marine science to popular awareness with his long- running television series The Undersea World of Jaques Cousteau and the award-winning films The Silent World and World Without Sun. But in 1996 – as Cousteau was looking to replace her with a new, modern and efficient Calypso II – the Calypso was rammed by a barge at harbor in Singapore and sank. She was raised a week later, patched and transported to La Rochelle, France, where she remained in the custody of the city's maritime museum for years. Museum director Patrick Schnepp told the Guardian in 2003 that the Calypso was in poor condition, and that following years of a complex custody battle between her owners and Cousteau's family he would like to see her scuttled. "Everything that's not broken is rotten, and everything that's not rotten is broken," he said.She was transferred to the Concarneau shipyard in Britanny in 2007 for renovation into a stationary floating museum. But further disagreement with her owners on the scope of her refurbishment led to a work stoppage in 2009, and in 2014 the yard's owners sought a court order for her removal, plus payment of 300,000 euros for storage fees and work completed.The disagreement now appears to be resolved. Cousteau Society says that it has “[gathered] a group of generous and highly motivated international sponsors, whose objectives are compatible with those of the Cousteau Society. At the end of the first trimester of 2016 Calypso will be able to leave the Concarneau’s shipyard, to begin its new life . . . Restored, she will sail again as an Ambassador for the Seas and Oceans, as Captain Cousteau wished."Captain Patrice Quesnel, the master of the Society's expedition vessel ALCYONE and the designated manager for the Calypso's release, has recently been holding conversations with vendors and authorities in Britanny. He suggests that Volvo will be providing her new engines and the Guip shipyard in Brest is in talks related to her refurbishment. “I am . . . certain that the enthusiasm sparked by the fantastic news of the ship’s rebirth will help him to find all the necessary support from those he will be working with,” said Society president Francine Cousteau.
Source: MAREX

April 2016
CMA CGM's freight forwarding arm, CMA CGM LOG, has coordinated the transport of Jacques Cousteau's legendary oceanographic ship CALYPSO from France to Turkey. In preparation for the move, CMA CGM organised the production of a bespoke metal structure on which to place the delicate cargo for its shipment across the Mediterranean. CMA CGM LOG explained that the 110-tonne vessel had to be loaded on a ship large enough to include two cranes powerful enough to lift the unit, but small enough to berth in the French port of Concarneau.Therefore, the company's specialised transport team chartered the multipurpose ship ABIS DUSAVIK from Ocean 7 Projects - agent of MIT Chartering in Versailles - to deliver the 40 m long vessel to Izmit in Turkey, where it will be renovated. Alongside the chartering of the vessel, CMA CGM LOG organised the procurement of five containers to transport accessories, stuffing and handling services at Concarneau port, and Customs clearance formalities. CALYPSO sailed the world's oceans undertaking scientific explorations from 1951 to 1996, before being involved in a mooring accident and sinking. Now raised from the sea, the ship will be renovated and returned to its scientific duties. Source : heavylift pfi

The Calypso

Given the name of the sea nymph from Greek mythology, the Calypso is the famous vessel used by Commander Cousteau for his scientific explorations between 1951 and 1996. Twenty years after it was sunk in Singapore, the vessel left Concarneau in March 2016 to be restored in Turkey.

Monaco 2017 1.70E sg?, scott?
Djibouti 2017 950fm sgMS ?, scott?