Soucoupe

Dr. Francis P. Shepard, Professor of Submarine Geology, who has been studying the canyons from the surface for thirty years, remarked: “I learned more in my three dives in the soucoupe.”

In the meantime suspended underwater cameras and deep submersibles, both the bathyscaphs ‘Trieste’ and ‘Archimede’ and the soucoupe of Cousteau have been employed extensively in attempts to identify various scattering layers.

The soucoupes are easily manageable and movable. Their crews can stop them anywhere and even collect samples from the sea floor. The soucoupe uses two water jets to move horizontally.

An excellent TV movie was made, including a visit to the wreck in his underwater soucoupe. A passenger in the soucoupe was Sheila MacBeth Mitchell of Edinburgh, Scotland, who was an 18-year-old nurse aboard the Britannic at the time of its sinking.

The 1950’s also saw the development of underwater systems by Jacques-Yves Cousteau, including his soucoupe (diving saucer), Denice,^([sic]) which was one of the first shallow-diving submersibles to be used in the United States during the mid-1960’s (Fig. 9). The soucoupe could take two people to depths of 300 m (1000 ft).