Calypso (ship)
The research vessel Calypso of Captain Cousteau arriving in Montreal on 30 August 1980.
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| History | |
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 United Kingdom
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| Class and type: |
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| Name: | HMS J-826 |
| Builder: | Ballard Marine Railway Company, Seattle, Washington, United States |
| Laid down: | 12 August 1941 |
| Launched: | 21 March 1942 |
| Commissioned: | February 1943 |
| Recommissioned: | BYMS-2026 (1944) |
| Decommissioned: | 1946 |
| Renamed: | Calypso G (1949) |
 France
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| Owner: | Thomas Guinness |
| Operator: | Compagnie Océanographique Française, Nice |
| Renamed: | Calypso (1950) |
| Reclassified: | Research vessel |
| Refit: | For Cousteau (1951) |
| Fate: | Sunk and raised (1996) |
| Status: | Being refurbished under the direction of the Cousteau Society |
| General characteristics | |
| Tonnage: | 294 GRT |
| Displacement: | 360 tons |
| Length: | 139 ft (42 m) (43 meters according to another source) |
| Beam: | 25 ft (7.6 m) |
| Draft: | 10 ft (3.0 m) |
| Decks: | Three |
| Installed power: | 2 × 580 hp (430 kW) 8-cylinder General Motors diesel engines |
| Propulsion: | twin screw |
| Speed: | 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
| Crew: | 27 in Captain's Quarters, Six Staterooms & Crew Quarters |
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RV Calypso is a former British Royal Navy minesweeper converted into a research vessel for the oceanographic researcher Jacques-Yves Cousteau, equipped with a mobile laboratory for underwater field research. It was severely damaged in 1996, and was supposed to undergo a complete refurbishment in 2009-2011. The ship is named after the Greek mythological figure Calypso.
Calypso was originally a minesweeper built by the Ballard Marine Railway Company of Seattle, Washington, USA for the United States Navy for loan to the British Royal Navy under lend-lease. A wooden-hulled vessel, she is built of Oregon pine.
She was a BYMS (British Yard Minesweeper) Mark 1 Class Motor Minesweeper, laid down on 12 August 1941 with 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, based in Malta, and was reclassified as BYMS-2026 in 1944. Following the end of World War II, she was decommissioned in July 1946 and laid up at Malta. On 1 August 1947 she was formally handed back to the US Navy and then struck from the US Naval Register, remaining in lay-up.
In May 1949 she was purchased by Joseph Gasan of Malta, who had secured the mail contract on the ferry route between Marfa, in the north of Malta, and Mġarr, Gozo in 1947. She was converted to a ferry and renamed Calypso G after the nymph Calypso, whose island of Ogygia was mythically associated with Gozo, entering service in March 1950. After only four months on the route, Gasan received an attractive offer and sold her.
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Wikipedia