Peterson Mark Twain

Pete Geek Hats Shipping Out! If you ordered, you should have received an invoice yesterday. See end of post for more information. Cousteau smoking a Peterson Mark Twain commemorative This morning I wanted to continue our survey of the great Thinking Men—and often men of action—who have taken up the Peterson System Pipe. This short piece first appeared in Of Pipes and Men, available only at Smokingpipes.com. JACQUES COUSTEAU (1910–97) was without a doubt the DaVinci of undersea exploration, forever changing the way we understand our world. A polymath adventurer, his list of accomplishments is staggering. As a graduate of the French Naval Academy, he envisioned a life in naval aviation, but a car wreck left him with two broken arms so he turned to underwater experiments instead. He did service as a naval intelligence officer during WWII and directed a commando raid against Italian espionage agents in France. A few years’ previously he had married the beautiful Simone Melchior, the first woman scuba diver and aquanaut, who would become known as “the Shepherdess” and de facto commander of his laboratory ship the Calypso in the post-war years. Couteau with the beautiful Simone and their family Cousteau directed all his energies throughout a long and extraordinary life to sharing the ocean’s unknown gifts. He pioneered divulgationism—the sharing of scientific findings with a popular audience—with books like The Silent World (1953), undersea films including the Palm d’Or-winning film by the same name (1956) and two television series, including the legendary Undersea World of Jacque Cousteau. Jacques and Simone on board the Calypso--notice the Peterson 124 Churchwarden! He co-developed the Aqua Lung and numerous underwater vehicles, including the famous “diving saucer” SP-350. He predicted the bio sonar of porpoises and other cetaceans and was well-known for his conservation efforts. His undersea archeological work included locating the wrecks of the Roman Mahdia, the HMHS Britannic (sunk by the Germans in 1916) and the 17th century French ship La Therese. Bill Murray as Steve Zissou with Cast members of the Wes Anderson film For the first-time contemporary explorer into the world of Cousteau, the best introduction I can think of is Wes Anderson’s brilliant comic homage The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004), one of Bill Murray’s finest hours and arguably one of Anderson’s finest films. As film critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky says, Anderson nails the “blasé quirkiness, boys-adventure camaraderie and useless technologies” that seem to make up so much of Cousteau’s filmography. From there, try the pipe smoker’s delight, World Without Sun (1964), available on YouTube. This is probably my favorite, because (like Vishnevetsky), I find myself “inexplicably endeared by the emphasis Cousteau puts on his team’s incessant smoking, including a shot where a diver enters the Conshelf II through its moon pool and is immediately handed a lit pipe.” Now this is the way to do it, fellas (from World Without Sun) For us as Thinking Men, of course, it’s the iconic photo of Cousteau with his Peterson Mark Twain that’s so indelible…