This Europe: Cousteau's ship may be laid to rest as sea-bed playground for divers

The ship Calypso, legendary vessel of Commander Jacques Cousteau, could end up in the place where the late French explorer and film-maker made his name: under the sea.

Calypso, once a British minesweeper, is rusting in the harbour at La Rochelle, in such a terrible state of repair that all plans to restore her have sunk below the waves. "Everything that is not broken is rotten and everything that is not rotten is broken," said Patrick Schnepp, director of the La Rochelle maritime museum, which originally planned to turn the ship into a Cousteau exhibition.

Mr Schnepp sees only one, fitting end for the small ship which served for nearly 50 years as the platform for Mr Cousteau's underwater exploration and film making. It should be scuttled off the Ile de Ré close to La Rochelle and turned into a paradise for fish and for deep-sea divers, he says. A replica could then be built – at a fraction of the cost of restoring the original – as the centrepiece of a Cousteau visitor centre in La Rochelle.

Like all previous discussions about the Calypso's future since the death of her master in June 1997, nothing is likely to be decided soon. Part of the problem is the vessel's appalling condition. The ship sank in Singapore harbour in 1996 and was brought back to Marseilles at great expense, in a floating dry-dock.

After Cousteau's death, the ship was left to rot until June 1998 when it was towed to La Rochelle on the Bay of Biscay. The vessel, once packed with sophisticated maritime exploration equipment, is so badly rusted and holed that it can only be kept afloat by permanent pumping operations.

The other problem is the ship's complex pattern of ownership. Any decision on the vessel's future has to be agreed by three parties.

Calypso belongs to a company controlled by Loel Guinness of the British-Irish brewing family, whose grandfather leased it to Cousteau for a symbolic one franc a year in 1950.

The "image rights" of the vessel belong, however, to Cousteau's widow, Francine. She in turn is in permanent dispute with Cousteau's sons.

In 1998, Francine Cousteau persuaded the mayor of La Rochelle, Michel Crépeau, to take the ship into his maritime museum. He announced that the ship would become the centrepiece of an underwater exploration exhibition. Mr Crépeau collapsed and died in the National Assembly a few days later. The new Mayor, after discovering the state of the Calypso, abandoned the exhibition plan.

Earlier this year, a solution appeared to have been found. The town of New Rochelle, on the coast of New York state – La Rochelle's twin town – was persuaded to take over the idea of creating a Cousteau underwater theme park. Calypso would sail, or be towed, across the Atlantic to America. But officials from New Rochelle visited the Calypso last month and immediately abandoned the scheme. The ship was untowable, they concluded.

Mr Schnepp suggests that sinking the ship would not be an unreasonable end to the saga.