On the occasion of Christmas is my pleasure to post an article of our friend Niccolò Genovese, who visited the famous manger in Manarola, one of Cinque Terre in province of La Spezia. The famous manger bright, the world's largest, is made by Mr. Mario Andreoli, a fan who wanted to make the hills of Manarola precisely this beautiful installation. Here are some pictures made by Niccolò with some of the most picturesque of the crib. Thanks to Niccolò for the photos and the news that I hope, for Christmas, make pleasure to many.
All the best wishes for happy holidays from HMS with the famous wine "Sciacchetrà" of Cinque Terre.
Manarola Church

Sunset in Manarola

A view of the manger







Our friend Niccolò Genovese and Mr. Mario Andreoli in his wine cellar

BEST WISHES!

Dear friends I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2010 with the hope that many will help "The Historical Maritime Society" with its mission to preserve the history and traditions of maritime and diving and to protect the water environment.
Each of you in your home town and in his own state can help achieve this goal with a little work: to signals an important piece of the heritage of maritime and diving, collecting news, collecting information about objects and things that are being lost because of time and neglect of men.
Each piece of the history and traditions of the maritime and diving must be preserved to be sent to those who come after us.
Join "The Historical Maritime Society" this will be important to protect the memory of men and things which on the sea have lived, worked, traveled transmitting knowledge and advancing our civilization.
BEST WISHES!!

Gianfranco VECCHIO
HMS Chairman

HELP US! JOIN TO THE HISTORICAL MARITIME SOCIETY

The maritime and underwater history are essential for the recognition of the evolution of our civilization. Many people think that the sea has always divided people; many others and me think instead that it was for centuries a vehicle of meeting: on the routes traveled by thousands of ships or through connections for communications and transmission of electricity on backdrop, this great element has united the different peoples who have lived on its shores and live. Above and below the surface, the sea was and is today the greatest means of imparting and sharing not only commercial but also and above all cultural. Seaside has grown our civilization through the sea and the sea that our peoples have met, but also clashed in epic battles over the centuries, filled with the blood of losers and winners. The maritime and underwater history are primary they should preserve and pass on to all those who come after us. A story of ships, boats, submarines, port facilities, lighthouses, maritime arsenals. A history full of traditions that were handed down from father to son and can not be left to oblivion of time. The Historical Maritime Society wants to be a landmark and meeting place between those who are passionate about the history and traditions of maritime and diving, all those who believe it is necessary and proper to preserve this great heritage to be passed on to those who come after us. Our Association wants to aggregate all these people and it wants to create a network among the many organizations that, like herself, seek to achieve this great goal.
Each piece ships, boats, boat ride, every architectural element that is linked to the story that was lived by the sea, and every single archaeological find, every diving equipment, the story of every man and the sea has had should be preserved and enhanced. We have an obligation also to protect the sea where this history and these traditions were experienced, the sea, today, is increasingly in danger because of our hands and we must protect in order for it to continue to ensure that our civilization a long and constructive progress.
Join "The Historical Maritime Society is easy to contact info@historicalmaritimesociety.org. We need many who, together with us, wants to preserve the history and traditions of maritime and diving and protect the aquatic environment.

The greatest sea lover

My passion for the sea comes probably from the fact that we are born in front, by the fact that the sea I took my father when I was too young to suffer and, despite this, the love I feel for this element is enormous.
The great passion for sailing and diving brought me to the story that these two elements guard and it seemed only right to do homage to a man who has lived in the sea and has been able to grasp and convey the essence.
A small tribute to a great man, a great explorer, a great lover of the sea.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau (11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the aqua-lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française. He was commonly known as "le Commandant Cousteau" or "Captain Cousteau".
Cousteau was born on 11 June 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde, to Daniel and Élisabeth Cousteau. He had one brother, Pierre-Antoine. Cousteau completed his preparatory studies at the prestigious College Stanislas in Paris. In 1930 he entered the Ecole Navale and graduated as a gunnery officer. After an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau indulged his interest in the sea.
In Toulon, where he was serving on the Condorcet, Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles, predecessors of modern diving masks. He later worked his way up the ranks as he became more famous and more useful to the navy. Cousteau also belonged to the information service of the French Navy, and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan (1935–1938) and in the USSR (1939).
On 12 July 1937 he married Simone Melchior, with whom he had two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940-1979). His sons took part in the adventure of the Calypso. In 1991, one year after his wife Simone's death from cancer, he married Francine Triplet. They already had a daughter Diane Cousteau (born 1980) and a son Pierre-Yves Cousteau (born 1982), born during Cousteau's marriage to his first wife. Pierre-Yves is currently in training to become a professional diving instructor, completing his divemaster certification in Santorini, Greece in 2009.
The years of the Second World War were decisive for the history of diving. After the armistice of 1940, the family of Simone and Jacques-Yves Cousteau took refuge in Megève, where he became a friend of the Ichac family who also lived there. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared the same will to reveal to general public unknown and inaccessible places: for Cousteau the underwater world and for Ichac the high mountains. The two neighbors took the first ex-aequo prize of the Congress of Documentary Film in 1943, for the first French underwater film:Par dix-huit mètres de fond (18 meters deep), made without breathing apparatus the previous year in Embiez (Var) with Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, without forgetting the paramount part played, as originator of the depth-pressure-proof camera case, by the mechanical engineer Léon Vèche (engineer of Arts and Métiers and the Naval College).
In 1943, they made the film Épaves (Shipwrecks): for this occasion, they used the aqua-lung, which continued the line of some inventions of the 19th century (Rouquayrol's and Denayrouze's Aerophore) and of the early 20th century (Le Prieur). When making Épaves, Cousteau could not find the necessary blank reels of movie film, but had to buy hundreds of small still camera film reels the same width, intended for a make of child's camera, and cemented them together to make long reels.
Having kept bonds with the English speakers (he spent part of his childhood in the United States and usually spoke English) and with French soldiers in North Africa (under Admiral Lemonnier), Jacques-Yves Cousteau (whose villa "Baobab" at Sanary (Var) was opposite Admiral Darlan's villa "Reine"), helped the French Navy to join again with the Allies; he assembled a commando operation against the Italian espionage services in France, and received several military decorations for his deeds. At that time, he kept his distance from his brother Pierre-Antoine, a "pen anti-semite", who wrote the collaborationist newspaper Je suis partout (I am everywhere), and was condemned to die in 1946. However this was later commuted to a life sentence, and Pierre-Antoine was released in 1954.
During the 1940s Cousteau is credited with improving the aqua-lung design which gave birth to the open-circuit scuba technology used today. According to his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure (1953), Cousteau started snorkel diving with a mask, snorkel, and fins with Frédéric Dumas and Philippe Tailliez. In 1943, he tried out the first prototype aqua-lung — designed by Cousteau and Emile Gagnan — which made lengthy underwater exploration possible for the first time.
In 1946, Cousteau and Tailliez showed the film "Épaves" to Admiral Lemonnier, and the admiral gave them the responsibility of setting up the Groupement de Recherches Sous-marines (GRS) (Underwater Research Group) of the French Navy in Toulon. A little later it became the GERS (Groupe d'Études et de Recherches Sous-Marines, = Underwater Studies and Research Group), then the COMISMER ("COMmandement des Interventions Sous la MER", = "Undersea Interventions Command"), and finally more recently the CEPHISMER.
In 1948, between missions of mine clearance, underwater exploration and technological and physiological tests, Cousteau undertook a first campaign in the Mediterranean on board the sloop Élie Monnier of Group of Study and Underwater Research (GERS) of the National Navy, with Philippe Tailliez, Frédéric Dumas, Jean Alinat and the scenario writer Marcel Ichac. The small team also undertook the exploration of the Roman wreck of Mahdia (Tunisia). It was the first underwater archaeology operation using autonomous diving, opening the way for scientific underwater archaeology. Cousteau and Marcel Ichac brought back from there the Carnets diving film (presented and preceded with the Cannes Film Festival 1951).
Cousteau and Élie Monnier then took part in the rescue of Professor Jacques Piccard's bathyscaphe, the FNRS-2, during the 1949 expedition to Dakar. Thanks to this rescue, the French Navy was able to reuse the sphere of the bathyscaphe to construct the FNRS-3.
The adventures of this period are told in the 2 books The Silent World (1953) by Cousteau and Plongées Sans Câble by Philippe Tailliez.
In 1949, Cousteau left the French Navy.
In 1950 he founded the French Oceanographic Campaigns (FOC), and leased a ship called Calypso
Thomas Loel Guinness for a symbolic one franc a year. Cousteau refitted the Calypso as a mobile laboratory for field research and as his principal vessel for diving and filming. He also carried out underwater archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean, in particular at Grand-Congloué (1952).
With the publication of his first book in 1953, The Silent World, he correctly predicted the existence of the echolocation abilities of porpoises. He reported that his research vessel, the Élie Monier, was heading to the Straits of Gibraltar and noticed a group of porpoises following them. Cousteau changed course a few degrees off the optimal course to the center of the strait, and the porpoises followed for a few minutes, then diverged toward mid-channel again. It was evident that they knew where the optimal course lay, even if the humans did not. Cousteau concluded that the cetaceans had something like sonar, which was a relatively new feature on submarines.
Cousteau won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956 for The Silent World co-produced with Louis Malle. With the assistance of Jean Mollard, he made a "diving saucer" SP-350, an experimental underwater vehicle which could reach a depth of 350 meters. The successful experiment was quickly repeated in 1965 with two vehicles which reached 500 meters.
In 1957, he was elected as director of the Oceanographical Museum of Monaco. He directed Précontinent, about the experiments of diving in saturation (long-duration immersion, houses under the sea), and was admitted to the United States National Academy of Sciences.
In October 1960, a large amount of radioactive waste was going to be discarded in the Mediterranean Sea by the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA). The CEA argued that the dumps were experimental in nature, and that French oceanographers such as Vsevelod Romanovsky had recommended it. Romanovsky and other French scientists, including Louis Fage and Jacques Cousteau, repudiated the claim, saying that Romanovsky had in mind a much smaller amount. The CEA claimed that there was little circulation (and hence little need for concern) at the dump site between Nice and Corsica, but French public opinion sided with the oceanographers rather than with the CEA atomic energy scientists. The CEA chief, Francis Perrin, decided to postpone the dump.[5] Cousteau organized a publicity campaign which in less than two weeks gained wide popular support. The train carrying the waste was stopped by women and children sitting on the railway tracks, and it was sent back to its origin.
A meeting with American television companies (ABC, Métromédia, NBC) created the series The Underwater Odyssey of Commander Cousteau, with the character of the commander in the red bonnet inherited from standard diving dress) intended to give the films a "personalized adventure" style.
In 1973, along with his two sons and Frederick Hyman, he created the Cousteau Society for the Protection of Ocean Life, Frederick Hyman being its first President; it now has more than 300,000 members.
Three years after the volcano's last eruption, on December 19, 1973, the Cousteau team was filming on Deception Island, Antarctica when Michel Laval, Calypso's second in command, was struck and killed by a propeller of the helicopter that was ferrying between Calypso and the island.
In 1976 Cousteau uncovered the wreck of HMHS Britannic.
In 1977, together with Peter Scott, he received the UN International Environment prize.
On 28 June 1979, while the Calypso was on an expedition to Portugal, his second son, Philippe, his preferred and designated successor and with whom he had co-produced all his films since 1969, died in a PBY Catalina flying boat crash in the Tagus river near Lisbon. Cousteau was deeply affected. He called his then eldest son, the architect Jean-Michel Cousteau, to his side. This collaboration lasted 14 years.
In 1980, Cousteau traveled to Canada to make two films on the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, Cries from the Deep and St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea.
In 1985, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.
On 24 November 1988, he was elected to the French Academy, chair 17, succeeding Jean Delay. His official reception under the Cupola took place on 22 June 1989, the response to his speech of reception being given by Bertrand Poirot-Delpech. After his death, he was replaced under the Cupola by Érik Orsenna on 28 May 1998.
In June 1990, the composer Jean Michel Jarre paid homage to the commander by entitling his new album Waiting for Cousteau. He also composed the music for Cousteau's documentary "Palawan, the last refuge".
On 2 December 1990, his wife Simone Cousteau died of cancer.
In June 1991, in Paris, Jacques-Yves Cousteau remarried, to Francine Triplet, with whom he had (before this marriage) two children, Diane and Pierre-Yves. Francine Cousteau currently continues her husband's work as the head of the Cousteau Foundation and Cousteau Society. From that point, the relations between Jacques-Yves and his elder son worsened.
In November 1991, Cousteau gave an interview to the UNESCO courier, in which he stated that he was in favour of human population control and population decrease. The full article text can be found online.
In 1992, he was invited to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations' International Conference on Environment and Development, and then he became a regular consultant for the UN and the World Bank.
In 1996, he sued his son who wished to open a holiday center named "Cousteau" in the Fiji Islands.
On 11 January 1996 Calypso was rammed and sunk in Singapore harbor by a barge. The Calypso was refloated and towed home to France.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau died on 25 June 1997 in Paris, aged 87. He was buried in the family vault at Saint-André-de-Cubzac in France. An homage was paid to him by the city by the inauguration of a "rue du Commandant Cousteau", a street which runs out to his native house, where a commemorative plaque was affixed.
During his lifetime, Jacques-Yves Cousteau received these distinctions:
 Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur
 Grand-Croix de l'Ordre national du Mérite
 Croix de guerre 1939–1945
 Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite Maritime
 Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
 Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia.

Jaques-Yves Cousteau superimposed the geonymic vision of the sea and Earth elaborated in the 1930s by Jacques Grob and Philippe Tailliez with a conqueror's mentality. A cultivated explorer in the spirit of Jules Vernes, he fed the public's taste for wonder. "One protects what one likes.", Cousteau repeated, "and one likes what enchanted us." As Cousteau's oceanographic and cinematographic campaigns took place over more than 50 years (1945–1997), he was able to measure the degradation of the in-situ mediums: the conqueror-explorer, sure of his technical prowess and finding it natural to drive out marine animals gradually morphed into an ardent conservationist who leveraged his worldwide notoriety to promote the idea of the Earth as a limited and fragile spaceship that needed to be preserved. He was the only non-politician to take part in the 1992 Rio Summit.
After 1975, he briefly considered founding worldwide 'Cousteau Clubs' for young people, but eventually abandoned this idea in its original form (which would have involved significant work with few direct rewards) and instead published a few fanzines (Calypso Log, Le Dauphin) and made a documentary film about a trip to the Antarctic with children. Towards the end of his life, he became pessimistic and even misanthropic: An ideal planet, he confided to Yves Paccalet, would be one in which humanity is limited to 100,000 people who are both educated and respectful of nature.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau's star power rested not only on his personal image, but on the image of a united team striving towards a common goal. Late in his life, however, highly-publicized intra-family conflicts, internal divisions, and consequent lawsuits chipped away at this image, and that of his successors: son Jean-Michel and grandson Fabien on one side, and the Cousteau Team with his third wife Francine and their children of the other, do not have the public standing of the 20th century Cousteau Team.
On the other hand, the kind of underwater and adventure film that Jacques-Yves Cousteau launched has never been more popular: each year, hundreds of increasingly beautiful documentaries are produced, thanks to improvement of photographic techniques. The idea of a fragile planet and sea has not only made its way into the public consciousness, but also affects the political class who were slower to come to environmental awareness.

Thanks to Wikipedia for historical notes.