soucoupe

plural soucoupes

1. A type of small submarine designed to hold two people.

   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.

   1984, Zdeněk Kukal, Atlantis in the Light of Modern Research, Elsevier Science Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 48

   4 more examples

   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.”

   1964, Westways, volume 56, Automobile Club of Southern California, page 21, column 2

   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.

   1965, Oceanus, volume 12, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

   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.

   1986, Harold E. Edgerton, Sonar Images, Prentice-Hall, →ISBN, page 54

   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).

   1990, Submersible Vehicle Systems Design, Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, →ISBN, page 54, column 2