It was 1946; the first Cousteau regulator tried to make himself known by sea sport lovers, and in Cannes, the French Riviera, a club dedicated to scuba diving was born. It was founded by Henry Broussard naming it “Alpin Sous-marin Club”, ancestor of Club Mediterranée. In September of the same year, its first official bulletin came out (other height issues will follow until 1956), and that name immediately suggested that the club had been founded by mountaineers who also fell in love with the underwater world. But it wasn't like that.
The journalist-scientist Pierre de Latil wrote:
Ce nom est tout un programme. A première vue, la juxtaposition de
ces deux épithètes « alpin » et « sous-marin » est fort surprenante.
Mais, si l'on y réfléchit, on comprend fort bien ce qu'ont voulu
exprimer ainsi ses créateurs : le sport nouveau est un alpinisme à
l'envers, c'est une aventure comme l'aventure alpine. Et ces zones
ocheuses dans la mer, ces falaises, ces grottes ne sont-elles pas les
derniers contreforts des Alpes, les véritables Alpes «Maritimes»?
(Translation: This name is quite a program. At first glance, the juxtaposition of these two epithets "alpine" and "submarine" is very surprising. But, if we think about it, we understand very well what they wanted thus express its creators: the new sport is mountaineering upside down, it's an adventure like the alpine adventure. And these rocky areas in the sea, aren't these cliffs, these caves the the last foothills of the Alps, the real “Maritime” Alps?)
On the other end, Broussard himself, while working underwater in these rocky walls together with the geologist Earl Murray, compared his dives to climbs of alpine walls performed with the lightness of a fly.
All this happened in 1946, historic year for sport diving considered the time of its real beginning, remembered from the cover page of the "L'Aventure sous-marine" magazine in summer 1966.
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