Finding The Calypso

An old black-and-white photograph of my father's fishing boat

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently began taking creative writing classes. One of our first exercises was deceptively simple: choose a random photograph and write whatever it inspired. No research. No overthinking. Just let the image guide you.

For the exercise, I chose an old black-and-white photograph of my father’s small fishing boat. I’ve only ever seen the picture; the boat itself was lost before I was born. My father said the boat sank during a bad storm in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. It had been moored to a pier, and if I remember correctly, he forgot to clear the clogged scuppers. The storm intensified, rainwater collected, and the boat slipped beneath the surface. He couldn’t afford to raise her.

My father was a skilled and passionate fisherman, but owning a boat was different from fishing off one. He bought it impulsively from a friend—cheap, enthusiastic, and short on experience.

The Cousteau Society logo, depicting the nymph Calypso with a dolphin

In my story, I named the boat The Calypso. I never knew its real name. But choosing that name sent me off on an unexpected tangent. “Calypso” immediately brought to mind one of my childhood heroes, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and his famous research vessel. Cousteau’s Calypso, in turn, was named after the sea nymph in Homer’s Odyssey, who detained Odysseus on her island, Ogygia.

That single invented name pulled a thread that unraveled an entire tapestry of memory.

Illustration from Jules Verne's Twenty
Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870):
Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnax
view Colapesce from the Nautilus 

A precocious and imaginative child, my interests rarely stayed in neat categories. Oceanography, art, mythology, fantasy, and science fiction blended seamlessly in my mind. I devoured Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Captain Nemo and the Nautilus felt as real to me as any historical figure. I was equally fascinated by Scylla and Charybdis, by Galatea and Pygmalion, by nymphs and nereids, by Atlantis rising and sinking in equal measure.

Even folklore crept in—tales like Colapesce, the boy who could live beneath the sea, holding up Sicily on his shoulders. Later, films like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou felt less like parody and more like a knowing wink to that same childhood wonder.

Looking back, I realize those interests weren’t separate at all. They were syncretic, overlapping currents feeding the same internal ocean. The photograph of my father’s lost boat became a portal. It wasn’t just a writing prompt; it was a convergence point between experience and imagination.

And with it, the desire to make things again.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, March 23rd, Feast of San Giuseppe Oriol