Piccard Leaving On World's Greatest Deep Sea Diving Expedition -- Professor Auguste Piccard is surrounded by reporters aboard the 4,000-ton steamer "Scaldis" here just before his departure with his friend and colleague, Professor Max Cosyns, for the Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of West Africa, with their bathyscaphe, for the greatest deep-sea diving expedition of modern times. The Piccard-Cosyns expedition is of much scientific importance - for the man who made the world gasp with astonishment 17 years ago by going up 10 miles in a balloon, will enter the steel bathyscaphe with his partner Cosyns - and descend 2? miles into the black depths of the ocean. September 13, 1948.