André Delvaux

The Grand Saint Antoine was the Navire which brought the Peste to Marseilles in 1720.

It was a “flute”, one three masts square, of Dutch manufacture.

  • It left Marseilles the July 22nd 1719 for the Syria. However, at this time, the plague prevailed in this country. The cargo of a value of 100.000 ecu S (the average monthly salary of a workman was of 1 ecu) out of invaluable fabrics carried in them the Bactérie of the plague Yersinia pestis .

  • the April 3rd 1720, a Turkish passenger embarked with Tripoli dies two days afterwards.
  • On the way of the return, the sailing loses successively seven Matelot S and the surgeon of edge.
  • an eighth sailor falls ill little before the arrival with Leghorn, in Italy.

The negligence of the Italian Médecin S which let set out again the ship cumulated with the haste of the captain Jean-Baptiste Chataud to deliver before the beginning of the Foire of Beaucaire does not arrange anything with the business: it moors its sailing ship with the Brusc, close to Marseilles, and discreetly makes prevent the Armateur S of the ship.

The owners then make play their relations and utilize the alderman S of Marseilles to avoid a Forty. Everyone considered that the plague was “a history of passed” and the business was taken with detachment: the Marseilles authorities simply required of the captain to set out again with Leghorn to seek a “clear Patente”, certificate attesting that all goes well on board.

The authorities of Leghorn, which do not want to be encumbered ship, do not make difficulties to issue the aforementioned certificate.

Thus the Grand Saint Antoine arrived to Marseilles the May 25th. It wet with Pomègues until the June 4th; it was then authorized to approach the infirmaries of Arenc to unload there momentary and goods for small forty, then it was finally placed in quarantine with the Île Earthenware jar the June 27th.

The Régent Philippe of Orleans ordered the July 28th to make burn the ship and its cargo but this order was carried out only the 25 and September 26th 1720.

Its calcined wreck was found in 1978 by an association of deep-sea diving, I' A.R.H.A. the re-installed archaeological vestiges of the ship are exposed today to the museum of the Hôpital Caroline on the Île of Ratonneau.

See too

  • Plague of Marseilles (1720)
  • Patrick Sheep, the curse of the Large-Saint-Antoine , Editions Another Time, 2001, ISBN 2845211090
  • Jean-Jacques Antier, Autant brings from there the sea , Presses of the city, Paris, 1993. ISBN 2-258-03561-9
  • Photographs of the ship
  • the Large-Saint-Antoine and propagation of the plague in Marseilles in 1720

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