See also: Jellyfish

the Jellyfish is a French frigate which made Naufrage the July 2nd 1816 on the Banc of Arguin, off the coasts of Mauritania, making 160 died, of which 137 perished abandoned on a raft. On the 15 survivors of this one, recovered after 13 days, 5 died before their transfer to Saint-Louis of the Senegal.

The shipwreck of the Jellyfish

In 1816, France recovers its Comptoir S in Senegal which had been taken to him by the British during the wars of the Empire. A naval division of four buildings (whose the Jellyfish and the Echo ) is sent over there to convey the colonists, civils servant, soldiers and scientists awaited on the spot. In particular, the ships transported the colonel Schmaltz, new governor of Senegal. Great quantities of material are also embarked.

The commander of the frigate the Jellyfish , Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, is a noble royalist who almost did not sail since the time of the Ancien Mode. He begins the crossing by outdistancing the other ships, slower than it his, and thus finds himself insulated. Not listening to the opinions of its officers, it already grants any confidence to a passenger claiming to have traversed trimmings, called Richefort. It is mistaken in its estimate and locates the ship much more far from frightening Banc of Arguin that it is not it actually. Instead of circumventing it while passing to the broad one as its instructions indicate it, it shaves the shallow waters, until the inevitable one occurs on July 2nd.

The frigate runs aground on a plate of Récif S. Several attempts at déséchouage also fail they… The crew builds a raft made up of pieces of wood of 20 meters by 7 intended to deposit material to reduce the boat. After a few days, a violent storm blows which shakes the frigate and causes several water ways. The staff of the ship fears that the ship does not end up disaggregating. The evacuation is decided.

The disorder is indescribable. Several sailors drunk died permanently. The officers try to keep the control of the situation, but the commander and the passengers of mark would not have shone for their example this day. It is on July 4th, the launches are launched and on the raft pile up 152 sailors and soldiers with some officers, a woman is among them. It is envisaged, at the beginning, that the raft is towed with ground by the launches and everyone must reach Senegal while skirting the Saharan littoral. Seventeen men remain on the wreck of the the Jellyfish hoping, undoubtedly, being helped later; three of them only were found in life, the next on September 4th.

But very quickly, the launches release the mooring ropes attaching them to the considerable mass of the raft which leaves to the drift. The launches move away and give up it. Some will gain the ground, the men trying their chance in the desert, overpowered by thirst, the walk and the hostility of the Bedouins. They arrive finally after 15 days of wandering and several deaths. Other launches remain at sea and reach Saint-Louis in a few days. In these last the commander Chaumareys and colonel Schmaltz are.

Following the shipwreck, the sailors and soldiers of the raft try to gain the coasts but derive. Equipped which lasted 13 the days made many victims, and gave place to drownings, mutinies, like with facts of Cannibalisme because of the lack of vivres like drinking water. The survivors (15 men out of the 152 people embarked on the raft) will be recovered on July 17th by one of the four ships of the convoy, the Argus which will bring back 10 of them to Saint-Louis.

Repercussion

The incompetence of the officers and the accounts around the raft caused a certain emotion in the opinion when men of the crew, the Savigny surgeon and the Corréard engineer-geographer, bring them back in a book. Following this testimony, a lawsuit took place in 1817, under the Restauration, and Chaumareys was recognized as responsible; he were in particular reproached its incompetence and its cowardice. But the capital punishment pronounced against him was commuted to 3 years of prison.

More largely, the scandal and the indignation which followed the drama were also directed against an antiquated navy with the hands of the royalists, who had chosen to be unaware of the contributions of the Empire in the maritime field.

See too

• the history of the Jellyfish inspired the table of Theodore Géricault, the Raft of the Jellyfish , fabric of 1819. The episode of the shipwreck retained by the painter is little before the rescue, when the ship the Argus is at the horizon. The realization of the table two years only after the lawsuit, and its realism reconstituting a fact thoroughly still topicality, were perceived like a provocation.