Velléda

Characteristics

Overall length: 17 m
Speed: 9 nodes
Gauge: 29,75 Barrels
Motorization: 2 Baudoin coupled engines of 100 CV

History

Four Velléda

According to Jean-Christophe Fichou, the Velléda is in fact the fourth boat of the Phares and beacons which bears this name.

a first Velléda , brought into service in 1933 and ensuring the changing of the headlights the point of the Finistere, starting from the island of Center, was implied in 1940 in the departure of many sailors sénans towards England, in answer to the Appel of June 18th. Its owner was Jean-Marie Porsmoguer.
One second Velléda replaces it in February 1949. But, a few months hardly after its startup, Velléda II breaks its chain of damping and breaks on the rocks of the port of the island of Center. The first Velléda , renamed Helle is then recalled to the island of Center. Henri Gall obtains the command in July 1950 from it, at the 22 years age.
the third Velléda (length: 15.80 m; width: 4.00 m; draft: 2.00 m; gross tonnage: 25 barrels), built by the building sites “Dupret” with Gujan Mestras, is launched in 1951 and is assigned again by the Headlights and beacons to the port of the island of Center. Henri Gall has of it the command, but the judge too not very sure. Renamed Essarts and moved in 1969 with Ouistreham in the Apple-brandy, the third Velléda remained in service until in 2004.
current the Velléda replaced it in 1968, at the request of Henri Gall. The fourth Velléda is thus always in activity. Henri Gall ensured the command until his departure of it the retirement, in March 1983.

A boat designed by its owner

Current the Velléda was built with the Chantiers of the Garonne to Bordeaux in 1968. It ensured the changing of the headlights which it served thanks to the use of the Cartahu, rope that one tightened between the mast of the boat and the headlight, and by which the men and the supply forwarded. It was ordered during many years per Henri Gall, considered in the medium of the sea as a “virtuoso” of the changing. It is besides him which partly conceived the plans of the Velléda , succeeding in putting forward near the engineers of the Headlights and beacons his great experiment of the trade and its requirements as regards safety.

Little time after its startup, the Velléda was turned over by a strong blade at the time of a changing to the Phare of the Old woman. The three sailors present on the bridge were carried. The boat was raised nevertheless, perfectly intact, and Henri Gall succeeds in recovering his three men of crew, into full Raz with Center, one of the most dangerous places of the French coasts. This extraordinary rescue been worth with Henri Gall the Legion of honor. It brought also the proof of the founded good of the modifications which it had obtained in the design of the boat (integral bridging, in particular).

Appearances in the literature and with the cinema

The writer Jean-Pierre Abraham, who was Gardien of headlight to Ar-Men, tells his emergency evacuation by bad weather on the third Velléda (1951-1968) in a text entitled " Velléda my amour".

But, in its account entitled Armen , Abraham also evokes with very many recoveries the Velléda and its crew, as in this passage where it describes the work of the cox (Henri Gall in fact), in the course of changing:

I saw it this morning still, with the foot of Ar-Men, to operate in a large swell, the hard eye, the tended face. It calculates in a flash speed and the force of the vagueness which goes up opposite in noroît. Not to be carried it launches the high-speed motorboat towards the headlight of all the power of its two hundred horses. The wave immobilizes it with fifty centimetres of the base.

One could recently see with the cinema the Velléda in the film the Team-member, carried out by Philippe Lioret (2004).

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