The crew of the Méduse

The Méduse was a 40-gun frigate launched in 1810 that served throughout the Napoleonic wars, mostly conducting raids in the Caribbean.

After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, the ship was converted into an armed transport vessel, intended to ship important personnel between France and the port of Saint Louis in Senegal, a former French colony in West Africa.

On June 17, 1816, the Méduse left Rochefort in southwest France and began its voyage to Saint Louis, carrying over 400 people including the appointed French Governor of Senegal, an important Colonel and his wife, 160 crew members, a number of civilian passengers plus a unit of Marine infantrymen who were to man the garrison at Saint Louis.

The Méduse was part of several ships that set off in a convoy for the African colony, but the Méduse was by far the fastest ship in the fleet, and for an unknown reason, someone thought it would be a good idea to give command of not only the Méduse but the whole convoy to a Captain Chaumareys, a very inexperienced captain with no previous knowledge of the route they were taking.

The Colonel on board wanted the ship to reach its destination as fast as possible, and so ordered Captain Chaumareys to sail for Saint Louis at top speed on the shortest route. The Méduse was sailing with 3 other ships, the Loire, Argus, and the Écho, but shortly into the voyage somewhere around the north coast of Spain, the Méduse quickly outran the Argus and Loire, with only the Écho keeping up.

Experienced ship crews normally sail a good distance away from shore to avoid sandbanks and reefs, though this can add many miles to a trip of that distance. Since the Méduse was trying to get there as fast as possible, it sailed dangerously close to the coast at various points, and since the Écho was manned by a more experienced crew, it sailed further away from shore to protect itself, leaving the Méduse on its own course.

(An early 1800’s drawing of the Méduse aftercastle)

The next day the Méduse was all alone and assumed it was far in front of the other 3 ships, but its Captain was having some problems with navigation, and out of desperation decided to involve one of the civilian passengers, a woman named Richefort who was a philosopher and experienced in recognising the stars, though she had no qualifications or experience in guiding a ship.

On July 2, 1816, the Méduse was more than 100 miles off course and panic was beginning to set in. Around the coast of Mauritania in northwest Africa, the Méduse began to run into white breakers and saw mud in the water, a sign that the ship in starting to close into shallow water, but the Captain ignored these warnings.

Lieutenant Maudet decided to take some measurements and found the water to be just over 30 meters deep, which he immediately told the captain. Finally realizing they were too close to shore Captain Chaumarey tried to alter the course to steer further away from the coast, but it was far too late and the ship settled on top of a sand bank.

Spring tides are often much higher and lower than tides of the rest of the year, and the captain of the Méduse didn’t know this, thinking that all they had to do was wait until the next hide tide and it would wash them off the sand bank. Being so sure of this he refused to jettison the 14 three-ton cannons on board, and that extra 42 tons of weight helped them settle deep into the sand bank.

On July 5, a fierce gale showed signs of cracking the hull of the ship so its evacuation was ordered. There weren’t anywhere near enough lifeboats to save all the passengers, and they were filled with the most important personnel first, leaving all the lower-class passengers and crew members to board a large raft they constructed.

(An early 1800’s drawing of the Méduse gun deck)

The raft was made of various pieces of the ship and its cargo lashed together and had no means of propulsion or steering, measuring 66ft long by 23ft wide. The plan was to use the lifeboats to tow the raft to safety, but it was far too heavy so the lifeboats cut the lines and sailed away making it safely to the coast of Africa.

17 Members of the crew decided to stay on board the wreck of the Méduse, and a total of 147 people who were all men apart from 1 were on board the raft. It wasn’t long before the lifeboats cut the lines to the raft and left it floating just over 30 miles away from the coast, so its passengers knew how dire their situation was right from the start.

On the first night 20 people died, either from fighting, drowning, or suicide. The center of the raft was the only stable part, with the rest being underwater by as much as a couple of feet at times. This caused many fights to break out and combined with the severe lack of rations and the fact they only had casks of wine to drink and no fresh water, things got heated very easily.

On the fourth day, there were only 67 people left alive and it was at this point some resorted to cannibalism. On the 8th day, the strongest of the survivors decided to throw the sick and wounded overboard, leaving only 15 of the original 147 still alive. These 15 men survived for the next 4 days until they were encountered by the Argus on 17 July, the ship the Méduse had left behind earlier in the voyage.

The Argus took the survivors to the port of Saint Louis, where 5 of them died over the next few days. Captain Chaumareys decided to send a rescue party to retrieve the gold that was stored on the Méduse, and upon the ship reaching the still intact wreck, it found that out of the 17 crew that stayed behind, only 3 were still alive. Captain Chaumarey was court-martialed and found guilty on various charges which were punishable by death, though due to corruption he only received 3 years in jail.