French frigate Méduse (1810)
Méduse sailing close hauled with brigs in the background.
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| Name: | Méduse |
| Namesake: | Medusa |
| Builder: | Crucy shipyard, Paimboeuf |
| Laid down: | 24 June 1806 |
| Launched: | 1 July 1810 |
| In service: | 26 September 1810 |
| Fate: | Beached on Bank of Arguin |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Pallas-class frigate |
| Displacement: | 1080 tonnes |
| Length: | 46.93 metres (154.0 ft) |
| Beam: | 11.91 metres (39.1 ft) |
| Draught: | 5.9 metres (19 ft) |
| Propulsion: | 1,950 m2 (21,000 sq ft) of sail |
| Complement: | 326 |
| Armament: |
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| Armour: | Timber |
Méduse was a 40-gun Pallas-class frigate of the French Navy, launched in 1810. She took part in the Napoleonic Wars, namely in the late stages of the Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 and in raids in the Caribbean.
After the Bourbon Restoration, she was armed en flûte to ferry French officials to Saint-Louis, in Senegal, for the reestablishing of the colony after the British handover. Through inept navigation of her captain, an émigré given command for political reasons but incompetent as a naval officer, Méduse struck the Bank of Arguin and became a total loss. The 400 people on board had to evacuate, with 151 men on an improvised raft towed by the frigate's launches. When the launches gave up and left the raft behind, a terrible ordeal developed. Dozens were washed into the sea by a storm, others, drunk from wine, rebelled and were killed by officers. The survivors engaged in cannibalism. When supplies ran low, several injured men were thrown into the sea. After 13 days on sea, the raft was found with only 15 men surviving.
The scenes on the raft instilled considerable public emotion, making Méduse one of the most infamous shipwrecks of the Age of Sail. Two survivors, a surgeon and an officer, wrote a widely read book about the case. The case was immortalised when Théodore Géricault painted his Raft of the Medusa, which became an icon of French Romanticism.
Méduse was commissioned in Nantes on 26 September 1810.
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