A hundred years later, a tribute in Vendée to the 568 victims of the sinking of “Africa”

A hundred years ago, the liner “Africa” ​​was shipwrecked off the Vendée coast. Tribute was paid this Sunday to the 568 victims. Two hundred people gathered on the site of the memorial to the dead at sea.

Some 120 descendants of missing persons, from all over France, England and Switzerland, were present at this commemoration. On a cold night, on January 12, 1920, around 3 a.m., the boat disappeared 40 km from Les Sables, submerged by a waterway and tossed about in a hurricane. Departing from Bordeaux, the boat headed for Dakar before serving other ports in West Africa.

Women, children, Senegalese riflemen …

On board were women, children, soldiers, 192 Senegalese riflemen who returned home after fighting during the First World War, as well as 18 missionaries from the Congregation of the Holy Spirit who traveled with Bishop Hyacinthe Jalabert

Marie Frigaux, great-great-granddaughter of captain Antoine Le Dû, the manager of the ship, as well as 74 other family members, reunited thanks to her granddaughter, Marie-Christine Le Due, were present on Sunday at this commemoration.

For these relatives from Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, Besançon, Toulouse or Brittany, the ceremony was an opportunity to “remember”, to pay tribute “but also to meet”, confides the descendant of the deceased.

Thirty-four had survived

“Of the 602 people who were on board the African liner, 568 perished at sea. It is, in my opinion, the most deadly sinking of a French civilian ship, apart from acts of war,” said Roland Mornet, author of a book on the sinking of the ocean liner, which erected the stele in honor of the victims. Only 34 passengers survived.