Through Manon Loubet
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From November 6 to 30, 2021, the City of Small Crown offers an exhibition on the history of port maritime from Rouen (Seine-Maritime), especially on prestige boats who passed through the port of the Seine. “We made the choice to select the boats which came outside the Armadas and which have a particular history”, indicates Dominique Krauskopf, in charge of the exhibition for the town hall of Petit-Couronne. Overview of these ships with extraordinary stories.
The first submarine was built in Rouen
In 1800, Robert Fulton, an American inventor, designed the first submarine, the Nautilus. Few know it, but the machine was built in Rouen, before diving trials in the Seine. Equipped with a sail, this wooden submarine was equipped with a propeller, daggerboards and portholes.
Able to place an explosive charge under the hulls of enemy ships, it was not however retained by Napoleon to be used against the English. But a plaque in memory of this Rouen world premiere is affixed to one of Rouen’s tide gauges. A life-size model can also be seen at the Cité de la mer in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin.
The Telemachus treasure
On the night of January 2, 1790, the ship Télémaque sank at Quillebeuf, carried by a wave. Since this shipwreck, a legend is born. Rumors circulate in this revolutionary period, one suspects the nobles and the clergy to pass their fortune in England via the Seine. Officially, the ship was carrying wood, but perhaps it was transporting the goldsmiths of Norman abbeys, or even secret archives and the fortune of Louis XVI!
In 1938, years later, an engineer located the wreckage. Items of no value have risen to the surface except for a superb gold chain. According to an expert, it was used to carry a bishop’s cross. Part of the ship was then refloated but nothing was discovered. The declaration of war with Germany interrupts the work. Would the treasure still be in the captain’s cabin, still trapped to this day in the waters of the Seine?
Luxor carries the Obelisk of Concord
The Luxor ship is custom built in Toulon to transport the Obelisk of Concord, built in Egypt. The three-masted flat-bottomed vessel traveled 9,000 kilometers between Luxor and Paris.
The ship waits three months in Rouen, so that the waters of the river are high enough to reach Paris. The Luxor will then be dismasted, razed and lightened to pass under the bridges to the Concorde Bridge in Paris.
The Dorade 3 carries Napoleon’s ashes
On November 30, 1840, the funeral convoy of Napoleon’s ashes landed in Cherbourg aboard the frigate La Belle poule, then the steamboat La Normandie took charge of the imperial remains to reach Le Val-de-la-Haye.
There she should have been transferred to a specially designed boat. But leaving Paris, the boat is delayed because of the boil. Finally, it was the Dorade 3, a ship providing the shuttle between Rouen and Elbeuf, which took over. Painted in black, the front is clear to place the coffin, covered with a funeral sheet, in full view.
Napoleon’s ashes were transferred aboard La Dorade 3 in Val-de-la-Haye.
The Statue of Liberty loaded on a frigate in Rouen
In May 1885, the copper structure of the Statue of Liberty – imagined by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, then Gustave Eiffel – arrived, distributed in 214 boxes, by train to Rouen, transported in 70 wagons. This copper puzzle is embarked in Rouen on the frigate L’Isère, a three mast 67 meters long and nine meters wide with a metal hull with a steam engine, one of the first ships that can navigate by sail and steam.
Leaving Rouen on May 21, 1885, the boat arrived in New York on June 17.
The Quevilly, the largest oil tanker in the world
Classified as the largest oil tanker in the world, Le Quevilly shuttled between the city that gave it its name and Philadelphia to fetch black gold, at the end of the 19th century.e century.
The Quevilly was decommissioned on October 5, 1921, abandoned not far from Croisset. In 1923, the Norwegians bought the dismasted sailboat, motorized it and turned it into a tanker for the transport of whale oil. On October 21, 1939, hit by a mine, it sank in the North Sea.
The impressive shipwreck of the Mezziane
It was the first shipwreck in the port of Rouen in peacetime. In 1955, as she set sail for Duclair, the Mezziane, a 61-meter-long cabotier belonging to the Moroccan maritime management company, was approached from the starboard bow by the Romarjean II self-propelled vessel. The latter would not have kept his right sufficiently while going up the river towards Paris and would not have seen the Moroccan cabotier.
The Mezziane sank in two hours, the speed of the sinking was due to the dilapidated nature of the ship built in 1917.
The Queen of England aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia
On May 19, 1972, Queen Elizabeth came to meditate at the Saint-Sever British military cemetery in Rouen. Arriving by train at Rouen station, she left aboard her royal yacht Britannia, a luxury pleasure vessel, equipped with all the flagships of modern technology: anti-roll stabilizers and air conditioning.
Other prestigious boats with incredible stories can be discovered in the Petit-Couronne exhibition. Do not miss !
Practical information :
Exhibition “On the quays of Rouen and Petit-Couronne: history of a seaport”, from November 6 to 30 at the Grange and in the Tourelles park every day from 2 pm to 6 pm. Closed Sundays and Thursday 11 November.
Free entry – Health pass and wearing a mask compulsory.
Information on +33 2 32 11 57 00.
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