French frigate Méduse (1810)

Common card · No. 236182

Méduse was a 40-gun Pallas-class frigate of the French Navy, launched in 1810. She took part in the Napoleonic Wars during the late stages of the Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 and in raids in the Caribbean. In 1816, following the Bourbon Restoration, Méduse was armed en flûte to ferry French officials to the port of Saint-Louis, in Senegal, to formally re-establish French occupation of the colony under the terms of the First Peace of Paris. Through inept navigation by her captain, Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, who had been given command after the Bourbon Restoration for political reasons even though he had hardly sailed in twenty years, Méduse struck the Bank of Arguin off the coast of present-day Mauritania and became a total loss. Most of the 400 passengers on board evacuated, with 146 men and one woman forced to take refuge on an improvised raft towed by the frigate's launches. The towing proved impractical, however, and the boats soon abandoned the raft and its passengers in the open...

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