An American team of divers and wreck researchers has discovered at the bottom of the North Atlantic the remains of a French steamship sunk in 1856 after a collision with an American sailing ship, a forgotten disaster that left 114 dead.
The Lyonnais, a technical gem for its time built in 1855, was sailing toward France in early November 1856 on its way back from a maiden voyage from Le Havre to New York, Jennifer Sellitti of the Atlantic Wreck Salvage association told AFP. Divers from the D/V Tenacious group found the wreck in August after two decades of searching, she added.
“He’s really in pieces”
The ship, which had an iron hull, was formally identified on the ocean floor 200 miles (320 kilometers) off New Bedford on the Massachusetts coast (northeast), in an area called Georges Bank. Ms Sellitti’s association has not said exactly where Le Lyonnais is.
“It’s obviously not in the condition it was in (when it was sailing). It’s really in pieces.”the manager acknowledged in a telephone interview. Because “The North Atlantic is a very hostile place for a shipwreck (because of) storms, tides (…) and shifting sands which completely bury wrecks.”
It was thanks to the dimensions of a cylinder of the engine that the Lyonnais could be formally identified, certified Mrs Sellitti. The ship, which ran on sail and steam, had left in 1855 an English shipyard, Laird & Sons, which had built it for the French company Compagnie Franco-Américaine.
For France, it was a question of developing transatlantic transport of passengers, mail and goods. “The 1850s marked the beginning of the transition from sail to steam” et “France is then seeking to set up a first transatlantic line”explained Jennifer Sellitti.
The Lyonnais, after having tr[…]
- sciencesetavenir.fr
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