In his thirty-year career as a customs officer at the port of Lorient, he has seen some surprising cargoes pass through. Elephant ivory tusks, exotic animal skins, weapons, cigarettes, without forgetting, of course, kilos of narcotics. But if there is one container that Gérald Nédélec is not ready to forget, it is the one that arrived at the port on September 19, 1987 with, inside, the first relics brought up from the Titanic. As a reminder, the famous transatlantic liner sank on April 12, 1912, after hitting an iceberg, causing more than 1,500 deaths.
Media operation
Stroke of luck: this day in September 1987, the customs officer is on duty, with his head of post. He remembers the excitement that reigned in the port when the tug Abeille Supporter arrived, carrying the precious treasures of the Titanic. “I was impressed by the security deployment,” says the Larmori resident, now 83 years old. There were CRS, security guards, the public prosecutor was there too. We had to make a live arrival for the 1 p.m. news. It was a real media stunt. We had to make the expedition profitable…”.
The arrival of the ship in Lorient marked the end of the very first campaign to bring objects from the Titanic to the surface, a very expensive operation costing 15 million francs. During the summer of 1987 and over 45 days, members of the Taurus International company and Ifremer carried out 33 dives to a depth of 3,800 meters. According to local media, 800 objects were then pulled out of the waves, after 75 years at the bottom of the North Atlantic.
A pipe, glasses, books, dishes…
On September 19, 1987 at the port of Lorient, Gérald Nédélec was feverish. “We were on alert,” he remembers. Present on site, the Télégramme reporter recounts the scene of the opening of the container: “the wait was long, the disappointment was great: we saw nothing but we imagined that the steel boxes could contain the jewelry from a lady and a few coins from an Italian immigrant. »
A big disappointment for the public, but not for the customs officer. He had the privilege of taking a look for a few minutes inside the famous container. The famous relics rested in gray tanks filled with water mixed with a saline solution. During his quick inspection, “I remember seeing a pair of glasses and some dishes,” he recalls. We later learned that the bins also contained a pipe, jewelry, coins, a cherub statuette, but also books and a newspaper.
Direction Saint-Denis
Once the inspection is completed, Gérald Nédélec places seals on the container door, which is then placed on a semi-trailer. A smaller box containing the jewels and precious stones is placed in an armored van. The two took charge of the EDF laboratory in Saint-Denis, near Paris. This laboratory has developed a preservation technique, based on electrolysis. This treatment will require several months before the relics are displayed to the public, in an exhibition that will tour around the world.
Gérald Nédélec will never see the objects from the Titanic cleaned and displayed behind a window. The fact remains that this episode will remain forever engraved in his memory. Especially since the history of the transatlantic liner echoes its own history. “It was very emotional for me because my parents emigrated to Canada in 1930. They left on a liner like this,” he explains. Homesick, they returned seven years later to Lorient, where they opened a garage.
In memory of this famous September 19, 1987, Gérald Nédélec carefully kept all the press cuttings from the time, some in several copies. His own relics from the Titanic.
