Général Chanzy
 Général-Chanzy
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The Général Chanzy was a passenger ship of the French shipping company Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT) put into service in 1892 , which carried passengers , freight and mail from Marseille to Algiers . On February 10, 1910, the Général Chanzy sank off the Balearic island of Menorca when it was thrown against a reef by a violent storm and the cauldrons exploded. Of the 156 passengers and crew members, only one survived.
The ship
The Général Chanzy was built in 1891 by the Chantiers & Ateliers shipyard in Saint-Nazaire , a port city on the Loire estuary . There they ran the following year from the stack and was found in May 1892 in service. It was the last to be completed in a quintet of sister ships that CGT commissioned for its passenger and freight traffic in the western Mediterranean . The others were the Eugène Péreire (1888), Duc de Bragance (1889), Maréchal Bugeaud (1890) and Ville d'Alger (I) (1890).
The steamship was 106.5 meters long, 15.9 meters wide and had a draft of 7.7 meters. It displaced 2920 tons. The Général Chanzy was named after the French general and diplomat Alfred Chanzy (1823-1883). On a trip from Le Havre to Brest in August 1895 , she had the incumbent French President Félix Faure on board. In 1902 and 1903 the steamer was newly equipped and renovated, including new boilers .
Downfall
On Wednesday, February 9, 1910, the Général Chanzy ran under the command of Captain Bruno Cayol in Marseille for another crossing to Algiers. There were 69 crew members and 87 passengers on board, including 30 in first class. The passengers were mainly French officers and officials on their way back to their jobs in Algeria. Many of them were accompanied by their families. However, there were also some Italians, British and Turks among them. Among the passengers were the Swedish major Carl Gustaf Mauritz Wilhelm Boltenstern , a brother of Gustaf Adolf Boltenstern senior with his wife Ulrika; the London stockbroker Michael Bruce with his wife Gertrude; the comedians Francis Dufor and Eugène Bourguignon; the singer Elise Henry and the fortune teller Marcelle Lafarre.
In the early morning of the following day, February 10, the ship was in the strait between the Balearic islands of Mallorca and Menorca when it got caught in a heavy storm with high waves and strong winds . This storm drove the Général Chanzy far off course and allowed her to drift onto a long rocky reef .
The ship's command tried in vain to get the steamer back on course and away from the cliff . Around 5 a.m., the waves hurled the Général Chanzy onto the rocky bank. The stern hit a rock , breaking the propeller and rudder and shaking the ship severely. High waves hit the ship and the people who came on deck after the collision were washed by them from the boat deck and washed into the sea. Due to the poor conditions, the lifeboats could not be lowered into the water. When the invading seawater reached the engine room , the boilers exploded and the middle part of the ship blew up. The bow and stern continued to be hurled against the reef and eventually sank. The Général Chanzy left a large field of rubble and corpses.
155 of the 156 people on board were killed. Passenger Marcel Henri Emile Bodez, a 23-year-old French customs officer living in Algeria , was the only survivor. He held onto part of the wreckage until it washed ashore the following day. Shortly afterwards, ships were sent to the scene of the accident to look for more survivors. However, they only found parts of the wreckage and some horrific corpses. Only ten could still be identified.
Web links
- Summary of technical data and sinking
- Entry in the Miramar Ship Index
- Discussion of the Général Chanzy in the Encyclopedia Titanic
- Copy of an article about the downfall in L'Humanité newspaper
- 156 LIVES ARE LOST IN WRECK OF LINER ( New York Times report of February 12, 1910)
- French website about the Général Chanzy with further information