Liban (ship)
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The Liban was a passenger ship of the French shipping company "Compagnie Fraissinet" put into service in 1882 , which sank near Marseille in 1903 after a collision . About 100 people died. The sinking of the Liban is considered to be one of the greatest shipping disasters in which ships registered in Marseille were involved, and was at the same time the heaviest and most lossy that took place in the sea area off the port of Marseille.
history
The Liban , fully occupied with around 240 people, left Marseille on June 7, 1903 at 11:30 a.m. for Bastia in Corsica . She was traveling at a speed of about 12 knots. At midday near the uninhabited islands of Tiboulen de Maïre and Maïre , the steamer Insulaire (Captain Arnaud) met her, which belonged to the same shipping company as the Liban . Coming from Toulon , he headed for the port of Marseille. The island that the two steamers passed obscured the view so that the crews of the ships realized too late that they were on a collision course. The passengers of the Liban were at table below deck at this time and were only alerted by the shrill of steam whistles.
The masters of the two ships each gave orders to change course to starboard in order to pass each other at a distance of about 100 meters. While Captain Lacotte, who was in command of the Liban , was also able to carry out this maneuver, the captain of the Islanders found that his ship was too close to the island to actually be able to evade. As a collision with rocks threatened, he ordered the ship to steer to port, whereupon the bow of the island bored into the flank of the Liban .
After several attempts, Captain Lacotte succeeded in freeing the Liban from the bow of the island . He decided to put his ship as close as possible to the island in order to save the passengers and crew. But before the Liban could reach the shallows, her stern rose out of the water and the propeller turned in the air. 17 minutes after the collision, the ship sank so quickly over the bow that hardly a lifeboat could be lowered into the water. Numerous people jumped overboard in a panic. They were partly torn into the depths, partly taken up by the lifeboats of ships approaching. While the ship was still sinking, the boilers of the steam engine exploded . This tore the Liban in two amidships, which quickly sank to the seabed.
The ships Bléchamp and Balkan , among others, rushed to the rescue , the former saved 40 and the latter 37 people. At least 17 people from the occupation of the Leban survived the accident. Well over a hundred people were killed in the shipwreck; a woman who had lost her husband and five children in the process and a man who had lost his wife and four children went mad.
After the accident, the captain of the island was accused of not having done more to save the people on the Leban . He defended himself by stating that he believed his ship was badly damaged and that he had maneuvered it closer to the rocks in order to be able to run aground in an emergency and thus save the passengers. Captain Lacotte, one of the longest serving captains in his company, also survived the accident and was charged with failing to steer his ship carefully.
The Compagnie Fraissinet, to which both ships belonged, lost the concession for postal traffic to Corsica in 1904 as a result of the accident. But since the Compagnie Française de Navigation et de Construction Navale, which then took over this service, could not keep their contract, the Compagnie Fraissinet received it back in 1905.
wreck
The bow of the more than 90 meter long Liban lies at a depth of about 30 meters, the stern about 36 meters deep. The wreck is located about 20 meters from the coast at the position 43 ° 12 '26 " N , 5 ° 20' 14" O .
literature
- Kurt Amsler, Claudio Nazzaro: Adventure wreck diving. On the trail of sunken worlds . Ed .: Egidio Trainito. White Star Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-86726-120-3 , pp. 60-63 .
- The Liban-Insulaire Collision . In: The Nelson Evening Mail . Volume XXXVIII, Issue 150. Nelson July 13, 1903, p. 3 (English, online ).
- French steamer sunk; over 150 ay be dead . In: The New York Times . New York June 8, 1903 (English, online [PDF]).
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ The figures vary in the individual sources.
- ↑ So Kurt Amsler et al., Plongee.be ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. apparently erroneously mentions May 7th as the day of disaster.
- ↑ According to Amsler, a lifeboat could no longer be used, but in the Nelson Evening Mail and other press reports a passenger of the ship is quoted as saying that one of the boats could still be launched and that is how he was saved.
- ↑ Big Steamers in Collision , in: The Pittsburgh Press , June 8, 1903
- ^ Compagnie Fraissinet
- ↑ Position of the wreck ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
