Méduse
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| The raft of the Medusa |
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| Théodore Géricault , 1819 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 491 × 716 cm |
| Louvre |
The Méduse was a French Pallas- class frigate that ran aground off the coast of West Africa in July 1816. She became known mainly because of the fate of the castaways who floated helplessly on a raft in the sea for days and of whom only one in ten survived.
On behalf of the French government, the Méduse was to sail from Rochefort to Saint-Louis in Senegal in June 1816 as the flagship of a ship formation . Due to navigation errors, she lost contact with the other ships and was shipwrecked on the Arguin sandbank on the West African coast. Since the 400 passengers and crew members only had six dinghies available, which could not accommodate everyone, 17 people remained on board the stranded frigate. A makeshift raft was constructed for 147 others, which four of the six dinghies were supposed to pull to Saint-Louis. But shortly after the evacuation, an officer cut the connecting rope to the raft, which then drifted in the open sea for over 10 days, unable to control it. Inadequate water and food supplies led to cannibalism among the people on the raft. In the end, only 15 of them survived. The remaining dinghies reached the West African coast and their passengers reached Saint-Louis on foot.
The disaster attracted attention across Europe. The incompetence of the ship's captain, the poorly carried out rescue operation and the inadequate reappraisal triggered a scandal which seriously damaged the reputation of the recently restored Bourbon rule. The shipwreck is the subject of several paintings , films and books. The most famous of the paintings is Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa , exhibited in the Louvre in Paris .
The frigate Méduse
The Méduse was laid down in April 1807. The shipbuilder Jacques Noel Sané was responsible for its construction. The launch was the frigate in July 1810. She was one of the at that time the most modern ships of the French Navy. In his analysis of the shipwreck, Johannes Zeilinger even describes it as the most modern and arguably the best [of the] French frigates . It was armed with twenty-eight 18-pounder cannons, twelve carronades and four mortars .
Frigates are fast and slim-built full ships that primarily have tasks such as reconnaissance or escort services in the navy. The Méduse's maiden voyage led to Batavia, today's Jakarta, to accompany a small Franco-Danish expeditionary force there. It was not until 1811 that she returned to Brest with her sister ship Nymphe . The Méduse was then used by the French Navy to intercept English merchant ships returning to Britain from East Asia. At the end of the reign of the Hundred Days in 1815, the Méduse was supposed to attract fire from the English warships in order to give Napoléon Bonaparte the opportunity to escape to North America aboard the Saale . However, the plan was not implemented in this way. The frigate, which was supposed to be destroyed in this maneuver, remained intact, but was then disarmed.
Background of the shipwreck
The dangers of the West African coast
In 1816 hydrography was still in its infancy. Captains who sailed along the west coast of Africa had insufficient map material, on which the shallows and reefs were often not or only incompletely drawn. The coast was also very current. Before the start of the expedition, the Commodore of the De Chaumareys Association received a nautical description of the West African coast from the Ministry of the Navy, dating from 1753. The author of the nautical description, Jacques Nicolas Bellin, had included drawings of the main landmarks, but precise position information was missing.
One of the particular dangers of the West African coasts was the Arguin Bank , an offshore area of sandbanks and shallow reefs that extends more than thirty nautical miles into the Atlantic from the north coast of Senegal . There are constant onshore winds here, as the Sahara extends to the sea coast and the heat of the mainland sucks in the cooler air masses over the sea. Sailing ships usually kept a long distance from this dangerous stretch of coast. Anyone who was near the coastal waters was instructed by the Ministry of the Navy to constantly carry out soundings. A route that initially led from Cape Finisterre on the northwestern coast of Spain in a westerly direction was considered safe . Not until far in the Atlantic did you take a course in a southerly direction and passed Madeira and the Canary Islands on their western coast. Only when you reached a position abeam St. Louis did you sail east again.
The ship formation
During the war with France, England had annexed the French colonies to which France was entitled by the Treaty of Paris of 1783. With the peace treaty, the First Paris Peace of 1814, France got its colonies back again. This also included the West African Senegal.
Various reasons contributed to the fact that a governor was not sent back to Senegal immediately after the peace agreement. It was not until June 1816 that the new Bourbon government ordered a small ship formation to Saint-Louis, the capital of Senegal, to officially take over this port city from the British. The ship formation consisted of four ships, namely the supply ship Loire , the brig Argus , the corvette Echo and the frigate Méduse as flagship. On board these ships were a total of more than 600 people, including engineers, teachers, priests, farmers, workers and soldiers who were to rebuild the French colony. The four ships also transported food and equipment. A total of 400 people were on board the Méduse . In detail, there were 166 seamen, 10 artillerymen, 161 soldiers, two wives of soldiers and 61 passengers. They included the newly appointed governor of Senegal, Julien-Désiré Schmaltz , as well as his wife Reine Schmaltz and his daughter Eliza. There were also four barrels with gold coins worth 90,000 francs on board the Méduse . The governor's trip was delayed by another depression by Reine Schmaltz, as writer Jonathan Miles later described.
The commodore of the ship formation
The French Ministry of the Navy had appointed Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys as commodore of the ships' association. De Chaumareys was a loyal royalist and descendant of the successful Admiral Louis Guillouet, Comte d'Orvilliers . During the reign of Louis XVI. De Chaumareys had completed part of his training under his older relative. Not least because of this relationship, he made a career in the French Navy. During his last assignment shortly before the French Revolution , he had been given command of a transport ship. De Chaumareys left France in 1790 and was involved in an attempt at a royalist invasion of the French Quiberon peninsula in June 1795 . However, this failed. De Chaumareys escaped execution after his capture because he pretended not to be involved in the military action. At first he was only imprisoned. A little later he managed to escape to England, where he was awarded the Ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis on February 21, 1796 . During the first phase of the restoration , he was awarded the Legion of Honor for his services to the Bourbons . At the time the French Navy Ministry gave him command of the squadron, he had not commanded a ship in 25 years.
The author John Miles already sees these incidents as clues to the personality structure of Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys. He was only able to escape from prison with the help of the Breton peasant girl Sophie du Kerdu, who promised de Chaumareys marriage in return. However, he never kept this promise, but married the Prussian noblewoman Sophie de Atzentrampf two years later. In London he published a report on the failed invasion and his subsequent escape, which he mainly used to highlight his own role in it. The report was published three times, and with each edition Sophie du Kerdu took a back seat. Instead, De Chaumareys increasingly portrayed the escape as if it were solely due to his ingenuity and daring. In 1804 de Chaumareys returned to France to live on his country estate. After the end of Napoleon's rule, he asked in numerous letters to the new Bourbon government for a post that would reward him for his loyalty at the time. On April 22, 1816, he was finally given command of the squadron.
More captains and officers
Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys was not the only one who was rewarded for his loyalty in this way after the Restoration of the Bourbons. While more than 600 seasoned naval officers and ranks who had served the French Republic and the French Empire were fired or given half-salary leave, a number of Bourbon supporters had been promoted to prestigious posts. Even the Minister of the Navy, Viscount DuBouchage, had not held any official office for the past 25 years prior to his appointment. This caused considerable unrest and displeasure among the navy. De Chaumareys was probably aware that his NCOs were considerably more experienced than he was and were skeptical about his appointment. Gicquel de Touche, captain of the Loire and twenty years younger than de Chaumareys, later described de Chaumareys as snobbish and clueless. After all, de Chaumareys had Gicquel de Touche in Rochefort explain the safest route to St. Louis. On board the Mèduse served with the first officer Pierre-André Reynaud, a seaman who had successfully served in Napoleon's fleet. However, there were strong aversions between de Chaumareys and Reynaud from the start.
Course of the shipwreck
The first misfortune
The ship association with the Méduse as its flagship left Rochefort on June 17, 1816 . Contrary to what was ordered by the Ministry of the Navy, the ship's formation fell apart just five days later when they reached Cape Finisterre . Only the corvette Echo could keep up with the high speed of the Méduse . The other two ships, the Loire and the Argus , on the other hand, were too slow and later reached St. Louis without having had any further contact with the faster ships.
On board the Méduse , the usual command structures were largely overridden. The aversions between Commodore de Chaumareys and his first officer Pierre-André Reynaud were so great that the Commodore decided not to work with him. De Chaumareys preferred instead to follow Antoine Richefort's advice. In the future, he was to hold the position of harbor master in St. Louis. However, he did not belong to the crew of the Méduse , but was merely a passenger. Before the peace agreement between England and France, Antoine Richefort had spent ten years as a prisoner of war in English prisons. To what extent he - as he claimed - had nautical experience and whether he had ever earned a rank in the French Navy can no longer be traced today.
That the ship was no longer commanded by competent and experienced seafarers became apparent on June 23, when a 15-year-old cabin boy went overboard. The usual rescue maneuvers were initiated too late and only half-heartedly. When the Echo , which was sailing behind the Méduse , tried to report the accident with a cannon shot, the cannons turned out to be unloaded. The boy drowned. Since a number of passengers stayed on the rear deck to watch a troop of dolphins, the maneuver carried out by laymen was not hidden from the people on board.
The lack of skills of Commodore de Chaumareys and Antoine Richefort was also evident elsewhere. De Chaumarey had announced that Madeira would be reached on the morning of June 26th. In fact, the position was wrongly determined. The Méduse was more than 90 nautical miles from the set course and the island was only reached in the evening. De Chaumarey also admitted that the Méduse was steered too close to the Madeira coast, so that the ship ran the risk of being washed ashore by the onshore currents. After a heated discussion, the first officer Reynaud and the second officer were able to prevail and steer the frigate away from the coast. Neither a call to Madeira nor from Santa Cruz de Tenerife was provided for in the instructions of the Navy Ministry, as the frigate was adequately provisions. Both start-up maneuvers were only carried out at the request of Governor Schmaltz, who wanted to spoil his wife and daughter with fresh fruit. Before Santa Cruz, whose coast was considered to be even more dangerous than that of Madeira, a scandal broke out on board the Méduse . The officers complained about Antoine Richefort's poorly nautical arrangements. Commodore de Chaumareys reacted indignantly and appointed Richefort to the helmsman, whose orders all ranks had to obey.
The Arguin Sandbank
Antoine Richefort chose a course that would take the frigate Méduse close to the coast of Africa, rather than at a safe distance in the open sea. When the frigate reached the tropic , it would almost have been stranded if the officer on watch had not changed course and steered the ship into the open sea. Both Commodore de Chaumareys and the new helmsman Richefort had mistakenly mistaken a towering rock for Cape Barbas, which represented the southern limit of the Gulf of St. Cyprien. They had overlooked a reef that stretched a mile and a half into the sea at this point and was in the way of the Méduse .
Cape Blanc on the southern tip of the Ras Nouadhibou peninsula is the last major landmark before the Arguin sandbank. The usual route to St. Louis was about 66 nautical miles west-southwest at the height of this landmark. Only when the ship was level with St. Louis did they sail east towards the coast of Africa. With this detour it was possible to avoid the shallows that made the African coast so dangerous at this point. The Echo under Captain Cornet de Venancourt took this west-southwest course. The captain had previously raised a light in the mizzen mast and tried to draw the flagship's attention by igniting powder charges. In the logbook , Captain de Venancourt noted on the same evening: “ There was neither an answer nor a signal from the frigate as to which course should be sailed overnight. “The frigate was about two days' voyage from St. Louis at the time.
When Commodore de Chaumarey entered the quarterdeck early in the morning of July 2, the officers present tried to convince him that a cloud-shrouded structure lying aft was Cape Blanc. They wanted to prevent the frigate too early on a course that led closer to the coast. However, they had not counted on the arrogance of Antoine Richefort, who had changed direction after only 30 nautical miles and sailed on in a southeastern direction. The change of direction again led to violent exchanges between the commodore and his officers. De Chaumarey ended the discussion by threatening the officers' spokesman with arrest. Charles Picard, who was supposed to be a notary in St. Louis and who had already traveled along the West African coast three times , also interfered in the dispute . Antoine Richefort only responded with derision to his warnings about the dangers of the Arguin Bank.
The course Antoine Richefort had taken led directly to the Arguin Bank. The changed sea suggested that shallow water was being approached. The water was cloudy. Seaweed and river grass were floating in it, and an unusual number of fish could be seen in the water. Surviving sailors later reported that the mood on board was subdued at that moment, as a number of them were certain that they were either just in front of the Arguin Bank or already directly above it. The lieutenant on duty had soundings carried out regularly, although de Chaumareys thought this was unnecessary. By early afternoon the sea was only eighteen fathoms deep . De Chaumareys then gave the order to luff the ship somewhat. During the next sounding, only six fathoms were measured and before the commodore could give further orders, the Méduse ran aground.
Try to get the ship free
The Méduse was relatively undamaged. The rudder was immobile, but the hull was still so undamaged that the pumps drained the water. However, the Méduse ran aground during spring tide . There was therefore no hope of getting the ship free with the next high tide. Instead, the ship had to be warped free . During this maneuver, anchors are thrown into deeper water. A fixed hawser is led from the laid anchor to the ship and the ship is moved towards the anchor with the help of the capstan . The aim of this warp maneuver is to pull the ship back into deeper waters. In order for such a maneuver to be successful, the ship is generally freed of all conceivable ballast. Commodore de Chaumareys, however, forbade throwing the 14 cannons and the bullets overboard. Governor Schmaltz forbade throwing off the numerous flour barrels. According to the descriptions of the two survivors Savigny and Correard, the attempts to get the ship free went uncoordinated and without discipline. Accordingly, the Méduse was still aground on July 4th. However, it was possible to turn the bow towards the open sea and move the entire ship a total of two hundred meters towards the open sea.
Commodore de Chaumareys failed to send one of the dinghies to St. Louis, two days' journey away, to request an aid convoy there. The alternative of taking the passengers with a troop of soldiers by dinghy to the coast 40 miles away was also omitted. However, this measure would not have been without its dangers. Eleven months earlier, the American brig Commerce ran aground nearby. The sailors had been able to escape to the coast, but had been captured there by nomadic tribes.
A storm broke out on the evening of July 4th, undoing the previous days' efforts. High breakers collapsed over the Méduse and pushed it back onto the sandbar. During the night the hull tore and the keel of the ship broke. The broken rudder struck the stern and severely damaged it. Under the impact of the storm, the soldiers on board mutinied and threatened to shoot anyone who could get to safety with one of the boats. Governor Schmaltz managed to reassure the soldiers by swearing that he would leave no one behind.
The evacuation of the ship
Governor Schmaltz had already begun drawing up a plan for a large raft before the evening of July 4th. To avoid unrest, he had indicated that the raft should only hold water and provisions. In fact, there was already a list that he had prepared, which distributed the people on board among the six dinghies and the raft. As was customary at the time, the dinghies were nowhere near enough to accommodate all the people on board. The raft was therefore intended for 200 people.
At dawn on July 5th, Commodore De Chaumareys gave the order to leave the Méduse . The launch took the governor, his family and some of their luggage and was commanded by First Officer Reynaud. The launch would have room for fifty people, but only 36 were left on board. Seamen swimming near the launch were kept away at gunpoint. Commodore De Chaumareys and 27 other people were on board the Kommandantenpinasse . The small harbor boat was under the command of Lieutenant Maudet. Another pinasse was commanded by Lieutenant Lapeyrère. Antoine Richefort, who had steered the frigate onto the sandbar, was assigned to the smallest dinghy. The largest and schwerfälligste dinghy, a sloop with no belt , was commanded by the Second Officer Jean-Baptiste Espiaux.
The raft mainly accommodated the soldiers of the African battalion, some of whom were forced to go on the raft with their weapons drawn. The raft quickly proved to be a bad design. Not only was it too small to hold 200 people. It also lacked floats to hold the heavy masts and yards above the water from which the raft was made. By the time the first fifty men were on board, the water was up to their waist. To make the raft lighter, some of the provisions were thrown into the sea. The little more than fifty people who were to be the last to board the raft successfully refused in the face of the crowded crowd. Commodore de Chaumareys, who had already left the Méduse contrary to the express instructions of the French naval articles and was on board the commander's pinasse, although there were still people on board the frigate, therefore ordered the sloop back to the frigate to take the other people on board . The sloop took so many people that water was already spilling over the gunwale. Seventeen men therefore refused to board this dinghy and preferred to remain on the frigate.
The raft should be pulled by four of the boats using a rope. The big sloop was out of the question for this task, as it had to keep its direction sailing without oars. At the head of the tow line was the commandant pinasse, followed by the harbor boat, then the pinasse under the command of Lieutenant Lapeyrère and finally the launch on which Governor Schmaltz was. Even before the boats could start towing, the sloop threatened to ram the harbor boat, so that it had to loosen the lines to the boat behind it in order to evade. The pinnace under Lieutenant Lapeyrère also cut the rope, so that only the launch was dragging the raft. In the current, the raft acted like a sea anchor and drifted along with the launch in a north-westerly direction. The first officer Reynaud then took hold of the lanyard and asked if he should also cap. While some of the crew members protested loudly, Governor Schmaltz ordered him to untie the hawser. No one had heard of these events on the commandant's pinasse. When Commodore de Chaumareys called out why the raft was drifting free, Reynaud replied that the hawser was broken, and when the commandant pinasse asked what to do now, the first officer replied, " Abandonnons-les! »(German:" Let's leave them behind! ")
The fate of those evacuated in the dinghies
The launch with the governor and his family as well as the commandant pinasse with Commodore de Chaumareys on board managed to stay close together for the next three days. Both boats carried sufficient provisions. The 36 people on board the barge alone had access to 50 pounds of ship's rusks, 18 bottles of wine and 60 bottles of water. Favored by the wind, they were about 35 nautical miles from St. Louis on the evening of July 8th when they were spotted by the Echo , who had sailed back from St. Louis to search for the Méduse . They arrived in St. Louis on July 9th without any harm to either person.
The over-manned sloop sighted the African coast on the afternoon of July 5th. But she was stranded on a sandbar before she could reach the coast, and it was night before the sloop had enough water under the keel again. 57 of the people on board preferred the 200-mile march along the coast to another sea voyage the next morning, although they did not have sufficient provisions and water, the route led through the desert and they had to expect to be ambushed by enemy tribes to become. The second officer Espiaux dropped them off at the south end of the Arguin Bank and sailed with the rest of the people towards St. Louis. A little later they met two of the other dinghies, namely the small dinghy and the harbor boat, and took in the 15 people whose dinghy was threatened with sinking. The following night the boats were driven apart again, and it was not until the afternoon of July 7 that the harbor boat and the sloop met again. Both boats were so close to the shore that the harbor boat was eventually washed ashore by the waves. Jean-Baptiste Espiaux then also steered the sloop onto the beach.
The pinasse under the command of Lieutenant Lapeyrère was initially able to remain close to the launch and the commandant pinasse. She had too little provisions on board, but they were refused provision by the two other boats, which were far better equipped with food. On the night of July 6th to 7th, she was separated from the other two boats. At that time the boat was only seaworthy to a limited extent and had a leak that was laboriously stuffed with clothing. On July 7, they were within sight of the coast, but did not dare to land on the coast because of the strong surf and fear of hostile tribes. Fresh water was no longer available, so some of the people began to drink salt water. On July 8th, the people who had been on the sloop and the harbor boat were discovered on the coast. The second attempt managed to steer the boat through the surf onto the beach. One of the men was crushed in the leg.
The raft
At the time the raft was abandoned by the dinghies, there were 146 men and one woman on the raft. A large number of them belonged to the African battalion, some of whose common soldiers came from Italy, Arabia, Guadeloupe, San Domingo, India, Asia, America, Poland and Ireland. The author Jonathan Miles describes this in his analysis as a thrown together, explosive bunch of mercenaries and ex-prisoners. The only woman on the raft was a sutler who refused to part with her husband, one of the soldiers. Only twenty crew members of the Méduse were on board the raft - the rest had been given a place in the dinghies. The rest of the people on board were craftsmen. According to the instructions of Commodore de Chaumareys, Ensign Jean-Daniel Coudein was to command the raft. However, the ensign had injured his lower leg on departure and was unable to exercise any form of authority on board due to the injury. According to the reports of the survivors of the raft, it was ultimately the second medical officer, Henri Savigny, the engineer and geographer Alexandre Corréard and the secretary Jean Griffon du Bellay who took on some form of leadership over the next few days. Alexandre Corréard had gone on the raft of his own free will, although he was assigned a place in one of the dinghies. However, his twelve workers were on the raft and Corréard felt obliged to stay with them.
The people on the raft were initially unable to properly classify what was happening to the dinghies. Henri Savigny and Alexandre Corréard, who later published the most famous account of what happened on the raft, wrote:
“ We couldn't believe we were abandoned until the boats vanished from our sight, but then we fell into deep despair. "
Everyone on board the raft should have realized at that moment how hopeless their situation was. The 147 people stood waist-deep in the water and every major wave crashed over them. Those at the edge were in danger of being washed into the sea, and any of them could seriously injure themselves if they got caught between the loosely tied masts and yards that made up the deck of the raft. There was no way to withdraw from the scorching equatorial sun. Henri Savigny had a mast with a small sail erected, but without an oar the raft was driven to and fro by the current and the wind. The compass, map, and anchor were missing - essential items of equipment that First Officer Reynaud had assured them they would find on the raft. They had only two barrels of wine and one barrel of water at their disposal. The only provision was a sack of wet biscuit , which Henri Savigny had distributed immediately.
Twelve men probably died on the first night. Quite a few had injured themselves on the deck of the raft during the night. The salt water made every graze and every flesh wound very painful, so that complaints and moans could be heard above all. The meager rations of fluids hardly helped in the scorching sun. Three men - a baker and two apprentices - committed suicide by throwing themselves into the sea. Others were trampled to death as those on deck tried to take shelter from approaching breakers in the middle of the raft. Supplies quickly ran out and cannibalism broke out on the raft . On the 8th day, 65 passengers were shot and the weak and wounded were thrown overboard. The surviving surgeon Henri Savigny wrote in his reports:
“ Those whom death had spared rushed greedily on the dead, cut them into pieces, and some ate them at once. A large part of us refused to touch this horrific food. But eventually we gave in to a need stronger than any humanity. "
A week later, only 15 men could be saved.
The ship Argus brought the survivors to Saint-Louis . Five of the survivors, including Jean-Charles, the last African crew member, died within days. Of the 17 men who remained on the Méduse , three survived. British naval officers helped the survivors return to France as the French naval ministry did not offer assistance.
Aftermath
The British governor of St. Louis refused to hand over the administration of the area to the few survivors of the French mission because they were in a poor physical and mental condition. In addition, the supplies and military equipment necessary for the takeover had been lost with the Méduse . A little later, the French government sent another mission with personnel and material to take possession of the colony again.
After returning to France, the surgeon Henri Savigny wrote a report to the authorities in which he described the incidents during the shipwreck and on the raft. In order to emphasize his demand that the bereaved of the victims be compensated, he also passed the report on to the anti-Bourbon journal Journal des débats , which published it on September 13, 1816. This sparked a scandal as the relevant ministers and authorities tried to talk their way out of the matter. Compensation was also not paid. In public, the shipwreck and its consequences were symbolic of the state of the French state after the restoration of Bourbon rule under King Louis XVIII. The marine engineer Alexandre Corréard, also a survivor of the raft, submitted another report in 1817 after his own investigations ( Naufrage de la frégate la Méduse ), which appeared in five versions by 1821.
The legal treatment of the events took place before the war court in Rochefort (Charente-Maritime) , said the de Chaumareys guilty to three years imprisonment condemned.
Géricault's representation
Impressed by the reports of the castaways, the 25-year-old artist Théodore Géricault decided to paint a painting of the incident and contacted those affected in 1818. To make his “ Raft of the Medusa ” as realistic as possible, he sketched the bodies of Corpses. The painting shows a moment from the reports of the survivors: Before being rescued, they saw a ship on the horizon and made themselves felt. (The ship can be seen in the upper right corner of the picture). It disappeared and a surviving crew member reported that "the delirium of joy turned into profound depression and grief." Two hours later the ship reappeared and rescued the survivors.
Géricault used friends as models, especially the painter Eugène Delacroix . The painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1819 and was hailed as a sensation. The painting is currently on display in the Louvre .
Location of the shipwreck
In 1980 the wreck of the Méduse was found during an expedition led by Jean-Yves Blot off the coast of Mauritania (position 19 ° 57 ′ 0 ″ N , 16 ° 58 ′ 0 ″ W ).
Receptions
Movies
- The Trial Medusa , German television film 1976, based on the book by Erwin K. Münz , director: Wolfgang Staudte
- Le Radeau de la Méduse , French film, 1998, director: Iradj Azimi , D: Jean Yanne (Chaumareys), Daniel Mesguich (Coudein), Claude Jade (Reine Schmaltz), Alain Macé (Savigny), Laurent Terzieff (Géricault).
- The Medusa , American film, 2017/2018. Director: Peter Webber , D: Jesse Eisenberg (Théodore Géricault), Pierce Brosnan (Jean-Baptiste Caruel, Géricault's uncle), Vanessa Redgrave . Biographical film about the creation of the painting
music
- In 1838/39 Friedrich von Flotow completed the opera La naufrage de la Méduse (German: “The Sailors”, 1845) begun by Auguste Pilati ; the piece established the reputation of Flotow as an opera composer.
- In 1968 the German composer Hans Werner Henze wrote an oratorio entitled The Raft of Medusa in memory of Che Guevara
Literary receptions
- Franzobel : The raft of the Medusa . Novel based on a true story , Zsolnay, Vienna, 2017, ISBN 978-3-552-05816-3
- Julian Barnes : A history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters ("A history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters"). Reinbek, Rowohlt 2000, ISBN 3-499-22134-9
- Günter Seuren : The raft of the Medusa. Roman , Rotbuch Verlag, Hamburg, 2004, ISBN 3-434-53123-8
- Erwin K. Münz : Process Medusa. Roman , Zsolnay, Vienna / Hamburg, 1964
Others (selection)
- The rock group Great White used the picture The Raft of Medusa as the cover for their album " Sail Away "
- The second album by the Irish folk rock group The Pogues uses the painting in a different form: the faces of the survivors were exchanged for the faces of the group members.
Quotes
"We couldn't believe that we were abandoned until the boats vanished from our sight, but then we fell into deep despair"
“Those whom death had spared rushed greedily on the dead, cut them into pieces, and some ate them at once. A large part of us refused to touch this horrific food. But eventually we gave in to a need that was stronger than any humanity. "
- From current comments
"On this raft the ideals of civilization shattered"
literature
- Jean-Baptiste H. Savigny, Alexandre Corréard: Naufrage de la frégate La Méduse, faisant partie de l'expédition du Sénégal, en 1816. Hoquet, Paris 1817. Up to 1821 there were 5 editions. There were also translations that led to publications in English, German, Dutch and Italian.
- In the 20th century in Germany: shipwreck of the frigate Medusa on its voyage to Senegal in 1816 or a full report of the strange events ... Greno, Nördlingen 1987, ISBN 978-3-89190-863-1 . New edition:
- The shipwreck of the frigate Medusa . Foreword by Michel Tournier . Afterword Johannes Zeilinger : Death of Medusa. Pp. 139-190. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin, 2005, ISBN 3-88221-857-6 .
- Alexander McKee: In the death drift. The raft of the Medusa , Desch, Munich, 1976. ISBN 3-420-04766-5 .
- Jonathan Miles: The wreck of the Medusa , Grove Press, New York, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8021-4392-1
- Hans Schadewaldt : The shipwreck of the Meduse. In Wilhelm Treue Hrsg .: History of the French Navy. Mittler, Herford 1982, ISBN 978-3-8132-0151-2 , pp. 107-127.
Web links
- Musée national de la Marine (French, English)
- Article in the newspaper "The Times" from March 24, 2007 (English)
- Article in the newspaper "Die Zeit" (December 8, 2005)
Footnotes
- ↑ Johannes Zeilinger: The death of Medusa. In The Shipwreck of the Frigate Medusa . Foreword by Michel Tournier . Epilogue Johannes Zeilinger : In Jean-Baptiste H. Savigny, Alexandre Corréard: Death of Medusa. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin, 2005, ISBN 3-88221-857-6 . Pp. 130–190, here p. 141. In the following only with Zeilinger and page number.
- ↑ Zeilinger, p. 142
- ^ Miles, pp. 13-14
- ↑ Zeilinger, p. 147
- ↑ Zeilinger, p. 148
- ^ Miles, p. 35
- ↑ Matthew Zarzeczny, "Theodore Gericault's" The Raft of the Méduse '' Members' Bulletin of The Napoleonic Society of America (Fall 2001); Matthew Zarzeczny, “Theodore Géricault's The Raft of the Méduse , Part II”, Member's Bulletin of The Napoleonic Society of America (Spring 2002).
- ^ Miles, pp. 24-26
- ^ Miles, p. 23.
- ↑ Miles, pp. 23, 24.
- ↑ a b Zeilinger, pp. 148 and 149
- ↑ Savigny & Corréard, p. 20
- ^ Miles, p. 37
- ↑ Savigny & Corréard, pp. 20 and 21
- ↑ a b Zeilinger, p. 150
- ^ Miles, p. 39
- ^ Miles, p. 39 and p. 40
- ↑ Zeilinger, p. 151
- ↑ quoted from Zeilinger, p. 152
- ^ Miles, p. 45
- ↑ Zeilinger, p. 153
- ↑ Zeilinger, p. 153 and p. 154
- ↑ Zeilinger, p. 155.
- ↑ Miles
- ↑ Zeilinger, p. 157.
- ^ Miles, p. 57.
- ↑ Zeilinger, p. 156
- ^ Miles, p. 60
- ^ Miles, p. 113
- ^ Miles, p. 59
- ↑ Zeilinger, p. 160
- ^ Miles, p. 113 and p. 114
- ^ Miles, p. 66 and p. 67
- ^ Miles, p. 69
- ↑ Miles, pp. 69-72
- ^ Miles, p. 95
- ^ Miles, pp. 96 and 97
- ^ Miles, p. 97
- ^ Riding, Christine, "The Raft of the Medusa in Britain," Crossing the Channel: British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism, 75. Published 2003.