Pourquoi pas? (Ship, 1908)

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Pourquoi pas?
Model in the Monaco Oceanographic Museum
Ship data
flag FranceFrance (national flag of the sea) France
Ship type Research ship
home port Saint Malo
Shipyard Chantiers François Gautier, Saint-Malo
Launch 1908
Whereabouts Sunk in a storm on September 16, 1936 off Alftanes on the west coast of Iceland
Ship dimensions and crew
length
40 m ( Lüa )
width 9 m
Draft Max. 4.36 m
displacement 435  t
 
crew 34 plus
4-5 scientists
Machine system
machine Steam engine (two boilers, one two-cylinder engine)
Machine
performance 		450 hp
Rigging and rigging
Rigging Three-masted barque
Number of masts 3
Speed
under sail 		Max. 7.5 kn (14 km / h)

The pourquoi pas? was the fourth ship of that name under the commandant Jean-Baptiste Charcot . He undertook his second Antarctic expedition , the fifth French Antarctic expedition.

history

Immediately after returning from his first Antarctic expedition , Jean-Baptiste Charcot began planning a second one. In 1907 he therefore commissioned a redesign of the Pourquoi-Pas? , the fourth ship of this name. The ship should have a total length of 57 m and rigging as a three-masted barque and be equipped with an auxiliary engine, three laboratories and a library. The construction is carried out according to instructions from Charcot and plans from François Gautier in Saint-Malo . The ship was equipped with trawling and fishing nets, pingers and drinking water tanks , among other things .

In 1908 Charcot broke the Pourquoi-Pas? to winter on Petermann Island to start his second polar journey. Expedition and ship returned to France after a second winter in June 1910 with significant scientific results. In addition to exploring Alexander I Island , new land, Charcot Island , was explored.

In 1912 the Pourquoi-Pas? the first training ship of the French Navy. For this occasion, the ship's hull was painted black.

With Charcot's departure on further research trips with Pourquoi-Pas? from 1918 it was painted white again. The trips led to the North Atlantic, the English Channel and the Faroe Islands . Research was carried out on geological and petrographic topics using excavators, for which Charcot developed materials and methods.

For the renewed research trip in 1925, Charcot gave up command of the ship for reasons of age, but traveled with him as chief of the mission . The ship, under the command of Lieutenant Le Conniat, made various trips to the Arctic ice. On board this and two other trips was the painter Marin-Marie , who created numerous sketches and drawings.

In 1926 Charcot traveled with the Pourquoi-Pas? to explore the east coast of Greenland and came back with an extensive collection of fossils, insects and plants.

In 1928 the Pourquoi-Pas? in the Arctic in search of the missing Latham 47 flying boat , in which Roald Amundsen set out on June 18, 1928 to rescue Umberto Nobile, whose airship Italia had crashed on an ice floe.

In 1934, the ship set off an ethnographic expedition in Greenland under Paul-Émile Victor , who lived with three companions at Tasiilaq for a year among the Inuit . 1935 returned the Pourquoi-Pas? back to resume Victor's group and continue mapping the region.

A year later, again from the return of Victor's mission, which that year crossed Greenland in 50 days, did the Pourquoi-Pas? Stopover in Reykjavík on September 3, 1936 to repair the boiler. On September 15, the ship set sail to return to Saint-Malo, but got into a severe storm off Iceland on September 16. The ship ran onto the Hnokki rock at the entrance of Borgarfjörður ( location ) and sank. Charcot and 39 men of the crew died, only the helmsman Eugène Gonidec could be saved. The bodies of half of the men, including Charcot's, washed up over the next few days. You were transferred to France in early October. Victims found later were buried in the Reykjavík cemetery. In October Thibaut de Rugy, who had worked as a telegraph operator on the Pourquoi-Pas? had been, in the magazine "Études" an obituary for the ship and crew.

Until its demise, the Pourquoi-Pas? In addition to the two expeditions to the Antarctic, nine campaigns (1921, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1930, 1931-1933, 1934, 1935, 1936) to the Arctic served as a ship.

gallery

  • The pourquoi pas? IV in Havre (August 15, 1908)

  • On the Bridge (August 15, 1908)

  • Itinerary of the Pourquoi-Pas? IV during the fifth French Antarctic expedition

  • "Le Pourquoi-Pas? IV en Antarctique" (etching 1917)

  • The pourquoi pas? IV in the port of Saint-Malo (April 1, 1920)

literature

  • Association des Amis du Musée de la Marine (AAMM), Le Pourquoi pas? Trois-mâts barque de 445 tonneaux, navire de recherche scientifique du commandant Charcot, - 1908-1936 - monograph consisting of description and history, a plan and two copies, [Paris]: AAMM, 1960
  • Charcot, Jean-Baptiste, various travelogues

Web links

Commons : Pourquoi Pas?  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ Ian R. Stone: French Antarctic (Pourquoi Pas?) Expedition (1908-1910). In: Beau Riffenburgh (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Antarctic, Routledge, New York and London 2007, p. 421 f, ISBN 0-415-97024-5 (English)
  2. ^ Marchand, Jean-Noël, Peintres français de la mer et de la marine, Paris: Arts et marine, 1997, p. 217
  3. ↑ Friðrik Rafnsson: The Friendship Pact on charcot.is, accessed on October 13, 2016.
  4. ↑ Jean-Babtiste Charcot (PDF; 268 KB) on borgarbyggd.is, accessed on October 13, 2016 (Icelandic).
  5. ↑ Friðrik Rafnsson: Charcot on charcot.is, accessed on October 13, 2016.
  6. ↑ Sur le Pourquoi-Pas? , Story by Thibaut de Rugy http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k113800q/f179.item (French)