HISTORIAS Manuel Espejo
The Raft of the Medusa
The Raft of the Medusa is not just a masterpiece by Théodore Géricault on display at The Louvre in Paris. Behind this painting there is a tragic and shocking story.
Méduse was a frigate of the French Navy, launched in 1810, that took part in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1816, after the defeat of the self-proclaimed French emperor, Meduse sailed across the Atlantic on a mission to ferry French people to Senegal. The voyage seemed ill-conceived from the start. France was in full Bourbon restoration, with a country impoverished, desolate, ruined, and deeply politically divided. The French political elite needed to restore the Grandeur of their country. Hence the need to take possession of the new African colony that had been ceded to France: Senegal.
Méduse was a large ship, which was adapted from military use to the transport of passengers. The vessel intended to bring French soldiers, explorers, engineers, scientists, workers, teachers, tradesmen, etc. to the new colony. For these people, this journey meant to be a fresh start, far away from the troubled situation of the French mainland. However, the ship did not have adequate charts, but old and almost entirely wrong ones, and was captained by an old incompetent man, who was given the command only for political reasons. Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, the captain, was a royalist appointee who had not been to sea for 20 years and had never commanded a ship in his life. Due to the negligent behaviour of Chaumareys, the vessel grounded the Bank of Arguin, off the coast of present-day Mauritania. The ship firmly settled into the bank of sand. Water began leaking in though the damaged hull and finally, it was lost forever on 2 July 1816.
Méduse gave no guarantee of being able to withstand a gale, so abandoning the ship urgently seemed the best option. Meanwhile, panic set in amongst the population of the ship. The cruiser did not carry enough lifeboats to bring the 400 passengers to shore in a single trip. The first thing that happened, as a harbinger of what was to come next, is that the passengers fought for a place in the lifeboats. Finally, the law of the strongest was imposed, and 151 people were left without a place.
Given the certainty that not everyone would fit in the boats, someone had proposed using the wood from the stranded ship to make a raft, where passengers that could not be transported in boats could take refuge. This raft was built in a hurry, with poor results. It had little food, no water, but plenty of wine, and no means of navigation. The people that could not find a place in the lifeboats were deserted on the raft. The provisions of the raft had been cast overboard in the chaos produced when the population of the ship fought between the boats and the raft. The pre-established lists were not respected. Conversely, the arrangement was done following the law of the strongest.
When the boats began to dislodge the raft from the hull of the Méduse, the evacuation had not been completed, so 17 men were left to their fate on the wreck. At first the raft was towed by the boats. However, soon everyone in the boats realized that this idea was not particularly good for them, so the ropes were cut, and the raft was abandoned in the middle of the ocean. 151 people, who started a real horror story, remained on the raft.
Leather belts and hats were chewed to fend off starvation. The seaworthiness of the raft, with no oars, was poor, and the situation inside became soon dire. The raft passengers started fights. Dozens of people committed suicide, or were swept into the sea, where if they did not find death, drowned, they were at the mercy of sharks. Others got drunk and violent, so they were killed for it. The riots caused the death of dozens, many of them brutally murdered and mutilated. The raft sailed with a deck full of corpses. Finally, some limbs of the bodies were cut off and their meat eaten raw. Without food, on a raft that threatened to break apart, some weak and injured men were thrown into the sea. The raft had been adrift for 13 days when it was discovered, and only 15 survivors remained, of whom 5 died shortly afterwards.