 |
| Photo courtesy of Pline. |
As I mentioned in my last post, which you can read Here, the year 1815 was the beginning of a new and prosperous age for this town. A lighthouse was built to aid shipping, and the port was redeveloped in 1856. Eleven years later, in 1867, the town acquired its first oared lifeboat. That particular fact prompted a reader's question and sent me down a rabbit hole to do some more research.
Prior to the nineteenth century, rescue at sea was very much an ad hoc thing. Local fishing ports and villages relied on one another for help should a vessel flounder. It was often the case that, when a boat did not return to shore as expected, that absence was the first indication that there was a problem.
In the UK, what is now the Royal National Lifeboat Institute first came into being on March 4th, 1824, with a slightly different title. But the overall objective was the same: to preserve life at sea. Here in France, the Société centrale de sauvetage des naufragés (the central society for the rescue of shipwrecked persons) was formed in 1865. At that point, there had been two serious shipwrecks, the Amphitrite in August 1833 and the Sémillante in 1855. The Amphitrite, a British convict ship, sank off the French coast at Boulogne-sur-Mer with the loss of all but three of the 136 on board. What was even more distressing was that the ship could be seen from the shore, and despite the French offering assistance, the Captain refused help and attempted to continue his journey. The Sémillante, a warship, ran aground in fog and heavy seas, resulting in the loss of over 600 crew and soldiers. Each of these events had a defining impact, and many coastal towns set up local Société humaine des naufragés (Human Society for Shipwrecks). But in 1861, a national commission was tasked with federating all the local initiatives into one cohesive force, and the SCSN was created on February 12th, 1865.
At that time, the equipment was a standard oared boat of a specific design, and one of the earliest can be seen in the National Maritime Museum in Port-Louis. For Granville to acquire its own oared lifeboat only two years later was a significant achievement. The oared lifeboats, with various improvements, remained in service until the early twentieth century, when they were replaced by motorised launches.
In 1967, the SCSN was merged with the Société des hospitaliers sauveteurs bretons (the Society of Breton Hospitallers and Rescuers) to become the Société nationale de sauvetage en mer (the National Sea Rescue Society), or the SNSM, which can be seen along the coastline of France and on some inland waterways.
Like the RNLI in the UK, the SNSM is a voluntary organisation and is funded primarily by charitable donations.
There will be more from my journey following the Granville-Paris Express next month, so keep watching this space…
