A lovely copy of the first edition, signed by both authors on the verso of the title-page.
Jean-Baptiste-Henry Savigny (1793-1843), born in Rochefort and a naval surgeon, was one of the fifteen survivors of the wreck. He was second surgeon (assistant to the surgeon-major Follet) and escaped the disaster. Alexandre Correard, another survivor and co-author of this book, was an ingenieur geographe.
The Meduse departed for Saint-Louis, Senegal, in 1816 with a complement of soldiers to re-establish French control. Poor navigation on the part of the captain saw her struck the Bank of Arguin off the coast of Mauritania. There were insufficient life-boats for the 400 passengers and so a raft was constructed for the 146 people who remained. The raft measured roughly 21 by 6 metres and was constructed from the Meduse’s mast and beams.
“After setting sail, however, an officer aboard territorial governor Schmaltz’s lifeboat used a hatchet to cut the rope that was towing the unwieldy raft. The remaining lifeboats did not come to the raft’s rescue and sailed on toward Senegal. Approximately 150 souls were left adrift upon a rickety floating platform with only a meager supply of wine and water. The paltry foodstuffs and coin-sized compass they originally brought onboard were lost at sea within the first day. For the next 13 days, horrors of every kind beset the raft, which was initially so overloaded that its passengers, packed together like sardines, sat in waist-high water. Violent winds and stormy weather tossed many survivors overboard; others were smothered or crushed in the thrashing about. In a drunken delirium, some of the soldiers initiated a series of violent mutiny attempts that wounded and killed more than half of the raft’s passengers. The remaining survivors turned first to cannibalism and then to something in between murder and euthanasia of the critically wounded in order to attempt survival. When the Argus finally spotted the raft after two weeks at sea, 15 of the 150 passengers were still alive, and five of them soon died at a hospital in Saint-Louis, Senegal” (Ravalico).
This account led to the conviction of the commander, Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, who was deemed responsible for the shipwreck and the abandonment of 149 sailors (he had been appointed commander for political reasons, even though he had very little experience). Savigny became a collaborator and friend of Géricault, whose famous painting commemorating this tragedy, “The Raft of the Medusa,” was exhibited in 1819.
There were further printings of this text in 1818 and 1821, but this first edition is scarce. Auction records locate copies in 2013 and 1920.
Ravalico, L., “Troubled Waters: Liquid Memory in the Wake of Disaster” in The Comparatist, Vol. 41 (October, 2017), p.61.
