- YouTube launches new TV-focused tools for creators
- White Sox heading for worst season in MLB history
- China the top challenge in US history: senior diplomat
- Hong Kong democracy tycoon's son warns time running out
- New migraine drugs no better than cheap painkillers: big study
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs again denied bail in sex trafficking case
- Brewers clinch division title as MLB playoff race heats up
- Man City blunted by 'giant' Inter in Champions League stalemate
- US stocks dip despite larger Fed interest rate cut
- Man City held by Inter as PSG pinch win in Champions League
- All Blacks recall Beauden Barrett for Australia Test
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 20, wound 450
- Spurs late show saves Postecoglou blushes at Coventry
- PSG snatch late goal to beat Champions League debutants Girona
- Gittens' late double gives Dortmund Champions League win at Brugge
- Man City blunted by Inter in Champions League stalemate
- Hidden talent: French Olympic star Marchand opts for disguise
- MrBeast named in California lawsuit over 'Beast Games' show
- Gauff splits with Gilbert as coach after 14-month run
- Hundreds of thousands at risk in Sudan's El-Fasher: UN
- Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to new sex crime charge
- Venezuelan opposition candidate says letter conceding election was coerced
- Ukraine official claims Russian advance in Kursk has been 'stopped'
- X update allows app to bypass Brazil ban: internet providers
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 14, wound 450
- US Fed makes aggressive rate cut, weeks before election
- Arsenal's Odegaard faces lengthy injury absence
- India coal expansion risks massive methane growth: report
- China the top challenge in US history, top diplomat says
- US Fed makes larger half-point cut in first reduction since 2020
- Ronaldo's Al Nassr appoint former AC Milan boss Pioli
- Ainslie 'relieved' as British book place in Louis Vuitton Cup final
- Struggling Roma replace sacked icon De Rossi with Ivan Juric
- Women's NBA will add 15th team in Portland in 2026
- Brazil fires need harsher punishment: environmental police boss
- Boeing to start large temporary furloughs amid Seattle strike
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill nine, wound 300
- 'Emergency' declared over falling UK butterfly numbers
- McIlroy outlines threats to golf peace deal
- Stock markets, dollar slip before US rate decision
- Russian advance in Kursk 'stopped': Ukraine official to AFP
- UN members demand end to 'unlawful' Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories
- Snapchat pushes 'safer' platform image, but not everyone agrees
- Three dead, 100 wounded in new wave of Lebanon device explosions
- So where does the oceans' plastic waste come from?
- Allied war heroes buried in Netherlands... 80 years on
- Marsh coy over Australia's choice to open alongside Head
- New London sculpture pays tribute to trans community
- Lebanon doctors tell of horror after pager blasts
- McIlroy eyes Wentworth glory after Irish Open collapse
RBGPF | 5.79% | 60.5 | $ | |
GSK | -0.31% | 42.43 | $ | |
RIO | -0.02% | 62.91 | $ | |
BTI | -0.34% | 37.88 | $ | |
RYCEF | 1.37% | 6.55 | $ | |
NGG | -0.46% | 70.05 | $ | |
CMSC | 0.02% | 25.055 | $ | |
SCS | 0.71% | 14.11 | $ | |
BCC | 1.33% | 137.06 | $ | |
CMSD | -0.12% | 24.98 | $ | |
AZN | 0.06% | 78.58 | $ | |
RELX | -0.82% | 47.37 | $ | |
VOD | 0.49% | 10.23 | $ | |
JRI | 0.45% | 13.44 | $ | |
BP | -0.37% | 32.43 | $ | |
BCE | 3.09% | 35.61 | $ |
Wreck discovered of French steamship that sank in Atlantic in 1856
A US dive team has discovered the wreck of a French steamship, Le Lyonnais, that sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 1856 after a "hit-and-run" collision with an American sailing vessel, claiming 114 lives.
Le Lyonnais, which was built in 1855 and was considered state-of-the-art at the time, was returning to France after completing its maiden voyage from Le Havre to New York when the disaster occurred.
Jennifer Sellitti of Atlantic Wreck Salvage, a New Jersey-based company, said a team on the dive boat D/V Tenacious discovered the wreckage of Le Lyonnais last month after a two-decade search.
Sellitti said divers positively identified the ship in waters 200 miles (320 kilometers) off of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in an area known as the Georges Bank. They are not revealing the exact location for now.
"She certainly doesn't look as good as she used to," Sellitti told AFP. "She was really broken apart.
"The North Atlantic is a brutal place to be a shipwreck -- storms, tides," she said. "The Nantucket shoals are known for shifting sands that just completely bury wrecks."
Sellitti said measurements of an engine cylinder were key to identifying the vessel.
The iron-hulled Le Lyonnais, which had both sails and a steam engine, was built by a British shipmaker, Laird & Sons, for Compagnie Franco-Americaine to provide passenger and mail service across the Atlantic.
"The 1850s was the beginning of the transition from sail to steam," Sellitti said. "This was an early attempt by France to have its first successful passenger line."
Le Lyonnais had sailed to New York carrying cargo and mail, she said, and was returning to Le Havre with its first passengers, most of whom were French.
- Hit-and-run -
On the night of November 2, 1856, Le Lyonnais, carrying 132 passengers and crew, collided with the Adriatic, an American barque which was sailing from Maine to Georgia.
Jonathan Durham, the Adriatic's captain, in a statement published in the November 19, 1856 edition of The New York Times, said it was around 11:00 pm on a starlit but "hazy" night when Le Lyonnais "suddenly changed her course, which rendered a collision inevitable."
Durham said the Adriatic suffered significant damage but managed to make it to Gloucester, Massachusetts two days later while Le Lyonnais continued on its way.
The French ship had, in fact, suffered extensive damage -- a hole at the water line and another one lower, probably near its coal bunkers, Sellitti said.
It sank several days later. The handful of survivors were picked up by another ship.
Sellitti, whose book about the incident, "The Adriatic Affair: A Maritime Hit-and-Run Off the Coast of Nantucket," comes out in February 2025, said the sinking of Le Lyonnais was "a really big deal at the time."
The American captain was arrested and put on trial in France, she said, and the collision raised a number of novel maritime liability questions such as what happens when a sailing vessel meets a steamship at sea.
The disaster, which is mentioned in Jules Verne's novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," was the focus of much international attention, she said, but when the US Civil War broke out in 1861 "everybody stopped talking about this and went on to the Civil War."
A.Gasser--BTB