After the silence of the shock, after the shrieks of panic and the inaudible commands, came the volley of recriminations. Increasingly during the voyage, murmurs of discontent had escaped from the quarterdeck, down through the moaning confines of the Medusa, to where veteran sailors vouched that they, by guess or God, would have a better chance of steering the frigate to its destination than this toffee-nosed Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys. This shipful of grousing erupted into accusation and affront when the frigate ran onto the Arguin Bank. Ensign Lapeyrère darted up onto the bridge and confronted the captain’s man Richefort: “You see, sir, where your pigheadedness has led us!”
Groups formed intent on convincing themselves that they were not in danger. Others speculated on the exact nature of their dilemma, while nearly everybody proposed extravagent theories about what should be done. Only Chaumareys, stunned into silence, seemed incapable of coming up with a plan. Loath, in any case, to pay much heed to their captain, the officers, all with differing ideas, issued a barrage of conflicting orders and a chaos of activity squandered the afternoon and evening of July 2. Certain necessary steps were, nonetheless, taken; midshipman Rang, who never doubted that they would refloat the Medusa, set about executing the orders that he had been given. Studding sails, set on the outer parts of the topgallant and topmast booms, were pulled in, the topgallants dismantled, and preparations made to lower the boats, an operation interrupted while the longboat, ignored in the rush to dispatch the expedition from Rochefort, was of necessity recaulked.
Lieutenant Espiaux went out in the skiff to take soundings. The Medusa drew five meters and, although it was high tide when she beached on the sandy bottom, skillful seamanship would be able to disengage and save her; it would take merely a modicum of informed humility to set matters right. A kedge anchor was dropped. This device, designed specifically to haul a ship into deeper water when she has run aground, did not produce, with this first attempt, the desired result. During the night, Sander Rang put out a boat to move the kedge farther from the ship, but at four a.m., when the tide was once again high, another attempt to pull off the bank resulted in the anchor, rather than the frigate, tearing free. The plan to drop the much heavier bower anchor was delayed as the only boat capable of transporting such a weight was the governor’s barge, which was also discovered to be in a bad state of repair. Time was wasted while she was patched and sealed, and even then empty barrels had to be fastened to the barge to give her the extra buoyancy needed to bear the bower’s great weight. When it was, at last, dropped into the sand, mud, and shells of the bank, the sea was so shallow that one fluke remained above the water while the purchase of the other fluke on the shifting bed proved so tenuous that this attempt also failed.1
Despite Brédif’s impression that everything was being done in complete disorder, several worthwhile measures were in fact taken by the lieutenants and the ensigns in their attempt to refloat the frigate. The hull was proving mercifully resistant to the shocks of the billows, although it was necessary to repair damage to the hold where water was entering. The dismantled topmasts were put overboard, but the lower yards were left in place to act as crutches should the ship list dramatically. To prevent this happening, barrels of powder were thrown into the sea and the cannon were moved to the port side to compensate the tilt of the frigate. Lightened by the jettisoning of the powder, the Medusa nearly floated on the high tide, and had they ditched the artillery there would have been a strong chance of success. Stubbornly, Chaumareys refused to sacrifice the cannon of the king, unable, it seems, to comprehend that the frigate herself was His Majesty’s ship!
As chances for successful rescue now seemed slight, a council was convened.2 With Richefort shamed and Chaumareys in disgrace, it was at this moment that Governor Schmaltz began to take control. If the captain proved unequal to his task Schmaltz, by contrast, seemed able to adapt himself to almost any situation. He was a survivor, his every action motivated by his overwhelming desire to succeed. While Chaumareys’s incapacity starkly revealed itself, Schmaltz’s maneuvers were more shadowy and his responsibility for the events that followed less easy to determine. In a fictionalized account of the wreck of the Medusa published in 1929, the author, Auguste Bailly, has Chaumareys sitting on the poop deck with Schmaltz when he hears a sailor singing “The Marseillaise,” the fervent republican anthem that Napoleon so perceptively appreciated “would save many a cannon”; the royalist Chaumareys is furious and orders the man to be clapped in irons, at which point, the “debonair” Schmaltz has a discreet word in the captain’s ear and the incident is forgotten.3 Illustrative of the way Schmaltz could smooth things over, it also suggests that the governor, who was happy to blow with the prevailing wind, was a less zealous supporter of the Bourbon monarchy than he pretended. Dubbed “an amphibious reptile” by a contemporary satirist, his sudden ardor for the monarchy in 1814 simply smacked of opportunism.4
His father German and his mother half Gascon, half Irish, Julien Désiré Schmaltz grew up in the cosmopolitan world of Lorient, a thriving port in Brittany. In 1797, when he met and married Reine, “merchant” appeared as his profession on their marriage certificate.5 A daughter, Eliza, was born the following year, but six days after giving birth, Reine suffered a severe postnatal depression that developed into manic rage during which she took an aversion to her husband and daughter.6
With this apparent liability in tow, Schmaltz departed for the Dutch East Indies where his advance was rapid and his life colorful. Despite a lack of military training, Governor-General Daendels promoted him to the rank of lieutenant colonel in May 1808. However, presumptuously sending the governor-general an essay on the defense of Java, he was suddenly retired in January 1809. Showing his ability for cunning readjustment, Schmaltz recalled that “I set myself up in manufacture and I trained several slaves that I owned, making of them good labourers. Both my wife and I worked with our hands and we succeeded.” After several months of manufacturing notions, Schmaltz was happy to be recalled to strengthen the defenses of the port of Surabaya. When the English attacked the town in September 1811, Schmaltz was taken to Bengal as a prisoner of war. Madame Schmaltz, who had suffered a second breakdown in 1805, succumbed to a third as a result of a terrible sea voyage and the imprisonment of her husband. At the end of 1812 Schmaltz was taken to England from whence, a year later, he was repatriated; the Picturesque Biography, a contemporary satire, insinuated, rightly or wrongly, that he had traded privileged knowledge about the island of Java for his freedom.7
With the return of the Bourbons, Schmaltz enjoyed an incredibly swift rise. On July 8, 1814, he was confirmed in the grade of major and in August appointed lieutenant colonel. He was awarded the Légion d’honneur and assigned to Guadeloupe as commandant of Basse-Terre.
The destabilizing episode of the Hundred Days served Schmaltz well. While in Guadeloupe he let it be known that he harbored Jacobin sympathies, yet a daring bet on the failure of Napoleon’s adventure gave him the appearance of a diehard royalist. During a period of vacillation among the administrators of the island, a schooner, the Agile, arrived from France persuading all except Schmaltz to back Napoleon. Schmaltz’s refusal meant that he was arrested and sent for trial. But the Agile had arrived in Guadeloupe only three days before the Battle of Waterloo; by the time Schmaltz arrived in France Louis was back on the French throne and the commandant of Basse-Terre was in a position to cash in on his fidelity. He was thus confirmed in his appointment as commander for the king and administrator of Senegal on April 25, 1816, promoted to a colonel of the infantry, and on May 22 further decorated as a Chevalier de l’ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis.8
In November 1815, Reine Schmaltz suffered another attack of mania and it was then that she came under the care of Dr. Esquirol, whose treatment appears, in the short term, to have been reasonably effective. She was not only able to accompany her husband on the expedition to Senegal but, what is more, she appeared calm and even insensible to the danger in which the Medusa found herself in the first hours after running aground.9
In the council, plans were discussed for the evacuation of the frigate. Given the enormous number of shipwrecks during this period, it was incredible that the small craft carried were often unsuitable as lifeboats. Frequently in bad shape, they were intended for light duties in and around the ship such as the laying out of a kedge anchor; there was no dedicated navigational equipment, no food, no water ready to be loaded in case of disaster. Given such insufficiencies, one of the most intelligent ideas put forward at the council was to ferry the passengers and crew to the inhospitable shore in a series of roundtrips. Reassembled into a troop, armed against the hostile Moors, and provisioned from the boats that would follow the castaways along the coast, they would thus march together on foot to Saint-Louis in Senegal. Another creditable idea was to lighten the frigate as much as possible and dispatch the most seaworthy of the boats posthaste to Senegal for help. Another idea, the construction of a raft capable of carrying a large number of men and all the supplies, was proposed by Governor Schmaltz. At mealtimes, the six boats, which would be carrying the rest of the passengers and crew, would approach the raft and collect their rations. This suggestion, seconded by Captain Chaumareys, was thus adopted and construction began at once for the sea was becoming rougher and the winds wilder, reminding all the frightened souls on board that the stormy season would soon be upon them.
During the evening of July 3, another attempt was made to position the anchor. The crew struggled with the capstan to pull the frigate free, efforts met with a sudden, universal shout of joy as those on board felt the first strains and stirrings of success. But the clamor of exultation suddenly collapsed into deadly silence as the sailors were ordered to stop. Night was falling, the sea had become heavy, and the attempt to free the Medusa would have to be postponed until the morning tide.10 The frigate groaned, the sea pummeled the ship, pounding and punishing the hull as sailors vigorously pumped out the seepage and the carpenters made all possible haste to advance the construction of the raft.
The crying of the wind in the cordage, the yelping of badly disciplined men, the contradictory commands shouted and swallowed by the night terrified the already frightened passengers. Song—rarely heard under Chaumareys’s command—echoed through the vessel as soldiers and sailors, oiled by drink, went on the rampage. They ransacked trunks and strongboxes in search of fine clothes and precious objects. They boasted of how they had broken into the captain’s cabin, preferring his wines and liqueurs to his safe. Nobody mustered for meals; everyone grabbed what they could as life on the ship rapidly descended into anarchy.
There was another burst of optimism when, on the morning of July 4, a further attempt to float the frigate appeared as if it might succeed. A kedge anchor was dropped on the port side to pull against the bower anchor off the starboard and swing the Medusa around so that she could float back into deeper water. The operation began encouragingly. The ship began to turn and, with breath held, the hopeful passengers watched as she swung about completely, leaving only her stern on the bottom. Ensigns Lapeyrère and Maudet wanted to jettison every possible object to lighten the vessel but they were stopped from doing so. Schmaltz even forbade the dumping of barrels of flour, claiming that hunger was a huge concern in the European trading posts. The ultimate failure of the refloating operation underscored the fatal inadequacy of the leadership. As Savigny and Corréard commented, “only half measures were adopted, and in all the manoeuvres, great want of decision prevailed.”11
The construction of the raft, which had been designed by Schmaltz, was put under the charge of that accomplished mariner Lieutenant Espiaux. The boom, masts, and yards from the Medusa were lashed together. A prow to aid navigation was fashioned from two topgallant yards and in the main body of the raft spars were placed at intervals onto which planks were fixed. Long pieces of wood were placed laterally and projected nine feet on either side to give the craft stability. A little raised deck was constructed with some spare planks and fixed with large nails and rope. The six-foot-long prow was not solid enough to support people and neither was a portion of similar length in the stern so, although the craft was a sizable sixty-five feet long by twenty-two wide and therefore nearly a quarter the size of the main deck of the Medusa, an eighth of its surface was all but useless. Barrels were placed in the corners and an ineffectual railing only fifteen inches high ran around the raft. The inadequacy of these defenses made it immediately clear that those who designed the craft were unlikely to assign themselves to its care.12
As soon as the makeshift platform was finished, Schmaltz and Chaumareys, standing before the white Bourbon flag, promised the assembled company that the five largest boats would tow the raft to the coast, and there, equipped with provisions and firearms, everybody would make for Senegal on foot. But these were a politician’s promises. Anglas de Praviel, the infantry lieutenant, recalled that a secret order of disembarkation had been drawn up by those in command, who assigned themselves to the safest places in the boats. When the allocations were, at last, made public, the Picard family, already much distressed by the violent scenes of drunken plunder, found to their horror that they had been assigned to the raft along with a grab bag of rough, drunken soldiers and sailors, assorted Cap Vert colonists, and several officers who were out of favor with Chaumareys or Schmaltz. Picard was indignant and swore that if they were not given a place in one of the boats, his family would stay on board the frigate, which remained well provisioned and showed little sign of breaking up. Although, as Charlotte Picard reflected, he was probably considering only how posterity would judge him, Schmaltz at last relented and promised them a place in one of the boats.13
The evening of July 4 began so agreeably that Brédif decided to put his mattress up on the quarterdeck and lie there under the unfamiliar stars. This brief respite was soon interrupted by a freshening wind that, toward midnight, became very strong. Waves struck the hull with a new vigor until the frigate began to crumple amidships as the keel split in two. The sudden violence of these shocks and jolts and the hunch that they were about to be abandoned unnerved the fiery soldiers of the Africa Battalion. They ranked in battle formation and threatened to shoot anybody they caught trying secretly to escape. Schmaltz came up on the quarterdeck to calm them. When they seemed disinclined to heed his words, he mustered all the troops, crew, officers, and passengers and, once again, repeated his vow to abandon no one. Everybody, he insisted, would be transported to the shore. Assembled as a caravan four hundred strong, they would all make their way on foot to Senegal.
Rather than these doubtful reassurances it was the raft breaking loose from its moorings and drifting out to sea that reestablished calm. Watching as their chance of rescue started to float away, the troops and crew, some constricted in their movements by the five or six stolen jackets they wore and were loath to surrender, united in an operation to recover the raft.14
All available pumps were working flat out when, at three a.m. on July 5, the master caulker informed the captain that the frigate had taken in a dangerous quantity of water. The increasing anxiety that the remaining masts would fall and crush people when the hull finally collapsed prompted the officers to finalize their evacuation plans amid the ruckus of a ship crazed with drink or fright. Sailors and soldiers continued to carouse as if all time were theirs, ignoring the captain who had, in any case, informally been relieved of his command. Pillagers were stumbling about carrying plates and candlesticks and other objects unlikely to aid their escape or survival, decked in finery that made it seem as if the whole misadventure were merely an extra episode in the tropical burlesque that had been in full swing such a short time ago.
Between five and six a.m. the water reached a sufficient height for Governor Schmaltz to order the evacuation. The list that had been drawn up on the previous day was little heeded, as those with rank or power sought the best manner of saving themselves. Provisions had been carefully prepared and placed in iron-hooped barrels, but such was the lack of leadership and panic in the face of disaster that many of these were left on deck or flung indiscriminately into the sea.15
The soldiers were the first to leave; Anglas de Praviel, supervising their descent onto the raft, took pains to ensure that any swag and, above all, their weapons were left on board the frigate. Another officer, observed by Charlotte Picard, “whose brain seemed severely affected, mounted on the bulwarks as if on a horse and, armed with two pistols, threatened to shoot anybody who hesitated to descend.” Standing on the quarterdeck, Rabaroust, the stowaway, was assigned a place on the raft. Convinced that to accept would prove fatal, he refused to budge. When Chaumareys chivied him, he retaliated: “I prefer to die on the frigate. I’m at least allowed to chose my own manner of death.”
By the time forty men had clambered aboard, the raft had sunk by up to two feet in certain places. Provisions that had been put on board the night before, barrels full of necessary supplies, were rolled off into the sea. Only six tubs of wine and two containers of water were left after this rash attempt to lighten a craft that would only sink further under the weight of the next hundred bodies. To supplement the few provisions left on board, a twenty-five-pound sack of biscuit was thrown from the frigate only to land in the sea. By the time it was retrieved the contents had become a soggy, salty paste that would, nonetheless, prove invaluable in the days ahead.
Praviel followed his men down onto the raft but was unable, through the glut of one hundred and fifty bodies, to reach the little deck that had been constructed in the center where other officers, along with the surgeon, Savigny, and Corréard, had formed an impregnable nucleus of command. Blocked in the sunken stern with water up to his waist and waves sweeping over his head, Praviel decided to jump into the sea and clamber back on board the frigate.
Unable to move and hence incapable of checking what had been left aboard the raft by way of provisions and instruments for navigation, Corréard hailed Lieutenant Reynaud:
“Have we got the necessary instruments and charts?”
“I’ve provided you with everything you need.”
The exchange was difficult against the ocean’s roar, but Corréard persisted.
“Is there an officer coming to take charge?”
“It’ll be me. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
And then, having urged an unconscionable number of souls aboard the makeshift structure, Lieutenant Reynaud went off to take his place in one of the boats.16
Throughout the confused evacuation the frigate’s ladder was insufficient, so men slithered down ropes or made a jump for it. Despite the sea swell, they made it to the raft or the boats and in all the undisciplined chaos it is remarkable that no one was seriously hurt. Apparently unruffled by the crisis—and wrapped in a large fitted coat, protecting her from the wind and the spray—Reine Schmaltz and then her daughter were, in turn, lowered into the governor’s barge, a twenty-eight-foot, fourteen-oared boat whose command was entrusted to Lieutenant Reynaud, the very officer who had promised to captain the raft.17 As for Governor Schmaltz, whom Charlotte Picard credits with “taking care of nothing but the wish to save himself,” he was lowered in an armchair suspended from a hoist and deposited in the well-provisioned barge where he joined his wife, daughter, and dearest friends. When five or six sailors who had jumped into the sea approached this barge and pleaded, in the name of humanity, to be picked up, they were repelled by the thick, curved saber of Schmaltz’s aide-de-camp. Settled comfortably among the other thirty-six passengers, who were well distributed in a barge capable of taking fifty, the governor’s family viewed this incident with complete indifference. Fearing for their lives, the repulsed sailors scrambled to get back on board the frigate.18
The Picard family was still stranded on the deck of the Medusa. Charlotte hollered to the captains of the boats who appeared to be abandoning them, and when the governor’s barge circled the frigate, as if to take on more passengers, Charlotte hoped against hope that the Schmaltz ladies, who had taken an interest in her family during the voyage, would make room for them in their boat. But as the barge pulled away again, Chaumareys opined disdainfully that they would not wish to burden themselves.
Picard hailed Lapeyrère, who had been ordered to take the family on board the pinnace, but his boat continued to distance itself from the ship. When the skiff came alongside, Picard beseeched the sailors to take them to Lapeyrère’s boat, which was as sizable as the governor’s barge and far from full. When they refused, he snatched a rifle and threatened to shoot whoever rebuffed him, adding that the skiff was the property of the king and that he and his family must profit from it as much as anybody else. The sailors capitulated and accepted the large complement of four small children, four women, and Picard himself. Precious papers, clothing, and two bottles of ratafia were seized from them and thrown into the sea by the sailors; they had been forced to leave all their other possessions on board the Medusa. As they drew close to the pinnace, they were greeted by a volley of excuses from an embarrassed Lapeyrère, who claimed that he had been ordered to pull away without them. Not necessarily believing such protestations, for the family constituted a large and obvious liability, the Picards were nonetheless relieved to be rescued.19
With the boats now beginning to move off for fear of becoming overloaded, Chaumareys decided, against all the laws and usages of the sea, that it was time for him to leave the frigate. Petit, a noncommissioned officer, confronted the captain with the utmost composure: “Since you are leaving us, at least give us the pleasure, if you reach France, of giving our families the news.”
Chaumareys descended by a forward rope, escaping onto the captain’s barge where midshipman Rang was already installed and in charge. Rang claims that the captain’s intention was to put himself in a position from which he could rally and regroup the less laden boats. But from the deck of the Medusa it appeared otherwise. Anglas de Praviel, furious at the selfishness and cowardice of the leaders of the expedition, grabbed a rifle and threatened to open fire. Rang hollered from the captain’s barge that the boats would return for them. Bucked by such comforting news, those on board the Medusa hoisted a white flag and started shouting “Long live the king” and “Long live the governor,” cries that passed along the convoy that was forming in order to tow the overloaded, half-submerged raft. The captain’s barge, with its mizzen hoisted, was at the head of the line, followed by the Senegal boat. This was commanded by Ensign Maudet and had its full complement of twenty-five on board. Next came the pinnace, under Ensign Lapeyrère, leaving the governor’s barge, under Lieutenant Reynaud, closest to the raft.
Realizing that he and the other sixty-three men remaining on the Medusa had been abandoned, Praviel became delirious and threatened to take his own life. An infantryman raised his rifle to take aim at the cowardly Chaumareys, but Rabaroust, thinking the man crazed, tussled with him and spoiled his shot, much to the dismay of the incensed and stranded victims. Believing that there was space for everybody in the boats, Brédif had not hastened to leave the frigate and was left among this increasingly irate and drunken rabble.
Although the wind had dropped and the sun was breaking through the clouds, the tide and current were dragging the heavy raft, which, in turn, pulled the convoy of four boats, in a northwesterly direction, away from the shore to the east and Saint-Louis in Senegal to the south.
The skiff was too small to form any useful part of the convoy and Lieutenant Espiaux’s longboat, though sizable, had not joined the towing operation. Alone among the officers, Espiaux decided to return to the ship. Conscientious and brave, he believed that his comrades in the longboat would rather die than abandon the helpless. Drawing close to the frigate with considerable difficulty, Espiaux was surprised to find that there were upwards of sixty soldiers and sailors remaining on the Medusa. His plan was to ferry everybody to the other, less laden boats, and he managed to embark, at his peril, all but seventeen.
Praviel and Brédif found themselves in the fragile and overladen longboat among nearly ninety people, the sea on the point of pouring over the sides and submerging them. Approaching the governor’s barge, hoping to place nine of their number on board, Espiaux met with a blunt refusal; Schmaltz claimed that he had accepted too many already and that his barge was taking on water. Espiaux approached Lapeyrère in the pinnace but was also refused, a callous officer interjecting that as Espiaux had gone to rescue them he would have to look after them.
The derisive cry resounded from boat to boat that the longboat was going to sink them all. Indeed, Espiaux’s encumbered and unwieldy craft appeared to be on the point of colliding with the Senegal boat, when its commander, Ensign Maudet, in order to avoid this accident, was obliged to release the towrope attaching him to the pinnace. This divided the line of towing boats into two. Maudet hailed Chaumareys: “Captain, take the towrope again.”
The blithe reply came back: “Yes, my friend.”
Now only the governor’s barge and the pinnace were towing the raft and before the captain’s boat and the Senegal boat were able to rejoin them the whole line was surprised by the cry: “The governor is abandoning the raft!”
From the sinking platform it was clear what was happening. The sudden confusion caused by the maneuvers to avert the collision gave Reynaud his chance. Standing up in the stern of the governor’s barge, he raised his arm like an executioner. The hatchet in his hand came down in hard, repeated blows on the thick rope, hacking until he had severed their last threads of hope.
The captain’s barge came within earshot of the governor’s barge and Chaumareys called out, “What are you doing?”
The reply came back, “The towrope has broken.”
“Get hold of it again.”
“We’re abandoning them.”
“We’re abandoning them.”
Clanet, the paymaster of the frigate who was on board the governor’s barge, repeatedly protested against the chopping of the towrope but to no avail. Lieutenant Reynaud had cut it on the order of Governor Schmaltz. Several men in Espiaux’s longboat, understanding what was happening, took aim at the culprits in readiness to open fire, but Espiaux prevented them.
As several of his friends were aboard the longboat and facing an uncertain fate, Picard renewed his appeal to Ensign Lapeyrère to take them on board their boat, which could easily accommodate a few more souls. Indeed, Picard was already enthusiastically holding out his arms, in order to help them, when suddenly Lapeyrère released the rope that tied them to the governor’s barge and rowed away toward the east. At that instant, all the boats imitated this maneuver in order to distance themselves from the foundering longboat. As Gaspar Mollien put it, surveying the scene from Maudet’s boat, “Egotism and cowardice triumphed,” and in their scramble to distance themselves the raft was forgotten.
Cries erupted on the frightened platform: “The towrope’s broken! The towrope’s broken!”
Hollow, desperate screams of “Long live the king” and “Long live France” reached the ears of Charlotte Picard as the pinnace rapidly pulled away from all immediate responsibility. The leaders and commanders in the other boats took up this cry, which, ironically, seemed to vitalize them. Chaumareys, obviously exhilarated to be rid of his unhappy command, was gaily waving his braid-trimmed hat.20
After a few moments, the cries from the raft died down as the silence of apprehension settled on its ill-fated occupants. The half-submerged structure, void of sails, oars, ropes, anchors, instruments, and charts, was abandoned, ungovernable, in the middle of the sea.21 It was eleven a.m. by the time the boats pulled away from the raft; the chaotic and cowardly evacuation had taken upwards of five hours and those stranded on the platform were stunned by the realization that the twice-sworn solemn promises made so recently on the deck of the Medusa had been broken.
Brédif, crammed aboard Espiaux’s longboat, had managed to save his diary from the general jettisoning that ineffectively attempted to lighten the craft. He recorded the cutting of the ropes and the distancing, under full sail, of the less-hampered boats, adding with sarcastic stoicism, “Whew! My friends, since that’s the way it is, leave us to our fate” as he looked out on the increasingly empty and desolate ocean.22