Pathway to Japanese Literature

In the third year of Louis XVIII’s Restoration government, along the coast of French West Africa, a shipwreck of unprecedented and unimaginable devastation occurred.

The three-masted warship La Méduse—carrying a new governor bound for Saint-Louis Island at the Senegal River’s mouth to rebuild a colony abandoned for half a century, along with gubernatorial officials, clerks, colonial chaplains, civil engineers, paymasters, provisions officers, local settlers, their wives and children, and approximately two companies of colonial garrison infantry—followed the orders of an incompetent and negligent fleet commander who understood nothing of navigation or ship handling. As an inevitable consequence, it ran aground in broad daylight upon Arguin Bank (banc d'Arguin), a shoal known even to novice sailors.

Though this too arose from ignorance and cowardly fear, every last crew member—for reasons unknown—judged that the warship would soon sink.
The full complement of 337 left seventeen unwilling to abandon ship aboard the warship and boarded six lifeboats along with a ludicrously enormous raft measuring eight toises in length (approximately seventy feet) and four toises in width (thirty-five feet)—the infamous raft that would later be remembered as "the raft of La Méduse"—before drifting aimlessly into uncharted waters of the South Atlantic.
Two of the six lifeboats reached Saint-Louis Island through unexpected good fortune, but the 188 aboard the remaining four—abandoning their craft solely out of terror of the sea—found themselves in the Sahara Desert, where marauders roamed and not a drop of water, blade of grass, nor sliver of shade existed. There, each in their living form enacted every folly, summoning misfortune upon themselves until their misery deepened beyond measure.
Pierre Mil, who wrote *The Monarch*, states as follows:

“Every last one of them—clinging, cowardly, nothing but brazen liars.”
Among these hundred-and-eighty-odd people, the only one who retained some semblance of humanity was Sergeant Guérin—the man who never relinquished the mummified head of his wife torn off by a leopard.
That too—how much truth it held remained unclear.
They preferred wandering alone as a pair, so none witnessed them.
“If they wished to vomit forth lies, they could fabricate any tale.”

The circumstances of the 149 individuals aboard the raft were likewise unparalleled. Their ill fortune began when they indulged in wild fantasies—that this massive timber structure, large enough to constitute a gunboat and loaded with so many people, might somehow carry them to Saint-Louis Island through sheer happenstance. Of the passengers, 122 comprised a motley crew of ignorant, violent foreign mercenaries who found life's purpose in looting and arson; moreover, it proved an unfortunate twist that this group of barely a hundred people represented over twelve different nationalities—Swiss, Bavarian, Italian, Spanish, Prussian, Luxembourgish, Senegalese Negro Nation, among others. When such disparate elements became concentrated upon a single raft and were forced to confront an aberrant reality, one needed little imagination to foresee what might transpire. From the very first night of their drifting, precisely the anticipated calamities unfolded: conspiracies, betrayals, plundering, brawls, mutual slaughter, and every other spectacular act within human and bestial capacity repeated ceaselessly over twelve days upon that colossal raft—a microcosm of living society. The scene appeared horrific beyond measure, and merely envisioning it brought a misty veil of tears pressing upon one's being—yet the essence lay not in its brutality. The true terror resided in how those hundred-odd souls, when thrust into such extremity, moved precisely as all humanity inevitably would have moved, their actions harboring an unspeakable dread.

From Farel to Benoît, every nineteenth-century writer tackled this incident at least once, yet none achieved what Armand Pravielle accomplished in *The Truth of the African Coast Shipwreck Incident*.
As for Madame Dangereux, she became utterly appalled by humanity’s ceaseless folly and, after years of investigation, condensed her findings into fewer than three lines before resolutely abandoning her writing altogether.

"149 individuals boarded the raft and drifted."
Only fifteen individuals had survived when discovered.
The remaining 134 individuals had either sunk to the seabed or been devoured by those who survived—or so the accounts claimed.
“That’s all there was to it……ou avaient été dévorés par Les survivants. C’est tout.”

In the gallery known as the third room of the Louvre Museum hung Géricault's monumental painting depicting a drifting raft. It showed Artillery Officer Coutant—one of the fifteen cannibals—waving a cloth at the sail of rescue ship La Argus, executed in the dramatic brushstrokes characteristic of Romanticism. This work had been exhibited at the 1819 Salon, precisely when publics across two continents were harboring incurable resentment and disgust toward the verdicts in the La Méduse shipwreck case. Consequently, it faced ferocious condemnation. Society at large denounced this deliberate focus on atrocities as a brazen assault on human ethics, mobilizing every means to demand its withdrawal—yet *The Raft of La Méduse* merely portrayed an artificial studio scene bearing no resemblance to truth. The preparatory sketches, with their somber tones allowing psychological shadows to seep into the figures fittingly, approached reality somewhat more closely—though even these scarcely justified the controversy they provoked.

Géricault then soon fell from a horse and suffered severe injuries, and was thereafter confined to an insane asylum where he painted nothing but portraits of madmen until he died at thirty-two within five years.
Society declared it divine retribution.

Documents and records concerning the La Méduse shipwreck were broadly classified into two categories: those such as voyage accounts before and after the wreck, drift memoranda, reports, official documents, and garrison duty logs—compiled in the *Senegal Archives*—and all trial records from the court-martial and maritime tribunal conducted at Rochefort Naval Port, along with interrogation transcripts, collected in the *Rochefort Records*. Together these appeared to have exhaustively analyzed every detail of events from the wreck to the survivors’ repatriation.
The outline of events from shipwreck to rescue seemed thoroughly coherent and readily convincing to anyone, yet upon closer scrutiny, hazy ambiguities emerged at every turn.
Though every detail was explicitly explained—like an April sky that remains somehow indistinct despite being clear—an invisible haze seemed to linger over the pages of the records, obstructing candid understanding and preventing any approach to the heart of the matter.
No matter how one struggled to clarify it, the incident remained persistently nebulous—a quality one could only describe as this disaster’s defining characteristic; there was simply no other way to put it.

“The moon sank.”
I no longer had energy to do anything; ceaselessly battered by towering waves, I must have drifted in and out of consciousness.
The Alps—a spectacular vista floated before my eyes.
The coolness of shade defied description.
Impressions revived in my senses exactly as they had been then.
I now tried entering Kaiserlautern Forest with my younger sister……Yet in reality, I had thrust my upper body into the sea and lay comatose.
The sound of waves against the hull felt like a torrent cascading down cliffs.
My body had likely submerged beneath waves a dozen times.
When my head cleared somewhat, I finally raised myself and licked my lips—only bitter sea salt remained, no trace of the spring I’d just seen.
It was a time of terror.
“The absolute extremity of despair.”

This was an excerpt from a diary recorded by Mr. Brédif—technical advisor to the settlers' group during their drifting—to preserve fading memories (to be precise, on July 8 when the lifeboat stranded on the sandbank), which was later submitted to the Governor's Office. Yet none of his companions ever witnessed Mr. Brédif writing characters or holding a notebook.
There should be no issue with the prose being too polished.
In such dire circumstances—where it is only natural that anyone would experience hallucinations—there can be no objection on that account. Yet from multiple angles, it becomes evident that this diary does not solely record unembellished facts.

During desert marches, whenever some vile act—such as brutal mutual killings, abandoning comrades who still breathed to advance, or presumably worse atrocities—seemed to occur, Mr. Brédif would invariably fall into a sort of fainting state and spend his time immersed in poetic fantasies of mountain clouds, rainbows, or springs in shaded groves.
During several days of overland travel, Mr. Brédif ultimately remained unaware of any inhumane acts committed by his companions—this being a case in point.

This too was Lieutenant Anglès's memoir from the land party.

Lieutenant Anglès assumed command of a group of about sixty men, including locals, but prior to departure, he reportedly issued the following instructions.

“Terrible misfortune hounds us.”
“No sooner do we resolve one than the next comes upon us in this manner.”
“We have avoided drowning, but in a desert such as this, we may find ourselves unable to expect either food or water.”
“But let us entrust all to divine providence and muster our courage to advance.”
“Refrain from transgressions not permitted by God.”
“Let us guard against being accused as Frenchmen who sucked our compatriots’ blood and devoured their flesh.”
“How much better to die laughing with innocence intact than spend our lives tormented by dark memories of sin.”

Judging from the intent of these instructions, Lieutenant Anglès—the commanding officer—may have believed the French to be a breed that would immediately resort to *cannibalisme* once their food ran out.
If that were true, it could only mean he had been excessively paranoid.
In France—a Catholic nation—there had been no open acts of cannibalism, not even during the benighted Middle Ages.
It was precisely for this reason that the shipwreck shocked an entire generation’s collective psyche and robbed millions of their appetites; yet had there truly been such prescience, Lieutenant Anglès would have been a remarkable philosopher—but such a thing defies belief.
Compared to the mercenary troops of mixed nationalities aboard the raft, Lieutenant Anglès’s unit was incomparably superior in quality—comprising not only regular French soldiers, district garrison commanders, clerks, a physician, and even an academic advisor to the settlers in Dr. Kummer, a scholar of natural philosophy—but also operating in a Senegalese coastal region where tents of various Trarza tribes and nomadic peoples were anticipated to exist. Thus, even when imagining the worst-case scenario, it seems inconceivable that such excessive instructions would have been necessary at the outset of their departure.

This was a later account: when Lieutenant Anglès and Dr. Kummer were confronted during cross-examination, Dr. Kummer stated, “I did deliver what might be called instructions, but I never mentioned *cannibalisme* or anything of that nature. Had I made such remarks, we would not have tolerated such an insult in silence.”

Lieutenant Anglès had abandoned ten—at least six—corpses in the desert.
According to Lieutenant Anglès's testimony, each instance had been furnished with an entirely reasonable justification—so much so that upon hearing them, one might indeed find them convincing. Yet precisely because there existed this matter of instructions that seemed formulated after the fact, doubts arose: even regarding these ten—or six—individuals, it remained impossible to know what had truly been done to them.

As for Dr. Kummer—the one subjected to cross-examination—if we consider whether he was making an honest confession, even this aspect proved to harbor suspicious elements. Dr. Kummer had for some reason separated from the unit and journeyed alone through the desert, humorously chronicling how he ended up being lavishly treated in the tent of a Moorish chieftain—yet why he chose to part from the others and undertake such an arduous trek of his own volition remained incomprehensible. If one were to speculate maliciously, it was not unimaginable that he could no longer endure witnessing atrocities or sought to evade responsibility for misdeeds. Regarding the true reason for his deliberate separation, he never divulged a single word until his death at sixty-seven. Dr. Kummer wrote that he "wanted to investigate Trarza's ancient ruins," but after several days of an excruciating trek that drained the very wellsprings of life—without a crumb of bread nor a drop of water—could such a desire truly have arisen? If this were indeed fact, it could only be called a great passion.

The circumstances of the seventeen individuals remaining aboard the stranded La Méduse also reveal numerous ambiguous details that seem both understood and not when examined to the utmost.
Fifty days later, when the rescue ship arrived, only three remained atop the mast top.
Of the remaining fourteen, twelve had constructed a small raft and departed from the ship on the morning twenty days after the stranding; one later clung to a mast fragment and likewise drifted out to sea; another succumbed to illness—thus leaving only three behind.

La Méduse was considerably flooded but had settled securely atop the sandbank; there should have been no immediate danger whatsoever.
Contrary to Commander Chaumareys’ expectations, the three-masted warship showed no signs of sinking whatsoever; maintaining its robust form for four months thereafter, it finally capsized and sank only when overt plunder—stripping copper sheathing from the hull and sawing out timbers—commenced at the end of October.

The seventeen individuals who remained aboard the warship were all seasoned maritime experts—the most astute among the over four hundred souls—who had voluntarily stayed behind precisely because they were certain La Méduse would never sink. Yet why they later abandoned their secure position remains an eternal mystery.
The interior of the warship was piled high with barrels of wheat flour, salted meat, cooking oil, lard, brandy, and light wine serving as drinking water—so much so that moving between decks had become nearly impossible. Given that what remained could not have been consumed by seventeen people in a year or two, this too could not be considered a reason.
The three survivors merely said, "We don’t understand what they were thinking," and when pressed for interrogation, they feigned madness and began babbling incoherently—leaving authorities utterly helpless.

But these events amounted to little more than an interlude when viewed in their entirety; the principal drama unfolded entirely upon the raft.
Three principal actors emerged: Savigny, a surgeon's mate; Corréard, an engineer; and Charles, a black porter of eighth-class service. Savigny assumed the role of king, Corréard that of chamberlain, and Charles that of executioner, dedicating themselves to a development as natural as it was meticulously orchestrated.
What events transpired upon the enormous raft floating on the waves of the South Atlantic?
Certain aspects of this were partially clarified through survivors' testimonies and journals, but to elucidate the nature of this enigmatic maritime drama, let us now excerpt from the memoir of Commander Reynaud—leader of the search party that first discovered the raft.

"The discovery of La Méduse’s raft was nothing short of a stroke of extraordinary luck. We had rescued the crews of four vessels—including a launch and a barge—between the north of the Marigot River mouth (a tributary of Senegal) and Cape Mirik, thereby accomplishing the majority of our mission; thus, we had resolved to hastily return the following morning. The task of retrieving provisions and gold coins from La Méduse still remained; however, with seven days since departure having already depleted our water reserves, headwinds blowing relentlessly each day, and Arguin Bank still lying forty nautical miles away, it was deemed utterly impossible to complete the mission."

If the wind had not shifted and the captain of La Argus had not conceived a capricious notion, they would have turned back to base in the early morning of the 17th, making the raft’s discovery forever impossible.
However, on the morning of the 17th, the wind suddenly shifted southwestward and began blowing straight toward the sandbank.
The captain said, “The wind has shifted favorably.
Let us go as far as we can.
Though we’ll likely achieve little,” and steered the ship toward Arguin Bank.

For the fifteen survivors, whether being rescued constituted happiness or misfortune could not be simply explained—but under these circumstances, at any rate, the raft was discovered.

The first thing that appeared through the telescope was the figure of Coutant, La Méduse's artillery officer—clinging to a mast timber and waving a scrap of cloth in a frenzy. About four people were supporting the artillery officer’s body, while another group danced wildly as if drunk.

When the boat was secured to the edge of the raft, Surgeon's Mate Savigny and Engineer Corréard came running.
Both were burned black by the sun, their cheeks hollowed to the point of being unrecognizable, yet despite having no food and drifting for over ten days, they remained remarkably energetic.
The surgeon's mate said to me, “Thank you for coming to our rescue. We have no food, but we can hold out for about five more days.”

Surgeon's Mate Savigny made a slip of the tongue in his excessive joy, I think.
Admittedly, it would not be until much later that I came to understand the true meaning hidden behind these words.

"The moment I transferred onto the raft, I was struck by an indescribably gloomy atmosphere and involuntarily halted my steps. The other thirteen—some crouched beneath the mast, others lay prostrate—covered their faces with their hands and emitted moans of utmost anguish, as though the arrival of the rescue ship were the greatest misfortune in this world. The joyful figures that had appeared in the telescope's lens moments earlier—I found myself wondering whether they had been an illusion or a dream."

With Surgeon's Mate Savigny at the lead, they began transferring one by one into the boat, but then Lieutenant Lozach burst into violent tears, pleading, “I beg you. Leave me on the raft.”
Then, following suit, the five men—Carpenter Lavillette, Lieutenant Clairet, Sergeant-Major Charlot, Artillery Officer Coutant, and Charles the Senegalese porter—began crawling back onto the raft in a state of feverish agitation.
These six individuals—including Lieutenant Lozach—later stubbornly continued refusing food at the British hospital on Saint-Louis Island until all six perished from starvation; yet that momentary act of returning to the raft remained an unforgettably poignant spectacle that stirred my emotions and plunged me into unfathomable contemplation.

What had happened on this raft?
Except for the black porter of eighth-class service, only the fourteen there were armed.
Why was it that only the armed group survived, while not a single one of the hundred-odd people who had no equipment at all was saved?
After departure, one of the accounting officers had regretted not loading proper provisions onto the raft—so why did they maintain near-normal health even after twelve days of drifting?
Unfamiliar pieces of meat hung in clusters from the guy ropes of the mast.
Similar objects protruded from the Surgeon's Mate's satchel as well.
When I asked, “What is this?” the Surgeon’s Mate answered with a laugh, “Ah, this is flying fish meat.”

Was it flying fish meat, or was it some other kind of meat? In the Senegalese subdivision, this was never made clear.

Surgeon's Mate Savigny was said to be a strange entity—both physically and mentally—that one might call Fourier-esque, but he made a return to mainland France akin to desertion and sent a lengthy statement of charges to the Naval Ministry and Debat newspaper, accusing Fleet Commander Chaumareys.
This was because until Savigny exposed the maritime disaster and subsequent events, they had remained entirely unknown in mainland France; consequently, regarding La Méduse's raft incident, rather than urging confessions from survivors, a political strategy to suppress the scandal that had spread across Saint-Louis Island and bury it in darkness was forcefully implemented.

On the day the fifteen raft survivors were rescued and returned, they were having such a conversation with the Governor and Lieutenant Coudein in the Recore’s captain’s cabin.

“Commander, there is something I must inform you about regarding certain events during our drifting.”

“Lieutenant Coudein, I already heard your report earlier. Is there still something else?”

“This is not a report.”
“A confession.”

“If it’s a confession, go to a confessor. I don’t know what you intend to say, but if it concerns appetite-killing matters, we’d rather you refrained from speaking.”
“I neither wish to hear nor know what transpired upon that raft.”
“As for you all, it suffices to simply thank God for your salvation.”
“The means by which one survived is insignificant compared to the value of life itself.”
“This is our advice and the sum of our opinions.”

And then, this letter.

"The transport ship's launch was about to depart from the pier. We had only five minutes to write this letter. We would defer the details to a subsequent message."

We are now in Africa.
By the way, we were shipwrecked on the coast south of Cape Branco.
We have lost our clothes and undergarments, documents and money, books and weapons—everything.
What remains is only intense fatigue and thirst.
But there is not a drop of water.
Everyone suffers from severe diarrhea.

We count ourselves fortunate still.
Some companions have perished in the desert; others remain enslaved there.
The mercenaries' fate proves most tragic.
"Half drowned, and the rest…"

All letters issued from Saint-Louis in 1816 had undergone legal deletion.
The records of the La Méduse incident remained riddled with such intentionally undepicted portions, luring human imagination into dimly lit labyrinths until everything became hopelessly tangled beyond comprehension.
Writers of the 1800s had endeavored to uncover the darkest aspects of this incident and the reasons for its alterations, but they achieved little success.
By the mid-point of this century, some historical novelists captured the subtle nuances in documents and memoirs, pursued discrepancies in testimonies and unconscious utterances, and came close to uncovering the truth of this incident.
For two centuries, the full picture of the incident had lain dormant in darkness; now, for the first time, it was brought to light.

The vast region along Africa’s west coast known as Senegal was preemptively occupied by an expeditionary force dispatched by Richelieu during the reign of Louis XV, who established bases on Saint-Louis Island at the Senegal River’s mouth and Dakar at Cape Verde to govern the colony; however, they subsequently lost effective control of this preemption and came under British rule. Following Napoleon’s downfall, as a result of the 1615 peace conference, France’s prior claim to the Senegal region was recognized, and for the first time in sixty years, the tricolor flag was raised over that land.

Around that time, there were letters written by the French stationed in Dakar and sent to the mainland.

"This scorching land."
"As for what inhabited here, there were only monsters of unknowable form, poisonous vapors, and slaves."
"But since there were human-like creatures nearby, we could still manage to survive."
"The Black people in this area were melancholic wretches who took no joy in anything done for them; they bore no malice but were dull-witted, filthy, and of such appearance that one could not bear to look upon them a second time."
"All they gave us was rotten camel milk, salty water, and nauseating meat reeking of decay."
"Not once had we encountered a clear day since arriving there."
"The sun was always veiled by layers of black clouds (these were sand tornadoes), and it was rare for food not to contain grains of sand."
"Stranger than any freak weather seen in England or elsewhere, and so parched one could scarcely breathe."

Yesterday, we walked around nearby.
Various fellows have written praises of Cape Verde’s scenery, but they’re all outright lies.
For fifty ri in every direction, there are no rivers or ditches, and not a single drop of freshwater exists.
For more than eight months of the year, there is absolutely no green to be seen.
"In this land, what thrives are insects, wild beasts, reptiles, and the rest—we can’t bring ourselves to write about each one…"

Saint-Louis was a small town on an island sandwiched between the Senegal River estuary to the north of Dakar and the Barbary sandspit that dangled like an elephant’s trunk, with a wide anchorage on the island’s eastern side where approximately five hundred Europeans—primarily British, including the British Governor of Senegal, officials, guards, employees of development companies and their families—lived alongside Senegalese Black people.
This region, located at the gateway to the Sahara Desert, reached an average annual temperature of sixty-five degrees Celsius—a wretched place with no drinking water except foamy stagnant pools, where murky rivers swarmed with man-eating crocodiles and crocodiles preyed upon by men. Yet its position beyond a narrow channel too shallow for warships drawing over eight fathoms had made it a strategically vital location.

At the French Ministry of Colonization, preparations for colonial reconstruction began from the start of 1816, and by the end of May, they had completed establishing the colonial government structure and organizing the settler group, appointing Colonel Julien Schmaltz as the new governor and Major Poincy-Signon to command the colonial guard force of three companies totaling three hundred men.
For transporting the development team, they decided to assign three warships and a transport vessel named Le Loire, appointing Duroy de Chaumareys as fleet commander and assigning the leaders of each ship as follows.

The three-masted battleship La Méduse (flagship commander Colonel Schmaltz), the three-masted gunboat L'Écho (captain Lieutenant Colonel Bunanqur), and the two-masted gunboat L'Argus (captain Captain Parnajon).

The Senegal expedition fleet with La Méduse as its flagship assembled at Île d'Aix—the strategic harbor district of Rochefort on France’s western coast—and set sail for West Africa at 8:00 a.m. on June 17. Yet Commander Chaumareys exposed his utter incompetence by spending an entire day merely navigating through the port’s simple channel, only barely managing to clear the strait near midnight with the belated aid of a north wind.

Having thus ventured into the Atlantic, Commander Chaumareys’ leadership grew increasingly erratic as he abandoned the three trailing vessels to commence an arbitrary course.
The three-masted gunboat L'Écho alone barely managed to follow along, but by around the third day, it could no longer keep up and was left far behind.

That such an incompetent individual was appointed fleet commander seems inconceivable, yet it was not without reason.
The exodus of French nobles abroad had commenced immediately following Louis XVI’s botched flight to Varennes, though they found little respect in any land; in Spain particularly, some met their end stabbed in thoroughfares as craven abandoners of royalty.
Those who sought refuge in Britain had nearly all depleted their fortunes, dwelling in squalid corners of West End slums where hunger drove some to peddle strings or scrape out violin melodies for coins.
When Napoleon was exiled to Elba in 1814 and Louis XVI’s brother—the Count of Provence—ascended as Louis XVIII, every exiled noble was summoned homeward, rising through unexpected eminence amid the dearth of competent men.

Chaumareys was one such exiled noble; he had fled France at twenty-five, just when he had finally become a trainee officer, but twenty-five years had since passed, and he had crossed the hill of fifty.
During his long years of exile, Chaumareys had become an itinerant watch repairman and wandered in dire poverty, so he had even lost memory of the most basic naval service protocols.
Entrusting such a man with critical responsibilities stemmed from the Restoration government’s reckless leniency, but Louis XVIII’s era was what might be called an age of dregs—all capable Frenchmen had either perished in war or been exiled, leaving no one competent enough to be of any use.

On the evening of the 19th, La Méduse capriciously anchored offshore at Tenerife Island in the Canary Islands, enabling L'Écho to finally catch up; however, Chaumareys once again set sail without making contact and proceeded toward Africa while taking a perilous coastal route.

At dawn on the thirtieth day, the African coast became visible off the port side.

This was a dangerous sign.
Off Africa’s west coast near latitude 19°54'N and longitude 19°24'W—approximately midway between Cape Branco and Cape Mirik—lay a sandbank called Arguin.
A vast sandbar harder than stone stretched forty nautical miles seaward from shore, mingled with low-lying rocky reefs.
The Docker Sandbank near England’s Hull Port, India’s Irrawaddy Sandbank at that river’s northeastern mouth, and this Arguin Sandbank formed the Western Hemisphere’s three great shoals—features no fleet commander could plausibly claim ignorance of. Yet he maintained course thirty *ri* westward still, until even the sailors began muttering unease.
One navigator ventured counsel, but Commander Chaumareys merely squared his shoulders in haughty silence and turned away.

On the afternoon of the first, they passed offshore of Cape Branco and from that vicinity finally entered the danger zone.

After departing Tenerife, L'Écho had been trailing La Méduse along a course roughly thirty nautical miles apart, but even by midnight on the second day, as they continued navigating through the sandbanks, they launched rockets to signal danger; yet with no response from La Méduse, they reluctantly proceeded onward.

Around noon on the second day, La Méduse approached the edge of the sandbank.
The aspect of the entire area transformed; the sea’s color turned an unusual milky white, and seaweed began mingling with the crests of the waves.

The navigator turned pale and warned to alter the course, but Chaumareys did not even respond to this and ordered a sailor to take soundings.

For some reason, the depth at that moment measured eighty fathoms; the tallow on the sounding lead came up coated in sandy mud.
It was a deep fissure where the sandbank had formed a fault.

“What? It’s a full eighty fathoms!”

Chaumareys attempted to proceed with the warship as it was.
The navigator insisted that such a depth was impossible and that they needed to take another measurement, so Chaumareys reluctantly ordered soundings taken.
This time it was eighteen fathoms, and soon it became a mere ten fathoms.
Chaumareys screamed like a madman.

“Lower the sails! Quickly, turn the ship into the wind!”

By this time, they were already moving through six fathoms.
The moment they felt a violent impact at the bow, La Méduse scraped its hull against sandstone and came to rest completely upon the birdlime-like sandbank.
At 3:15 p.m., under a cloudless sky so calm there was scarcely a breeze to blow, the foolish captain ran the three-masted battleship aground a mere forty nautical miles from the West African coast.

La Méduse lay tilted at an angle of about twenty degrees to starboard, stranded in the churning waves of the shallows.
Across the boundless sea where nothing obstructed the view, clouds cast drifting shadows in silence.
Only the sound of waves remained—a scene steeped in indescribable loneliness.

Chaumareys, emerging from his stupor, promptly ordered an assessment of the shipwreck.
Fortunately, La Méduse had sustained no major damage, fostering an optimistic belief that they might still reach Saint-Louis if they could dislodge from the sandbank at high tide.
They lowered all sails at once, dropped anchors as far out as possible, and manned the capstan—yet the ship remained fixed while the anchors were instead effortlessly dragged back.
Each attempt proved futile; the anchors merely clawed through sandy seabed before sliding home.
The disaster had struck at peak tide—even as they labored, the water receded, exposing a draft exceeding ten spans while levels continued their inexorable drop.
All hope of using high tide for escape now vanished.

Governor Schmaltz，Commander Chaumareys，the garrison commander，Captain Renaud，and other senior officers gathered in the captain’s cabin and began their meeting．
Chaumareys sketched a simple diagram of the raft with a pencil and showed it．

“We’ll build a raft roughly in this shape.
“Since we have four launches, a cutter, and a barge, we’ll divide and load 278 personnel along with weapons and provisions onto those vessels, then tow the remaining 150 on the raft.”

Everyone supported the plan.

“That’s good.
“That should suffice.”

From what calculations they derived this plan, they believed four launches could tow a massive raft carrying nearly two hundred people. Such maneuvers relying solely on sails and oars would have been difficult even on calm seas, but everyone was solely focused on fleeing the ship, and not a single person had conducted thorough calculations. Thus, the distribution of boats and allocation of responsibilities were promptly determined. It took shape in this manner.

1. 14-oared launch (for the Governor’s use): Governor, his wife, his daughter, adjutant, staff officers, senior officials.
Commander: Captain Renaud.
(All thirty-five people)

2. Same [type]: 12-oared (for naval use) – Naval officers and non-commissioned officers.
Commander: Lieutenant Lapelér.
(All forty-two people)

3. Same type: 14-oared (for Fleet Commander's use) - Commander, select Governor's Office officials, Commander: Lieutenant Ran.
(All twenty-eight people)

4. Same type: 8-oared (for Governor's Office use) - Senior officials, Secretary Picard, his wife, his daughter, family members, and four young children.
Commander: Lieutenant Mord.
(All twenty-five people)

5. Cutter (for settler group use): Chief Engineer Chastelus, senior settler group members.
(All thirteen people)

6. Large boat (for naval use): Sailors, seamen.
A contingent of mercenaries.
Commander: Lieutenant Espiau.
(All forty-five people)

7. Raft (for mercenary use): The majority of three artillery companies.
A portion of lower-ranking sailors and lower-ranking local personnel.
Commander: Lieutenant Coudein.
(All 149 people)

As evident in the boat allocation plan, the four secure launches and two other vessels were prioritized and generously assigned to the Governor, Commander, officers, senior officials of the Governor’s Office, and their families, while the entire garrison and lower-ranking members of the settler group were to be herded onto a makeshift raft.
In other words, from the moment this allocation was decided, the lives of approximately 150 people had already been deemed forfeit.
The leadership consisted solely of audacious men who only remembered others when needing to dispose of nuisances; they never entertained effeminate concerns like whether a raft could realistically hold 150 people or what fate might await those consigned to such a vessel.
Assuming a grand posture that fairness was never to be expected in the first place, they briskly disposed of the matter by exercising the forgetfulness and spirit of rejection characteristic of those in power.

The detailed agreements were continued until evening, and once prospects for securing each individual’s safety had been confirmed, they summoned the chief accountant, instructing him to secretly load six boats that night with hardtack, drinking water, nautical charts, compasses, ropes, and other supplies necessary for navigating to Saint-Louis, while also agreeing to strictly conceal the intricacies of the boat allocations until immediately before disembarkation.

The second day was spent in meetings; come morning on the third, they again set about refloating operations.
Chaumareys had them discard some of the flour and gunpowder barrels into the sea, then had them drop anchors farther out and operate the capstan.
The colonists and mercenaries emerged, gripped the capstan handles, and as they worked together to turn them, La Méduse began to move little by little.
After about an hour, it slid out roughly 300 pas (approximately 200 meters) from the stranding point and floated there on the water.
Since only the stern was touching the sandbank, they all cheered as they wound the capstan furiously, but when the towline had tightened near the anchors, it abruptly came to a halt.
Soon the tide ebbed, and La Méduse was left stranded on the sandbank, listing to starboard.

“We can do no more than this.”

With those words, Chaumareys halted the operations.
It was later understood that these sham operations had likely served as an *excuse* for abandoning the warship.
La Méduse had been equipped with as many as fourteen 24-pound cannons; had they discarded those, they might have refloated.
At the naval tribunal of the court-martial, the presiding judge had sharply pointed out this flaw.

The sea, which had been calm until around noon on the third day, suddenly began to rage from evening onward, and high waves from the shallows started surging up to the middle deck.
After dinner, they held another meeting but ultimately decided to abandon the warship per Chaumareys' opinion, ordering a raft to be hastily constructed.

It seemed bizarre that they still deferred to this commander—who had shown fathomless incompetence since their departure from Rochefort—yet stranger still that among so many minds, none had conceived the simple logic: sending a cutter to Saint-Louis for sister-ship aid would outpace abandoning their vessel.
La Méduse remained firmly gripped by the implacable sandbank without sustaining damage or taking water—no justification existed for such extreme abandonment.
From the instant of stranding, the conviction that the warship would sink had congealed in every mind; overwhelmed by circumstance, they lost all capacity for moral judgment—no alternative interpretation availed itself.

Until that day, the sea had remained calm, so they likely could not bring themselves to propose such measures, but as the waves gradually rose, they gained a perfect pretext, and from the morning of the fourth day openly began constructing the raft.
Chaumareys issued a wanton order to cut down anything usable, so sailors climbed the masts and unceremoniously sawed off yards, smashed the lower spars, and finally even hacked down the fore-topgallant mast.
Thus the three-masted warship—which had sustained no damage—was stripped of its essential rigging and left utterly bare; even if freed from the sandbank now, it could not have moved an inch.

By evening, the raft had been fully secured. Using four sets of yards bundled in pairs as the main hull, they haphazardly extended timber on both sides, installing handrails approximately two empans (about thirty-nine centimeters) high along the edges. At the bow, they fashioned a protruding section, and anticipating the possibility of sailing, even prepared mast materials. The completed structure was a colossal thing measuring eight toises in length (approximately seventy feet), four toises in width (approximately thirty-five feet), and seventeen hundred square feet in area—about the size of a fifty-tatami-mat room.

Near midnight, the wind shifted and high waves struck, causing the moored raft to snap its ropes and drift away.
This sparked an uproar, leading them to decide to lower the launches and retrieve it.
I cannot comprehend why such a trifling matter agitated everyone so intensely—each person panicked needlessly, shouting and screaming.
The mercenaries had been sleeping below deck when about three of them heard the commotion and came up topside.
Receiving no coherent answers from anyone, they rashly concluded that the ship was foundering and that the crew meant to abandon them while escaping alone.

“The ship’s sinking!”
“They’re ditching us!”

A soldier bellowed toward the lower deck.

“Everyone out here now! We’ll slaughter you all!”

The mercenaries seized their rifles, charged up to the deck, and barricaded the exits, howling threats to gun down anyone attempting to abandon ship. The duty officer eventually reasoned with them and dissolved the confusion, though a contingent of soldiers kept their weapons clutched tight and remained planted on the deck until dawn.

The rudder’s bindings had snapped, battering against the hull through the night before rebounding endlessly—each impact letting seawater creep further through the breaches. Everything unfolded exactly to plan.

“If the storm worsens, she’ll split in two; nothing can be done.”
“Let’s abandon the warship.”

Chaumareys ascended to the bridge and announced the ship’s abandonment, then commanded the garrison soldiers to leave their weapons on the deck, as there was a risk of equipment getting wet on the raft.
This measure had been taken considering the previous night’s disturbance and anticipating future dangers; however, the soldiers—without contemplating what misfortunes might await them—discarded their equipment in their eagerness to lighten their loads.

When the order to transfer was given, the soldiers all rushed to the ship’s side, clinging to ropes and rope-ladders as they shouted and leaped onto the raft—but there was neither discipline nor order, only a scene of chaos too dreadful to behold, with nearly all of them tumbling into the sea, jostling and kicking each other as they bobbed in the waves.

In the resolution made in the captain’s cabin, it had been decided to load onto the raft at least as much food and water as possible, but due to the purser’s negligence, they ended up discarding mostly unnecessary items like canvas and rigging gear.
Finally noticing their mistake, they threw over water, a barrel of wine, and a single twenty-five-pound bag of hardtack; however, the hardtack bag missed its mark and fell into the sea, and when retrieved, it had become a sodden mass of dough.
The raft was so overcrowded that movement was impossible, yet even after receiving such unfair treatment, the soldiers showed no anger—displaying an oddly submissive attitude instead—and stared blankly as the boats carrying the governor and officials departed one after another from the ship’s side, all while being monitored by sternly armed officers and non-commissioned officers.

Before long, Chaumareys transferred to a launch hand-over-hand along the bow rope.
Aboard La Méduse remained about sixty personnel who had refused to board the raft; they were drinking wine and causing a commotion, but upon seeing Chaumareys transfer to the launch, they hurled insults from the ship's side.
Chaumareys stood up,

“You should have remained there of your own free will.”

With that, he turned toward La Méduse and performed a ceremonious farewell salute.

The barge under Lieutenant Espiaux’s command was a particularly decrepit old vessel; having loaded forty-five people into its leaking hull—water seeping from multiple places—it had slowed to near immobility. Yet unable to abandon those left on La Méduse, they persuaded forty-three to come aboard.
This brought the raft’s complement to eighty.
La Méduse still retained seventeen personnel, who hauled out great wine casks onto the deck and raised a tremendous clamor.

It was 7:00 a.m.
The wind subsided, the clouds parted, and from between them streamed the intense equatorial sunlight.

The order to depart was issued, and four launches lined up in a row to tow the raft; but with no one coordinating them and their towlines of uneven lengths, the raft’s front section remained constantly submerged.
The soldiers panicked and threw barrels of flour and wine into the sea.
Lieutenant Anglès declared, “This raft is useless,” plunged into the sea, and swam over to Lieutenant Espiaux’s barge.

The raft's towing nevertheless continued for about an hour, though it was dragged more than towed, and it became clear that attempting to haul a raft with launches was an utterly foolish notion. Just then, a barge cut in from the side. Lieutenant Maudet, fearing a collision, released the towline; yet when he attempted to resume towing after about five minutes, for some reason both the governor's launch and Chaumareys' launch had already cast off their lines. Lieutenant Maudet's minor action had been utilized as a pretext, but in the confusion all four launches ended up discarding their towlines.

“The ropes have snapped—let’s abandon the raft.”

In one of the launches, a voice like that was heard.

The four launches competitively hoisted sails and began sailing eastward in unison.
The giant raft bearing 149 souls was thus abandoned.

The captains of L'Écho and La Argus had assumed La Méduse would have arrived first, but there was no sign of her.

Both the captain of L'Écho and the captain of La Argus had assumed La Méduse would arrive first, but she was nowhere to be seen.
On the following eighth day, they waited all day, yet still she did not appear. As they recalled how perilously close to shore La Méduse's course had run and felt an inarticulate dread, around eleven that night two launches bearing the governor, the fleet commander, and sixty-three others came up the estuary.
These two launches—first to abandon the raft and set sail—nevertheless met no safe passage.
They had run aground on a sandbar, been battered by headwinds, endured calamity; though they could still glimpse companion vessels off Cape Merik for a time, soon even those were lost, and for four days they drifted through tempestuous seas.

L'Écho descended to the tip of the Barbary sandspit and launched rockets all night for the following launches, but even by the morning of the ninth, not a single one had returned.
In any case, as they had to implement emergency measures, they were holding a leadership meeting in L'Écho’s captain’s cabin when the transport ship Le Loire arrived at the tip of the sandspit in a battered state.

The captain of Le Loire gave a situation report.
He reported that La Méduse remained stranded on the sandbank with her hull intact, but since there were neither launches nor rafts visible in the surrounding waters, he suggested they might have been blown back to La Méduse by headwinds.
It was a baseless, careless conjecture, but without deeper consideration, the Governor and the fleet commander promptly resolved to mount a rescue operation.

What the Governor regretted most was having abandoned the vast provisions and the 90,000 francs in gold coins from the development fund. The information that La Méduse’s hull remained fully intact was more valuable than anything else; thus, they dispatched La Argus with Captain Reynaud aboard and further entreated Governor Breton to deploy a land-based search party. The British side also agreed to undertake rescue efforts. Lieutenant Caanet took command, loaded provisions and drinking water onto camels, and departed Saint-Louis that same day with the Moors.

As could be inferred from the surrounding circumstances, the rescue plan formulated in L'Écho’s captain’s cabin targeted only the recovery of supplies left aboard La Méduse and the rescue of the crews from the four launches.
The raft was already assumed to have sunk, so that aspect had never been considered from the beginning.

La Argus proceeded northward while hugging the outer edge of the Barbary sandspit, but around 7:00 a.m. on the following tenth day, they spotted through their telescope a group of Black and white people gathered beneath a sand dune near the Marigot River, causing some sort of commotion.
Suspecting they might be survivors from La Méduse, the ship moved closer to shore and fired a signal cannon shot; the group on land waved pieces of cloth vigorously, but soon sent over a report.
A Black man swam about a nautical mile through the sea and delivered it to La Argus.
The group on the dunes was, as expected, part of the eighty-eight individuals who had boarded Lieutenant Espiaux’s barge and were en route to Saint-Louis on foot.

That morning, Lieutenant Espiaux approached the group of launches towing the raft, intending to have some crew members taken aboard—but the launches all hoisted their sails and fled, forcing Espiaux to continue his arduous voyage with eighty-eight people still aboard the decrepit vessel.
With water ceaselessly flooding into the decrepit vessel’s bottom—so perilous it seemed it might sink at any moment—they rounded Cape Merik, but on the morning of the sixth day, Lieutenant Anglès abruptly proposed going ashore by land, and about sixty soldiers disembarked to follow him.
Dr. Kummer also joined that group.
On the barge remained Lieutenant Espiaux and twenty-five personnel.
Exchanging farewell signals between shore and ship, the barge drifted out once more into the equatorial sea shrouded by steam-like hot haze.

After about an hour, three boats caught up from behind.
They were Lieutenant Lapérelle’s launch, Lieutenant Maudet’s cutter, and Chief Engineer Chastelus’s pinnace.
The pinnace appeared to have run aground on a shoal, its gunwale shattered and in such a dire state that it seemed on the verge of sinking if left unattended. Espiaux therefore took back the twenty-five crew members, abandoned the pinnace, and continued his desperate struggle alongside the two launches.

The actual conditions of the barge group’s drifting were recorded in Espiaux’s “Memoir” and Engineer Brédif’s diary, but the accounts from this day through the eighth were filled with disjointed fantasies, making it impossible to grasp the true circumstances.
The direct sun and extreme thirst had left them all emaciated; day and night they hallucinated, their writings filled with nothing but visions. Fortunately, Mr. Picard’s handwritten notes (chief of the Senegal sub-district outpost) subtly elucidated the circumstances of this period.

When the six boats abandoned the raft and set sail, the crew members were satisfied and gazed leisurely at the sea. Across a calm sea without a single swell, the launches glided swiftly. They were optimistic about reaching the Senegal estuary by the morning of the day after tomorrow. However, when night fell, the circumstances changed abruptly. The sea grew rough as a strong wind began blowing from the opposite direction, pushing the launches back. The boat journey, which had been almost pleasant, now became an extreme danger directly threatening their lives. As midnight approached, the wind intensified and waves ceaselessly crashed over the low gunwales, making the crew members cry out in despair every minute. When they had left La Méduse's side, their unease about overcrowding the small launch resurfaced as a new terror gnawing at everyone's hearts. The gunwale rode too low. Thinking that reducing the crew to a third might stop the flooding, he began loathing everyone but himself. When dawn broke and the sea calmed somewhat, the launches resumed their swift progress as before—yet this feeling lingered like sediment in their hearts.

When night fell, the headwind returned.
It seemed a storm was coming; lightning flashed near the distant horizon.
Struck by a morbid fear that they wouldn’t last a moment if caught in a storm in their current state, each and every one of them became intensely agitated.
Before the storm arrived, they had to lighten the launches as much as possible.
Those who were fat or looked heavy were targeted first.
Even women were not spared.
Those nearby suddenly attacked in unison, twisted them down, strangled their necks, and threw them into the sea.
Among them were some who, comprehending their circumstances, threw themselves into the sea of their own accord.
In the storm, a gloomy splash resounded.
The launch commander silently watched without attempting to intervene.
When dawn broke, every launch had its crew reduced by half.
Nevertheless, the launch commanders conducted morning roll call and steered their boats forward with nonchalant expressions.

The moment Lieutenant Espiaux retrieved the pinnace's crew, a volatile energy surged through the barge.
They had just rid themselves of some sixty individuals—to take on such numbers now seemed utter madness.
That both groups now stood at twenty-five men apiece only worsened tensions.
No sooner had Espiaux's barge begun sailing alongside the launches than baleful glares erupted into open combat; tillers abandoned, sheets unmanned, all rose to grapple with one another.
Thus unmoored, the barge veered wildly and grounded itself on a shoal in an instant.

For Lieutenant Espiaux, traveling by land was against his wishes, but having concluded that continuing the voyage in this state was impossible, he decided to abandon the barge and walk to Saint-Louis.

The same thing had occurred with the two launches as well.
The crew members of that group had grown utterly weary of the hardships at sea and were fervently longing to set foot on safe land—even if it meant dying in the attempt.
Upon seeing Espiaux’s group begin their overland journey, they coerced their commanders into running the launches aground; those groups too came ashore.

The three groups merged into a single unit—scorched by relentless sun, stripped bare by avaricious Moors—and just as they finally reached dunes near Marigot River’s banks found themselves encircled by Moors once more.
When La Argus arrived offshore they were mid-critical negotiations—determining ransom sums per head and arranging transport to Saint-Louis.

On the morning of July 6th, among the hardships endured by Anglès’s unit after landing near Cape Merik, the fate of Sergeant Guérin and his wife Clotilde stood as a tragedy beyond measure.
On the morning of July 6th, Sergeant Guérin landed under Lieutenant Anglès’s command and marched through the desert as the rearguard of a unit of fifty-eight members; Clotilde, her nerves frayed by terror and anxiety since La Méduse’s shipwreck, had become a semi-invalid unable to walk, yet for two days she clung to Guérin’s shoulder and persevered. On the evening of the third day, even as the others departed, she remained seated where she had collapsed and did not rise.

The place where the unit had camped was an oasis thick with low-growing shrubs, but Clotilde—wishing to die quietly in this cool spot—insisted they leave her there without concern.
Guérin assessed the situation and concluded that the only recourse was to jolt her mind into action,

“If you want to die there, I’ll leave you behind.
But being devoured by wild beasts or captured by Moors and made a slave is miserable—so instead, I’ll kill you myself.
I’ll run you through with my saber.”

With that, Clotilde
“Please, do it.”
“Then the suffering will finally be over.”

and exposed her chest.

When he realized there was no way to make her walk despite all persuasion attempts, Guérin hoisted Clotilde onto his back and began walking.
Looking ahead, he saw his companions about to vanish into twilight at the desert's edge.

His wife pleaded repeatedly through unceasing hiccups - thirst tormenting her.
Guérin found a water pool and led her there, only to discover brackish bitterness.
He watched her sit vacantly with hands submerged in stagnant water before abandoning their progress and retreating to their former oasis.

When the thicket of shrubs began to appear like a shadow in the distance, Clotilde's body on his back suddenly grew heavy.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Clotilde was dead.

Guérin placed his wife’s corpse beside the oasis’s pool of water and offered a heartfelt prayer for her final moments.

“So you’re dead.”
“Now your suffering must be over.”

With those words, he wept.
The thought of abandoning his elderly wife—who had been with him for twenty years—to such conditions made him feel as though part of his chest were being torn apart.

Night fell.
By starlight, as he dug a grave with his saber, a wild beast's roar echoed from a nearby thicket.
Guérin reflexively bolted toward the shore and, carried by momentum, collapsed into the shallow sea.
Something round drifted toward him.
It was a barrel.
When Guérin clung to it, a towering shorebreak surged forth, dragging both man and barrel out to sea.
He fought the waves while clutching the barrel.
This battle lasted until dawn.
When morning came, he gauged the wave patterns and swam incrementally shoreward, finally hauling himself onto the beach.

When he went to where he had left his wife’s corpse, Clotilde’s body had been utterly devoured by wild beasts, leaving only her bloodstained white-haired head behind.

When Guérin beheld the ghastly sight he never imagined encountering in this world, he collapsed unconscious for a time; but upon regaining his senses, he lifted his wife’s head onto his lap and murmured.

“I’m a man who fought against the ocean’s waves this long and protected my life—so I should have the courage not to abandon the memento of the wife I loved more than anyone in this world.”

Guérin tore his shirt to wrap the pitiful relic, rested briefly, then set out alone across the desert.

Guérin was captured by Arabs, enslaved, sold from one tribe to another, forced into harsh labor, and finally reached Saint-Louis after three months.
Around his waist hung a strange object wrapped in tattered cloth.
Guérin soon died in the Saint-Louis hospital and was laid beneath the grave together with his wife’s head.

According to Commander Chaumareys’ “Shipwreck Report” submitted to the Navy Ministry, as of 7:00 AM on July 5th—when the ship abandonment was completed—the raft carried 145 people (147 people according to Armand Graviers’ “The Truth of the African Coast Shipwreck”).
The breakdown was as follows: Raft supervisor Navy Lieutenant Jean Coudein; Navy surgeon’s mate Savigny; four army officers (Captain Dupont, Lieutenant Luluu, Second Lieutenant Rosarge, Second Lieutenant Claire); artillery officer Coutant; chief petty officer Charlot; Navy ship’s carpenter Lavillette; purser Bérard and eleven other naval infantrymen; 120 army soldiers including black porters; engineer (Corréard); pilot (Thomas); and eight local civilians including a sutler woman.

For the twelve-day drift from July 5th to 16th, records included *The Shipwreck at Arguin*—published by Surgeon’s Mate Savigny in *Le Drapeau Blanc* on September 13, 1816, which horrified an entire generation—Engineer Corréard’s *Memoir of the Sea Disaster*, and an official report by raft supervisor Lieutenant Coudein; this last document, however, confined itself to abbreviated descriptions in its efforts to evade accountability.

When Chaumareys’ launch severed the final towline, none among the 145 souls upon the raft conceived that open abandonment was being executed; they gazed vacantly, devoid of concern, as the six vessels raised sails one after another and withdrew eastward.
Understanding it better to seek allied ships and rescue than persist in futile labor, some even took heart at Chaumareys’ new initiative.
The boats dwindled gradually until at last they sank beneath the horizon.
Five nautical miles distant, La Méduse could be seen—swathed in white-crested waves yet lying hushed and motionless.

The raft appeared peaceful.
Rescue would surely come.
Once they landed the boat crews on the nearby coast, rescue would surely come right away.
They thought enduring like this for a few hours would suffice.
Even so, wanting to bring the raft somewhat closer to the coast, they began various attempts.
When they erected a mast and unfurled a sail, the raft began to move somewhat; but given its enormous bulk and lack of rudder, even when drifting oppositeward, they found themselves unable to redirect it.
They realized that unless favorable winds arose, approaching shore under their own power would prove impossible.

As provisions, there were ten boxes of flour, two casks of fresh water, six casks of wine, and one bag of seawater-soaked hardtack; however, this was entirely consumed during their first midday meal.
Convinced that rescue would arrive imminently, they gave no thought to rationing provisions and had already distributed four casks of wine among themselves.

The first night adrift brought no peace.
As night fell, a fierce wind arose while lightning flared incessantly across the dark sea.
The waters, lit by pallid flashes, stretched white with foam as far as the eye could see—a sight both ghastly and terrifying.
Endless swells advanced with aligned crests, granting no respite as they battered the raft like a leaf in a torrent.
When towering waves crashed over them, soldiers panicked and scrambled wildly, each time nearly capsizing the unstable platform.
About twelve men stationed astern were swept away by the surge.
As others began falling into the sea, they stretched a sail rope across the raft and clung to it collectively.
Near midnight, a marine shouted, “A rocket over the sea!”
An allied ship had come to rescue them.
Artillerymen hastily lit gunpowder flares while officers fired pistols madly skyward, but only lightning answered—no response came.

The sixth day (the second day of drifting)—something akin to madness began taking hold of the raft.
Around ten in the morning, two young drummer boys and a middle-aged baker declared,

“We’ll go look for the boats.”
“We’ll return shortly.”

With those words, they leapt into the sea and swam eastward.
Soon every head sank beneath the water.

The Swiss veteran soldier screamed in a shrill voice for hours, demanding bread and roast chicken.
A certain soldier seemed to believe he was still aboard La Méduse; he searched around asking where his bunk was.
Some began committing suicide.
Twelve soldiers in the rear and eight in the front—twenty in total—vanished into the stormy Atlantic, yet over a hundred still remained on the raft, their meager provisions now stretched impossibly thin by so many.
If the drifting continued in this state, the thought occurred to everyone’s mind: the weak would be sacrificed to the strong.

There were twenty officers and non-commissioned officers aboard the raft. From the first day of drifting, they had formed their own bloc, armed themselves, and maintained silent intimidation; some of the army soldiers and lower-ranking marines, anticipating the inevitable turn of events, began monitoring the officers’ and non-commissioned officers’ movements.

The sea began raging again at midnight.
Those aboard the raft were ceaselessly hurled from stern to bow, several swept away by waves in an instant.
The soldiers shunned the raft's edges and fled toward the center, crowding together until breath grew scarce.
Amid this turmoil, ten despairing soldiers plotted to destroy the raft in defiance of fate.
The Moorish black soldier scythed through those attempting intervention and began severing the raft's bindings with an axe.
One officer discovered this and struck him with a sword.

Horror began.
The officers and non-commissioned officers formed a defensive square at the raft's center and began slaughtering nearby soldiers indiscriminately.
The soldiers retreated to the stern in a panicked avalanche and started dismantling the raft en masse, shouting, “If we die, they’ll go with us!”
Unarmed soldiers threw themselves prone across the timbers, clawing at ropes with teeth and nails.
An officer raised his saber and charged toward them upon seeing this.
One soldier slashed at an officer with a sword stolen from a petty officer—the blade only tore through uniform—before being driven to the raft’s edge and hacked into the sea.

The conflict escalated into total war.
A ghastly slaughter unfolded in the darkness.
The soldiers, though greater in number, were almost all unarmed; gradually forced into retreat toward the stern, they found themselves in a situation where—lacking any defensive barricades—they risked being driven into the sea.

There, someone—

“Cut down the mast!”

he shouted.
When they severed the backstay, the mast toppled onto the officers, crushing Captain Dupont beneath it.
The soldiers dragged out the captain—groaning with a crushed thigh—from beneath the log and cast him into the sea.
The officers brandished pistols to drive the soldiers away, then hauled up the captain clinging to the raft’s edge rope.
The soldiers rushed in with fragments of rib timbers and bolts, attempting to bludgeon to death the captain lying prone at the raft’s edge.
The officers brandished their sabers and barely forced the group to retreat.

“Everyone, assemble!”

“Come here! If we stay scattered, they’ll slaughter us!”

The soldiers gathered at the stern of the raft, shouting to one another.

The officer and non-commissioned officer bloc retreated to the raft's bow and caught their breath, then resolved to maintain an unrelenting offensive by ordering the non-commissioned officers to implement coercive measures.
The non-commissioned officers surrounded the approximately thirty soldiers remaining in the central section, stabbing and hurling them one after another into the sea. They shot those attempting to climb back with pistols and severed the fingers of others clinging to the raft before thrusting them into the water.

This commotion continued until around three o'clock in the morning.
The soldiers attempted to overwhelm through sheer numbers but realized victory was impossible without weapons; resolved to bide their time for an opportunity, they sent representatives to offer apologies.

The officer corps discerned the hidden intent behind the plan and convened to preempt another outbreak before abruptly storming the soldiers' quarters.
The soldiers tripped the officers' legs to knock them down, strangled their throats, grappled with them, and bit like wild beasts.
Surgeon's Mate Savigny cut down soldiers with his sabre while,

“Show no mercy—finish them completely!”

he walked about urging the non-commissioned officers.

When dawn broke, exhaustion finally quelled the struggle.
Not a single officer or non-commissioned officer was killed or wounded, but only sixty soldiers remained alive.
The raft became lighter—eight crates of wheat flour and two water casks... all provisions vanished from its planks, leaving only the wine barrel lashed to the mast.
Soldiers unhinged by despair threw them into the sea while snarling, “Let them starve!”
This truth soon spread among all present, yet even calling it “a self-inflicted blight” proved too cruelly precise—the soldiers sat wordless in their desolation.

The merciless sun scorched relentlessly down upon the raft.
There was no food to eat nor water to drink.
As the raft was constantly washed by waves, nothing remained to distract from the hunger; yet occasionally unexpected things were discovered.
A small bag containing garlic had become wedged between the canvas.
The soldiers, blood-drenched, fought over a sliver of garlic.

A soldier conceived the idea of catching a shark with a fishing hook, but when the shark bit down, the hook stretched at once and failed to hold.
The soldiers all fell silent, crouched at the stern of the raft, and desperately pondered whether anything edible remained.

On the eighth day (the fourth day), in the evening, a school of flying fish arrived and slipped beneath the raft.
The soldiers made a great commotion and caught about two hundred fish.
They split open the bellies faster than catching them to suck out the milt sacs, then gulped down the fish meat from the ends without removing the scales.

Such fortune never came again. Both officers and soldiers, tormented by stomach contractions, chewed on belt leather and shoe soles while collecting urine to drink.
Some soldiers’ urine was thin and easy to drink, but others’ was thick and acrid, impossible to swallow.
They collected drinkable urine in small bowls, soaking them in seawater to cool quickly, but without keeping watch, it would be stolen—so vigilance could not be relaxed.

The ninth day (fifth day). They finally began eating the corpses.
According to Corréard’s *Shipwreck Chronicle*, the first to succumb to temptation was recorded to have been Charles, a Black soldier and eighth-class porter.

Charles surreptitiously cut meat from the bodies of the previous night’s victims that remained on the raft.
Several people immediately began to imitate his example.

On a clear morning, the raft’s occupants became engrossed in butcher’s work.
The raft’s surface glowed bright red like a cutting block.
The officers watched in silence.
That night passed without storm or struggle.
They were all utterly exhausted.
They tried to sleep but could not regain strength.

On the tenth day (the sixth day), in the afternoon, Savigny established a regulation to dispose from the raft those too weakened to survive much longer and announced it to all.
About ten injured soldiers were discarded with their eyes still open.

The terror that weakness meant being discarded spread across the raft and transformed into ferocious hatred toward the officer and non-commissioned officer bloc.
The soldiers secretly resolved that to survive, they must first defeat their opponents.

Eleventh day (seventh day). A gloomy mood hung over the raft.
Around noon, a Spanish soldier suddenly went mad and jumped into the sea while screaming loudly.

That night saw another ferocious bout of slaughter break out.
The executions of two lower-ranking soldiers had precipitated it.
Surgeon's Mate Savigny maintained they had merely preemptively quashed a conspiracy—a Bedouin Black lower-ranking soldier who'd spotted the bag of gold coins and jewels dangling from the masthead had allegedly goaded Italian and Spanish lower-rankers into plotting to massacre the officer corps.
How much truth this held remained uncertain, but executions brutal enough to provoke rebellion appeared indeed to have occurred.
According to Lieutenant Coudein's report, this was how it began.

Around noon that day, a Bedouin Black soldier and his Italian comrade were executed on the grounds of having stolen and drunk wine.
Surgeon's Mate Savigny declared the sentences, and a cannibal Senegalese Black soldier with a rock-like massive frame carried them off one by one and threw them overboard.

As soon as they witnessed the cruel executions, the soldiers suffered psychotic breakdowns.
The despairing Spanish orderly, still wrapped in a cloak, jumped into the sea.
The middle-aged Spanish soldier stole an officer’s knife, carved a cross into the mast timber, then brandished the blade and charged at the officer corps.
About five marines subdued him, wrested back the knife, hoisted him up, and threw him into the sea.
In the gathering dusk, the mutual slaughter began anew.
The soldiers repeatedly charged forward with battle cries and fought fiercely until dawn.

On the twelfth day (the eighth day), when morning came, only about thirty soldiers remained alive on the blood-soaked raft.
Of those thirty men, half bore mortal wounds, while the other half were reduced to merely drawing breath.

According to a memorandum written by Chief Carpenter Lavillette at the Saint-Louis hospital, on this day, an even more ferocious tragedy unfolded following the previous night’s struggle.
Surgeon's Mate Savigny and some army officers had long planned to eliminate redundancies, but upon Savigny’s proposal, they set about executing it.

“As of today，our provisions consist solely of twelve flying fish and four days’ worth of wine．Since those fifteen have no chance of survival，eliminating them will double our ration allocation．Let us carry this out decisively．”

Charles, a Black soldier and porter, along with three marines, undertook that task.
Two marines came to dispose of the chief carpenter.
Lavillette pinned down the first one, forced his head into the water to suffocate him, then seized a bayonet from the other marine and split his skull.
Surgeon's Mate Savigny, taken aback by Lavillette's unexpectedly resolute attitude, said, "I'll spare you if you assist with eliminating redundancies."
The memorandum attempts a pained excuse with "Of course, I refused, but..."

The executioners were methodically disposing of redundancies in accordance with the predetermined plan.
Among them was a kind-hearted sutler woman who had followed armies through battlefields for twenty years while providing comforts to soldiers.
The husband had sustained a severe head wound while she had her leg crushed between raft timbers.
Still clinging together, the couple were struck down by a marine’s axe blow that severed their lives at the root.

Engineer Corréard’s Memoir.

"Since all the victims were in critical condition, it is not necessarily unjust to consider that we shortened their suffering by several hours."
Moreover, through this, some people could secure a chance at survival.
Each time we killed someone, we thanked God for gaining another hope of escaping this hell on the sea.
"After disposing of the last person, we threw all weapons on the raft into the sea and swore never to repeat such acts again."

The raft’s occupants, initially numbering one hundred forty-five, were reduced to one-tenth their number by the eighth day of drifting.
Navy Lieutenant Coudein, Army Captain Dupont, Army Lieutenant Leloup, Army Second Lieutenant Lozach, Army Second Lieutenant Clairet, Surgeon's Mate Savigny, Artillery Officer Coutant, Chief Petty Officer Charlot, Chief Carpenter Lavillette, Orderly François, Navy Purser Bellée, Pilot Thomas, Seaman Coste, Engineer Corréard, Black Porter Charles—these fifteen remained.

The revolution had ended.
The surviving members reached an uneasy truce and resolved to organize their environment for as comfortable an existence as possible.
Chief Carpenter Lavillette built a platform-like structure at the raft's bow, laid out clothing stripped from corpses there, and lay down.
The slaughter's ghastly aftermath plunged them all into an uncanny stupor—they lay on their backs drifting through consciousness all day long.
Only waves grew louder now; change meant occasional shark leaps—time bled away through the merciless indigo expanse.

On the morning of the seventeenth day (the thirteenth day), as they divided the last of the wine and swallowed it down their throats without any emotion, Captain Dupont pointed seaward and said, "Ah, a ship is coming."

On the distant horizon, something resembling a sail moved as though adrift.
A sailor named Coste tied various colored cloth pieces to a pole like international signal flags and, clutching it, climbed up the mast.
As they focused their scorching gazes intently, the ship sailed indifferently southwestward and soon sank below the horizon.

No one uttered a word.
Even considering the depth of sin's moral pollution, they seemed resigned to the belief that such fortune could never be theirs.
Then, as usual, they crawled into scattered spots beneath the awning, stretched out, and closed their eyes.

Around eight o'clock, when Artillery Officer Coutant emerged from the awning, he saw L'Argus sailing toward them from about ten nautical miles away.

About thirty minutes later, L'Argus's launch came alongside the raft's starboard.
What spectacle Lieutenant Reynaud witnessed had already been described previously.

The fifteen survivors were admitted to the British hospital in Saint-Louis the following day, where six died and nine survived.

On January 20, 1817, as the signing of the restitution treaty concluded and a twenty-one-gun salute resounded, the British red flag was lowered from the flagstaff of Saint-Louis Fortress, and in its place, the French white flag was raised.
Under the French flag, eighteen officers and soldiers stood in formation.
This was the last remnant of the three-company security force that had come on the expedition to Senegal.

Of the nine raft members, two returned to their homeland, while the remaining seven remained in Senegal, ending their trivial lives while living in fear of the shadows of past sins.
Lieutenant Colonel Chaumareys was stripped of his decorations by court-martial and sentenced to three years' imprisonment.