Through inept navigation by her captain, Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, who had been given command after the Bourbon Restoration for political reasons and even though he had hardly sailed in 20 years, Méduse struck the Bank of Arguin off the coast of present-day Mauritania and became a total loss.

Most of the 400 passengers on board evacuated, with 146 men and 1 woman forced to take refuge on an improvised raft towed by the frigate's launches.

[1] News of the tragedy stirred considerable public emotion, making Méduse one of the most infamous shipwrecks of the Age of Sail.

Two survivors, a surgeon and an officer, wrote a widely read book about the incident, and the episode was immortalised when Théodore Géricault painted The Raft of the Medusa, which became a notable artwork of French Romanticism.

[4] On 17 June 1816, a convoy under the command of Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys on Méduse departed Rochefort accompanied by the storeship Loire, the brig Argus and the corvette Écho to receive the British handover of the port of Saint-Louis in Senegal.

Méduse's complement totaled 400, including 160 crew plus a contingent of marine infantrymen intended to serve as the garrison of Saint-Louis.

Schmaltz then wanted to reach Saint-Louis as fast as possible, by the most direct route, although this would take the fleet dangerously close to the shore, where there were many sandbars and reefs.

[7] On 2 July 1816, now more than 160 kilometres (99 mi) off course, Méduse ran into increasingly shallow water, and neither the captain nor the navigator noticed dangerous signs such as the mud bottom starting to become visible.

Chaumareys ordered the ship brought up into the wind, but it was too late, and Méduse ran aground 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the coast.

Numerous ideas for lightening Méduse in an effort to lift her off the reef were also proposed, such as building a raft so cargo could be safely removed.

The passengers and crew panicked, and Chaumareys decided to evacuate the frigate immediately rather than enact the original plan to make two trips.

The raft was hastily repurposed for moving passengers and the Méduse's longboats were rigged to tow it behind them; this left 146 men and 1 woman on an improvised craft that struggled to hold their weight.

Rations dwindled rapidly; by the fourth day there were only 67 people left alive on the raft, and some resorted to cannibalism (part of the Custom of the Sea) to survive.

[16][failed verification] In 1980, a French marine archaeological expedition led by Jean-Yves Blot located the Méduse shipwreck site off the coast of modern-day Mauritania.

[17] The search area was defined on the basis of the accounts of survivors of Méduse and, more importantly, on the records of an 1817 French coastal mapping expedition that found the vessel's remains still projecting above the waves.

[18] Impressed by accounts of the shipwreck, the 25-year-old artist Théodore Géricault decided to create an oil painting based on the incident and contacted the writers in 1818.

The painting, titled Le Radeau de la Méduse (English: The Raft of the Medusa), is considered an iconic work of the French Romantic movement and Géricault's masterpiece.