Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys

On 5 July 1816, at least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and the survivors endured starvation, dehydration and cannibalism (the Custom of the sea).

The event was an international scandal, in part because of his incompetence, having been appointed by the newly restored Bourbon King Louis XVIII by virtue of his nobility and royalist actions, even though he had hardly sailed in 20 years.

In 1818–19 the French Romantic painter Théodore Géricault created the iconic Scène de Naufrage (Shipwreck Scene) which hangs in the Louvre as The Raft of the Medusa.

On board the lead frigate Méduse, was the future governor of Senegal, Julien-Désiré Schmaltz, and his family, travelling to formally resume possession of the former French colony from the British garrison.

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

Realising the danger at last, 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.

But, the connecting ropes were cut so the raft, unable to manoeuvre and inadequately stocked with food and water, drifted helplessly at sea for 13 days until it was rescued by the Argus.

[6][1] While an emigre from the revolution he went to Westphalia in Germany where, in 1796, he married Sophie Élisabeth von der Brüggeney, descended from a family of Teutonic knights.