Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys
French naval officer / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, (December 20, 1763, in Vars-sur-Roseix – November 23, 1841, at Bussière-Boffy) was a French naval officer, the "incompetent and complacent" captain of the frigate La Méduse when it ran aground off the coast of Mauritania on 2 July 1816 and circa 151 people died. 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 February 1817 he escaped the death penalty but was sentenced to three years imprisonment by his court-martial at Port de Rochefort. He was found guilty of incompetent and complacent navigation and of abandoning Méduse before all her passengers had been taken off.
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.