SOS Vessel in Distress!

A captain has the power to command but also the duty of organizing the rescue of his passengers and crew. The rule is that he is last to leave the ship. And yet this is not always the case... two notorious examples provide tragic evidence. A fresh look at the legendary stories of the Costa Concordia the Costa Concordia in Giglio, Italy and the Raft of the Medusa in the Bay of Arguin, Mauritania.

Every sailor knows that you can't trust appearances at sea. In 1855, caught in a hurricane, the frigate Sémillante in Corsica, Italy, shattered on the reef with no survivors among the 700 crew on board. A century later, the steamship Lamoricière in the Balearic Islands, Spain, sank in the middle of a storm taking to their graves nearly 300 souls, including a good number of children.

Ships pose a permanent threat to the environment. Two wrecks of supertankers have gone down in history. On December 12 1999, the Erika was caught in an exceptional storm off St-Nazaire, and sank spilling thousands of tons of oil along 400km of coastline. Some twenty years earlier, the Amoco Cadiz had an identical wreck had already fouled the coasts of Brittany, France.

All shipwrecks are tragic but some become veritable legends. In April 1912, the RMS Titanic hits an iceberg. Two hours and forty minutes later, the biggest and most luxurious liner of its age sinks. In 1936, the Pourquoi Pas, enters the world of legend when it sinks just a few hundred yards from the coast of Iceland.

In November 1664, La Lune, sank in Toulon, France, within a few minutes for some mysterious reason, drowning nearly 700 men. A few years earlier, the Vasa had cast off with great pomp for its maiden voyage. A simple gust of wind capsizes the Vasa in Stockholm, Sweden, which sank like a stone into the waters of the harbor of Stockholm before the eyes of the stunned crowd.

Some shipwrecks transform the ships into veritable underwater graveyards. On June 11 1940, the Niobe, was hit by four bombs in Croatia. The ship sank within minutes, taking with her more than 1,000 souls. 62 years later, to the south of Senegal near Gambia, Le Joola, suddenly capsized off the coast. Trapped inside, more than 2,000 passengers met their deaths in the wreck.

Submarines have always held a unique place in maritime history. All mariners acknowledge that it requires a very special courage to dive into the depths of the abyss enclosed in a steel hull. Because, under water, the least incident can quickly turn to tragedy, as it happened with the U-171 in Lorient, France and Le Vendemiaire in the English Channel, UK.

Storms, reefs, damage, human error... Certain vessels have sunk for reasons that are still a mystery. A look back at two shipwrecks that left their mark on maritime history: the Bugaled Breizh in Cornwall, UK, and the steamship Afrique in Olonne-sur-Mer, France. Two sinkings that remain unexplained today and which for many still hold the bitter taste of a State secret.