This is the story of a ship who has lived no less than five different lives, who flew three different flags, who sails on when so many thousands of bigger, grander, newer sailing ships disappeared for ever...
This is the story of a staunch survivor, a ship born under a lucky star.
In December 1895, Fernand Crouan, head of “Denis Crouan Fils”, a family firm of ship owners based in Nantes, placed with the Dubigeon shipyards in nearby Chantenay sur Loire (where, coincidentally, the famous writer Jules Verne used to spend his childhood holidays) an order for a three masted barque with a steel hull destined to join his fleet of similar merchant ships. A type of vessel known as “Antillais” because they were used mainly for trading with the French West Indian islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique (les Antilles).
The ship was launched on June 10th 1896. She was named the Belem, after the Brazilian port where the Crouan family had founded a trading post a few generations earlier.
For the next 18 years, the Belem sailed the Atlantic, carrying all sorts of cargo but especially spices, chocolate beans, sugar. She made 33 crossings and lived through a number of adventures and unpleasant incidents, as when a fire on board destroyed her whole cargo : 115 live mules who all ended up very dead...
The Belem's most memorable escape from certain destruction and the death of all aboard was in 1902 at St Pierre de la Martinique : on May the 8th, “la Montagne Pelée”, the neighbouring volcano, erupted, belching burning clouds of ash that destroyed the town, the ships in the harbour and killed 30 000 people in 90 seconds. The Belem had reached the port the day before but, due to a bureaucratic mix-up , her berth was occupied by another French ship so she had to anchor in a bay further along the coast. And thus survived, intact, the island's worst catastrophe.
