page_title: French frigate Méduse (1810)
section_title: Géricault's painting
hierarchical_section_title: French frigate Méduse (1810) / In popular culture / Géricault's painting
context_page_description: Méduse was a 40-gun Pallas-class frigate of the French Navy, launched in 1810. She took part in the Napoleonic Wars during the late stages of the Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 and in raids in the Caribbean.
  In 1816, following the Bourbon Restoration, Méduse was armed en flûte to ferry French officials to the port of Saint-Louis, in Senegal, to formally re-establish French occupation of the colony under the terms of the First Peace of Paris. Through inept navigation by her captain, an incompetent émigré naval officer who was given command for political reasons, 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 151 men forced to take refuge on an improvised raft towed by the frigate's launches. The towing proved impractical, however, and the boats soon abandoned the raft and its passengers in the open ocean. Without any means of navigating to shore, the situation aboard the raft rapidly turned disastrous. Dozens were washed into the sea by a storm, while others, drunk from wine, rebelled and were killed by officers.
context_section_description: 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. His work depicts a moment recounted by one of the survivors: prior to their rescue, the passengers saw a ship on the horizon, which they tried to signal. She disappeared, and in the words of one of the surviving crew members, "From the delirium of joy, we fell into profound despondency and grief". The ship Argus reappeared two hours later and rescued those who remained. 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. It is on display in the Louvre.
caption: Le Radeau de la Méduse (1818–1819) by Théodore Géricault
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