French frigate Méduse ( 1810 ) The Méduse was a 40 - gun " Pallas " - class frigate of the French Navy , launched in 1810 . She took part in the Napoleonic wars , namely in the late stages of the Mauritius campaign of 1809 – 1811 and in raids in the Caribbean . After the Bourbon Restoration , she was armed en flûte to ferry French officials to Saint - Louis , in Senegal , for the handover of the colony . Through inept navigation of her captain , an émigré given command for political reasons but incompetent as a naval officer , " Méduse " struck the Bank of Arguin and became a total loss . In the immediate aftermath of the wreckage , passengers and crew attempted to evacuate the ship on an improvised raft and became helpless when the frigate ' s launches gave up towing them . Only a handful of the shipwrecked survived the ordeal . The scenes on the raft instilled considerable public emotion , making " Méduse " one of the most infamous shipwrecks of the Age of Sail . It was definitively immortalised when Théodore Géricault painted his " Raft of the Medusa " , which became an icon of French Romanticism . Service . " Méduse " was commissioned in Nantes on 26 September 1810 . Napoleonic wars . In 1811 , she was sent off to Java with the " Nymphe " , in a frigate division under Joseph - François Raoul . On 2 September , the frigates arrived at Surabaya , tailed by the 32 - gun frigate HMS " Bucephalus " . On the 4th , another British ship , , joined the chase , but lost contact on the 8th . On the 12th , " Méduse " and " Nymphe " chased the " Bucephalus " , which escaped and broke contact the next day . " Méduse " was back in Brest on 22 December 1811 . She then served in the Atlantic , and in 1814 , she was part of the fleet sent to retake Guadeloupe . Bourbon Restoration . At the Bourbon restoration , Louis XVIII attempted to put Royalists in charge of the Navy once more . Consequently Viscount Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys was appointed " Capitaine de frégate " even though he had hardly sailed in 20 years . Course to Senegal . On 17 June 1816 , a convoy under the command of Chaumareys on " Méduse " departed Rochefort , accompanied by the storeship " Loire " , the brig " Argus " and the corvette " Écho " , to receive the British handover of the port of Saint - Louis in Senegal . The " Méduse " , armed en flûte , carried passengers , including the appointed French governor of Senegal , Colonel Julien - Désiré Schmaltz , and his wife Reine Schmaltz . The " Méduse ' s " complement totaled 400 , including 160 crew . She reached Madeira on 27 June . Schmaltz then wanted to reach St . Louis as fast as possible , by the most direct route , but this would take the fleet dangerously close to the shore , where there were many sandbars and reefs . Experienced crews sailed further out . The " Méduse " was the fastest of the convoy and , disregarding his orders , the captain quickly lost contact with the " Loire " and the " Argus " . The " Écho " kept pace and attempted to guide " Méduse " , but to no avail . The " Écho " then prudently moved further out to sea . Chaumareys had decided to involve one of the passengers , Richefort , in the navigation of the frigate . Richefort was a philosopher and a member of the Philanthropic Society of Cape Verde , but had no qualification to guide ships . As she closed on the coast of Africa , the course of " Méduse " became dangerous . Richefort apparently mistook a large cloud bank on the horizon for Cape Blanco on the African coast , and so underestimated the proximity of the Bank of Arguin off the coast of Mauritania . On 2 July 1816 " Méduse " ran into increasingly shallow water , both Chaumareys and Richefort ignoring signs such as white breakers and mud in the water . Eventually , Lieutenant Maudet took it upon himself to start taking soundings off the bow , and , measuring only 18 fathoms ( ca . 32 meters ) , warned his captain . 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 off the coast . The accident occurred at a spring high tide , which made it difficult to re - float the frigate . The Captain refused to jettison the 14 three - tonne cannons and so the ship settled into the bank . The raft . Plans were proposed to use the ship ' s launches to ferry the passengers and crew to the shore , about 30 miles away , which would have taken two boat trips . Numerous ideas for lightening " Méduse " and immediately coming off the reef were proposed , in particular , that of building a raft to unload " Méduse " ' s cargo . A raft was soon built ; it was 20 metres in length and 7 metres in width , and was nicknamed " " la Machine " " by the crew . On 5 July , a gale developed and the " Méduse " showed signs of breaking up . Passengers and crew panicked and so the captain decided to evacuate the frigate immediately , with 146 men and one woman boarding the woefully unstable raft , towed by the boats of " Méduse " . The raft had few supplies and no means of steering or navigation . Much of its deck was under water . Seventeen men decided to stay on the " Méduse " , and the rest boarded the ship ' s longboats . The crew of the boats soon realised that towing the raft was impractical and began to fear being overwhelmed by the desperate survivors on the raft . It was decided to cut the ropes , leaving the raft and its occupants to their fate . The lifeboats , including the captain and Governor Schmaltz aboard , then sailed away to safety . Some landed immediately on the coast of Africa , most of the survivors making their way overland to Senegal though some died on the way . On the raft , the situation deteriorated rapidly . Among the provisions were casks of wine instead of water . Fights broke out between the officers and passengers on one hand , and the sailors and soldiers on the other . On the first night adrift , 20 men were killed or committed suicide . Stormy weather threatened , and only the centre of the raft was secure . Dozens died either in fighting to get to the centre , or because they were washed overboard by the waves . Rations dwindled rapidly ; by the fourth day there were only 67 left alive on the raft , and some resorted to cannibalism . On the eighth day , the fittest began throwing the weak and wounded overboard until only fifteen men remained , all of whom survived until their rescue on 17 July by " Argus " , which had accidentally encountered them . Aftermath . " Argus " took the survivors of the raft to Saint - Louis to recover . Five of them , including Jean Charles , the last African crew member , died within days . Chaumareys decided to rescue the gold that was still on board the " Méduse " and sent out a salvage crew , which discovered that the " Méduse " was still intact . Three of the 17 men who had decided to stay on the " Méduse " were still alive 54 days later . British naval officers helped the survivors to return to France because aid from the French Minister of the Marine was not forthcoming . " Méduse " ' s surviving surgeon , Henri Savigny , submitted his account to the authorities . It was leaked to an anti - Bourbon newspaper , the " Journal des débats " , and appeared on 13 September 1816 . Savigny and another survivor , the geographer Alexandre Corréard , then wrote a book with their own account ( " Naufrage de la frégate la Méduse " ) of the incident , published in 1817 . It went through five editions by 1821 and was also published with success in English , German , Dutch and Italian translations . A revision of the text in later editions increased the political thrust of the work . The matter became a scandal in French politics and officials tried to cover it up . At his court martial at Port de Rochefort in 1817 Chaumareys was tried on five counts but acquitted of abandoning his squadron , of failing to re - float his ship and of abandoning the raft . However he was found guilty of incompetent and complacent navigation and of abandoning the " Méduse " before all her passengers had been taken off . Even though this verdict exposed him to the death penalty , Chaumareys was sentenced to only three years in jail . The court martial was widely thought to be a " whitewash " and in 1818 Governor Schmaltz was forced to resign . The Gouvion de Saint - Cyr Law later ensured that promotions in the French military were based on merit . Géricault ' s depiction . Impressed by accounts of the shipwreck , the 25 - year - old artist Théodore Géricault decided to make a 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 . Shipwreck site found . In 1980 , a French marine archeological expedition led by Jean - Yves Blot located the " Méduse " shipwreck site off the coast of modern - day Mauritania . The team operated out of the port city of Nouadhibou , approximately 160 kilometres north of the wreck site and used four sailboats as the expedition working vessels . The primary search tool was a one - of - a - kind magnetometer developed by the CEA . The search area was defined on the basis of the accounts of survivors of the " Méduse " and , more importantly , on the records of an 1817 French coastal mapping expedition that found the vessel ' s remains still projecting above the waves . The background research proved to be so good that the expedition team located the shipwreck site on the very first day of searching . They then recovered enough artifacts to identify the wreck positively and to mount an exhibit in the Marine Museum in Paris . Portrayals . Other portrayals in popular culture . The rock group Great White used this painting as the cover art for their album " Sail Away " . The second album by Irish folk - rock group The Pogues , " Rum , Sodomy , and the Lash " , uses the famous painting as its album cover , with the faces of the band members replacing those of the men on the raft . Also , on their album " Hell ' s Ditch " they pay tribute to the incident with the song " The Wake of the Medusa " . The layout of the scene is copied in the French comic book " Astérix Légionnaire " ( Goscinny / Uderzo , 1967 ) to depict yet another shipwreck of Astérix ' s recurring pirate enemies . The captain ' s comment is the pun , " " Je suis médusé " " ( " I am dumbfounded " ) . Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge in their English translation replaced this pun with a different joke specifically relating to the painting , having the captain say , " We ' ve been framed , by Jericho ! " In " The Adventures of Tintin " comic " The Red Sea Sharks " , while the protagonists are escaping on a raft , a wave washes Captain Haddock off . He climbs back on with a jellyfish on his head . Tintin asks him : " Do you think this is some raft of " Méduse " ? " ( " Méduse " is the French word for " jellyfish " . ) French songwriter and poet Georges Brassens alludes to the raft of " Méduse " in his song " Les copains d ' abord " ( 1964 ) . The song is a hymn to friendship , symbolised by the crew of a ship named " Les Copains d ' Abord " ( Friends first ) , and in the first verse it says that she was not " the raft of " Méduse " " . Dr . Lecter ' s mind wanders to Géricault ' s anatomical studies for " The Raft of the Medusa " while waiting for Senator Martin to focus on their conversation in the novel " The Silence of the Lambs " .