French fluyt Seine (1845)
French fluyt Seine was a fluyt of the French Navy. Sent to the Pacific in a time of colonial rivalry with the United Kingdom to both consolidate French positions and diplomatically ease tensions with the British, she ran aground off Balade and was wrecked. The remains of the ship have become a subject of interest for maritime archeology, notably yielding a rare example of a desalination device of the 1840s. Career. Designed as a fluyt, or "corvette of burden", "Seine" was built under the direction of Bernard Chariot upon plans drawn by Forfait and revised by  Sané, with notably a hull sheathed in bronze. "Seine" left Brest on 3 September 1845, under Lieutenant Commander François Leconte, to take the New Zealand station and relieve "Rhin". "Seine" ferried troops to Tahiti, where the British encouraged the local population to riot against the French, which had led Abel Aubert du Petit-Thouars to expel British consul George Pritchard to Australia. She also carried a letter from Minister Mackau to renounce sovereignty over New Caledonia and ease tensions with the British in the Pacific. Fate. On 4 July 1846, she ran aground off Balade and became a total loss . The crew abandoned ship with no loss of life and spent two months at Pouébo before the British ship "Arabian" rescued them. The diplomatic letters reached the British via Bishop Guillaume Douarre. Legacy. On 28 May 1968, French Navy frogmen of the "Dunkerquoise" located the wreck of "Seine" in 23-metre deep waters, near Pouébo. Between 7 and 18 April 1997, "Laplace" conducted a survey of the wreckage, with the local association Fortunes de Mer Calédonienne. The wreck triggered interest as carrying the lone surviving example of a Peyre et Rocher desalination system, invented in 1840 by chemist Peyre and  industrialist Rocher and used on long-haul ships. The system used waste heat from the kitchen of the ship to desalinate water in a 1.2-ton copper cubic cistern. The device was located 20 metres from the wreck. Citations and references. Notes. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_ship_Seine_(1845)&action=edit#