LA BAYONNAISE

The Bayonnaise was a spectacular sailing corvette with a wooden hull lined in copper that had three masts. It had a displacement of 310 tons and a crew of 250. It was built in 1794 by Bastiat, Dufourc et fils, in the French town of Bayonne. It had twenty-four 8-pound guns on board, which were supplemented with four deck cannons and two 32-pound carronades.

The vessel was covering the route from Havana to Ferrol when it was pursued by the English ship H.M.S. Ardent, which had 64 guns. The Bayonnaise was run aground by its own crew which abandoned it after having set fire to it. It exploded at midnight.

The captain of the heroic corvette preferred to blow it up off the Galician coast rather than surrender it to the enemy. The Bayonnaise was a pirate vessel, it was not intended for combat or to carry cargo; its priority was speed and, consequently, structural weight had been sacrificed.

Previously, this French corvette was the star of a famous war exploit. On 14 December 1798, under the command of Lieutenant, Jean-Baptiste-Edmond Richer, it boarded and seized the English war frigate H.M.S. Ambuscade, which was much more powerful than the Gallic corvette, which was equipped with forty-two 24-pound and 18-pound guns.

Finding of the shipwreck

The Bayonnaise shipwreck was located by the Archeonauta team, Miguel San Claudio Santa Cruz’s underwater archaeology group, during the archaeological survey carried out during the European project to promote the submerged heritage of the Costa da Morte (Coast of Death), Finisterre Galician Shipwrecks.

The La Bayonnaise shipwreck was located in 2015 as part of the European project to promote the submerged heritage of the Costa da Morte (Coast of Death), Finisterre Galician Shipwrecks.