The Wreck of the Medusa by Jonathan Miles

After surviving the wreck and subsequently drifting on a raft on which 133 of 147 died, Correard, an engineer fleeing the growing chaos in post-Napoleonic France, wrote a bestselling account of the tragedy and agitated for the monarchy's end. From the swirl of characters boiling around the story-admirals, ministers and kings-Miles ( David Jones: The Maker Unmade) anchors his tale on Medusa survivor Alexandre Correard and painter Théodore Géricault. What followed-gross incompetence, murder and cannibalism-shocked European society and pushed the fragile, recently restored French monarchy to the brink. In June 1816 French frigate Medusa ran aground on a sandbar off the African coast. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. The scandal inspired a young artist, Theodore Gericault, whose iconic depiction of suffering and hope won first prize at the Salon of 1819 and captivated viewers in the Louvre for centuries to come. Two survivors' written account of the tragedy became an international best seller that exposed far-reaching corruption in Restoration France. When rescue arrived thirteen days later, only fifteen were alive. Without a compass or many provisions, hit by a vicious storm the first night and exposed to sweltering heat during the following days, the group set upon each other: mayhem, mutiny, and murder ensued. The rest were herded onto a makeshift raft and set adrift. In the chaos that ensued, the commander and a privileged few claimed the lifeboats. In July of 1816, the French frigate Medusa, bound for the Senegalese port colony of Saint Louis under the command of an incompetent royalist captain, hit a famously treacherous reef.

Drawing on contemporaneously published accounts and journals of survivors, Miles brilliantly reconstructs the ill-fated voyage and the events that inspired Theodore Gericault's magnificent painting The Raft of the Medusa. The Wreck of the Medusa is Jonathan Miles's spellbinding account of the most famous shipwreck before the Titanic.

The Wreck of the Medusa by Jonathan Miles