![]() ![]() Within a few days, most of those castaways had been burned to death by the sun, providing food for the survivors. Other officers and crewmen left on the remaining lifeboats, taking most of the ship's provisions and leaving more than 150 passengers to brave the open sea on a raft. ![]() That captain, writes Alexander McKee in this forceful work of historical reconstruction, did not wait to see the results of his incompetence he abandoned his crew and set off on a longboat for the Senegalese shore. Aboard were some 400 men, women, and children, some aristocrats, some Republicans, and all at the mercy of an incompetent captain who, a tribunal later found, had alienated his battle-tested officers and favored a shockingly incompetent and untried navigator. In July 1816, a year after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, a French ship bound for the colony of Senegal foundered off the West African coast. ![]()
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