63 years after his disappearance in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, the wreck of the Ravenel found-Liberation

It is the end of more than six decades of mystery. Tuesday June 10, elected officials and representatives of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon brought together the rare journalists present on the small archipelago located in the east of Canada to announce a unprecedented discovery: that of the wreck of the Ravenel. She marks the end of « Over 60 years of doubts, uncertainties and sadness »told The 1st Bernard Briand, the president of the territorial council, while the sinking of the trawler remains the largest maritime tragedy that the territory has known.

If history is little known in France, it has largely marked the 6,000 inhabitants of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon. The ship had taken the sea in January 1962 with fifteen sailors on board in icy conditions: according to the locals, it was around -20 ° C and the gusts exceeded 120 km/h, that day. The crew has never returned, leaving behind ten widows and 27 orphans. Since then, no one had managed to find the trace of the boat that everyone imagined Gésir somewhere at the bottom of the ocean. Only a few debris belonging to the boat had been discovered on a beach on the neighboring island of Newfoundland.

For a long time, the relatives of the deceased, formed since 2003 in association, remained unanswered and without support from the French State. Until in 2021 the government decided, on the initiative ofAnnick Girardinthen Minister of the Sea and former deputy of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, to deploy significant resources to find the ship. Several expeditions are launched, equipped with robot drones and cameras that can probe the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

The first research is unsuccessful. Then, at the end of May, researchers from the CNRS, accompanied by a retired sailor who was convinced that he had touched a wreck out of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon two decades ago when he was making hopes. Sonars sent by the team were able to capture several images of what looks like a stranded boat, seven nautical miles (13 km) from the archipelago coast and 122 meters deep. A new expedition is hastily organized on June 10. A fisherman, who has become a wreck hunter, has been dispatched from France and arrives in North America with his tools. A sailor robot plunges again and films the wreckage of what is indeed the ravenel.

On the imagesbroadcast the next day to families, we see a boat, almost intact, covered with marine vegetation. « There is a bundle of concordant elements compared to the images that we had of the afloatdetailed Bernard Briand. We left the front of the boat, we recognized the rambards, then the trawl, and we arrived at the wheelhouse on which there was the bell, one of the main elements to identify the Ravenel. ” However, it is impossible for the moment to determine the reasons which caused the shipwreck of the boat.

Nathalie Rebmann, the niece of a disappeared, who attended the retransmission, testified at the microphone of the 1st: « It was beautiful, breathtaking, and at the same time mysterious to say that he was so close to us, posed there on the sand, and that it was however long that we were looking for him. » “When they showed the bell and the open tile, it was poignant. One can imagine the captain behind the glass, giving his orders ”supports AFP André Autin, who was 19 years old in 1963 when he agreed to give way to the ship to « A boyfriend ».

« Since the time we were in doubt, now that’s it, everything has come back to normal. It’s over for us: we found what we were looking for ”also said Sybil Olano, the president of the Ravenel disappeared association. This son of one of the Ravenel sailors now wants a ceremony to be organized « shortly » Above the wreckage so that families can meditate there, failing to be able to rise to the surface because of the depth to which it is found. A tribute will also be paid to the missing on June 22 during the annual festival of the sailors of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon.