Built as a first rate three-masted wooden frigate by the shipbuilder Mathurin Boucher (1778-1851) at Lorient for the French Navy.
1824 Launched under the name Le HERMINIE.
Displacement 2.501 tons, dim. 54.00 x 14.50 x 7.10m, draught 5.94m.
Armament 60 guns.
Crew ?
1828 Completed.
Did not see active duty till she was ordered to sail to Havana.
1837 Stationed at Havana, Cuba under command of Capitaine de Vaisseau Bazoche.
03 August 1837 arrived at Havana, but soon a large number of the crew was down with yellow fever.
10 March 1838 it rejoins LAPÉROUSE and L’ECLIPSE, at Mexico, for the blockade of Mexican ports.
At Mexico command was changed to C.A. Baudin. But due of a very weak crew, she was ordered home.
On a voyage from Mexico to Brest with on board many crew members with yellow fever, she was wrecked on 03 December 1838 at the North West reef of Bermuda. (some sources give by bad weather other by a flat calm sea.)
All 495 crew were saved, and returned home a month later on board the HERCULES, JEAN and OSAGE.
The next day most of the ship stores were salvaged.
Most of her wooden hull is gone but still 58 guns and anchors can be seen, she is a popular dive site at Bermuda... She is resting in 35 feet of water four miles west of Ireland Island
The account of her loss is given in Bermuda as follows:
1838. January 8. Sinking off Bermuda of the French warship L’HERMINIE, launched in 1824 but not completed until some four years later. For a naval warship of her day, she was huge, 300 feet long and carrying 60 cannons. She was one of eight frigates designed by Martin Boucher in 1823 and designated as a warship of the La Surveillante class, built to carry 30 French 30-pounder cannon and 30 other guns, including carronades. Earlier, in 1837 she was ordered to Mexican waters to enforce France's claims during the revolution. But, upon arrival in Havana, Cuba, on August 3, 1837, 133 members of her crew came down with yellow fever. Figuring her crew would be useless in battle, France's high command recalled her back to France. Under the command of Commodore Bazoche, L’HERMINIE left Havana for home on December 3, 1837. During her Atlantic crossing she encountered increasingly heavy seas. The captain decided to take shelter in Bermuda. By the time land was visible, however, the big ship had inadvertently wandered well inside a treacherous stretch of the Bermuda's northwestern facing barrier reef. Shortly after, L’HERMINIE got grounded on the reef. Before the ship started to break up, a group of local boats from Ely's Harbour came to her assistance. Given the sea conditions, it is amazing that all 495 members of L’HERMINIE's crew were safely evacuated from the doomed ship. The following day, several of the ship's stores were successfully salvaged. An advertisement appeared in the newspaper demanding that such material be handed to the ship’s agent at Ely’s Harbour, Thomas Tucker. Goods from the ship later offered for sale copper hinges, hemp hawser, blocks, sails, hooks, thimbles, a wheel, mast hoops, iron belaying pins, a stove mounted with brass, a set of fire utensils, iron rails, iron stanchions, mess tubs, leather buckets, brass wire conductor, copper stove funnels, harness casks, lead, lead pipes, copper pumps, jack screws, leather hoses, cabin doors, tables, crockery, ladders, and a marble slab. Today L’HERMINIE rests in 35 feet of water four miles west of Ireland Island. Since her wooden hull has been down for 160 years, little remains of her other than 58 of her original 60 cannons. The wreckage is scattered across white sand in the middle of the reef. Two cannons lay atop one another forming a cross. Surrounding the wreckage are the very coral heads that ripped the hull to pieces. Other than the cannons, divers can also see one of L’HERMINIE's two massive anchors propped up against a large coral head, as well as several of her square-shaped, iron holding tanks, now half-eaten by the sea. They once held the ship's supply of drinking water. Buried in the sand are some of the ship's timbers and cannonballs, as well as a collection of small artifacts such as broken glass, bottles, and pottery. (A team from the Smithsonian Institution examined the site in the 1960s and some archaeological work was undertaken by East Carolina University in 1995).
http://www.bermuda-online.org/history1800-1899.htm
Bermuda 1986 $1 sg518B scott?
Source: Info received from Mr. Jean-Louis Araignon. Musée de la Marine, Paris. Some web-sites.