Wreck of French steamship that sunk in 1856 discovered off New England coast

PORTLAND, Maine -- The French steamship Le Lyonnais, a marvel for its time, was feared lost forever when a maritime disaster in 1856 sent her to the bottom of the ocean off Massachusetts.

Generations later, a marine salvage crew is ready to write the next chapter in the history of the passenger liner, which was built as the Age of Sail was yielding to steamships. New Jersey marine salvage firm Atlantic Wreck Salvage found the wreck of Le Lyonnais about 200 miles (322 kilometers) off New Bedford, Massachusetts, in late August.

The discovery of the steamship follows years of work to locate it and also represents a new beginning, said Jennifer Sellitti, a spokesperson for Atlantic Wreck Salvage and a crew member on D/V Tenacious, the vessel the company uses for dives and salvages. The next steps are to document the wreck site, map it and determine what artifacts can be brought to the surface, Sellitti said.

“Finding it in some ways is closure, in some ways is the end. In some ways it's the beginning — documenting it, determining what is down there and what should be brought up,” Sellitti said. “This was a very early example of a steam engine.”

Le Lyonnais was about 260 feet (79 meters) in length and tasked with carrying passengers and cargo between New York and France, Sellitti said. The ship had sails but was also outfitted with a horizontal steam engine and an iron hull, making her an example of how innovation changed shipping in the mid-19th century.

But disaster struck during the ship's first return voyage back to the French city of Le Havre from the U.S. The ship collided with the Maine-built barque Adriatic, which was en route from Belfast, Maine, to Savannah, Georgia, according to Atlantic Wreck Salvage's research, which Sellitti is using as the basis for a book on the ship called “The Adriatic Affair.”

The collision left Le Lyonnais bearing a hole in the hull that would eventually sink the boat. Of the 132 passengers and crew, 114 died. The Adriatic made it back to New England for repairs.

The salvage crew found Le Lyonnais by doing historical research and using sonar to narrow down the site of its final resting place. The ship is likely too deteriorated to be raised, Sellitti said.

However, the historic nature of the ship makes its discovery significant, said Eric Takajian, a member of the crew that found the Le Lyonnais.

“Being one of the first French passenger steamships to have a regularly scheduled run crossing the Atlantic and an early transitional steamship make Le Lyonnais’ discovery significant,” he said.