
‘Now or never' to save replica of American revolutionary war vessel, say French campaigners
The copy of L'Hermione, a three-mast, 32-gun frigate that carried the Marquis de Lafayette across the Atlantic to announce France's support for American independence from Great Britain in the revolutionary war, has been in dry dock at Anglet, near Bayonne, since its oak hull was found to be riddled with fungus four years ago.
Campaigners have raised €5m (£4.3m) to replace part of the rotted structure but say they need another €5m to make the vessel seaworthy again. Despite launching an appeal two years ago, the funds have not been found.
A fresh plea for the remaining funds comes as relations between France and the US enter a stormy period after Donald Trump's threat to impose a 30% tariff on goods from the European Union.
Emilie Beau, the executive director of the Hermione-La Fayette Association, told the Guardian: 'We need a generous patron and we now have very little time to find one. It has been three years in dry dock and its 1,200 tonnes of wood needs to be in sea water and not dry.
'We have been dampening the hull, but this could lead to the development of even more fungus. We're hoping that if someone comes forward with the funds, we could restart work to repair the hull in September, with a view to sailing again in 2027.'
The replica of L'Hermione, which took 17 years to build and cost €26m, was launched in 2015 and sailed to New York where it was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd.
In 1780, the original ship made the voyage to America to help the revolutionaries led by George Washington in the war of independence. Onboard was Lafayette, Louis XVI's personal envoy to the man who would later become the first US president. Lafayette disembarked in Boston and rode to Washington's headquarters to deliver his message of French aid to the rebels.
L'Hermione – nicknamed the 'Ship of Liberty' – spent two years battling the British naval blockade before returning to France. In 1793, she ran aground off western France and sank. The wreck was discovered in 1984.
In 1992 a group of maritime history enthusiasts set up the Hermione-La Fayette Association to oversee the construction of a replica of the 66-metre-long ship at the former royal shipyard at Rochefort, using historic techniques but to modern standards to enable the ship to be certified to sail.
The plans for L'Hermione had been lost, but her sister ship the Concorde had been captured by the British navy in the 1790s, and detailed drawings and measurements of the vessel, a jigsaw of more than 400,000 pieces of wood and iron, were found at the Admiralty in London.
Unlike the original, the replica has modern navigation equipment and electric motors for manoeuvring in and out of ports. It was also fitted with showers and toilets, as opposed to a plank of wood with holes in it near the prow that the original crew would have used. The replica cannon are fake; otherwise, it would be classed as a warship and come under the control of the French navy.
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In 2021, L'Hermione was due to visit the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the UK, including sailing up the Thames, but after going into dry dock for maintenance before setting sail, workers discovered that the wood at the bow and stern was infested with lenzites and cellar polypore, both wood-decaying fungi.
'What we know about these fungi is that they existed in the 18th century, but back then it took six months to build a ship, and if one didn't come back or rotted, they just built another. Obviously, we cannot do that,' Beau said. 'We want to build a ship that lasts longer than they did at the time.'
The association has issued a new international appeal for funds, saying it is 'now or never' to save the ship.
'About 10% of the hull wood was damaged; we have replaced the wood in the rear part but now we urgently need €5m to complete the work,' Beau said. 'L'Hermione is a symbolic, historical ship. It is not only a chef-d'oeuvre of technical achievement but it was called the frigate of liberty and carried the values of freedom and solidarity between peoples.
'Today it is a symbol of peace and humanity, and in the current difficult period our countries are going through, it represents diplomatic relations and common values. We don't want to lose that.'
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Reuters
16 minutes ago
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Ministers gather at UN for delayed meeting on Israel, Palestinians
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8 hours ago
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Fires in warehouses known to be part of logistical supply chains have taken place across Europe, including in Britain, while there have also been reports of sabotaged train tracks. In the past, Russian spies posing as diplomats would be linked to these incidents, but since the 2018 poisoning of the Skripals, Moscow is known to also deploy agents on tourist visas. Stop EU visas for Russians Sir William Browder is an American-born English financier turned anti-Putin activist and campaigner. He urged France, Italy and Spain to stop issuing visas to Russians. 'Unless the Russians can demonstrate in a visa interview that they're opposed to the Putin regime, they shouldn't be allowed to come to Europe,' he said. European capitals have hit the Kremlin with waves of sanctions since Putin launched his illegal invasion in 2022. Both Britain and the EU closed their airspace to Russian airlines, triggering a drop in tourist numbers. 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He added, 'I also see that some countries have a self-interested motive – they want the income from Russian tourism. It's not just about visa fees; it's about money spent on hotels, shopping, tickets and so on. Russians are known to spend a lot. 'This undermines the credibility of our sanctions regime and sends a confusing message about our values.' Lifeline for dissidents Andrei Soldatov is a senior fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank and a Russian investigative journalist specialising in the activities of the Kremlin's secret services. He said the visas were valuable for dissidents and families that wanted to visit them abroad. He said, 'it is a problem which doesn't have a simple solution. These are also the countries which help people with anti-Kremlin views move out. 'To make it safe for these people one needs to hide their applications in a stream of other applications. One cannot really expect a Russian dissident to come to a foreign embassy for a 'dissident visa', given the high level of repression in the country.' Popular locations Across the EU, visitor numbers are just a tenth of what they were in 2019, before the pandemic and the invasion, but this varies substantially across the bloc. In 2024, just six EU countries saw an increase in guest nights booked by Russians via websites such as Airbnb, according to figures from Eurostat. Italy saw the largest increase of 18.9 per cent, with 321,678 guest nights across the year, the highest in Europe. France remains the third most popular location for Russian tourists with 203,072 guest nights per year, which is an increase of 7.8 per cent - the fourth highest spike in Europe. Spain is second at 259,068 guest nights, down 3.6 per cent from the previous year, according to the figures obtained from the EU's statistics agency. There was a rise of 13 per cent in the number of nights booked by Russians in Hungary, which has a government that is notoriously soft on Putin. The UK, whose data differs slightly from the EU's, would rank seventh on the list for Russia visitors after Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus. Unlike France and Italy, Britain saw its visitor numbers fall by around 1.3 per cent year-on-year, according to data from the Office for National Statistics. Other statistics, which look at nights across hotels rather than Airbnb-style websites, suggest that France is hosting 27 per cent of the level it was in 2019, compared to just 9.8 per cent in the United Kingdom. The UK has always required Russian tourists to apply for visas, including when it was part of the EU. It never joined Schengen. Schengen members also require that Russians obtain visas. There was an agreement, which made it faster and cheaper to obtain those tourist visas to enter the EU but it was suspended after Putin invaded Ukraine. Analysis of Schengen area visas also showed that Italy and France were leading the tourism rapprochement with Russia. Italy issued 152,254 Schengen area visas at its two Russian consulates last year, which was almost 19,000 more than in 2023. France issued a total of 123, 890, according to European Commission figures, 25,000 more than the year before. Spain issued 111,527, an increase of 15,000. Figures first reported by the EU Observer website showed a rebound in Schengen visas for Russians with 552,630 issued in total last year, an increase of nine per cent. Greece issued 59,703 visas and Hungary 23,382. Rome and Paris unrepentant 'Italy continues to regularly issue visas to Russian tourists who meet our requirements,' A spokesman for Antonio Tajani, the Italian minister of foreign affairs and deputy prime minister, said. 'Our opposition is to the Russian army's military operations in Ukraine, not to the Russian people.' The Elysée was presented with the statistics but did not respond to requests for comment. France has previously defended issuing visas to Russians. 'People-to-people relations and cultural ties can play a positive role in fostering mutual understanding and dialogue between populations,' the French foreign affairs ministry told EU Observer. 'We work hard at maintaining a differentiation between the regime responsible for the war and the population, its civil society, and the opposition,' it said. 'It is essential to maintain this window, to enable Russian society to get access to a plurality of reliable sources of information.' The British and Spanish government were asked for comment. The European Commission said they could not comment, despite being given 72 hours notice, because it was summer. Eurostat, the EU's statistics body, has collected data on the number of guest nights spent in 'collaborative economy platforms', which includes sites such as Airbnb and Expedia since 2018. The UK's Office for National Statistics has collected similar data since mid-2023, meaning pre-invasion figures are not available and there might be minor methodological differences between the two bodies. Data on broader hotel stays across Europe have not been updated for the entirety of Europe in 2024.


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10 hours ago
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