The great shipping disaster of 1910 in the Balearics

In more modern times it has been possible to chart the location of wrecks and to understand the reasons for vessels sinking. One such location is a stretch of coast in Minorca known as Sa Punta des Llosar. The reason is generally accepted, though French reports that there were thirty tonnes of gunpowder on board have always somewhat muddied the waters (so to speak) of the story of a shipping disaster that takes us back to February 1910. It is the story of the sinking of the General Chanzy.

Antoine Chanzy was born in 1823. The son of a French knight of the Legion of Honour, his military career started in 1839. In 1878, such had been his dedication and achievements, he received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. The following year he was nominated to be the president of France. The last of his postings was as commander of the VI Corps. He died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage in 1883.

So, this was how the passenger ship got its name. An ocean-going liner, it was built in 1891 and had been used for Atlantic routes until becoming the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique’s ship for the Marseille to Algiers route. This was a substantial vessel, therefore; 2,920 tonnes of it. The route had been done many times. The captain, Bruno Cayol, was highly experienced. But in the face of a severe storm and at a time when there wasn’t radar, familiarity and experience were to count for very little as the captain had sought some refuge from the storm by altering the route and entering the channel between Mallorca and Minorca.

The press coverage of the General Chanzy disaster was international. Only one of the 157 people on board survived a collision with rocks that ripped a hole in the hull and caused water to pour in and which in turn resulted in a boiler explosion. The scale of the disaster made the sinking worldwide news, as did the fact that there was a delay of a couple of days before anyone knew about it and the insistence from the French media that there had been all that gunpowder. This was eventually confirmed.

Marcel Baudez, also named as Marcel Rodel, was a customs official. Aged 23, a report from London of February 14, 1910, stated that he had been rendered unconscious by the explosion that had occurred around 5am on February 10. He had been washed into a cave, having gone on deck before the explosion, had regained consciousness, taken shelter and had then set out to find someone to tell what had happened, which involved having to climb up a cliff face. It took him almost two days to report the disaster. A large ship had exploded right by the shore and no one had known about it. The report of February 14 said that the ship sank within three minutes of exploding. It was ripped apart. The explosion was colossal.

As Mallorca was the administrative centre for the Balearic province, investigations into the accident and indeed searches were overseen in Palma. The governor of the Balearics had to be sure there weren’t other survivors, even if these were unlikely. The Compagnie Générale Transatlantique’s chief inspector was despatched to Ciutadella. Guardia Civil agents were sent from Palma. French warships were called in to search for bodies. Another of the company’s ships arrived to collect the bodies.
Meanwhile, and in a different report of February 14, it was said that Marcel Baudez had still been unable to give an account of what had happened. Doctors in Ciutadella insisted he was suffering from mental trauma. When he was finally able to offer an explanation, his lack of technical detail - which couldn’t really have been expected - shed little light onto events.

There was a lighthouse in the area, Cavalleria, but it was the absence of lighthouses on a stretch of coast where the company had experienced an accident twelve years previously (without loss of life) that was to prompt the building of Punta Nati in 1913 and Farritx a few years later.

One of the various side stories of the General Chanzy disaster concerns American fashion buyer Edith Russell. She survived the sinking of the Titanic, and the story goes that she was booked on the General Chanzy journey from Marseilles but that while taking tea at a hotel in Nice, she had a premonition that the ship would blow up. She got her money back and the next day read in the papers that the General Chanzy had indeed blown up, a disaster that will never be forgotten in Minorca or in Mallorca.