America
Napoleon Bonaparte's getaway ship found in Australian waters
Canberra, June 15
A ship used by French leader Napoleon Bonaparte to sneak back into
France while he was in exile has been found in Australia, a media report
said on Monday.
Australian filmmaker and shipwreck hunter Ben
Cropp claimed that he found the final resting place of the "Swiftsure"
in shallow waters off far north Queensland state, The Australian
reported.
Cropp had to risk a dive in crocodile-infested waters
off Lockhart River, towards the tip of Cape York Peninsula, to be sure
he'd really found what he'd spent several years searching for.
A distinctive line of keel bolts, ballast and pottery shards made Cropp to confirm his finding.
Officials from the Queensland's Department of Environment and Heritage Protection are now in the process of verifying the claim.
The
significance of the find dates back to 1815 when Napoleon was living in
exile on the island off Elba, off Italy, following a crushing military
defeat during his march on Russia.
Napoleon escaped the island by
commandeering a 337-tonne brig named "L'Inconstant", later renamed the
Swiftsure to retake his homeland, famously confronting the soldiers of
King Louis XVIII and ultimately forcing the monarch into exile.
England
later seized the brig as a war prize after the battle of Waterloo,
renamed her and used her on the England-Australia shipping route.
The
brig was believed to have sank after striking a coral reef on the great
barrier reef while en route from Sydney to Mauritius in 1829.
Cropp
made the discovery in November 2014, however, kept it secret as plans
were made to create a film of the discovery. Those plans were abandoned
due to the site being highly decomposed and in crocodile infested
waters.
"I counted six crocodile tracks leading into the water a
mile away and that's not funny. My dive there (in November 2014) was
very brief," Cropp said.
The film-maker said it took years of
meticulous research to narrow the search area, with the final line of
debris he found during a scuba- dive corroborating reports from a ships
log in 1830 which noted wreckers stripping the vessel of it's valuables.