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SHIPWRECK

Divers find 18th-century Danish warship

Divers in Denmark have located a warship that sank near the island of Læsø 238 years ago.

Published: 13 November 2018 17:27 CET
Divers find 18th-century Danish warship
Parts of of the wreckage under the sea near Læsø. Photo: HANDOUT/Undervandsgruppen.dk/Ritzau Scanpix

The 52-metre, 70-cannon Printz Friederich went down with almost 500 men on board during a storm on September 30th, 1780.

A diving team named Undervandsgruppen (The Underwater Group) has worked to locate the wreck for over ten years.

“We’ve sailed 2,500 nautical miles and combed 100 square kilometres of seabed. We were ready to give up because we thought we weren’t going to find it,” the team’s leader Kim Schmidt told Ritzau.

“This ship was overlooked a little. After 1781, no one gave it a second thought,” Schmidt said.

Divers from the group have recovered a number of objects from the shipwreck, including a lead plate with a royal crown and some lead cannon balls.

Authorities will now decide whether to recover more objects from the sunken ship.

Almost all of the ship’s 500-strong crew were rescued after it ran aground and sank. Between 6-8 men are thought to have died.

“The sinking was a complete disaster for the Danish navy, since the ship constituted one fifth of the fleet,” Schmidt said.

The ship was engaged in a mission when it ran aground in stormy weather.

“The captain was taken ill and the first mate was in charge. The ship was blown completely off course, and they had no idea where they were. They could not see landmarks or stars to navigate by,” Schmidt said.

But boats sent from the nearby island of Læso were able to save the majority of the people on board after the ship went down.

“It was quite turbulent for the people of Læsø. They had to find food and shelter for 500 people. Many were given lodgings with single women, and that resulted in a lot of descendents (from the crew),” the diving team leader said.

The story of the Printz Friederich shipwreck is to be featured at Læsø Museum, Ritzau writes.

READ ALSO: Wreckage of German WW2 ship found in seas north of Denmark

TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

Published: 16 May 2023 08:29 CEST
France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

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