SHARE
COPY LINK

FRENCH HISTORY

Archaeologists probe French coast for WWII wrecks

A team composed of British and French experts has launched a new campaign to find shipwrecks from the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940.

Archaeologists are searching French waters around Dunkirk to find WWII wrecks.
Archaeologists are searching French waters around Dunkirk to find WWII wrecks. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)

Shattered by bomb impacts, the 100-metre-long British destroyer “Keith” has been lying at the bottom of the Dunkirk channel since its sinking in 1940.

It went down during Operation Dynamo, when hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were rescued by sea from the advancing Germans.

Now the World War II warship appears in brightly coloured 3D, vertical slice by vertical slice, on the screen of Mark James, a geophysicist from Historic England.

James has joined a group of archaeologists taking stock of the traces of the battle still lurking under the waves.

A British government agency, Historic England has joined the search for wrecks dating to the Dunkirk evacuation run by France’s DRASSM, which is in charge of underwater archaeology.

Firing sound waves down to the seabed, a multibeam sonar “allows us to create a really nice 3D model of the seabed and any wrecks and debris,” he said.

“It’s quite an emotional feeling seeing somebody’s wreck come up on the screen,” he added. “You kind of realise the human sacrifice that was made.”

Although a large ship, the “Keith” is set to “disappear bit by bit”, said Cecile Sauvage, an archaeologist with DRASSM who is one of those leading the search launched on September 25.

Surveying the wrecks now will allow both countries to “preserve the memory of these ships and the human history behind these wrecks”, she added.

Perilous crossing

Brought to the big screen in an acclaimed 2017 film by Christopher Nolan, Operation Dynamo ran from May 26 to June 4, 1940.

Encircled in northern France by Nazi German forces, the Allies threw everything into a mass evacuation.

Over those nine days, 338,220 soldiers — mostly British, but also 123,000 French and 16,800 Belgians — were evacuated on all kinds of vessels, cramming into military ships, fishing trawlers, ferries and tugboats.

The shortest route from Dunkirk to safe harbour across the English Channel in Dover is 60 kilometres (40 miles).

But that path was within range of German guns already in place at Calais.

“Between 1,000 and 1,500 vessels of all types made the crossing”, with 305 sunk by “shelling, enemy torpedoes, mines and even collisions caused by the panic around the operation,” said archaeologist Claire Destanque, another of the search mission chiefs.

Almost 5,000 of the fleeing soldiers were drowned, according to Dunkirk-based historian Patrick Oddone.

‘305 stories’

The three-week search by two archaeologists and two geophysicists has quartered the English Channel to tally up the lost ships  – the first hunt of its kind in French waters.

Volunteer divers had already catalogued the locations of the wrecks, with the scientists’ job to confirm the sites and shore up their identifications by comparing them with archive data.

Sailing on from the “Keith” under the autumn sun, the crew next heads for a French cargo ship, also around 100 metres (yards) along the keel.

The “Douaisien” had made the trip from Algeria to unload its goods at Dunkirk before being requisitioned to transport 1,200 soldiers.

It had barely left the port before it hit a mine and sank, Claire Destanque recounts.

She points out the point the mine struck on the sonar screen, still visible more than 80 years later.

“Knowing the history that’s behind it, it’s very moving,” she says.

The campaign has allowed the archaeologists to definitively identify 27 Operation Dynamo wrecks.

Three more have been found, but need closer inspection by divers next year given the extent of the damage.

Sauvage says their aim has been “to better locate and get to know the remnants”, as well as “to protect them better, especially if there’s a construction plan like a wind farm that could destroy them”.

Plans have been afoot for several years to build turbines in the sea off Dunkirk.

Another benefit of the search is the return to the headlines of “an important milestone” in World War II history that is far less familiar to the French public than in Britain, Sauvage adds.

The sunken wrecks represent “305 stories within the sweep of history,” Destanque believes.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

FRENCH HISTORY

5 things to know about Charles de Gaulle’s historic ‘appel du 18 juin’

In 1940, France's former president and then-General Charles de Gaulle recorded a historic speech that many consider the start of the French resistance during World War II. Here are some facts you may not know about it.

5 things to know about Charles de Gaulle's historic 'appel du 18 juin'

On June 18, 1940, then-General Charles de Gaulle spoke into a BBC microphone in London, proclaiming that “Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.”

His words were broadcast on the BBC’s Radio Londres, the network’s French language programme.

General de Gaulle called on all officers, soldiers and engineers already in British territory or capable of getting there, to join the fight against Nazi Germany

The speech is widely considered to be the “founding act of the Free French Forces” that would be led by de Gaulle. 

De Gaulle had fled to UK the previous day, after Marshal Philippe Pétain, the new French prime minister, had promised to sign an armistice with Nazi Germany.

READ MORE: ‘Punished for daring’: Women journalists defied Allies to cover D-Day

Here are five facts about the famous speech;

It was actually a response to another speech – The previous day, on June 17th at 12:30pm, the new head of the French government, Marshal Philippe Pétain, made a speech announcing his plans to sign an armistice with Nazi Germany. De Gaulle fled France the same day, and met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who gave him the green light to record a speech.

There were not many listeners – In reality, de Gaulle’s appeal on June 18th is not thought to have been heard by many French people. After the British government went back and forth about whether to air the speech, it eventually was broadcast at 10pm, rather late for people to have heard it across the Channel.

On top of that, the BBC would not have been a first choice for radio stations amongst French people, historian Aurélie Luneau told France Bleu.

Instead, the notoriety of the speech instead came from the word of mouth and re-prints of its words in the international press in the days to come. It was also put into poster-form and placed on walls around London.

A reproduction, from August 1940, of the poster put on walls around London, with the words of de Gaulle’s June 18th speech (Photo by AFP)

But it did mobilise many French once they heard about it. One key example is the Isle de Sein, off the coast of Finistère in Brittany. The small fishing community mobilised, and from June 24th to 26th, 136 locals sailed to Britain, the youngest just 14 and the oldest 54.

No recording of the speech – As it was not widely listened to, the original speech made on June 18th was not recorded or filmed. However, de Gaulle repeated his message again on the radio again four days later (on June 22), and this one was recorded and more widely listened to. 

The BBC then went on to give de Gaulle and the Free French five minutes a day to broadcast to France, in an effort to organise the resistance.

In 2023, French newspaper Le Monde was able to use artificial intelligence to recreate a close version to what de Gaulle’s original speech may have sounded like.

De Gaulle’s nickname – The General won the nickname ‘L’Homme du 18 juin’ (The man of the 18th of June) due to his initial speech and the many more that were broadcast during World War II.

Commemorated with a coin and stamp – Upon the 70th anniversary of the speech in 2010, France commemorated the event with a special stamp (you can see it here), as well as a €2 commemorative coin (you can see/buy it here).

SHOW COMMENTS