ROCHEFORT, CHARENTE-MARITIME

'Rochefort' is a commune in western France, a seaport on the Atlantic Ocean. It is a ''sous-préfecture'' of the Charente-Maritime ''département''. The town's non-official name is ''Rochefort-sur-Mer'' but the last part of the name is normally omitted.

Contents

History

Miscellaneous

Births

Town Twinning

See also

External links

History

In December 1665 Rochefort was chosen by Jean-Baptiste Colbert as a place of "refuge, defense and supply" for the French navy. Its military harbour was fortified by Louis XIV's commissary of fortifications Vauban. Between 1666-1669 the king had the "Corderie Royale" (then the longest building in Europe) constructed to make cordage for French ships of war. The making of cordage ceased in 1867, and in 1926 the arsenal of Rochefort was closed. The building was burned by occupation forces in 1944 and left abandoned for twenty years. Today it has been restored for municipal and tourist purposes. Another infrastructure of early Rochefort from 1766 was its ''bagne'', a high-security penal colony involving hard labour. ''Bagnes'' were then common fixtures in military harbours and naval bases, such as Toulon or Brest, because they provided free labour.
Off Rochefort, from the island of Île-d'Aix where he had spent several days hoping to flee to America, Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered to Captain F. L. Maitland aboard HMS ''Bellerophon'', on July 17, 1815, ending the "Hundred Days".
Rochefort is a notable example of 17th-century "ville nouvelle" or new town, which means its design and building resulted from a political decree. The reason for building Rochefort was to a large extent that royal power could hardly depend on rebellious Protestant La Rochelle, which Cardinal Richelieu had to besiege a few decades earlier. Well into the 20th century, Rochefort remained primarily a garrison town. The tourist industry, which had long existed due to the town's spa, gained emphasis in the 1990s.

Miscellaneous

The town gained some fleeting fame with Jacques Demy's musical movie ''Les demoiselles de Rochefort'' (''The Young Girls of Rochefort'') (1967), starring Catherine Deneuve, her sister Françoise Dorléac, Gene Kelly and George Chakiris (Bernardo from West Side Story).
It is home to a unique style of bridge called a Transporter bridge, (built 1900) named ''Pont transbordeur de Rochefort''.[1]

Births

Rochefort was the birthplace of:

★ Pierre Loti (1850-1923), author. His house has been turned into a museum

★ Pauline Réage, pseudonym of Anne Desclos (1907-1998), author

★ Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), philosopher

Town Twinning

★ Burton upon Trent, East Staffordshire, England

★ Torrelavega, Cantabria, Spain

★ Papenburg, Lower Saxony, Germany

See also

★ Palmyre Zoo

★ Poitevin-Saintongeais language

External links

★ Town council website

★ Captain Maitland's detailed report of Napoleon's interception and surrender