The presumed remains of the Little Ermine, one of the three ships of the expedition commanded by Jacques Cartier in 1535, will return to Quebec this spring to be exhibited at the Musée de la civilization. The artifacts, whose age has been contested since their discovery, could date from the 16the century, according to a carbon-14 analysis carried out by the History Museum of Saint-Malo, the explorer’s hometown.
The wood of one of the internal covering pieces of the hull was cut between 1434 and 1620. The tree which was used to make a piece of the ship’s keel was felled between 1520 and 1799 These preliminary results must be validated by the beginning of May by an archaeodendrometric study which was carried out last November on a fragment of sheep cap, a piece of wooden rigging.
Visitors will be able to admire the debris of this wreck from May 30 as part of the permanent exhibition Quebec, in other wordswhich must replace The time of Quebecers. “These objects fit well with the theme of the encounter, which is the common thread of the exhibition,” explains the press relations officer of the Musée de la civilization, Agnès Dufour. The uncertainty surrounding the dating of the artifacts does not compromise their presentation. “We know that history is in constant flux, it transforms, it sparks exchanges,” explains M.me From the oven.
Scurvy
The artifacts expected in Quebec in mid-April are traditionally associated with the Little Erminea vessel whose holds could contain up to 60 barrels of food and goods.
In the summer of 1535, the nave sailed up the Saint Lawrence alongside the Great Ermine and theSwivel, the two other ships of Jacques Cartier’s expedition. There Little Ermine would also have accompanied the Malouin explorer a year earlier during his stopover in Gaspé, marked by the taking possession of this indigenous territory in the name of King François 1er.
The Atlantic crossing in 1535 was tough for the sailors of Saint-Malo, who spent 118 days aboard their ship before dropping anchor off Cap aux Diamants, in Quebec. The winter will be even worse for the people of Saint-Malo, many of whom will die from scurvy. The scourge will also force Cartier to abandon the Little Ermine near the Iroquoian village of Stadaconé in May 1536, due to lack of sailors to bring the building back to France.
Wreck
In 1843, the carcass of an ancient ship emerged at the mouth of the Saint-Michel stream, one of the tributaries of the Saint-Charles river, in Quebec. We are only 500 meters from today’s Cartier-Brébeuf Park, the location where Cartier’s crew would have wintered in 1535-1536. The collapsed hull lies awash in the mud. It is also used as a makeshift pontoon by duck and partridge hunters from the surrounding area.
“A vessel thus buried is a fact without example in Canada,” declared the bibliophile Amable Berthelot in 1844, during a conference relating the discovery of the previous year. In living memory, the place where it was found thus placed was no longer navigable for a vessel in its port, which must make it suppose several centuries of existence. »
Popular enthusiasm for Cartier, the “discoverer of Canada,” led the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec to finance the excavation of the site. However, removing part of the remains results in the destruction of the hull.
“It would perhaps have been better for science [de] let it last as long as possible for the satisfaction of the present generation and those to come,” regrets Berthelot. The history enthusiast nevertheless wishes the excavations to continue so that the bones of the scorbutics buried in the winter of 1535-1536 are found: “If we cleared the bottom of this basin to the depth of the place where the At the bottom of this vessel, it is likely that we would find the bones of the 25 French people who died of scurvy, which Cartier had hidden under the snow. »
Skeptics
The artifacts extracted from the mud in 1843 are divided into two lots. The first was briefly exhibited at the parliament of the Côte de la Montagne, in Quebec, where they were destroyed during its fire in 1854. The second was sent to Saint-Malo, where a committee of experts confirmed the age of the debris at from a simple visual examination.
The committee’s conclusions were contested in 1896 by the Quebec historian Narcisse-Eutrope Dionne, who saw the artifacts during his honeymoon in Brittany. “To be frank, I had decided in advance not to let myself be convinced,” relates the scholar in a work published in 1913. “Our cousins from Saint-Malo are Bretons, and when you are Breton, you misjudge yourself with difficulty. »
The remains of the ship passed from the town hall of Saint-Malo to its medieval castle in 1927. They narrowly escaped the Allied bombings which followed the Normandy landings in the summer of 1944.
The wood and metal reliquary was recovered in the early 1950s by the Saint-Malo History Museum, which exhibited it until 2019, despite the doubts sown by Narcisse-Eutrope Dionne. The carbon 14 analyzes carried out last summer at the initiative of Quebec historian Bernard Allaire shook up the ambient skepticism.
The artifacts attributed to the Little Ermine will return to Saint-Malo in 2028, in time for the opening of the new maritime museum in the corsair city.