An exceptionally rich maritime cultural heritage
The shelter that the Gulf of Saint-Florent offers to navigation has made it a hub of maritime activity in Corsica since antiquity.
As such, the Florentine city played the role of an open door to the outside world; it was a place of cultural and commercial exchange between the different Mediterranean civilisations.
As a result, it also witnessed the wars that tore apart European nations, and its bay, the theatre of ruthless naval battles.
Today, shipwrecks and archaeological remains lying at the bottom of the bay are a reminder of the richness of this tumultuous past.
Do you know the remains of our cultural heritage?
Did you know?
Two associations have been working for the past fifteen years on the research and promotion of this underwater heritage:
- The Friends of the Agriates
- a Centre for Nautical Archaeology Studies - CEAN
This last one was the origin of an exceptional discovery: the Wrecks of Mortella. These are armed galleons dating from the 16th century, sunk at the bottom of the bay.
History
A historical research programme is being conducted by CEAN in French, Italian, and Spanish archives with the aim of pinpointing the origin of the wrecks and linking them to a historical event. Several researchers are participating in this task, including Corsican historian A.M. Graziani. This work has led to favouring the hypothesis that the shipwrecks originate from the naval battle of December 1555 between the Spanish fleet of Alonso Pimentel, largely composed of allied Genoese ships, and the French fleet of Baron Paulin de la Garde.
The text of Marc-Antonio Ceccaldi (1520-1560)
A contemporary chronicler of events in Corsica gives us an account of the incident. He relates that the Baron de la Garde, arriving from Civitavecchia with several galleys, had taken refuge in the bay of Saint-Florent to shelter from a storm. A Spanish fleet of about ten ships, which was transporting provisions and troops to Genoa, also sought refuge there for the same reason.
With Spain and France at war, the clash is therefore unavoidable and results in the loss of two Spanish ships which are sunk by French galleys.
Adrien's account of the battle
In the 18th century, an epic text by the historian Adrien Richet recounts the event as follows: The account of the battle by Adrien Richet.
«When the baron had completed his mission (to escort two French cardinals to Rome)…being off Civita-Vecchia, a seaport in Italy, in the state of the church, he was caught by a violent storm which scattered his galleys and threw the one he was on, along with another, onto the beach at San Fiorenzo in the island of Corsica. He spotted twenty-four large Spanish ships that had been battered by the storm and had withdrawn to the same coast, a short distance from San Fiorenzo…Baron de la Garde, accustomed to fighting whenever the opportunity arose, wished to attack them, but his forces were too unequal for him to have hope of victory; he only had two galleys, the other four having been separated from him, as we have stated.
Seeing that courage was not enough in this situation, he resolved to use cunning. He promptly hoisted the emperor's flag and sent a brigantine to tell the Spaniards that Princess Anne, wife of Ferdinand, King of Hungary, brother of Charles V, was aboard and that he was transporting her to Spain where she would be safe during the war that the emperor and her husband were waging against France and the Turks. He added that it was their duty to salute her with all their artillery. The Spaniards fell into the trap the baron laid for them; they hastened to fire all their cannons. Immediately the baron replaced the French flag and attacked them so swiftly that they did not have time to reload their cannons.
He sank two of their largest ships, taking fifteen that were richly laden. The rest of the fleet escaped by sail and oar. He chained the soldiers and sailors who were in the ships he had captured.
Philosophy had not yet reached the degree it is at: the baron's cunning was approved, even admired at court, and the Spaniards' imprudent credulity was laughed at; today, such simplicity would be laughed at, but the baron de la Garde's deception would be condemned.