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L'Hermione Update, Anchored at La Pallice!

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It's been a few days since my last update, so I thought I would let you know what I have been able to find out about L'Hermione the past few days. She has been docked in La Rochell, France since last Wednesday to undergo some repair work on one of her maneuvering engine pods that was malfunctioning. This is exactly what these sea trials are designed to do, find issues before the ship is actually out to sea and far from any help or repair facility. I am not sure which pod she is having problems with, but you can find some good pics of the installation, a video, and out quite a bit more about them HERE! From the articles I have been able to find, she also replaced 20 volunteer crew members, but I have not been able to find out why.

L'Hermione has been in La Rochelle for a week now and I really haven't been able to find out much about what the exact problem was, or why she is still in port. Part of the reason may be there there is a boat show going on in La Rochelle called Grand Pavois that runs from today through September 22'nd! According to a Tweet today from LHERMIONE_SHIP, some of the crew have taken out one of her canoes and joined in the fun at the boat show.

She has actually been docked in the primary port of La Pallice, which is the site of an important Nazi submarine base during World War II. Construction of the U-boat bunker in La Pallice started in April 1941, and took 2 years to complete but the first U-Boats started to arrive shortly after construction began. In September of 1944, the Allies had the base surrounded, but it was well defended by 20,000 German soldiers which kept the allies from taking it outright and set the stage for a siege that would last till the end of the war. The German soldiers occupying the base were resupplied by subs, but finally surrendered on May 8'th, 1945. These bunkers are currently used by the French Navy for storage, and they have also been used in several movies, such as "Das Boot" and "Indiana Jones II".



Sous-marins au port de La Pallice (La Rochelle) (1) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], by Jean-Pierre Bazard (Own work), from Wikimedia Commons

You can see some photos of her in port at La Pallice HERE! You can also find some pictures of her at La Pallice through the Twitter hash tag #LHERMIONE!

L'Hermione is scheduled to head for Brest, France next, and should be there on September 26'th. After that, her next port of call is Bordeaux, Frnace, where she will be open for public tours October 9'th through the 13'th. You can follow her live on www.marinetraffic.com, click on “last position recieved” button and it will bring up the live map showing her current location, heading and speed.

A video of some great pictures of L' Hermione, including the first picture of her under sail!


Here is a Daily Motion video of a tour of one of the crew births given by Alice, one of the volunteers.


You can also follow them on Twitter HERE, and HERE! They also have a blog set up to follow what is going on onbaord, you can find the original French blog HERE, and the Google translated version HERE!! They just uploaded some great black and white pictures taken by photographers Solange and Jean-François Gautier Deroubaix. They also have some pictures of a stowaway that happened to make it onboard! I'll keep looking for more news and keep you posted as I find it!
 

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Personally, I think the sub pens look out of place, she looks like she belongs everywhere she goes! :onya

Just a bit of an update on the failed engine, it must be pretty serious because they had to call in an expert from the Italian firm that built them, so this is no easy fix and she may be late for her appearance in Brest. The expert should be there to examine it on Monday the 22'nd.
 
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