C_B_2015_05_

JEAN-MICHEL ENAULT

ANTIQUAPRINTGALLERY.COM

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2015 59

ONBOARD

T

he last time I was in Port Chantereyne,

Cherbourg was thirty years ago. I

vaguely remembered a dirty grey

industrial town with nothing to do but

play pinball next to moody dock

workers in acrid cafés. People seemed to

have pudding for breakfast, drank coffee from cereal

bowls and it always rained. For sailors it was a place

to stop to refuel and grab some sleep and provisions

before the sailing holiday started with heading along the

coast. This time, I could have been forgiven for thinking

I had somehow got on the wrong ferry and arrived

in a completely different place.

Vauban, the Marshal of France and famed designer

and engineer of fortifications, first realised the

importance of Cherbourg as a defensive naval base

against the English during a visit in 1686. The

harbour’s main sea dyke began construction a hundred

years later and took over 70 years to build. Then the

entire project of Cherbourg harbour began during the

reign of Louis XVI and ended in 1860 although you

could argue that this project never actually ends. The

vast outer sea defences, some 2^1 / 2 miles long with forts

all the way along them were originally constructed by

Napoleon. The Titanic made her second-to-last stop

here and passengers boarded from Cherbourg, never to

be seen again. It played a pivotal role in the Second

World War, being the stage for the artificial harbours

floated across the Channel and a strategic landing place

for 2.3 million tonnes of GI gear and 110,000 men to

support the landings at Juno, Gold, Sword, Utah and

Omaha. One harbour wall fort was used as an ammo

dump but was blown up so as not to let it fall into the

hands of the Germans. On the hills above Cherbourg is

the 19th-century, gunned hill fort cemented ominously

into the Montagne du Roule like a huge grey limpet.

The protection of the harbour is so safe that it

allows for schoolchildren in Optimists to be racing and

training all year round and we often saw long duckling

lines of them being towed back and forth inside the

embrace of the walls that act as a huge lagoon and

have Blue Flag recognition for cleanliness. No mean

feat, this being the largest port in France, with a vast

marina of 1,556 berths, 1,300 of which are annual, and

Left: Etretat in

Normandy.

Below:

Cherbourg

vintage map

available from

antiqua print

gallery.com

CB323 Cherbourg.indd 59 24/03/2015 14:19