Rochefort Journal: Following In Lafayette’s Footsteps, Or Rather, His Wake

ROCHEFORT, France, July 29 — Piece by piece, a graceful structure of whimsy and magic is taking shape in this old river port, fulfilling the dream of a group of seafaring Frenchmen to honor a founding father of French-American friendship.

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For a decade now, historians, architects, carpenters, boat builders, craftsmen and blacksmiths have lovingly — if slowly — sought to recreate the Hermione, the 145-foot, 32-gun, three-masted frigate that in 1780 carried a young French nobleman known as the Marquis de Lafayette on a 38-day voyage to Boston.

Lafayette had already made his reputation, fighting for the cause of American liberty alongside Gen. George Washington against the British. The mission this time was to bring word that King Louis XVI would send a half-dozen ships and 5,000 infantry soldiers to help the rebels.

The lean warship, known for its speed, moved on to take part in the final battles of Chesapeake Bay and the decisive fall of Yorktown in 1781. Two years later, it met an inglorious demise, crashing on a sandbar and sinking off the coast of Brittany.

It took six months and more than a thousand workers to build. Today, with an average of a dozen workers on-site, it will take at least four more years to complete the replica, which the organizers promise to sail on Lafayettes route, perhaps with a joint French and American crew.

Until then, its curved oak frame sits impatiently in a cavernous 18th-century cobblestone dry dock. A three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle that will eventually have 400,000 pieces, it is Rocheforts top tourist attraction and the focus of an ambitious trans-Atlantic fund-raising campaign.

Every little piece of wood is like a sculpture! exclaimed Craig Roberts Stapleton, the American ambassador to France, donning a hard hat and descending into the cargo hold last Friday. He delivered remarks — in respectable French — about his pride in the Hermione, which already flies the flags of France and the United States.

Now is a good time to gin up support for the Hermione. Sept. 6 is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier (a k a the Marquis de Lafayette).

The event will be celebrated in the United States, where schools, bridges, streets, squares, cities and towns have been named after the Revolutionary War hero. Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., which is planning an entire year of festivities, has even arranged with Hermès to produce a Lafayette commemorative silk scarf that will be sold exclusively in the United States for $325.

The French will follow with their own celebrations in December, including a dinner-debate sponsored by Frances defense minister, meetings of French and American businessmen, academic conferences and a flood of publications. Members of Congress and the mayors of 30 American cities and towns named after Lafayette have been invited.

But it is in Rochefort, a town of 27,000 people 250 miles southwest of Paris, near the Bordeaux wine country, that Lafayette fever — and the stakes — run highest.

The depressed river port was once the thriving center of Frances naval shipbuilding industry, but never recovered economically from the closing of the navy arsenal in the 1920s.

Determined to revive the town, a handful of local figures and sailing enthusiasts came up with the Hermione II idea over a wine-filled dinner on the site in 1992.

Benedict Donnelly, a public relations executive and recreational sailor whose American father had been a liaison officer for Gen. George S. Patton during D-Day, was picked as president of the organization they created: the Association Hermione La Fayette.

One challenge to the builders was that the French had no blueprints of the boat. The projects marine historian eventually tracked down British-drawn plans for one of the three sister frigates of the Hermione in Greenwich, England. The plans were drawn after the British captured the frigate, the Concorde, in a battle in 1783.

Another problem has been the financing. The $22 million needed to build the boat has come from local and regional French governments, the European Union, private and corporate sponsors and ticket and gift shop sales.

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