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6 unusual facts about Édouard Corbière


Édouard Corbière

In 1880, a short road in central Le Havre was renamed after Corbière and later Brest, Morlaix (1905) and Roscoff (1911) did the same.

Jean Antoine René Édouard Corbière (1 April 1793, Brest – 27 September 1875, Morlaix) was a French sailor, shipowner, journalist and writer, considered to be the father of the French maritime novel.

The Corbière family originated in Valès, a hamlet in the Haut-Languedoc (now part of the commune iof Le Bez, to the east of Castres, in the Tarn département).

At the time of Édouard's birth his father was an infantry captain in the French Navy - his mother, Jeanne-Renée Dubois, had been born at Morlaix in 1768.

He launched a regatta in 1851, then unsuccessfully proposed starting a national subscription for France to send a yacht to the regatta around the Isle of Wight at which, on 22 August 1851, the schooner America won the trophy later renamed the America Cup.

He was a prisoner on parole at Tiverton, Devon, until November 1811 when he was sent to Stapleton Prison near Bristol.



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