1833 - A Steamer Tugs a Barge from Egypt to France

It is well known that Muhammad Ali Pascha, 64 years old now, Wali of Egypt for the Ottoman sultan, viceroy if one prefers, offered France the two obelisks flanking the gate of the temple of Luxor. It was three years ago.

The operation consisting in extracting, boarding, transporting, unloading and erecting the gift in Paris was entrusted to Jean-Baptiste Apollinaire Lebas, a naval engineer aged 36 by now.

A special three-masted strengthened 500-ton barge named Louqsor was built on purpose to carry a single 230-ton 23-metre obelisk. It was already some painstaking work to extract it then to board it. The barge displacing 800 tons once loaded sailed with some help from the stream down the Nile over some 1,000 kilometres in 38 days. She had also to cross the sandbar at the mouth of the river - a tricky manoeuvre - before rallying her tug at Aboukir near Alexandria.

The paddle steamer Sphinx - a premonitory name -, the first such corvette built for the French navy, launched in 1829, was waiting there to take the barge in tow.

¤ She is 46-metre long and 8.20-metre broad and she displaces 800 tons. Designed by Jean-Baptiste Hubert, a naval engineer 52 years old today, she was built at Rochefort dockyard. She is fitted with a nominal 160-hp, real 640-hp, robust machinery made by Fawcett meant to drive her at seven knots, but nine have been reached out.

¤ The boilers are typical of the British make as they are rectangular, in copper, at a quite low pressure of three or four psi. The two vertical side-lever cylinders had a 1.22-metre diametre and a 1.45-metre stroke. The weight amounted to 830 kilogrammes for each hp, the consumption to six kilogrammes of coal for a hp-hour. Robustness is the prime quality of this machinery, certainly not brilliance.

¤ Sphinx was used as a dispatch vessel between France and the expeditionary force during the short punitive expedition against the dey of Algiers in 1830. She also contributed to silence the fort of Sidi Fredj.

Sphinx tugged Louqsor over 5,500 nautical miles at an average speed of four knots up to Le Havre with a number of intermediate calls to refuel. This is a tour de force. No breakdown occurred. The convincing operation has caused much stir in the public and amongst the naval experts. Steam has definitely proved its worth through the fortunate venture of the obelisk.

Louqsor has then been taken in tow by usual means on the Seine down to Paris.

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IN RETROSPECT FROM TODAY

Note A - on Sphinx

Sphinx runs aground in 1845 owing to a thick fog. She is the lead ship of a collection of 23 ships classified as avisos built until 1839, the machinery of which being made at the French works of Indret. She is determining in the introduction of steam in the French navy and perhaps elsewhere.

Note B - on the obelisk

It is erected in 1836 in the middle of Paris. The whole operation is so costly - two millions francs - that the second obelisk remains at Luxor.

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CREDIT

Model of Sphinx - © Musée de la Marine, paris