1833 - Steamer Sphinx Tows the Obelisk 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, moving, boarding, transporting, unloading and erecting the gift in Paris has been entrusted to Jean-Baptiste Apollinaire Lebas, a naval engineer aged 36 by now. A first obelisk has come to Paris after an epic journey. He has still to erect it somewhere.

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, move it then to board it.

¤ Yet the ancient Egyptians already did it since the pieces of red granite were quarried at Aswan, at 160 kilometres from Luxor.

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 by pure chance -, the first steam corvette built for the French navy, launched in 1829, was waiting there to take the barge in tow.

¤ She is 46-metre long at the waterline and 8.20-metre broad, 11 at the paddle-wheels, and she displaces 800 tons, as her barge in tow. 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 four psi. The two vertical side-lever cylinders had a 1.22-metre diameter and a 1.45-metre stroke. The machinery weight amounts 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 at the same opportunity.

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 even more 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 - a last 360-kilometre trip to complete its long journey.

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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 by imitating then developing from the British prototype. She is determining in the introduction of steam in the French navy and elsewhere.

Armament of a paddlewheel steamer is limited, as broadside is partly obstructed by the paddle-wheels. Yet the steamer proves to be ideal for all the ancillary tasks around the battle fleet, as scouting or dispatching orders, which explains the relatively high number of sisterships and quasi sisterships which come within ten years of Sphinx' appearance.

Sphinx has the rigging of a three-masted ship. Her successors will progressively be reduced to barques and barquentines, their main role resting on steam.

Note B - on the obelisk

It is erected in 1836 in the middle of Paris - an impressive operation attended by 200,000 persons. Lebas steals the show by his command post, just below the stone, threatened to be flattened if anything had turned wrong. The whole operation has been so costly - two millions francs - that the second obelisk will remain forever at Luxor.

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SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Apollinaire Lebas - L'Obélisque de Luxor : histoire de sa translation à Paris, description des travaux auxquels il a donné lieu..., suivi d'un extrait de l'ouvrage de Fontana sur la translation de l'obélisque du Vatican - Paris, 1839 - available on the Internet

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CREDIT

Model of Sphinx - © Musée de la Marine, Paris