In 2024, the association Voile latine de Sète et du bassin de Thau launched a loude, launched in the 1990s on the Kerkennah Islands, Tunisia. It now carries the memory of these traditional Tunisian fishing boats, now disappeared, but also the personal history of this replica, from one Mediterranean shore to the other.
On the Thau pond, at the foot of Mount Saint-Clair, a sailboat with a singular hull, cingle in the laughing. Its small front mast, the trinquet, carries a Latin sail, whose folded antenna greets the Mediterranean. Its large 12-meter mast, leaning towards the sten, surprises with its quest. He wears a square sail riged to the third, not in the manner of the misainiers of Finistère: his rail falls backwards. This circumflex-cut wing evokes the Caribbeans that once came and went on the Great Blue. This sailboat is a loud, worthy representative of a missing lineage from the Kerkennah archipelago, in Tunisia. They have served for centuries the merchants, sponge and octopus fishermen of the deep lands of the Gulf of Gabès. The Loud was built in Kerkennah in 1994, restored in Sète from 2019 and returned to the water in 2024. But its story begins in 1992, when a former tuna man from the island of Yeu crossed in Tunisian waters.
The latter then follows the trail of Ulysses, who would have passed through Djerba in very ancient times. On board the ship, educators supervise young people who are breaking up with a difficult daily life. As the islands of Kerkennah approach, the name of the archipelago intrigues the most Bretons of this wandering. The places turn out to be populated by fishermen and adults recognize the advantages of a community devoid of superfluous, changed by family traditions and turned towards the sea. Young people would not be tempted to pocket tourists, there are none. « We thought they could go with the fishermen, » explains Robert Antraygues, from Seto and instigator of the adventure.
To stimulate exchanges with those who welcome them, these navigators, inspired by the renewal of the maritime heritage of the 1990s, want to have a replica of a traditional sailboat built. The felouques seduce them, but Salah Ben Amor, a visual artist of the islands, points the fans of old hulls to another type of boat, the loude, a wreck of which is kept under a shed. Salah Ben Amor’s grandfather fished on these sailboats before they fell into disuse. The living works, elongated over nearly 10.50 meters, bloom the tar. « The body of the boat looks like a fish, » described in 1882 Privat Arthur Hennique, a naval officer. A low draft (50 centimeters on these boats) includes two small false kills under the bow and bow. Otherwise, the bottom is almost flat, « it holds little water, » said the officer. Stranded on the beaches in the jusant, the loude keeps his plate, and quickly finds the pearly waters when he is taken over by the flow.
The wreck on display turns out to be a historical relic. Robert Antraygues followed Ulysses, but met another legend. Salah Ben Amor explains to her that she would have transported Habib Bourguiba. Before becoming president of Tunisia, this lawyer pleaded for the country’s independence. Between 1945 and 1947, he would have reached Libya by boat, to escape the French colonial authorities.
`source : Ouest France
