The 36 sailors on board the dredger
D'Artagnan
experienced a big scare on January 29.
During a rock removal operation, to fragment the rock and increase the depth of the nautical access to the Grand Maritime Port of La Rochelle, the ship hit a 250 kilo bomb, reports our colleagues from
Sud Ouest
.
The operation carried out by the dredge experienced an unexpected event when its sling, an articulated arm capable of scraping the seabed, hit a bomb a stone's throw from the city's former submarine base.
At 7:10 a.m., the 120 kilos of explosives caused an underwater detonation.
According to a La Rochelle deminer from Civil Security, interviewed by the local daily, the bomb could weigh
“500 pounds, or 250 kilos”
, based on
“the crack observed on the sling of the dredge”
and the
“vibrations felt up to 'at the captaincy of the Grand Port Maritime'
at the time of the explosion.
It would be a residue of the Second World War, since one of the German U Boot flotillas was sheltered in 1941 in the submarine base.
The detonation only caused material damage and repairs to the ship were completed within a week.