THE MORNING LIST
Saint-Nazaire is a delight for curious sea lovers. On bike or on foot, we admire the boats of yesteryear and today we are ruffled by the wind and waiting for the fish.
By bike from the Loire to the ocean
From the Place du Comando, as glasses clink on the bistro tables, the view of the entrance to the port of Saint-Nazaire is impressive. In the distance, behind the two crab-claw pillars, stretches the 3.3-kilometre cable-stayed bridge spanning the Loire estuary. A large yellow boat is setting off and heading towards the Atlantic. This is the suction dredger. Samuel de Champlain which transports the freshly collected silt into its trapdoor cellars. Heading for the ocean! You can follow it with your eyes and pedals along the promenade along a track in the foam, it is a tugboat now heading towards the sea. On the land side, the street signs for Veracruz, Havana, Santander evoke Latin America. Here, the houses with red, yellow or cyan-blue facades recall those of the early twentieth century.my In the 19th century, a bourgeois neighborhood was born with a flourishing port industry.
Go on a cruise… to the museum
With our hair in the wind, we are about to hang on to the railing to gaze at the icebergs on the horizon in the dark, frozen night. On the bridge entirely reconstructed in the bowels of Escal’Atlantique, a museum about ocean liners, one would think one was there. “Some visitors have the impression that it rocks, but it never gets to the point of making you dizzy”“This immersive visit to the corridors, cellars, engine rooms and cosy lounges of the luxury liners that sailed from Saint-Nazaire between 1864 and 1962 is a gigantic immersion in the history of transatlantic ships. Heading to America, in first class for the wealthy businessmen and their families, and between decks for the 60 million European immigrants. More than two hundred spectacular objects, such as the lacquered panels in the smoking room of the Normandyor delicate, like the dishes of the three classes of passengers on the same ship, recall these industrial and human adventures.
Take the measure of a giant of the seas
“Building a boat is like a giant Lego construction, with the addition of welding”“Bérangère Cousin says into the microphone as the bus enters the heart of the Chantiers de l’Atlantique. The speaker, a specialist in this company visit, is unbeatable at deciphering the Dantesque spectacle of the enormous red and grey steel sheets rising into the air, caught by the electromagnets of a giant gantry. On the 110-hectare site, inspected by car, 8,000 people work, from engineers to boilermakers. Seven ships are being built, giant cruise ships, but also a military supply ship and, at the back of a hangar, an electrical substation for an offshore wind farm. Steel is shot-blasted, cut, welded and painted everywhere. We pass a few metres of welders in helmets who, perched on a scaffold, seal a door amid the sparks. Standing on the ground in a technical gallery that allows you to walk along the construction site: on dozens of 2-metre-high wooden cans, like skillfully aligned dominoes, a cruise ship awaits completion in balance. Here we feel like Lilliputians.
You have 39.08% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
