Joseph didn’t know what the word sinking meant, but he could read consternation on everybody’s faces. What did it mean? Why was it so painful? The boy would not wonder for very long. From his pulpit, the vicar enlightened him by describing the dreadful scene of a liner sinking in the ocean.
The liner in question was the Ville de Saint-Nazaire46 in route from New York. Laded with merchandise for the West Indies, it was to stop over in Le Cap on March 6, 1897. It never arrived. It went down due to a leak, worsened by a violent storm. Among the eleven passengers and seventy-four crewmen aboard, only eighteen people survived. As Joseph listened to the macabre account of the sinking, he pondered the stories he’d been told about the animal world, where only the shrewder one played his cards right. Was it the same for humans? Were the survivors luckier, or simply more astute, than those who’d drowned?
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Answers to Joseph’s questions came from a Martinican survivor, sailor Marcel Héber-Suffrin.47 He explained that, the entire night, the crew used big buckets to try to empty the engine room. But at seven in the morning, “all hope to save the ship was lost.” When the captain ordered the evacuation of the Ville de Saint-Nazaire, boarding the three lifeboats and the dinghy was extremely difficult. “They had to strap down the women,” Marcel Héber-Suffrin said, “because the wild sea terrified them. Using a hoist, they hauled down the human cargo into the small boats. After a ninety-minute operation, they had been able to squeeze twenty-one people in the first lifeboat that then set off to the high seas.”
The men were rowing. The storm was not waning. The sea was “furious.” It was cold. After four days, fatigue, hunger, and thirst “started to have a disastrous impact on morale.” Unable to stand it any longer, a boy “profusely” drank salted water.48 Soon, he was rambling and wanted to throw himself in the ocean. “After a few hours of agony, he breathed his last breath.”
A man also died that evening, and then a woman the following night. “From the moment she got on the boat,” Héber-Suffrin said, “she sat on the edge. We provided her with all the care we could, but the violent waves kept her constantly drenched and helpless. It was torturous for her.
Her moans, moments before she died, broke our hearts. She extended her arms toward us, mouth open, her voice raspy. The water ultimately choked down her whimpers, and she died in agony.”
The next day, a man jumped into the ocean. The captain sobbed, disheartened, calling over and over for his wife and five little girls, whom he would never see again.
Héber-Suffrin was rescued in extremis by a passing ship. He later found out about the ordeal of the people evacuated in the two other lifeboats.
In one boat, the madness started on the third day in open sea. From that point on, not one day went by without four or five “poor souls” going insane and jumping into the ocean. In the other one, many were driven to incredible acts of lechery that should forever remain untold. As for the dinghy, it disappeared with everyone on board.
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The sinking of the Ville de Saint-Nazaire created heartbreak in Le Cap because the locals loved to welcome the ships that regularly stopped over at the port. They came from America, France, Germany, and even Denmark, carrying all kinds of products that brought happiness to the young and the old alike.
The liner Franconia49 was one of the star ships of the time. Starting in 1874, it regularly set sail from Hamburg, headed to the West Indies, until the new owners changed its name to Olindes Rodrigues. For a while, the ship traveled between different local ports in France, until 1891, when it was assigned a new itinerary: Le Havre-Haiti. Historian Marc Péan explains that, “every month, whenever the liner Olindes Rodrigues arrived in Le Cap, the local joined in celebration. A converted cabin on board the ship held a very large selection of magazines and books, from the last Zola,50 Loti,51 or Bourget52 novels, to other political, economic, and scientific works.” These books and magazines brought happiness to the teachers, lawyers, or reporters who were members of various literary clubs in Le Cap. They regularly met to talk about literature, music, or philosophy, in the home of wealthy merchant Larante Desormeaux or famous physician Nemours Auguste, an uncle of Joseph Laroche.
The ships that stopped in Le Cap were usually freight vessels that had been remodeled to hold a few passengers. The journey was long and grueling. In bad sailing conditions, the crossing between Le Cap and New York could take up to seventy days. Christina Schutt relates that, “during the many storms that sometimes lasted for days, passengers were confined to their quarters, crammed in filth and stink, with no light—to avoid the risk of fire—and no access to the deck. Windows remained tightly closed to protect against large waves. Some ships, however, had cabins for the passengers of more fortunate means.” And it is in one of those cabins, on board one of those ships, that Joseph Laroche would soon leave Haiti to continue his studies in France. His mother gave in to the trend: wealthy Le Cap families often spent a fortune to send their children to Paris, as there was no university in Haiti at the time.
Émile Zola.
Literary master Émile Zola (1840–1902), who spearheaded the development of theatrical naturalism, failed his baccalauréat examination not once, but twice! That goes to show you: Even if you may not be a good student, you can still be successful in literature…or in life. Many famous authors of the nineteenth century lived on almost nothing, as their works were not recognized when they were alive. Zola actually made quite a bite of money as a writer during his lifetime.
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For Joseph, the countdown started a month after the Ville de Saint-Nazaire tragedy.
At dinner one evening, his mother announced that she had saved enough money for his passage to France, where he would attend school. His future was set. It was just a matter of time, Joseph knew, and the excitement kept him awake that night.
And for good reason: Many of his friends dreamed of traveling across the ocean to visit—and even live in—France. It had been his own secret wish, even though he never talked about it. From a distance, he’d succumbed to the charms of that faraway land, as the adults often praised its beauty and its culture. The France they talked about seemed different in its sophistication from the cruel one their ancestors had fought against during the independence wars, and whenever Joseph met a “Parisian” in Le Cap, such as his uncle, Nemours Auguste, he understood how one could be fulfilled by a stay in France. In fact, Nemours Auguste was one of the most noteworthy figures of the time. Historian Marc Péan reports that, in many respects, Auguste held a groundbreaking position. A physician who’d graduated from the Medical School of Paris, he was a very good practitioner who was praised everywhere for his know-how and his remarkable cures.
For a long while, Joseph dreamed good dreams of Europe. However, he acquired mixed emotions when reality set in and his departure date was set. He felt both joy and sadness at the idea of leaving his family, his friends, and his city. Was it worth it? Could he not succeed in life if he stayed in his country? For the first time in his young life, he questioned his mother’s choice for him. But since her decision was made, Joseph wondered if other parents would consider a group departure. It would be so much better if other children his age were to embark on the journey with him. Once in France, they could then help and encourage each other.
The idea was appealing, but there was one problem: 241 Le Cap children were born like Joseph in 1886. How many of these parents could afford such a trip? Most students ended their education after secondary school, including Luc Grimard. The orphan did not allow his life circumstances to stop him from succeeding, however. He later established himself
