On Thursday, June 17, 1885, New York Harbor It was the scene of a ceremony that any unsuspecting person could believe took place on the other side of the Atlantic. Thousands of people gathered to receive a French warship to the sound of the music of La Marseillaise performed by a military band so that a choir could sing its verses.
L’Isère, as the ship was called, arrived a week late due to a series of fierce storms that it had to face on the high seas, but with its precious and heavy cargo intact, distributed hundreds of boxes strategically distributed within the hold.
Thus, fragmented into hundreds of pieces, as if it were a gigantic three-dimensional puzzle, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York, after a long and eventful journey that included a train trip from Paris to Rouen and then on barges that went down the Seine to the port of Le Havre, where they were embarked in L’Isère to cross the ocean.
But if the trip was long, the wait had been much longer: more than 15 years since the politician Eduard Laboulaye and the sculptor Auguste Bartholdithe two Frenchmen, had the idea of building it to celebrate the abolition of slavery in the United States.
The process that brought the project to fruition was also long and eventful, with economic difficulties, financial problems, technical issues and complicated logistics that more than once led us to think that this luminous idea would end up crushed by the darkness of failure.
By 1870, USA They were in the process of reconstruction after the civil war that had bled the country between 1861 and 1865 and, at the same time, they were preparing for the celebrations of the centenary of Independence, declared on July 4, 1776. It was in that context that Laboulaye He proposed that his country send a gift to the American nation to symbolize the friendship between both countries and the joint fight they fought against the British crown in the war of independence.
The French politician decided to summon his friend, the sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, to design the monument. The artist did not hesitate to accept the commission, which sounded to him like revenge for his career because he had suffered frustration due to the rejection of the governor of Egypt, Isma’il Pasha, of his proposal to build a monument comparable to the Colossus of Rhodes. , which I intended to call “Egypt brings light to Asia.”
Laboulaye’s commission gave another opportunity to Bartholdi, who also recovered some of the ideas he had about the Egyptian statue and put them into the new project. To achieve this, he requested the collaboration of Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, who was asked to design an iron and steel structure that could support the statue. There the first obstacle arose, because Viollet-le-Duc died suddenly and had to be replaced by another engineer, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, the same one who years later would design another monument that became the distinctive feature of Paris, the tower that bears your name.
At that time there were difficult times in France, embarked on the war with Prussia and with the conquest of Alsace, the region from which Bartholdi came, by the German empire. That conflict had aroused strong anti-American sentiment among the French, due to Washington’s closeness to the Germans.
Furthermore, the Third Republic was far from being stabilized, in the midst of a political climate where many French people longed for the monarchy.
Despite all these difficulties, Laboulaye and Bartholdi They decided to go ahead with the project and, in 1871, the French politician met with the then American president, Ulysses S. Grantto offer him the statue and suggest a location, Bedloe Island, off New York.
But, beyond the political problems, the construction of the statue also meant an immense economic and logistical challenge.
The statue designed by Bartholdi represented Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom and equivalent to the Greek deity Eleuteria. He decided to name it “Freedom Enlightening the World.” Many of its elements were already in the artist’s head since he had designed the frustrated Egyptian statue.
The sculptor never revealed the origin of his inspiration for choosing the face of the statue, although one of the most consistent versions says that he wanted mirror your own mother’s face.
One of its most representative elements, the diadem with seven solar rays – representative of the seven seas – was based on the work of the Spanish sculptor Ponciano Ponzano, whom Bartholdi admired. The external part of the statue would be covered by 300 copper panelsweighing 28,000 kilos, supported by the structure designed by Eiffel.
If the statue was going to be astonishing on the outside, its internal structure would not be far behind: beneath Liberty’s robe an intricate framework of iron and steel would unfold. A huge central pylon would anchor it to the pedestal and act as a backbone for the steel beams intended to support a structure of thin metal bars attached to the copper “skin.”
So that it could stand firmly on the ground, it was designed with a wide, flowing tunic around the base, which would make it structurally stronger and help it withstand the strong winds of the bay.
The costs of the war had put France in a difficult economic situation and, in that context, the government had to attend to more urgent and important matters than financing the monumental project, whose cost reached a million francs. Then Laboulaye launched a real financial campaign, with shows and sporting events, to raise the money necessary to build the statue.
At the same time, exhibitions, auctions and boxing matches were held in the United States to raise funds to pay for the construction of the foundation on which the monument would be built.
But the delay in obtaining the necessary sums prevented the statue from being completed by 1876, when it was initially planned to inaugurate it to coincide with the centennial of the Independence of the United States.
By that year, barely one arm had been finished, which would later be exhibited in Philadelphia to continue raising funds. Two years later, in 1878, he completed his head, which was shown in France, during an exhibition at the Mars field.
With that last bit of money, Liberty was completed in 1884. That same year, the completed statue was assembled for the first time in Paris, where a ceremony was held to present it to the United States ambassador to France on July 4.
In 1885, dismantling began to move it. It was necessary to divide it into 300 pieceswhich were distributed in 214 huge boxes that would travel to New York.
The statue then began a journey in which difficulties were not lacking. The boxes were taken by train from Paris to Rouen and then transferred by boat along the Seine to the port of Le Havre.
Bartholdi was very concerned about the weight of the load. If the ship encountered a storm and large waves, she ran the risk of breaking in half and sinking in the Atlantic. He had to avoid danger at all costs and that is why it was essential study well the distribution of merchandise within the warehouse.
On May 20, 1885, loading was completed and the ship left for New York. The chronicles say that the Isère spent two days refueling with coal on the island of Faial in the Azores.
The dismantled statue was about to end up at the bottom of the sea shortly after beginning its journey across the Atlantic, when A strong storm almost capsized the ship L’Isère, which was transporting the pieces.
He finally arrived in New York on June 17, 1885, a week after the scheduled date due to difficulties during navigation. This late arrival made it impossible to inaugurate the statue on the ideal date, July 4 of that year, when 110 years had passed since the declaration of Independence.
The assembly and assembly work took more than four months, until it could be inaugurated on October 28, with a speech by thanks from President Grover Cleveland.
“The people of the United States accept with gratitude from their brothers in the French Republic the great and complete work of art that we inaugurate here. This display of the affection and consideration of the people of France demonstrates the kinship of the republics, and conveys to us the assurance that in our efforts to recommend to humanity the excellence of a government based on the popular will, we still have beyond the continent American a firm ally,” he said.
He added: “We are not here today to bow before the representation of a fierce and warlike god, full of wrath and vengeance, but we joyfully contemplate our own deity watching over and protecting the open gates of America. Instead of grasping in his hand the rays of terror and death, he holds aloft the light that illuminates the path to man’s liberation.
Behind him, the Statue of Liberty It radiated a golden shine that is not known today, since over the years – actually a few – the copper turned to the green with which it can be seen today.
During the first twenty years, between 1885 and 1905, it was used as a lighthouse, but the low lighting power it had meant that it was no longer used to guide ships. The torch she currently holds is not the original, it was replaced in 1986 by a replica that included gold leaves to prevent deterioration.
After delivery of your cargo, the L’Isére returned to France. It docked in the port of Brest on July 21, 1885. In 1904 the frigate underwent a refit in which a new engine was installed, before being put into service again, although only five years later, in December 1909. Due to the poor condition of the iron in its hull, the ship was decommissioned in the port of Rochefort, where it was used to store coal.
In 1924 her hull was towed to the Lorient arsenal to be installed as a pontoon on the right bank of the River Scorff until 1940. In March 1941, during the occupation of France by the Nazis, during World War II, the German army moved her to the Lorient submarine base, where it was hit by Allied bombing in February 1943.
The Isère ended its days sunk in 1945 by the German army off the port of Locmiquelic, where it still rests at the bottom of the sea as the forgotten protagonist of the transfer of the Statue of Liberty.
