Marseille harbor filmed in 1959 |
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Collection title
Dimanche en France
First broadcast date
03/29/1959
Abstract
Sequence on the activity of the port of Marseille filmed in 1959, illustrated by the text of Albert Londres "Marseille, gateway to the South".
(1927)
Audiovisual form
Magazine
Primary theme
Main harbours
Map locations
- France - South East - Marseille
Context
The port of Marseille filmed in 1959
Céline Regnard
Since Antiquity Marseille's wealth has depended on trade and commerce. In the 18th century the Old Port welcomed ships bringing goods from the Levant (wheat and cereals) and the Far East (textiles and spices) into Marseille – and so into the rest of the kingdom. Backing up this flourishing trade was a whole industry processing raw materials: oils used in making soap, materials for the clothing industry, sugar to be refined. The Marseille system revolved round a sybiosis of trade and industry, the whole made possible by an active group of merchants and industrialists – and a large number of workers.
The rise of trade – very largely dependant on the colonial conquest begun in Algeria in 1830, continuing right through the 19th century, especially once the Suez Canal opened in 1869 – meant that industry also took off. This double growth made a second port inevitable, with all the docks and industries to go with it. For despite deepening and widening it between 1819 and 1827, then between 1839 and 1844, the Old Port was saturated: the tonnage in 1842 was three times more than it had been in 1816. So the Law of 5th August 1844 ordered the building of a second port, La Joliette. This huge project took 9 long years to complete, transforming Marseille's north shore. A new pool covering 20 hectares, 10 metres deep was taken from the sea, from which the port was protected by a jetty 400 metres out from the shore. By the time it was finished, in 1853, the pool of La Joliette was already too small. Two other pools on the same model were added: Lazaret and Arenc, given the go-ahead in 1854 and 1856. A warehouse dock was also built, managed by two companies: the Compagnie des docks et des entrepots and the Société des ports. But the increase in trade needed yet another pool to be built, the Napoleon pool, later called the Ferry Terminal, then the Imperial pool and today the National or the Refit. In 1914 77 new hectares were added to the existing 48 of the Old Port and the Joliette.
At the height of the French colonial empire, in the first half of the 20th century, the port of Marseille was the most important in the Mediterranean, the biggest in France. Huge amounts of goods from the four corners of the world were unloaded there, many of them to be processed in Marseille's industrial districts making pasta, sugar, fats and soap. These processed products were then sent off again across the seas or taken by train all over France. The quaysides also piled up with all the exotic merchandise which consumers craved (spices, leather, rum, fruit, vegetables) By the 1960's the crisis in tradional industries, aggressive competition with other ports and the decolonisation sounded the death knell for the port.
For we are talking about a bygone era, but one which many believe was Marseille's Golden Age. Contemporary descriptions of this activity are alive with the pride in one of the great empires of the world and the taste for an exoticism tinged with mystery. The mix of smells, colours and tastes, the evocation of this great bazaar smacks of dreams of the orient. Marseille is indeed the Gateway to the South, as Albert Londres, a journalist, described it in 1927. It was a working city then, not a tourist town. As proof of that, just look at the number of dockers, whose status in the 1950's was the envy of other ports. In fact even though their working conditions were difficult at the end of the 19th century – hired by the day and a low wage – the creation of the Union syndicale des ouvriers de ports et docks in 1902 opened the way to strikes and better working conditions. The rise of the port guaranteed them a job and made their profession a symbol of Marseille's working class world right up to today.
Bibliography :
Gaston Rambert, Marseille, La formation d’une grande cité moderne. Étude de géographie urbaine, Marseille, Société anonyme du sémaphore de Marseille, 1934
Bertrand Régis, Le vieux port de Marseille, Marseille, Jeanne Laffitte, 1998
Raveux Olivier, Daumalin Xavier, Girard Nicole (dir.), Du savon à la puce. L’industrie marseillaise du XVIIème siècle à nos jours, Marseille, Jeanne Laffitte, 2003
Domenicho Jean, Guillon Jean-Marie, Les Dockers, Jeanne Lafitte, Marseille, 2001
