Massachusetts
French ship that sank after 1856 collision found off Massachusetts coast – The Boston Globe
For nearly 170 years, Le Lyonnais lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, though no one knew exactly where. Until last month, when a dive team found its wreckage about 200 miles off the Massachusetts coast.
“We always have kind of a list of ships that we’re looking for, but this one became a passion project for us over the last eight years,” Jennifer Sellitti said.
Sellitti, 50, and her partner, Joe Mazraani, live in New Jersey, where they are “lawyers by day and shipwreck hunters on the weekend,” operating Atlantic Wreck Salvage LLC and the vessel D/V Tenacious, Sellitti said.
Sellitti, formerly a staff attorney for the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Massachusetts, became interested in Le Lyonnais in 2016 after she asked Mazraani to suggest a missing ship she could look into.
“I very quickly just became obsessed with this ship, and her story,” she said. “And every little piece of information I uncovered was this sort of this unraveling of what really is an incredible story about this collision.”
Contemporary accounts describe an avoidable tragedy. Different reports include varying numbers of people on board, but Sellitti’s research indicates 114 of 132 passengers and crew members died.
An 1856 report in The New York Times said the collision took place “in a thick fog.” The Adriatic’s captain, Jonathan Durham, initially expected Le Lyonnais would miss his ship, but after a light on the Adriatic was accidentally snuffed and relit, he saw that Le Lyonnais “had changed her course and was coming directly toward the [Adriatic].”
The Times report said Le Lyonnais kept going after the collision “and was almost immediately out of sight in the fog.” Durham told the Times his crew “hailed the steamer, and requested them not to leave us, but received no answer.”
After those aboard Le Lyonnais abandoned ship for lifeboats and a makeshift raft, the “weather was very rough, and the hapless voyagers suffered terribly,” according to The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser of New South Wales, Australia.
“They encountered several severe snowstorms, and were short of water,” the paper reported, according to survivors’ accounts. “They had claret, bread and preserved meats. They were beaten about six days, until the afternoon of the 9th (Sunday), and two of their number (passengers) died during this terrible interval.”
The Adriatic, which had been bound for Savannah, Ga., instead went to Gloucester, Mass., for repairs, arriving “in distress” on Nov. 4.
Durham was later apprehended in France and put on trial there for the collision, according to Sellitti, who has written a forthcoming book called “The Adriatic Affair: A Maritime Hit-and-Run off the Coast of Nantucket.”
To find Le Lyonnais, the team combined what Sellitti learned from her research with information about anomalies on the ocean floor, which initially came from speaking with fishermen who work in the area, she said. Later, the team used sonar to scan the depths and then began diving to explore the unknown bumps and masses they were finding.
“A shipwreck so old is like a needle in a haystack,” Sellitti said. “Back in the 1800s, they measured speed by dropping a rope with knots into the water. That’s where we get the name ‘knots’ from. They used stars for navigation. . . . They didn’t report positions the same way modern ships report positions.”
Assisting in the search was Captain Eric Takakjian, who had begun looking for Le Lyonnais almost a decade earlier. Takakjian said the ship is significant because it comes from a transitional period in seafaring.
“Her iron hull construction methods represented some of the earliest examples of that type of hull construction for oceangoing ships known to exist,” he said in a statement. “Similarly, her propulsion machinery is unique in that it represents one of several engine designs that were tried before precedents were set on ocean steamship machinery.”
The search required Mazraani and Sellitti to rebuild their boat so it could travel greater distances and involved painstaking scans of the ocean floor, which the team called “mowing the lawn.”
Last month, their dive crew spent five days in the water examining a handful of potential wreck sites, “and one of those turned out to be it,” Sellitti said.
“I wish I could say there’s one ‘aha’ moment,” she said. “This was a lot of little things that were adding up.”
The crew found portholes consistent with 1850s shipbuilding and other promising wreckage, but Sellitti became convinced they had found Le Lyonnais when they examined the steam engine cylinder, a type that was used only briefly and measured 57 inches — the size records showed for Le Lyonnais’s engine.
Then, during Mazraani’s final dive on Aug. 25, he found rigging that showed the ship had sails as well as the engine, Sellitti said.
“That was when we felt like we could say to the world that we had found it,” she said.
Sellitti and Mazraani aren’t revealing the ship’s exact position because they plan to continue dives and hope to learn more about the ship’s final hours from the debris.
“We’re going to have years of exploring this,” Sellitti said. “Once storms come over the winter, they might bury parts of it and expose other parts of the wreck. So we’ll be going back every summer to continue to document it and explore it.”
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him @jeremycfox.
Twenty-eight lawmakers dissented Wednesday as the Massachusetts House voted to set new terms around what state Auditor Diana DiZoglio would be able to review in the legislative audit voters authorized her to carry out in 2024.
Almost all House Democrats voted for the measure, which also proposes to make more state government records accessible to the public. Three Democrats — Cambridge Rep. Mike Connolly, Attleboro Rep. Jim Hawkins and Fall River Rep. Alan Silvia — joined the body’s 25 Republicans in voting no.
Speaker Ron Mariano said the bill responds to an ongoing call from voters for more transparency out of Beacon Hill and provides a path forward in lieu of a what he called “politically motivated audit conducted in violation of the Constitution.”
Leaders of the House and Senate have resisted DiZoglio’s audit push, arguing that a probe by the auditor’s office would run afoul of the separation of powers laid out in the state Constitution, bringing the legislative branch under the review of a piece of the executive branch.
“We are not accountable to any constitutional officer,” said Rep. Mindy Domb, an Amherst Democrat. “We are only accountable to our constituents.”
Taunton Rep. Lisa Field, a Democrat in her first term, said she was among the 72% of Massachusetts voters who backed the audit ballot question in 2024.
“Due to legitimate concerns and questions about constitutional privileges and separation of powers, we have been stuck on this audit issue for more than a year,” Field said. “Let’s not be like Washington, D.C. and accept such gridlock — not about the audit and not about public records. Let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good progress.”
The House’s bill would authorize DiZoglio to review what it defines as the “administrative functions” of the Legislature, going back to the 2021 fiscal year. Those areas include the adoption of annual budgets, official audits of the House and Senate by independent firms, spending by both chambers, and the execution of any financial settlements with lawmakers and employees.
It would also newly apply the state’s public records law to the governor’s office, and create a process by which people could request and receive certain legislative files.
Massachusetts is currently the only state where the Legislature, governor and judiciary all claim to be exempt from the public records law.
Warren Republican Rep. Todd Smola described the process that led up to Wednesday’s vote as opaque in and of itself. Mariano last week said the House would take up what he called comprehensive transparency legislation, but did not say when or what, specifically, the bill would do.
The bill was circulated to members of the House Ways and Means Committee around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, and committee members had a little over a half hour to vote on whether to advance it. Smola, the ranking Republican on the committee, said during that 34-minute window, “we had members on both sides of the political aisle that were calling each other back and forth to say, ‘Can you explain this portion to me?’”
“We are so much better than the process that has unfolded,” he said. “And for the sake of people that are asking us for transparency, that is not transparency. That’s the opposite of transparency.”
Rep. Michael Soter, a Bellingham Republican, said he was particularly concerned with a part of the bill that removes the courts from settling disputes between the auditor and the Legislature.
He said that by setting its own rules around an audit, the House would be “ensuring the auditor can only see exactly what we allow her to see and nothing more.”
It’s not clear yet if the Senate will pass the bill. Last week, state senators voted to turn over a limited set of documents to DiZoglio. The documents the Senate plans to provide mirror the records she would be allowed to review under the House bill.
Asked if he expected the Senate to agree to the legislation, Mariano on Tuesday said only, “I talked to the Senate.”
BOSTON, MA — An international restaurant group with locations across the globe is preparing to open its first Massachusetts restaurant this year.
LPM Restaurant & Bar, a French Riviera-inspired restaurant founded in London, is set to open on the second floor of the Four Seasons Hotel One Dalton Street in Back Bay, according to Four Seasons. The hotel lists the restaurant as “Opening Summer 2026,” while the Boston Business Journal reported the restaurant plans to open in September.
The Boston restaurant will mark LPM’s debut in the Northeast and its third U.S. outpost, following locations in Miami and Las Vegas, according to a Four Seasons announcement.
LPM, also known as La Petite Maison, was founded in London in 2007 and is known for French-Mediterranean food, Mediterranean ingredients and dining rooms influenced by Belle Époque design.
The business operates locations in London, Dubai, Miami, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, Riyadh, Limassol, Doha, Mykonos, Kuwait, Boston, Maldives and Bangkok.
Four Seasons said LPM will take over the space that formerly housed One Dalton’s breakfast concept, One + One. The restaurant will join other dining options at the hotel, including Zuma and Trifecta.
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Massachusetts
Massachusetts high school under investigation after teachers diagnosed with breast cancer
A Massachusetts high school is under investigation after “several” teachers have been diagnosed with breast cancer or precancerous conditions.
The state Department of Public Health is set to visit Uxbridge High School on Thursday to “conduct a series of air quality tests,” to determine whether the multiple cases are potentially connected.
Superintendent David Ljungberg and Principal Michael Rubin alerted families and district staff on Monday of the “sombering news,” after Uxbridge High School’s graduation over the weekend.
“We are writing to inform you about a concern we are investigating at Uxbridge High School,” Ljungberg and Rubin stated in the letter. “Several female teachers have been diagnosed with breast cancer or precancerous conditions over the past few years.”
“It is, of course, possible that these multiple cases are not connected to one another,” the leaders added, “but out of abundance of caution, we are looking into any environmental factors at the school that may be a factor in their diagnoses.”
The 123,000-square-foot school, with an enrollment of roughly 600, was constructed in 2012 at a cost of $45 million, including a $22-million state reimbursement.
Uxbridge school leaders say they notified the state Department of Health and local health board as soon as they became aware of the cases, seeking “counsel about how best to proceed.”
“Massachusetts DPH officials have indicated that there is no evidence of immediate danger in the building and no reason to limit access to or use of the facility at this time,” they wrote in their letter. “In fact, the public health officials have commended our decision to approach them with these concerns, our readiness to partner with them in support of the evaluation process.”
Health officials are assessing the school’s interior and exterior to “ensure there are no issues with the infrastructure that would present risks (including electrical, plumbing, mechanical, HVAC, and other systems)” and the indoor and outdoor air quality on campus.
The superintendent and principal said that state officials have ruled out water supply as a “risk factor” after “thorough testing.”
“The team has reached out to the women who have been diagnosed, requesting data to evaluate whether there may be a connection among their cases,” Ljungberg and Rubin wrote. “We are grateful for their cooperation.”
They added that the state has said discovering an environmental “smoking gun” is “rare” in workplace investigations.
“However, even if a direct causal link is not established,” the leaders wrote, “the administration is utilizing this process to rigorously test the building and guarantee that it meets all safety standards moving forward.”
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