François Élie Roudaire (born 6 August 1836 in Gueret and deceased 14 January 1885 in Gueret) was a French author, military officer and geographer. He, along with

Ferdinand de Lesseps Ferdinand Marie, Comte de Lesseps (; 19 November 1805 – 7 December 1894) was a French Orientalist diplomat and owner of Main Idea of the Suez Canal, which in 1869 joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas, substantially reducing sailing distan ...

, was a proponent of creating an inland

Sahara Sea The Sahara Sea was the name of a hypothetical macro-engineering project which proposed flooding endorheic basins in the Sahara with waters from the Atlantic Ocean or Mediterranean Sea. The goal of this unrealised project was to create an inlan ...

by flooding areas of the

Sahara Desert The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...

which were below

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an mean, average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal Body of water, bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical ...

Early life and military career

Roudaire was born into a middle-class family. His father, François Joseph Roudaire, was director of the Natural History Museum of Gueret. After classical studies in his hometown, François Élie turned towards a scientific career in the army. He entered the Ecole Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr in 1854. In 1864, he was assigned to Algeria as an officer surveyor, given the task of creating a geodesic and topographic survey of the colony. Operating south of

Biskra Biskra () is the capital city of Biskra Province, Algeria. In 2007, its population was recorded as 307,987. Biskra is located in northeastern Algeria, about from Algiers, southwest of Batna, Algeria, Batna and north of Touggourt. It is nickna ...

, in

Constantine Province Constantine () is one of the 58 provinces (''wilayas'') of Algeria, whose capital is the city of the same name, with 1 291 575 inhabitants, with a density of 460/km2 (1,200/sq mi) History In 1984 Mila Province was carved out of its territory. ...

, he explored the region's

chott In geology, a chott, shott, or shatt (; ) is a salt lake in Africa's Maghreb that stays dry for much of the year but receives some water in the winter. The elevation of a chott surface is controlled by the position of the water table and capil ...

s, and was one of the first to accurately measure their depth, noting that many lay below sea level.

Proposal of a Sahara Sea

Having discovered many locations far below sea level (up to ), Roudaire became convinced that a vast depression once extended to the salty

Gulf of Gabès The Gulf of Gabes (or Cabès, Cabes, Gaps; ), also known as Lesser Syrtis (from ; ), contrasting with the Greater Syrtis in Libya, is a gulf on Tunisia's east coast in the Mediterranean Sea, off North Africa. The gulf roughly spans the coast from ...

and corresponded to a geographic feature known at the time of

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

Lake Tritonis Lake Tritonis () was a large body of fresh water in North Africa that was described in many ancient texts. Classical-era Greek writers placed the lake in Ancient Libya. In details of the late myths and personal observations related by these hist ...

(also known as the Bay of Triton). In an article written for the '' Revue des Deux Mondes'' in 1874, titled "An inland sea in Algeria," François Élie Roudaire proposed to recreate the former sea by cutting a channel from the

Chott el Fejej In geology, a chott, shott, or shatt (; ) is a salt lake in Africa's Maghreb that stays dry for much of the year but receives some water in the winter. The elevation of a chott surface is controlled by the position of the water table and cap ...

to the Gulf of Gabès. He argued that the mass of water would allow water transport, as well as significantly alter the climate; it would turn the arid region of the Sahara into one of considerably greater fertility. Ferdinand de Lesseps, who was instrumental in the creation of the

Suez Canal The Suez Canal (; , ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, Indo-Mediterranean, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest ...

, adopted the idea along with several other writers, scholars and politicians. While there was initially general enthusiasm for the project, further surveys discovered that one of the chotts that Roudaire and de Lesseps had proposed digging a canal to was, in fact, above sea level. This reduction in floodable area (a reduction of between and ), and the cost of a channel long, caused a loss of support from within the government, leading the Public Works Minister to cancel the project in 1882. Roudaire and Ferdinand de Lesseps fell back on private funding and founded the Society for the Study of African inland sea later that year to continue their pursuit of the project. Criticism of the project from within the scientific community mounted, however, and the project was abandoned shortly before Roudaire's death in 1885.

Decorations

*First class medal awarded by the International Geographical Congress (11 August 1875) *Grade Officer of the Legion of Honour (6 October 1875) *Grade Officer of Public Instruction (28 August 1876) *Gold Medal of the Geographical Society (March 1877) *Great Medal of Honor Society (March 1877)

Publications

*Premier rapport sur la mission des chotts publié par l'instruction publique (January 1877) *Deuxième rapport sur les missions des chotts publié par l'instruction publique (January 1881) *''La mer intérieure africaine'' (September 1883)

Portrayals in literature

*Jules Verne, ''

Invasion of the Sea ''Invasion of the Sea'' () is an adventure novel written by Jules Verne. It was published in 1905, the last to be published in the author's lifetime, and describes the exploits of Berber nomads and European travelers in Saharan Africa. The Europea ...

'' (1905).

Footnotes

Other references

*Gérard Dubost, Le colonel Roudaire et son projet de mer saharienne, éd. Société des sciences naturelles et archéologiques de la Creuse, Guéret, 1998 *René Létolle et Hocine Bendjoudi, Histoires d'une mer au Sahara : utopies et politiques, coll. Écologie et agronomie appliquée, éd. L'Harmattan, Paris, 1997 *Jean-Louis Marçot, Une mer au Sahara, éd. La Différence, Paris, 2003 {{DEFAULTSORT:Roudaire, Francois Elie People from Guéret French Army officers French surveyors French topographers French geographers 1836 births 1885 deaths