Ancres marines

Maritime heritage

Two sea anchors can be seen in the commune:

the first anchor is located on the Boulevard des Nations Unies, at the entrance to the town (near the car park of the same name) near the Filets housing estate
the second is above Plage de la Tara.



Without knowing its history, it is possible to say that the sea anchor on the Boulevard des Nations Unies, lost by a large ship on an unknown date, was dredged in the estuary, where fishermen had hung up many trawls. It was for this reason that the anchor was pulled out of the water in the 1980s off Pointe Saint-Gildas. The dredging was carried out by two local fishermen, Gaston Rialland and Michel Lebond, who were fed up with the damage to their fishing net.

In 1984, it was recovered by the municipality of La Plaine-sur-Mer, along with the other specimen at La Tara. It found its current home in 2009.

Many locals still believe, probably mistakenly, that it is an anchor from the ocean liner Le Juste. This ship had taken refuge in the Loire estuary during the Battle of Les Cardinaux in November 1759, where it ran aground and sank. Her wreck was spotted in 1969, when the channel was widened by the dredger René Siegfried of the autonomous port of Saint-Nazaire, south of the Pointe de Chemoulin. Some of the cannons were refloated. Some of them can be seen at Port Royal in La Bernerie-en-Retz, as well as at Pointe Saint-Gildas, in front of the Sémaphore museum in Préfailles and on the promenade between Anse du Bouceau and the Pointe port.



The sea anchor of the Tara is erected facing the ocean, to honour "the memory of the sailors from the Pays de Rete who perished at sea". It commemorates the deaths of many local fishermen and victims of maritime disasters in the estuary, such as the Saint-Philibert in 1931 and the Lancastria in 1940, which were particularly deadly.


🔎 To find out more about the major shipwrecks that took place in the Baie de Bourgneuf and the Loire Estuary, take a look at the Sémaphore de la Pointe Saint-Gildas.