Book recovered from the shipwreck of the "Desirée."

[Shipwreck] / François Magendie. Précis élémentaire de physiologie. Paris, chez Méquignon-Marvis (De l’imprimerie de Cellot), 1816-17. 2 volumes. 8vo [19.8 x 12.7 cm], vol. I: [1] f. title page, VI pp., 326 pp; vol II: [1] f. title page, 473 pp., [1] p., both volumes lacking the half-title. [Bound at end of vol. I:] M. F. Rampont. De la voix et de la parole. Paris: Imp. de Feugueray, 1803. 8vo. 151 pp. [1] p. Originally bound (as far as I can tell) in contemporary pasteboard covered with decorated paper and with vellum tips. Spines entirely gone, only traces of decorated paper and vellum tips now present, portion of sewing remains and still holds the volumes together, a few rust stains. Internally surprisingly clean apart from a heavy biological bloom in the first few leaves of vol. I, a few minor tears, minor edge wear, contemporary ex-libris inscription (washed out) on second leaf of the Rampont text (reading “A. Watt???”). Overall, in honest flotsam condition. 
 
 
“Book from the shipwreck of the Desirée at Point Baleines on the Île de Ré — December — 1839” (Livre venant du Naufrage de la Desirée a la Baleine île de Ré — Xbre — 1839 —): Thus reads the contemporary inscription on the front flyleaf of volume I of this two-volume Précis élémentaire de physiologie (1816-17) by the physician François Magendie (1783-1855). This work is not especially rare, but, for obvious reasons, it is highly unusual to encounter a book known to have been salvaged from a shipwreck. Unlike the 80 or so sailors and galley conscripts aboard the Desirée, this book survived its encounter with the sea. 
 
The condition of these volumes is quite bad for landlubber books, but remarkably good for books that braved the deep and lived to tell the tale. 
 
The Desirée, a gabare of the Marine Royale Française under the command of M. Richard, carried galley conscripts (forçats) from Brest to Rochefort. She foundered on the rocks at the lighthouse of Les Baleines (near La Rochelle) on the night of 28/29 December 1838. Corpses and debris washed ashore into the first week of January 1839 (“A six heures du matin, le 28, on trouva sur la côte le premier indice du naufrage, c’était le corps d’un marin, depuis ce monment jusqu’au 3 janvier, tous les jours, la marée roula des cadavres et des debris de navire. 50 cadavres vinrent sur la plage pendant ce laps de temps, 26 marins et de personnes habillées en bourgeois, 11 gardes-chiourmes et 13 forçats. Les debris du navire, sa mature, son gréement, les voiles couvraient aussi le sable de la côte” [Le magasin pittoresque, p. 130]). The inscription here would suggest that these volumes were recovered from the beach in the first days of January 1839.
 
 
* Collated against the Université de Lausanne (Magendie) and British Library (Rampont) copies; Anon., “Naufrage,” Alliance litteraire, no. 14 (15 February 1839), pp. 109-10; P. Zaccone, Histoire des bagnes depuis leur création jusqu’à nos jours: Brest, Toulon, Rochefort, Lorient, Cayenne, Nouvelle-Calédonie, pp. 198-99; E. Charton, ed., “L’Île de Ré et les phares de la Pointe des Baleines,” Le magasin pittoresque, vol. 40 (1872), pp. 129-31.