Camille Mortenol

Sosthène Héliodore Camille Mortenol (; 29 November 1859 – 22 December 1930) was a senior officer in the French Navy under the Third Republic and graduate of the École polytechnique. He fought in several of France's colonial campaigns of the era and commanded Paris's anti-aircraft defences during the First World War.

Life Family origins Mortenol was born on 29 November 1859 at a house at the junction of rue de Nozières and rue de l'Abbé Grégoire in Pointe-à-Pitre (the house survives and the town council placed a plaque on it on the centenary of his birth), a town still suffering the after-effects of the 1843 Guadeloupe earthquake. From a modest background, he was the third and last child of a man named André, born in Africa around 1809 and freed from slavery on 23 July 1847 aged 38. He bought his freedom for 2400 francs by a decree of the governor of Guadeloupe, André had then declared to the royal commissioner accepting his money "You captured me in the land of Africa to enslave me. Today give me my liberty!. On being freed André took the surname Mortenol

At the time of Camille's birth, André was working as a sailmaker and later (according to some business documents) a master sailmaker. Camille's elder brother Eugène André was born in Pointe-à-Pitre on 7 June 1856, whilst his younger sister Marie Adèle was born on 27 June 1858, again in Pointe-à-Pitre. Pointe-à-Pitre's registers of births, marriages and deaths record a Sosthène Héliodore Camille Mortenol born to André Mortenol and Julienna Toussaint on 29 November 1859 and dying on 25 June 1885 a death also recorded in the Le Courrier de la Guadeloupe as "25 – Mortenol (Sosthène-Eléodore-Camille), aged 26 years, sailmaker". Did the declared death usurp the identity of someone who was actually still alive? argues that the eldest son Eugène André was a brilliant scholar at the town school in Pointe-à-Pitre and so André's friends convinced him that Eugene André's educational success would be best served by enrolling him at the diocesan seminary-college in Basse-Terre under the less-gifted Camille's identity. Such a change of identity could have operated discretely, far from his relations and friends in Pointe-à-Pitre. Knocking these three years off his age nevertheless allowed Sosthène Héliodore Camille to have a secondary education up to baccalauréat level and then free higher studies without any suspicion of the fate they would offer him.

Education Camille Mortenol, student officer at the École polytechnique de Paris. Camille Mortenol, student officer at the École polytechnique de Paris, 1880. Sosthène Héliodore Camille Mortenol began his external studies under the Brothers of Christian Instruction's primary school on rue Schoelcher in Pointe-à-Pitre and then began at the diocesan seminary-college in Basse-Terre founded by Monsignor Pierre Lacarrière on 1 January 1852. His good results, notably in mathematics, brought him to the attention of Victor Schœlcher, who gave him help and support He also benefitted from a 50% government bursary (decreed on 30 November 1875), which completed the 50% local bursary and a paid-for voyage to France aboard Le Finistère for secondary education at the Lycée Montaigne in Bordeaux.

In 1877 Camille Mortenol obtained his baccalauréat ès sciences and then began preparing for the entrance examination to the École polytechnique; he came nineteenth out of 209 applicants. At the same time he was also offered a place at the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr but preferred the Polytechnique, which he entered on 1 November 1880,

This made him the third black man, the first Guadeloupean and the first man both of whose parents were black to enter the Polytechnique – the two previous black students were Auguste-François Perrinon (joined 1832, the mixed race son of a freed slave) and the Creole Charles Wilkinson (joined 1849), both from Martinique. At the séance des cotes he was welcomed on these terms by the ans (the "anciens", the argot term for those in their second year), who created the cote nègre for the occasion:

Another famous anecdote states that Patrice de MacMahon, visiting the École in 1881, said to Mortenol "Is it you, the black man? Very good my friend. Carry on." A similar anecdote is also lent to the same marshal during a visit to Saint-Cyr, but the debate seems definitively closed, the marshal would never have said this phrase during a visit to Saint-Cyr.

The École polytechnique archives hold no evidence of an inspection by marshal Mac Mahon who stopped being president of France on 30 January 1879 - it has to be asked why aged 72 he would be inspecting it with that title. On the other hand, the École did have two inspections in 1881, one on 12 July by Baron de Berckheim, president of the artillery committee and on 17 July by the superintendent general Vigo-Roussillon. The marshal would never have pronounced this sentence in the same way during a visit to the Polytechnique. Just afterwards he took part in a training cruise along the African coast. At the end of this period, praised by his superior officers, A year later, in April 1892, he was transferred to the reserve squadron for the western Mediterranean and the Levant as chief torpedo officer of the cruiser Amiral Cécille, and Maevatanana on 9 June the same year After the capture of Tananarive on 30 September 1895 by the French expeditionary force, Martenol was one of the officers for in Gallieni's entourage and on 19 August 1895 was rewarded for his bravery by being made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, presented in person by president Félix Faure. - the citation stated he had been in the navy for 16 years 10 months, of which 11 years 6 months had been spent at sea. He was also awarded the Madagascar commemorative medal.

In May 1896 he began two years aboard the cruiser Fabert as its second in command under its commander capitaine de frégate Pierre Georges Fernand Forestier. He therefore sailed near Madagascar again and Forestier wrote on 15 August 1896: In May 1898, weakened by the malaria which plagued him throughout his career, he returned to mainland France aboard the packet boat Pei Ho.

After some time convalescing, he was attached to the mobile defences of Toulon and served in several buildings. He went back to sea in 1898, again aboard the Algésiras and at the torpedo school, then he was ordered to join the training-ship Couronne. In a note dated 25 July 1899 captain Jean Baptiste Pierre Jules Arden, commander of the mobile defences, wrote of Mortenol:

1900–1908

Mortenol was ordered to take command of a torpedo boat attached to Toulon's mobile defences on 14 February 1899 before taking command of a second-class group of torpedo boats within the reserve squadron on 1 March 1900, consisting of the Aventurier and the Argonaute. For rescuing ships in difficulty during that command he was in 1909 awarded the Prussian Order of the Crown and thanks from Spain for rescuing ships in difficulty. and on 9 September that year in the 14th arrondissement of Paris he married Marie-Louise Vitalo (17 May 1866, Cayenne - 28 July 1912, Brest ), the widow of a mathematics teacher. - the couple had no children. Once that period of convalescence was complete he was sent to join the naval staff in Bresst in January 1903. Later in 1903 Mortenol made another request to be admitted to the École supérieure de Marine, which could earn him the rank of admiral. Brest's maritime prefect ranked him first out of the five candidates and gave a particularly complimentary reference, but the naval minister did not accept his application, perhaps due to his skin colour or due to the Affair of the Cards. In 1907 he had to return to mainland France yet again to convalesce and on his return to duty he was posted to the naval division in the Indian Ocean, commanding the anti-torpedo-boat ship Pistolet and the 2nd Torpedo Boat Flotilla in the China Sea. In April 1908 he was also given command of the 1st Flotilla.

1909–1913 On 22 July 1909 he was given permission to return to mainland France to convalesce again

On 2 April 1911 he was awarded the Imperial Order of the Dragon of Annam and on 12 July the same year he was made an officier of the Légion d’honneur, followed by promotion "capitaine de vaisseau" on 7 September 1912.

1914–1919

From March 1914 until summer 1915 he was also put in command of the unexciting task of disarming the battleship Carnot. - a wall plaque on that building commemorates Mortenol as the "graduate of the polytechnique, son of a freed slave" who in 1915 organised "the first anti-aircraft defence of Paris" inside that building.

His new appointment did not go unnoticed - for instance, on 10 July 1915 battalion commander Charles Arsène Pierret, then in command of the third office of Paris's military government, wrote: The successor to commander Prère, capitaine de vaisseau Mortenol, today arrived to take command of the DCA; he is a black man. One is rather surprised to see this black man with five stripes and an officier of the Légion d’Honneur; it seems he is very intelligent; he is a graduate of the Polytechnique.

Retirement and death Mortenol finally retired from his wartime post in Paris on 15 May 1919. though a typographical error in Oruno Denis Lara's Mortenol, ou, Les infortunes de la servitude mistakenly placed it in the 14th arrondissement.

In Oriol's words, in him Guadeloupe lost "one of its most glorious children, a great and valiant soldier, as modest as brave", whilst Jean-Claude Degras wrote "Mortenol's success has an undeniable symbolic significance in the collective unconscious. His countrymen saw him as the first to have broken through the hellish circle of inequality and racism". Degras added that in December 1950 the Guyanese Gaston Monnerville, himself a descendent of a slave who had become president of the Conseil de la République, attested that "Mortenol [was] an admirable example. Better than that, [he was] a model.". lieutenant de vaisseau on 25 August 1889 capitaine de frégate on 7 April 1904 capitaine de vaisseau on 7 September 1912

Commemorations

Although a request to move his remains to the Panthéon in 1937 proved unsuccessful, The town also has a statue of him on quai du Port de Croisière, unveiled on 3 December 1995.

In November 1984 a rue du Commandant-Mortenol was inaugurated in the 10th arrondissement by Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris.