Mathurin-François Boucher

Mathurin François Boucher (Nantes, 22 November 1778 – Marseille, 31 March 1851) was a French naval engineer. He is notable for his adaptation of the technique of ship camel to large 74-guns, and for designing the Surveillante class of 60-gun frigates.

Career Born to the family of a carpenter, Boucher entered the École Polytechnique in 1794, aged only 16. Graduating three years later, he briefly joined the Geography corps, but soon transferred to Naval engineering. He took part in the French campaign in Egypt and Syria as a trainee engineer.

Returned to France in 1801, he served in various harbours and was sent to Holland to study the ship camel buoyancy system, which allows to temporarily reduce the draft of a ship. On 20 February 1812, he successfully applied it on the 74-gun ship Rivoli, built in Venice to a draft exceeding that allowed by the pass of Malamocco.

In the early 1820s, Boucher designed the Surveillante class of 60-gun frigates. He was sent to Lorient to oversee the construction of the lead ship, Surveillante. Surveillante was kept at sea from 1825 to 1830 with such performances that France started building further frigates and ships of the line after her design.

In 1829, he rejected a memorandum by Vice-Admiral Missiessy proposing a new organisation of the fleet. In 1831, he launched into an archival endeavour of cataloguing the various naval libraries of France.