PS Normandy

PS Normandy was a British paddle-wheel mail steamer operating on the Southampton - Guernsey - Jersey route, which sank 20 miles from The Needles in the English Channel in the night of 17 March 1870 after colliding at around 03:30 with steamship Mary, a propeller steamer carrying 500 tons of maize from Odessa to London.

Incident summary

It carried Captain Harvey with 28 crewmen, including chief mate J.Ockleford, one stewardess, and 31 passengers, among which 12 were women. The Normandy could launch only the two portside lifeboats, the large starboard lifeboat having been damaged by the collision. One lifeboat was launched from Steamer Mary, without reaching the Normandy.

The heroism of the Captain, who died after having ensured that the passengers would be first to abandon the ship, was praised by Victor Hugo, who also recommended that London and South Western Railway should equip its ships with watertight bulkheads, with sufficient life jackets, and floating lights.

Court ruling

The Greenwich Police Court judged on 11 April that the Normandy was responsible for "a breach of the Regulations for Preventing Disasters at Sea" and blamed the second mate of the Mary for returning to the Mary with the lifeboat without reaching the Normandy.

Normandy

Normandy (/ˈnɔːrməndi/; French: Normandie, pronounced [nɔʁ.mɑ̃.di], Norman: Normaundie, from Old French Normanz, plural of Normant, originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is one of the regions of France, corresponding to the historical Duchy of Normandy.

Administratively, Normandy is divided into five departments: Calvados, Eure, Manche, Orne, and Seine-Maritime. It covers 30,627 km² (11825 sq mi), forming roughly 5% of the territory of France. Its population of 3.37 million accounts for around 5% of the population of France.

The historical region of Normandy comprised the present-day region of Normandy, as well as small areas now part of the départements of Mayenne and Sarthe.The Channel Islands (referred to as Îles Anglo-Normandes in French) are also historically part of Normandy; they cover 194 km² and comprise two bailiwicks: Guernsey and Jersey, which are British Crown dependencies.

Normandy's name is derived from the settlement of the territory by mainly Norwegian and Danish Vikings ("Northmen") from the 9th century, and confirmed by treaty in the 10th century between King Charles III of France and Earl Rollo of Møre, Norway. For a century and a half following the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, Normandy and England were linked by Norman and Frankish rulers.

Mass Effect

Mass Effect is a science fiction action role-playing third person shooter video game series developed by the Canadian company BioWare and released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows, with the third installment also released on the Wii U. The fourth game will release on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The original trilogy largely revolves around a soldier named Commander Shepard, whose mission is to save the galaxy from a race of powerful mechanical beings known as the Reapers and their agents, including the first game's antagonist Saren Arterius. The first game sees Shepard investigating Saren, whom Shepard slowly comes to understand is operating under the guidance of Sovereign, a Reaper left behind in the Milky Way tens of thousands of years before, when the Reapers exterminated virtually all sentient organic life in the galaxy as part of a recurrent cycle of genocide for an unknown purpose. Sovereign's purpose is to trigger the imminent return of the Reaper fleet hibernating in extra-galactic dark space, restarting the process of extermination. The second game takes place two years later, and sees Shepard battling the Collectors, an alien race abducting entire human colonies in a plan to help the Reapers return to the Milky Way. The final game of Shepard's trilogy centers on the war waging against the Reapers.

Normandy (disambiguation)

Normandy refers to a region and former province within France. Between 1956 and 2016 it was composed of two regions: Lower Normandy (Basse-Normandie) and Upper Normandy (Haute-Normandie).

It can also refer to:

Historical connections

United Kingdom

United States

Vessels

Other uses