Page 48 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW SPECIAL ISSUE 6

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 4 8

On another website, Michel Le Hénaff writes:

“The wine epic in Tréguier culminated with the regular docking of the Sloughi, a
pinardier in the 1950s. This tanker replaced the four-masted Capitaine Guyomard,
which supplied wine to Brittany, but which to our knowledge did not come to Tréguier.

The last four-masted ship in operation, commanded by Captain de Kergariou (from
Plestin-les-Grèves), it sank on the coast of Spain on December 30, 1947.

Let's summarize the history of Sloughi. At the Liberation in 1944, the Blainville shipyard
near Caen was building a series of ten tankers ordered by the German Navy, originally
intended to ensure the supply of Afrikakorps troops. As in all French construction sites
under the occupation, the work has dragged on, and although the construction of some

is well advanced, none has yet been completed. It was decided to complete eight, of
which six were allocated to the Merchant Navy and two to the National Navy.

These tankers are practically identical: length 59.6 m, width 9.45 m and depth 4.3 m,
they have a gross tonnage of 621 tonnes and a deadweight of 832 tonnes. At this load,
their draft is 3.96 m. Powered by two Sulzer diesel engines of 700 HP each, they reach

12.4 knots during tests for a speed of 11.5 knots in normal service.

The fifth in the series, called Sloughi, is directly incorporated into the Société Navale
Chérifienne in Morocco. It was only put into service in 1948. After transporting wine
under the French flag for ten years, it became the property of a Moroccan company at
the time of Morocco's independence in 1958. However, it did not stop the deliveries in
Brittany, both in Saint-Brieuc and in Tréguier. She will end up under the blowtorches at

Briton Ferry, in the southwest of England in 1978.

Her various misadventures are always engraved in the memory of the Trégorrois and the
legends brighten up our evenings: barrels of the precious liquid fall in a specific place in

the river where they are expected, the unloading pipes are pierced and everyone can
retrieve; or again: the ship is stranded with a leaky hull, and we can guess what happens
next...