Michigan vs. France

This piece first appeared in February 12th, 2009 edition of the Pioneer Tribune, a weekly newspaper from Manistique, Michigan. Please visit their website: http://www.pioneertribune.com/

As if there aren’t enough battles being fought around the globe, now we have one being fought right here, in our own backyard.

It would appear that Michigan is now at war with France. Yes, you read that right. The state of Michigan and the country of France are fighting.

Okay, it’s not really a military conflict. After all, everyone knows that France, with all of its military might, would forcibly and decisively throw down their weapons and raise their white flags the moment a Michigan hunter loaded his shotgun for an afternoon bird hunt. Even the Detroit Lions could overcome a French offensive – well, that may be stretching things a bit.

Since the days of Napoleon, the most successful military venture undertaken by France was in 1985, when French operatives sank the Rainbow Warrior. As flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, the Rainbow Warrior was the most feared ship to sail the seas since the Bismarck.

“Michigan isn’t fighting just me any more. They’re fighting the country of France,” said Steve Libert, spokesman for Great Lakes Exploration LLC, in a recent interview.

Great Lakes Exploration is a group that, in 2001, discovered what may be the remains of a 17th century ship, known as the Griffin, lying at the bottom of Lake Michigan somewhere south of Upper Michigan’s Stonington and Garden peninsulas.

The Griffin was a ship that was built in 1679 by the French explorer Rene-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle. Thanks to the French name reduction act of 1875, we now can simply call him La Salle, which probably means “The Sally” in English.

So now, after over 300 years, the French have decided that the Griffin is still theirs and they want it back. France filed a claim to the vessel in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids in late January.

This is so typical. They lose something and show no interest in coming to find it for three centuries, and all of a sudden when someone does find it they chime in with, “Hey, that’s ours! We’ve been looking everywhere for that thing!” like they somehow had faked the death of Jacques Cousteau to allow him to secretly ply the waters of the Great Lakes in search of their missing boat.

It seems a little crazy to me when you can take a ship like the Titanic, which went down in international waters less than a century ago, and claim that whoever finds it gets to keep it, but if you find a ship within the borders of the United States that went down over a quarter-of-a-millennium ago, it belongs to France. The Titanic still has a living survivor, for crying out loud.

Maybe that explains why the French still hold St. Pierre and Miquelon, a small island group 16 miles off of the southern coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Perhaps a few hundred years back, some Canadian kids had been out goofing around in a canoe one day and came across this group of small islands. They would have been all excited about their big discovery and, while on their way home, maybe they crossed paths with the big bully that is France, who then told the kids, “Those are our islands, we lost them when we were playing with them out here yesterday.” Then, in a show of force, France would sink an inflatable raft.

Actually, after Germany had invaded France in 1940, without telling anyone, France sent a flotilla to St. Pierre and Miquelon and took control of the island group in 1941 without a fight. The local fisherman must have determined that resistance was futile, and went back to mending their nets, or they thought that having some company over might be nice.

So, France abandons a ship here a long time ago, basically leaving it like so much litter at the bottom of Lake Michigan, and now that it may have been found, and it might be worth a lot of money, they want it back.

I wonder if that logic can be used in reverse. My ancestral name was Bravier and it was Americanized to Braver when my great-great-grandfather came here from France. I am sure that someone in my ancestry left a chateau or two lying around somewhere in France. I just might have to lay claim to one.

I wonder if it’s bird season in France right now?