_2.jpg)
Your ad here
City of eagles and cranes
Let’s just say that this place, where iron monsters are placed alongside a bird-shaped mountain, where History tells the story of the Greek sailors and workmen so proud of their hands, is one of our favourite, especially its Port-Vieux.
When you come from the West, the Bec de l’Aigle (Eagle’s Beak) hides the lights and the town. This golden cliff with its rough profile littered with cavities – “taffonis” – whose main overhang – “parpèle” – gives it a look of a bird, is a co
nglomerate – pudding stone – of pebbles from former rivers, “cemented” by the siltstone and sculpted by the wind.
Once you get past the Bec de l’Aigle, you will see the cranes. No, you haven’t gone wrong, you are definitely at La Ciotat. These monsters are the visible part of the soul of La Ciotat whose history resounds with the clanging on the vessels’ bodywork, and the tidal waves caused by each giant launching in the heart of the town.
You have two possibilities: the Port-Vieux or the new port, with its two basins whose entrances are at opposite ends of the same sea wall. Whatever your choice, La Ciotat, with its charming little city and harbour and its turbulent industrial history, is a very splendid stopping place, where you’d like to be stuck both in bad and good weather.
FROM WOOD TO STEEL
You won’t be the first to enjoy this place, as people have lived here for more than four thousand years. In 600 B.C., the Greek sailors set up a trading post here, like in Marseilles and Agde, and, over the centuries, between retreats towards the hills and return journeys to the shore, its population has followed the different to-ing and fro-ing of peace and invasions.
Civitas (the Latin for town), created in 1429, became Cieutat, then Ciotat. In the 16th century, the town expanded, and broke out of its walls, entering into its golden age, the 17th century, when its fleet surpassed that of Marseilles. And then La Ciotat bowed down in favour of its neighbouring rival, until the boom in shipbuilding in the 19th century.
In 1835, the Louis Benet shipyard built wooden vessels of 250 to 600 tons and created a steam engine workshop. Between 1842 and 
1846 nine steel steam-powered vessels were manufactured, before Armand Béhic, a financier, bought Ets Benet and put new life into it. Records in length followed one another: the Périclès, 53m (1852), then the Danube, 77m (1854). From 1916, the shipyards built and maintained the fleet of the Marseilles Messageries Maritimes, and at the end of the Great War, the shipyards expanded over 14 ha, with 2,300 employees and could build two 150m long vessels at the same time. In the forties, Jean-Marie Terrin bought and modernised the shipyards under the name of Chantiers Navals de La Ciotat (CNC). New records were reached, like the super-tanker Al Rawdatain in 1970: 332 000 t, 357 m long and 57 m wide. The shipyards employed six thousand people and provided work for two thousand subcontractors, before the oil crisis in 1973. The last ship, the Monterey, was launched in 1987, and the dream left with it.
Just like the pitheads in the North or the rolling mills in Lorraine, the shipyards in La Ciotat could have become industrial wasteland, but the people of La Ciotat had other plans. For twenty years, the former workmen occupied the abandoned shipyards to prevent their dismantling.
IF THE SHIP’S FINE, EVERYTHING’S FINE!
A pleasure boater who has not visited La Ciotat for more than fifty years would only notice a difference in the type of boat on the platforms: the large gleaming yachts have replaced the cargo ships and liners, composite materials have replaced the steel, and English has replaced French: they no longer build trade ships, but “refit” – restore – the luxury toys of rich yachtsmen. But it doesn’t matter; after all, iron replaced the wood!
How did it all come about? The public sector associated with the private sector through the SEMIDEP (mixed econo
my company created in 1995), succeeded in keeping back the 40 to 80m boats, of which there are several on the Côte d’Azur, on their way to be repaired in Italian, Spanish or Maltese shipyards.
In 2007, 800 yachts of more than 25m long were being built or ordered, 6,000 sailed on the seas throughout the world, half of them in the Mediterranean, and despite the crisis, there should be 8,000 of them in 2015. A large enough market for La Ciotat to make its mark, in return for a few adaptations to suit this new clientele, in particular a “boat lift” inaugurated in 2007.
Success was immediate: in 2008, 400 yachts were taken on and the shipyards which currently employ 550 people could double their staff numbers by 2016. Twenty-eight companies have set up there, and there is a plan to set up a platform for medium-sized yachts of less than 40 m long.
With its two pleasure boat harbours, its new shipyards, its Port Vieux and its fishermen, La Ciotat has not felt compelled to throw itself into the arms of all-out tourism or to dress itself up as a waterfront marina. When you drink a cup of coffee at the café on the harbour, there are at least as many “Citoadins” as holidaymakers there. And that also makes all the difference.
