1911 – Un bus tombe dans la Seine

It is the afternoon of the 27^th of September 1911, and the No. 205 bus from Jardin des Plantes to Batignolles is making its habitual journey across the city. On board are twenty passengers, patiently awaiting their destination. But, when the bus turns onto the Pont de l’Archevêché, one of the narrowest bridges in Paris, the driver suddenly notices another bus facing him head on in the other direction. Suddenly panicked, he takes a sharp turn to the right – the bus is hurtled straight through the iron railings of the bridge, leaving a gap five metres wide, and plunges into the river below. Only Antoine Cormenier, a travelling salesman, managed to abandon the vehicle before it hit the water, remaining clinging to the railings. Eleven other passengers, including the conductor and the driver Jean Raynal, were all killed. Nine others were injured. One of the day’s heroes was the clergyman Antoine Richard, a passenger who managed to free another man from the water. Another was Eugène Reneveux, a champion swimmer and lifeguard, who rushed to the scene upon hearing the news, and spent two hours in the water taking as many people as he could from the bus, leaving him with considerable injuries to the hands and feet from shattered glass. The tragedy dominated the headlines of Le Petit Journal for three days over the 28-30^th of September. As for the Pont de l’Archevêché (built in 1828), its widening, planned since 1910, never came to pass.