is a
Commune in western
France , a
Seaport on the
Atlantic Ocean . It is a ''
Sous-préfecture '' of the
Charente-Maritime ''
Département ''. The town's non-official name is ''Rochefort-sur-Mer'' but the last part of the name is normally omitted.
In December 1665 Rochefort was chosen by
Jean-Baptiste Colbert as a place of "refuge, defense and supply" for the French navy. Its military harbour was fortified by
Louis XIV 's commissary of fortifications
Vauban . Between 1666-1669 the king had the "Corderie Royale" (then the longest building in Europe) constructed to make
Cordage for French ships of war. The making of cordage ceased in 1867, and in 1926 the
Arsenal of Rochefort was closed. The building was burned by occupation forces in 1944 and left abandoned for twenty years. Today it has been restored for municipal and tourist purposes. Another infrastructure of early Rochefort from
1766 was its ''bagne'', a high-security
Penal Colony involving
Hard Labour . ''Bagnes'' were then common fixtures in military harbours and naval bases, such as
Toulon or
Brest , because they provided free labour.
Off Rochefort,
Napoleon Bonaparte was intercepted and surrendered to Captain F. L. Maitland aboard
HMS ''Bellerophon'' , on
July 17 ,
1815 , ending the "
Hundred Days ".
Rochefort is a notable example of seventeenth-century "ville nouvelle" or
New Town , which means its design and building resulted from a political decree. The reason for building Rochefort was to a large extent that royal power could hardly depend on rebellious
Protestant La Rochelle , which Cardinal
Richelieu had had to
Besiege a few decades earlier. Well into the twentieth century, Rochefort remained primarily a garrison town. The tourist industry, which had long existed due to the town's spa, gained emphasis in the 1990s.
The town gained some fleeting fame with
Jacques Demy 's
Musical Movie ''
Les Demoiselles De Rochefort '' (
1967 ), starring
Catherine Deneuve , her sister
Françoise Dorléac and
George Chakiris .
Rochefort was the birthplace of the author
Pierre Loti whose house has been turned into a
Museum .
Philosopher
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was also born in Rochefort.
