Pierre Alexandre Forfait

Commander of the Légion d'Honneur

Pierre Alexandre Forfait was born in Rouen  on April 2, 1752. At the age of twenty, having won prizes in mathematics and hydrography, he was admitted, in recognition of his brilliant studies, to the Corps du Génie de la Marine, which normally admits only members of the nobility. A student builder at the Brest naval shipyard in 1773, sub-engineer in 1777, member of the Académie de Marine in 1781, he distinguished himself the following year by successfully repairing badly damaged ships.

Author of a treatise on masts, he also took an interest in the construction of the first liners linking France and the United States. In 1789, he was elected correspondent to the Académie des Sciences, and that same year took over management of the Le Havre shipyards, traveling to England to study the operation of arsenals.

He was elected deputy to the Legislative Assembly in 1791 and joined the Marine Committee. Arrested during the Terror, he built a sailing barge with a folding mast after his release.

He was admitted to the Institut in 1796, after which he wrote a Mémoire sur la navigation de la Seine before studying, in 1797, the possibility of creating an arsenal in Antwerp.

He was then successively employed in Toulon and Venice, and took part in preparations for the Egyptian expedition, before devising a plan for the invasion of England.

In November 1799, he became Minister of the Navy. His main task was to restore order to a totally disorganized institution. He left the Ministry in October 1801 to join the Conseil d'État.

In 1804, as Maritime Prefect of Le Havre, he repelled an English attack. Appointed to Genoa  in 1805, he was dismissed following the failure of a shipbuilding project.

He died in Rouen on November 8, 1807, perhaps from the grief of his disgrace.