That timing, if accurate, adds another layer to the irony that multiple observers of the story have noted: the authority that left her to die came home to failure, while she survived.

The Fishermen And Their World

The Breton fishermen who eventually rescued Marguerite were part of one of the most important industries of sixteenth-century France.

Brittany, the northwestern peninsula of France, had a long maritime tradition — its coastlines and its culture were shaped by the sea in ways that the more inland parts of France were not.

Breton fishermen had been sailing to the rich waters of the North Atlantic — the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, the Gulf of St.

Lawrence, the shores of Labrador — since at least the early 1500s, and possibly earlier.