Jean Baptiste Henri Savigny

Born in 1793, Jean-Baptiste Henri Savigny was a French naval surgeon. He is closely associated with the 1816 wreck of the frigate Méduse, a disaster off the coast of West Africa that became widely known through the survivors' published account.

Savigny, together with Alexandre Corréard, wrote the narrative usually known in English as Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816. Their account described the shipwreck, the raft, and the suffering of those left adrift, and it helped fix the tragedy in public memory.

Because Savigny is remembered mainly through that episode and the book that followed it, widely available biographical details about the rest of his life are limited. He died in 1843.