The Raft of the Medusa is the title of a painting by Théodore Géricault of an infamous catastrophic shipwreck of the French ship Medusa (original French name: La Méduse) in 1816 in the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Africa. The term has also come to mean the shipwreck itself. The incident, which led to the demise of 140 crew and passengers, was popularized throughout Europe by account of survivors and led to a scandal in the French government because of the incompetence of the ship's captain and the feeble rescue effort. It was later the subject of several notable paintings of which the Géricault's is the most famous; and hangs in the Louvre.