Cherbourg fishing company owner Sophie Leroy-Le Barbenchon has been made a knight of the Order of Maritime Merit at a ceremony held in the port’s fish auction. It’s a rare honour, and a female recipient is even rarer, but she is not someone who has ever been far from salt water.
Sophie Leroy and her husband David, who sails as relief skipper, between them operate the two 22 metre trawlers Marie Catherine and Marantha, and have embarked on a newbuild currently under constriction at the Socarenam yard in Boulogne which will be the first new fishing vessel for Cherbourg for more than twenty years.
She comes from a family of Cherbourg fish traders today runs Armement Cherbourgois which operates two 22 metre trawlers, and the company has a new trawler on order.
As a mark of her achievements in the fishing industry and the maritime community as a whole, she was made a knight of the Order of Maritime Merit (lordre du Mérite maritime) at a ceremony held in Cherbourg this week.
‘I was at the auction with my parents when I was nine and by the time I was fourteen I was working with my mother in the family fish shop,’ she said.
The award ceremony took place at the Cherbourg auction, where Armement Cherbourgois also has its offices, with the award presented by Jean-Paul Devis, deputy director of DDTM (Directions Départementale des Territoires et de la Mer) in front of a packed house.
