As the new year of 1910 moved closer to its second month, the world marvelled that there had been so few deaths in Paris when the River Seine rose more than eight metres and flooded the city. The water didn’t burst the banks as many presumed; instead, it took a more sinister path, rising up through the subway system and overflowing through sewers and any tunnel that its liquid tendrils could discover. Mother Nature, in her stealth, brought the city to its knees and covered its homes with her waters. And yet she had warned them – winter rainfall had been much higher than usual, and other rivers were showing signs of breach. Makeshift bridges had to be built to allow people to move around Paris, and some chose to row up and down its great avenues, even the Champs Élysées. The atmosphere in the city felt almost carnivalesque. The scenes described and photographed for the rest of the world were surreal.

In its gleeful rush to the sea, the River Seine took with it a restless highway of trees, furniture and shopfronts, amid a parade of possessions and the carcasses of animals caught unawares.

It also took three people from the same family with the surname Delancré…

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