It was a fortunate day for the prosperity of La Ciotat when the engineers and directors of the great steamship company founded its vast workshops here. To be sure they do not add much to the romantic aspect of this charmingly situated coast town; but men must live, and great ocean liners must be built somewhere near salt water. The prosperity of La Ciotat, the _ville des ouvriers_, has grown up mostly from its traffic by sea, the railway stopping at an elevation of some two hundred feet above the level of the quays. The traveller makes his way by a little branch train, but heavy merchandise for the ship-building yards is still brought first to Marseilles and then transhipped by boat. Ship-building was one of the ancient occupations of the people of La Ciotat, hence it is natural enough to hear some old workman, who has become incapacitated by time, say: “_N’est-il pas naturel que La Ciotat soutienne son antique réputation en construisant de bons bateaux?_” For a long time it was the grand ship-building yard of the Marseillais, who obtained here all their ships to “_faire la caravane_,” as the voyage to the Levant was called in olden times. La Ciotat was perhaps the Burgus Civitatis of the itinerary of Antony, but in time it came to be known--in the Catalan tongue--as _Bort de Nostre Cieuta_, and it is so given in an ancient charter which conceded certain rights to the Marseillais. In 1365 La Ciotat passed to the monks of the Abbey of St. Victor, but for a short time it was in the possession of the Catalans, who were the partisans of the Antipope Pierre de Luna. Few towns of its size in all France have had so varied a career as La Ciotat, until it finally settled down to the more or less prosaic affairs of later years. Forty families formed its first population, but, in the reign of François I., its population was twelve thousand or more, a number which has not perceptibly increased since. During the pest of 1720, which fell so hard upon Marseilles, and indeed upon nearly all of the ports of maritime Provence, La Ciotat was saved from the affection by the observance of a stringent quarantine. To a great extent this was due to the prudence and fearlessness of the women. All entrance to the city was rigorously refused to strangers, and, when the troops from the garrison at Marseilles were sent here that they might be quartered in a place of safety, the women armed themselves with sticks and stones and formed a barrier, _dehors des murs_, and drove the soldiery off as if they had been an attacking foe. This is one of those Amazonian feats which prove the valour of the women of other days. La Ciotat was frequently attacked by the Barbary pirates before these vermin were swept from the seas by the intervention of the two great republics, France and the United States. The English, too, attacked the intrepid little town, and there are brave tales of the valour of the inhabitants when bombarded by the guns of the _Seahorse_ in 1818.