The project "Industrial Heritage between Land and Sea " is an opportunity for the Eco-museum Le Creusot-Montceau to account for the very origins of the industrialisation of its territory and of the essential role played by ship building activities. The establishment (1787) of a cannons foundry for the Navy inLe Creusot has been determined by the availability of coal fit for coking, to be used in blast furnaces, and by the project for digging a canal linking Saône and Loire rivers, in other words, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic (opened 1793). The origins of Le Creusot illustrate the fundamental role of the waterway for the purpose of disenclosing a territory at the end of the XVIIIth century -as well as in our days, and of permitting the transport of very big pieces unto the sea. From 1837 on, the Schneider company has been developing in Montchanin, along the Canal du Centre, a port, working as a true interconnecting platform. Thus the canal is used for shipping products towards the Rhône valley and the Mediterranean, and further as a local connecting way between Le Creusot and the annex workshops which have been established as soon as 1839 along the Saône. Creating the site of Le Petit-Creusot first allows to assemble steam boats intended to transports on the Saône and Rhône rivers.

At the end of the XIXth century, tug-boats, torpedo-boats and submarines are constructed there, together with steel frameworks for overseas export. After the creation of an artillery workshop in Le Havre in 1897 and when a testing base for torpedoes in Hyères bay became operational in 1910, the Schneider ironworks get to be settled right on the seaside. Nowadays, the ironworks in Le Creusot and Chalon-sur-Saône no longer enjoy any maritime establishments, yet some of their products go on reaching the sea thanks to the river. There are still extant testimonies of that coastal industry : the remains of the testing base for the torpedoes, a factory and management offices, and a former workers’ village close to "Le Creusot beach".