100 Francs CFA Herzogin Cecilie

The Herzogin Cecilie was a four-masted barque built in 1902 for the Hamburg shipping firm F. Laeisz, later sold to Gustaf Erikson of Åland and pressed into the grain trade between Australia and Europe. She ran aground off Devonshire in April 1936, a wreck that drew enormous public attention across Britain and effectively marked the end of commercial sail on that route.

The Republic of the Congo had no connection to this vessel. The issue belongs to a wave of small-nation commemorative programs from the early 1990s in which African states licensed their coining authority to European distributors targeting the collector market.