French shipbuilding town in shock over lost Australian submarine order

Cherbourg, France: Teaching assistant Georgina was settling into a new life in the shipbuilding town of Cherbourg with her Australian husband when Canberra revealed it was scrapping the $40 billion submarine order that he had been sent to France work on.

Ten months after the couple arrived in France, Georgina was two weeks into a new job when Australia announced that the deal with France's Naval Group to supply a dozen diesel-powered submarines was dead.

They were both still in shock, she said.