by David Barrie
Bougainville’s stay in Tahiti was no holiday, however. The ships’ anchor cables, being made of hemp rather than chain, were frequently severed by the sharp coral of the anchorage, and this very nearly led to the destruction both of La Boudeuse and L’Étoile.26 The prospect of being marooned—even in such a paradise as Tahiti—was very alarming, while the loss of six of his anchors meant that Bougainville was unable to explore the island and its neighbors as thoroughly as he wished. Véron also had problems: after making a large number of lunar observations27 over four days and nights in order to fix the longitude of Tahiti, his precious notebook was stolen. He was, however, able to determine the position of the French camp to his satisfaction by means of eleven observations taken on the eve of their departure.28
Bougainville’s voyage after Tahiti took him almost as far as the east coast of Australia. He encountered on June 4, 1768, a low, sandy island covered with birds, which he named La Bâture de Diane (Diana’s Bank).29 The following day some members of the crew thought they could see land to the west, but Bougainville believed they were mistaken. During the night, however, the appearance of driftwood and fruit coupled with the fact that the swell had subsided led him to suspect the presence of land somewhere to the southeast.30 Continuing their westerly course they encountered another reef on June 6, and some thought they saw land to the southwest of the breakers. So Bougainville altered course to the north until 4 P.M., when he turned west again. At 5:30, lookouts at the masthead could see more white water to the northwest, which extended as far as the eye could see. The furious breaking of the sea on these reefs struck Bougainville like “the voice of God”31 and rendered him “docile.” Realizing that he was somewhere off the still unknown east coast of “New Holland,” he decided—cautiously but perhaps wisely in view of Cook’s subsequent experience—that it was too risky to close the land.
Since Bougainville and his crew were critically short of bread and vegetables, and their salt meat was so heavily infested with maggots that they preferred to eat the ship’s rats,32 they now needed to reach one of the Dutch settlements in the East Indies—and as quickly as possible. Unsure whether a navigable passage existed in that direction, Bougainville chose not to head west along the south coast of New Guinea and across the Gulf of Carpentaria. He thus missed the chance of anticipating Cook’s rediscovery of the strait that Torres had passed through in 1606. Becalmed off the south coast of New Guinea—on whose sweet-smelling and fertile shores he and his hungry crew were unable to land—they narrowly escaped shipwreck. “Terrible” days followed as they struggled to the southeast in the face of strong headwinds, rain, and even thick fog. Once again they were almost wrecked and then found themselves in a heavy sea surrounded by so many reefs that they could only close their eyes and hope. So shallow was the water that bottom-dwelling fish were washed aboard, along with sand and seaweed; there was simply no point in taking soundings. On June 16 the weather improved, but they still faced a long, hard struggle to reach the eastern end of the New Guinea archipelago. Their food supplies had almost run out and “the most cruel of our enemies, hunger, was now aboard.”33Rations were reduced; a favorite goat and a pet dog were sacrificed. Bougainville even had to issue orders against eating the leather that protected the spars and rigging.
At last on June 26 they rounded the end of Rossel Island that marks the eastern extremity of the reef-hedged New Guinea archipelago. They called the high headland Cape Deliverance: “a piece of land that we have well earned the right to name,”34 wrote Bougainville. He then warily sailed north, passing among the long-lost Solomon Islands, one of which is named in his honor. Like Carteret, who had recently passed this way in the Swallow, Bougainville had no idea that these islands were the same as those that Mendaña had discovered two hundred years earlier: understandably, as contemporary charts based on the wildly underestimated longitudes recorded by the Spanish explorer placed the Solomons much farther to the east. On July 13, 1768, observations of a solar eclipse made by Bougainville’s astronomers in New Britain at last made it possible to determine accurately the width of the Pacific Ocean—“hitherto so uncertain.”35
Bougainville’s course then took him west along the north shore of New Guinea, across the Celebes Sea and then south through the Macassar Strait—regions already well-known to the Dutch. By now, scurvy was affecting almost all of his men, and he was forced to make two stops in Dutch-controlled harbors to restore their health, before heading home via Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope. As he himself conceded, his circumnavigation yielded fewer discoveries than Cook’s first voyage36 (which partially coincided with it), but it did much to excite interest in the Pacific islands and their peoples. It also made Bougainville a celebrity. Sixteen years later an even more ambitious French expedition set sail for the Pacific, this time under the command of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse. The contrast between Bougainville’s experiences and those of La Pérouse could hardly be more pronounced.
Chapter 10
La Pérouse Vanishes
Day 11: Hardly slept at all. Colin made inedible porridge for breakfast with far too much salt. Worked out that we were approaching the halfway mark. We’re almost a thousand miles from land in rough seas under a cloudy rain-filled sky. God I wish we were home.
Westerly gale-force winds continued throughout the night as we lay ahull. At about 0800 we were all sheltering down below when we heard the loud, deep blast of a ship’s horn. Rushing up on deck I saw a ship looming out of the murk only half a mile astern, and heading right for us. She was pitching heavily in the big seas. A 25,000-ton bulk carrier, according to Colin; we tried to raise her on the radiotelephone, but had no luck. Going very slowly, she circled round us, some of her crew lining the rail and waving.
We waved back, though we must have looked a sad sight, rolling around in a heavy sea with no sails up. Colin tried to show that we were okay by pretending to take swigs from a whisky bottle, though maybe this had the opposite effect. She was the Janetta, and her port of registry was in Norway. With her engines going astern, she ranged up close alongside us to windward. Caught in her lee, we seemed to be drawn ever closer to her clifflike steel hull, and our mast, swinging wildly like an inverted pendulum as we wallowed in the confused seas, came close to hitting her side. Had it done so the mast would have snapped like a match, and we would really have needed help.
At this point a very strong squall came through, bringing with it more rain and spray that stung our faces, half blinding us. We needed to get away from the ship before there was a disaster, so we bent on the first foresail that came to hand and ran off as fast as we could, though it felt as if the rigging would give way under the strain. Luckily nothing broke and we quickly went back to bare poles. The Janetta moved off, disappearing quickly into the murk, leaving us feeling relieved but lonelier than ever.
As the day wore on the wind gradually eased and some clear patches began to appear among the fast-moving clouds, which were now a little higher in the sky. We hoisted some sail and resumed our proper course. We took no sights but there was a magnificent ruddy sunset that edged the black clouds with vermilion. Timed against the chronometer it placed us at about 37 degrees West.
BORN TO A well-heeled family near the southern French town of Albi in 1741, La Pérouse joined the French navy in 1756 and during his long career saw action in North America, the West Indies, and the Indian Ocean. While serving in the Isle de France (Mauritius) in the 1770s, he fell deeply in love with the beautiful young Eléonore Broudou (born in 1755), daughter of the manager of the local naval store yards and hospital. Although French-born, she was far from being a suitable match in the eyes of La Pérouse’s father.1 The devoted Eléonore followed La Pérouse when he was posted back to France in December 1776, but his father remained adamantly opposed to their marriage:
You make me tremble, my son! You are cold-bloodedly contemplating the consequences of a marriage that would disgrace you in the eyes of the Minister [in charge of the navy]
and cause you to lose the protection of powerful friends! . . . You are preparing nothing but regrets for us; you are sacrificing your fortune and the respectability of your condition to a frivolous beauty and to so-called attractions which perhaps only exist in your imagination.2
When La Pérouse returned in 1783 from service in the American Revolutionary War, he had reached the rank of post-captain and had been granted both a knighthood and a pension by the king. He was now forty-two. Eléonore continued to wait patiently for him, but his parents were determined that he should marry an aristocratic girl from Albi whom he hardly knew. La Pérouse offered poor Eléonore a large sum of money to be freed from his earlier promise to marry her. Seemingly cruel, this seems to have been a stratagem on his part, and one trusts that Eléonore was a party to it. She refused the offer but gave him his freedom, protesting for her part that she would enter a convent, as she could love no one but him. La Pérouse then rushed dramatically to meet her in Paris and wrote to his mother:
I was imprudent in contracting this engagement without your consent; I would be a monster if I broke my word. . . . I can only belong to Eléonore.3
His parents at last relented, and in July 1783 the lovers were quietly married in Paris. A grand wedding ceremony followed at the high altar of the imposing redbrick cathedral of Albi, but they were not able to enjoy married life together for very long. While his young wife remained in Albi, La Pérouse spent much of the next two years in Paris planning the great expedition that he was soon to lead. After long preparations, and a last, fleeting visit to Eléonore, La Pérouse set sail from France in August 1785 with two well-named ships, La Boussole (“the compass”) and L’Astrolabe.
The king himself took a close interest in the expedition, which was a much more elaborate operation than that which Bougainville had led. The main aim—it was frankly admitted—was to fill in, as far as possible, the gaps in the charts of the Pacific left by Captain Cook and to confirm Buache’s theory about the Solomon Islands. La Pérouse was equipped with a wide variety of navigational instruments. These included: three English sextants; three astronomical quadrants; a single English “pocket watch, or chronometer, for the longitudes”; five marine clocks; and three astronomical clocks—used for checking the daily rates of the “watch” and “clocks” on dry land when opportunities occurred.4 Two instruments for measuring variations in the earth’s magnetic field (“dipping needles”) that had formerly been used by Cook were lent by the Longitude Board in London, thanks to the intervention of Sir Joseph Banks, now president of the Royal Society. “I received these instruments,” wrote La Pérouse, “with a feeling of religious respect for the memory of that great man.”5
According to the official instructions—issued in the king’s name—the determination of longitudes was one of the principal aims of the voyage:
As often as the state of the sky permits, [La Pérouse] will have distances between the moon and the sun or stars taken, with the instruments designed for this purpose, to determine the longitude of the vessel, and will compare the result with that indicated by the clocks and marine watches at the same place and same time: he will take care to multiply the observations of each kind, so that the mean result of the two operations may yield a more precise determination.6
The scientists accompanying La Pérouse were advised to preserve their original lunar-distance calculations so that it might later be possible to correct their results in the light of any new astronomical observations made on dry land.7 La Pérouse boasted that his officers never missed an opportunity to measure their longitude by lunars when the weather was favorable. They were so well practiced and so well supported by Joseph Lepaute Dagelet, the official astronomer aboard La Boussole, that—according to La Pérouse—their largest longitude error would not have exceeded half a degree.8 Needless to say, they carried with them a copy of Mayer’s tables and Maskelyne’s Nautical Almanacs for the years 1786 to 1790.9
La Pérouse was also accompanied by a geologist, a naturalist, a mineralogist, a botanist, a gardener and three artists—two to paint natural history subjects, and one to record costume, landscape, and “in general all that is often impossible to describe.”10 It has even been suggested that an ambitious young artillery cadet named Napoleon Bonaparte was among those who wished to join the expedition. However, his domineering mother had already firmly ruled out a naval career for her son even though his teachers at military school said that he was “highly suitable to become a naval officer.” So if—as seems quite possible—the young Napoleon had wanted to join La Pérouse, she would probably not have allowed him to do so.11 Who knows what the consequences for the world might have been if she had not been such a formidable woman?
The orders given to La Pérouse were extraordinarily—almost absurdly—detailed and precise both as to the itinerary and the timetable.12 The expedition was to take him around Cape Horn, to Easter Island, Hawaii, Alaska, and down the American coast to California, then across the Pacific to China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Sakhalin, and Kamchatka. In addition to making accurate charts of the places they visited, La Pérouse and his colleagues were required to gather every kind of information that might conceivably be useful—meteorological, botanical, social, anthropological, economic, political, military, and much more besides. The list is daunting and might have overawed a less determined individual. But despite the enormous care that had gone into the preparations, and the skill and experience of La Pérouse and his officers, the voyage was marked by calamities worse than any experienced by Cook and other recent explorers.
Disaster struck first in July 1786, when they were exploring the Pacific coast of present-day Alaska.13 Pleased to have come so far without one man falling sick or even suffering an attack of scurvy, La Pérouse and his companions were anchored in a large bay (now known as Lituya Bay). Three of the ships’ boats were dispatched to take soundings. La Pérouse had expressed some misgivings about the man he put in command of this operation, the first lieutenant of La Boussole, Charles d’Escures, chevalier de St. Louis, “whose zeal had sometimes seemed to me a little ardent.” So he gave him written orders in which he specifically forbade him to go near the entrance of the bay if this presented any danger. The chevalier bristled, but La Pérouse mildly pointed out to him that young officers often took foolish risks—risks much better avoided on such an expedition as the one on which they were now engaged. Sadly, his warnings were ignored. The boats set off early in the morning, in fine weather, their crews planning to take a picnic ashore and go hunting, as well as to conduct the necessary survey work: it was to be as much a pleasure trip as duty. A few hours later the smallest of the boats returned, dismally alone. It soon emerged that the two larger boats and all their occupants had been lost in the violent race thrown up by the extremely powerful tide in the narrow entrance to the bay—which ran at “three or four leagues an hour.” Worse still, contrary to standing orders, two young twin brothers had been allowed to leave the ship together. They had both drowned and, despite the help of the natives, none of the crews of the two missing boats was recovered alive. The effect of this disaster on the morale of the expedition can easily be imagined. Before departing, La Pérouse erected a memorial to the men who had lost their lives. Beneath it a bottle was buried containing the message: “At the entrance to the port, twenty-one brave sailors perished. Whoever you may be, mix your tears with ours.”14
This catastrophe could not, of course, be allowed to disrupt the voyage. Some months later, having cruised down the coast of British Columbia and on to the Spanish colony of Monterey in California, La Pérouse set out for the Mariana Islands, on the far side of the Pacific. When they were roughly halfway and soon after passing Necker Island (a remote member of the Hawaiian archipelago that he named after a celebrated former French minister of finance, perhaps because it was so barren), they were very nearly wrecked during the night on a reef slightly farther to the west.15 It was a very calm night, and La Pérouse had wisely given orders for the
two ships to proceed slowly. His caution was well founded as it was not until they were within four hundred yards of the rocks that they spotted the breakers, which were so slight that they might easily have escaped notice until it was too late. Others would have breathed a sigh of relief and sailed on, but La Pérouse was too professional for that: “I was persuaded that if we did not reconnoitre this little rock more closely, many doubts would have remained about its existence.”16 Having earlier in the voyage wasted days trying to find a nonexistent rock reported in the South Atlantic, he was also conscious of the time and energy that others would have to devote to the rediscovery of the reef if he did not accurately determine its position. So in the morning they reversed their course and found the islet and its surrounding reefs again, Dagelet fixing its coordinates as best he could. The longitude he recorded was impressively accurate. Now known as La Pérouse Pinnacle, the island forms part of French Frigate Shoal, so named by its discoverer because it had almost brought his vessel’s career to an early end.17
After an uneventful passage, La Pérouse reached the Mariana Islands on December 14, 1786, commenting that “the method of distances [that is, lunars], especially when combined with the use of marine timekeepers, leaves so little to desire . . . that we made our landfall . . . with the greatest precision.”18 He continued on his way, travelling via Macao to Manila, and then up through the Sea of Japan and on to Kamchatka, making friendly contact on the way with the Ainu people of northern Japan. From the town of Avatscha (now Petropavlovsk)—a remote corner of the Russian Empire earlier visited by the Resolution and the Adventure following Cook’s death—the Russian-speaking Barthélémy de Lesseps19 undertook an epic trans-Siberian journey to bring home copies of La Pérouse’s journal and charts.20