Sextant

by David Barrie

  Having received fresh orders from Paris (and a promotion to the rank of chef d’escadre, or commodore)21 La Pérouse sailed southeast, crossing a little-known and almost empty expanse of the Pacific where he made no new discoveries, before calling at the Navigator Islands (earlier visited by Bougainville, and now called Samoa) to obtain desperately needed fresh provisions. The events that unfolded here in December 1787 illustrate all too clearly the dangers that explorers faced when dealing with warlike native peoples.22

  The island of Maouna (now known as Tutuila) was surrounded by reefs that prevented the two ships from approaching close to the shore, but their needs were so great that La Pérouse decided to risk anchoring outside them. There was a heavy onshore swell, and he was anxious that if their cables parted and the wind dropped they would be set onto the reefs—just as Cook had been. Although it was already late in the day, the commander of L’Astrolabe, Paul-Antoine Fleuriot, vicomte de Langle, made a brief foray ashore with a party of sailors and soldiers in three boats that could pass through the small gaps in the reef, and was apparently well received by the inhabitants.

  The following morning the two ships were surrounded by canoes full of islanders who seemed keen to trade, though they cared nothing for the hatchets and cloth that had proved so popular elsewhere: they were interested only in glass beads. This time, La Pérouse and de Langle both went ashore in the ships’ boats and set up camp on the beach, the perimeter guarded by a line of soldiers. Trading began, but soon got out of hand:

  The women, some of whom were very pretty, offered their favours to anyone who had beads to give them. . . . Soon they tried to cross the line of soldiers, who resisted them too feebly to stop them; their manners were gentle, cheerful and seductive. Europeans who have gone round the world, above all Frenchmen, have no weapons in the face of such an attack.23

  The eager women quickly breached the ranks of soldiers, and confusion reigned. Order was eventually restored, but La Pérouse suspected that the local men—who were tall and strongly built—had underestimated the power of European firearms. He therefore arranged for three pigeons to be freed and shot in full view of everyone. This seemed to have the required effect, and while the water casks were being filled, La Pérouse wandered over to the neighboring village, where he admired the sophisticated design of a house that he supposed belonged to a chief:

  The best architect could not have given a more elegant curve to the ellipse that formed the ends of this hut: a row of columns . . . surrounded it: these columns were made out of very nicely worked tree trunks, between which finely made blinds covered in fish scales could be raised or lowered with cords.24

  Back on the beach, trading had been brisk and all seemed to be going well. Like Bougainville in Tahiti, La Pérouse and his companions were ravished by the beauty and abundance of the island:

  These islanders, we kept saying, are without doubt the luckiest people in the world: surrounded by their women and their children . . . they have no other care than to raise birds and, like the first man, to gather without effort the fruits that grow above their heads.25

  However, all was not as innocent as it seemed. They saw no sign of weapons, but could not help noticing that the male islanders were covered in scars and looked ferocious. With the benefit of hindsight, La Pérouse caustically commented that “nature had doubtless left this imprint on the bodies of these Indians” as a warning that “the almost savage man, living in a state of anarchy, is a more dangerous being than the fiercest of animals.”26

  Having returned to the ships, La Pérouse was keen to set sail, but de Langle had found an ideal place to fill more water casks and was convinced that the members of the crew who were suffering from scurvy would benefit from a run ashore. Although La Pérouse was concerned that the two frigates were too far offshore to provide any protection to a shore party, de Langle persuaded him that another expedition should land the next day.

  The two frigates weighed anchor—just in time, as it turned out that the cable of La Boussole had almost parted—and stood off and on under sail throughout the night. At 11 A.M. they lay a few miles from the island. La Pérouse dispatched several boats to the new watering place, containing all the victims of scurvy together with a large number of armed men—sixty-one in all. But to the dismay of all concerned, it turned out that the supposedly ideal landing place could now be reached only by a narrow, tortuous channel beyond a bar on which the swell was breaking: it was approaching low water and de Langle, who had first seen the bay when the tide was high, had underestimated the rise and fall. While La Pérouse remained helplessly aboard La Boussole, de Langle proceeded to the shore and began filling the water casks. By mid-afternoon a huge and menacing crowd of natives had gathered around de Langle and his men, and he decided to embark. But the tide had now ebbed further and the bay was almost dry, leaving the two larger boats hard aground:

  If the fear of starting hostilities and of being accused of barbarity had not constrained M. de Langle, he would doubtless have ordered a discharge of muskets . . . which would certainly have driven off this multitude; but he flattered himself that he could contain them without spilling blood and fell victim to his own humanity.27

  De Langle attempted to pacify the enormous crowd by offering gifts to some whom he took to be chieftains, but this gesture served only to provoke the others. When the attack came, it was sudden and furious: de Langle was the first to fall under a fierce rain of stones and was soon clubbed to death. Many of the firearms had been soaked by seawater and were useless, and although some men escaped to the smaller boats that remained afloat, no one remained alive on the larger ones. Out of sixty-one men, twelve died and twenty were wounded.

  When the survivors reached the ships, many canoes were milling around them with produce to sell. La Pérouse had great difficulty in containing his own rage and that of his crew, but he succeeded in preventing reprisals.28 Realizing that it would be impossible to recover the bodies of his dead comrades, or indeed the two larger boats, he reluctantly decided to quit the island, and headed west for Botany Bay, which he reached in January 1788 via Tonga and Norfolk Island. La Pérouse was, not surprisingly, deeply dejected. He wrote to a friend:

  Whatever professional advantages this expedition may have brought me, you can be certain that few would want them at such a cost, and the fatigues of such a voyage cannot be put into words. When I return you will take me for a centenarian, I have no teeth and no hair left and I think it will not be long before I become senile. . . .29

  After refreshing themselves, and sending home another batch of papers in a British ship, La Pérouse and his remaining comrades set sail again on March 10, with the aim of returning to France in the summer of 1789. First, however, they planned to pin down the location of the long-lost Solomon Islands. Neither La Boussole nor L’Astrolabe was ever seen again.

  In France it eventually became clear that La Pérouse, with his two ships and the two-hundred-odd members of their crews, had been lost. Their disappearance caused consternation and was a mystery that demanded to be solved. By now the French Revolution was gathering momentum, but thanks in part to the king’s intervention, an elaborate search-and-rescue mission was mounted under the command of Rear Admiral Joseph-Antoine Bruny d’Entrecasteaux. Two ships—touchingly renamed La Recherche (“search”) and L’Espérance (“hope”)—sailed from Brest in September 1791, but the voyage was anything but prosperous. Disease and scurvy cut through their crews, and d’Entrecasteaux, along with his senior colleague Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec, died far from home. Although they made important discoveries on their way, and confirmed at last the existence of the Solomon Islands, they found no trace of the missing ships and their crews. The king’s interest in the fate of La Pérouse did not wane even though his own survival was by now in grave doubt. Shortly before his execution in 1792 he is said to have asked: “Is there any news of Monsieur de La Pérouse?”30

  The publication in 1797 of the account of the voyage of La Boussole and L
’Astrolabe, based on the materials La Pérouse had sent home before his disappearance, turned him into a national hero, and rumors circulated about the possible survival of some of the crew. Plays and musicals about the expedition were performed all over Europe,31 but it was not until 1827 that an intriguing adventurer named Peter Dillon managed to identify the small, remote, and pestilential island of Vanikoro in the Santa Cruz group—so named by Mendaña and Quirós in 1595—as the place where La Pérouse’s voyage had come to its abrupt and disastrous end. Ironically, d’Entrecasteaux had sailed quite close to it—without stopping—as had the Pandora when searching for the Bounty mutineers. The Pandora even saw smoke rising—perhaps from a signal fire lit by the survivors—but reasoning that mutineers would not wish to draw attention to themselves, they did not bother to investigate.

  Dillon was a colorful character who might have stepped out of the pages of a Conrad novel. Brought up by Irish parents on the island of Mauritius, he spoke French as well as English, and by the time he solved the mystery of La Pérouse’s fate he had been knocking around the South Seas for some years, trading among the islands and—by his own account—narrowly escaping death at the hands of cannibals in Fiji. In 1826 he picked up the trail of La Pérouse on the island of Tukopia in the Santa Cruz group, where he came across various artifacts of European origin, including a silver sword-guard, said to come from the nearby island of Mannicolo (now Vanikoro).32 Natives also reported that two large ships, like the one in which Dillon was sailing, had been wrecked there many years earlier. Having tried unsuccessfully to land on Vanikoro, which was surrounded by dangerous reefs, Dillon sailed to India, where he persuaded the governor of Bengal to put him in charge of an expedition to search for any survivors from the French expedition and to gather evidence of what had happened to the two ships and their crews.33

  After many vicissitudes, which included a short spell in prison in the town of Hobart, Tasmania, and a visit to New Zealand, Dillon at last reached Vanikoro in September 1827. Despite language difficulties, he was able to piece together testimony from some of the older local natives about the loss of the two ships. Both had apparently been wrecked on the reefs that surround the island in a hurricane. Some of their crews were said to have reached the shore in safety, despite attacks by sharks, only to be killed by natives who supposed them to be ghosts.34 Dillon was led to believe that some survivors had built a small vessel in which they had departed, leaving others behind.35 There were even suggestions that a few might still be living on neighboring islands, though ill health prevented Dillon from extending his cruise long enough to confirm this.36

  On Vanikoro he acquired by barter a large and miscellaneous haul of material that had been recovered from the wrecks by the natives, including a brass bell inscribed “Bazin m’a fait”37 (“Bazin made me”), a silver candlestick with a coat of arms, part of a European ship’s stern, and a grindstone. His men also managed to recover some small brass guns from one of the wreck sites.38 On Dillon’s eventual return to Europe he travelled to Paris, where the sixty-four-year-old de Lesseps was able to identify many of the relics.39 The coat of arms was variously attributed to Collignon, a botanist aboard La Boussole, or to de Langle, the commander of L’Astrolabe.40Dillon was presented to King Charles X and made a chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur, as well as being awarded an annuity of four thousand francs in recognition of his services.41

  In February 1828, a Frenchman, Jules Dumont d’Urville, sailed to Vanikoro and located what he believed to be the site of the wreck of L’Astrolabe. He found more objects on the seabed, but sickness among his crew forced him to leave without obtaining “irrefutable” proof of his discovery. An expedition in 1883 recovered anchors, which now lie at the foot of a monument to La Pérouse in Albi.42 In much more recent times a series of well-equipped expeditions have shed new light on the fate of La Pérouse and his companions. The wreck sites of both ships have been identified and, on shore, the remains of the camp used by the survivors have been discovered. It is still not certain that any of the crew escaped from Vanikoro, though according to local traditions, descendants of one of the ship’s surgeons are living to this day on a neighboring island. Many more artifacts have been recovered from the wrecks, among which the most significant (found in 2005) is a sextant, inscribed by its maker “Mercier, Brest.” Just such an instrument was recorded in the inventory of La Boussole—handled, perhaps, by La Pérouse himself.

  La Pérouse’s widow, Eléonore, struggled for years to obtain the pay that was due to her late husband. She was promised a share in the proceeds of the magnificent three-volume account of the voyage edited by the Baron Milet-Mureau and published in 1797. However, it sold poorly. In 1803 Napoleon granted Eléonore a pension and a rent-free royal apartment at the chateau of Vincennes, though she chose not to live there.43She died in 1807, aged fifty-two, long before the mystery of her husband’s disappearance had been solved.

  Chapter 11

  The Travails of George Vancouver

  Day 12: At last the weather is improving and so is our mood. Skies almost clear, wind moderating and a warm sun—clothes, oilskins, boots and sleeping bags all drying.

  Took sun sight at 0915 and raised main. Now being headed by a NE wind and it’s getting a bit light. Changed up to the blue genoa. Had our first contact with Europe when we picked up a Portuguese radio station, presumably in the Azores, which are now less than five hundred miles away. Noon position: 43°02.5' N, 35°23' W—by earlier sun sight crossed with mer alt. Several runners on the mainsail bolt rope had come adrift: Alexa and I reattached them. We also sewed up the tear in the sprayhood. Skipper did some maintenance on the self-steering gear. Shearwaters and petrels still around us.

  Saw dozens of dolphins flying through the waves—they move at an amazing speed with enormous grace. That brought smiles to our faces!

  Weather still fair but wind now right on the nose. Some cirrus in the west suggests another depression may be coming but barometer steady.

  Noticed a tear in the big genoa and replaced it with heavier white one which we haven’t used before.

  Heard BBC shipping forecast for first time. Fine evening. Colin and I did some star sights—Mirfak, Altair and Arcturus gave us good fix consistent with noon position.

  During the 1790s British sailors were prominent among those who continued to fill in the gaps in the charts of the Pacific. None achieved more than George Vancouver, though the portly, unheroic gentleman revealed in the portrait that is our only record of his appearance gives no hint of the reserves of courage and determination on which he must have drawn. While the Canadian city and the great island that bear his name keep his memory alive, he is hardly known in his own country.

  Vancouver was born in 1757 in King’s Lynn, then a busy port on the east coast of England, in the county of Norfolk, where his father was a customs officer. Not much is known about George’s childhood or his antecedents, though his name presumably has a Dutch origin. In 1772, possibly through the influence of the eminent musician Charles Burney, a former neighbor who had served as organist at the parish church of King’s Lynn, George obtained a place aboard the Resolution.1 He was fourteen. On Cook’s third voyage Vancouver served as a midshipman on the Discovery, commanded by Charles Clerke.2 He idolized Cook and plainly learned his trade well: on his return home in 1780 he was promoted to lieutenant and in 1782 he was posted to the West Indies station, where he was made fourth officer aboard the Fame, a seventy-four-gun ship.3 Vancouver soon found himself at home again on half pay, but in 1785 he was back in the West Indies as third lieutenant of the Europa, the flagship.4 While serving there, Vancouver surveyed the harbors of Kingston and Port Royal, Jamaica, and by the time he was posted home in 1789 he had risen to first lieutenant of the Europa.

  In 1790 Vancouver was appointed first lieutenant of the Discovery, a newly built 337-ton sloop that was being fitted out for a voyage of exploration in the Pacific.5 This plan was shelved as a result of the so-called Spanish Armament—a brie
f but alarming international crisis that followed the seizure by the Spanish of British trading vessels and shore facilities at Nootka Sound, a harbor on the west coast of what is now Vancouver Island that Cook had earlier visited. The Spanish—who had unrealistically laid claim to the entire west coast of North America—quickly backed down in the face of strong British protests, but by then the original commander of the Discovery had been assigned to other duties. Vancouver now had his chance. In November 1790 he was given the command of the Discovery and was ordered to sail for the northwest coast of America to explore the region between latitudes 60 and 30 degrees North.6This was a challenge for which he was well qualified, but the voyage also had another purpose: to negotiate the return of the British property seized by the Spanish at Nootka Sound. In this delicate task Vancouver was not successful—probably because of the inadequacy of his instructions. He was not the first diplomat to feel let down by his superiors.

  In the introduction to the account of his own great voyage, Vancouver described how “the commercial part of the British nation” responded to Cook’s discoveries in the Pacific—particularly by developing a trade in sea-otter furs from the northwest coast of America, which fetched enormous prices in China. His scorn for the greed and amateurism of these traders is matched by his disdain for the armchair geographers who dared to criticize his mentor:

  Unprovided as these adventurers were with proper astronomical and nautical instruments, and having their views directed almost intirely to the object of their employers, they had neither the means, nor the leisure, that were indispensably requisite for amassing any certain geographical information. This became evident, from the accounts of their several voyages given to the public; in which, notwithstanding that they positively contradicted each other . . . they yet agreed in filling up the blanks in the charts of Captain Cook with extensive islands, and a coast apparently much broken by numberless inlets, which they had left almost intirely unexplored.7