Barney and the Secret of the French Spies

by Jackie French

  ‘What did you tell Monsieur Peron?’

  ‘That I would do my best to help, of course,’ said Elsie.

  I blinked at her, startled, and then she added, ‘I just didn’t say who I’d help.’

  I smiled at this. Because there were things neither of us had to say aloud, not to each other.

  I’d been born an English slum brat. Elsie had been born French and to a better family by far than mine. But we were neither French nor English now. We belonged to this land, and so would our children and our children’s children.

  I didn’t even really care much what mess England and France got into. But I did care about the safety of this colony, if French ships might attack.

  ‘I’ll call on Governor King tomorrow,’ I said.

  Elsie shook her head. ‘Send a note to Mrs Macarthur and have the governor meet us at her Sydney house. I want Monsieur Peron to think I am loyal to France, not that I have run at once to the governor and have no intention of letting the French know more of our secrets.’

  The shadows were striding up the hill. We walked down as the moon rose like a vast golden apple above the trees. An owl boomed, and another answered far away. An old-man o’possum grunted in the trees above us.

  Below we could see the slush lamps lit in the farm cottages, the people we loved and spent our lives with roasting chunks of kangaroo or eating mutton stew rich with winter onions, leeks, potatoes, carrots and even garlic, for those who liked the taste, and cornbread with good cow’s butter and cheese, with apples, persimmons, medlars, quinces and pears stored from summer’s harvest, and every good thing the land had given us.

  Our land. And no enemy would ever take it.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Invasion That Never Happened

  French ships never did attack our colony. Governor King made the defences more secure, and for a while a Citizens’ Militia marched and paraded with our guns. A new colony was settled down south (though the sandflies drove the first colonists away quick smart) — they call the place Melbourne now — and in Van Diemen’s Land, to stop the French from making a supply base there.

  Monsieur Napoleon sent orders to Mauritius for ships to invade us, but the English navy blockaded Mauritius, and then Napoleon was defeated and the invasion came to nothing.

  Old Napoleon came back to power later on and hatched a new plan to invade the colony, in 1810 I think it was. The Irish convicts were supposed to rise and fight the English while four French frigates took the harbour. I’m not sure about the date, for that invasion never happened either.

  Invasions that don’t happen mostly don’t get written about. If the French hadn’t tried to involve my Elsie, I’d probably never have thought twice about the French plotting to invade us after the first scare was over. There are probably a million invasions that never happened, all across the world, and a good thing they didn’t too.

  Do you know the real secret in this book? Not that the French wanted to invade, and not that Elsie was born French either, but that it was a French woman, the great-great-aunt of my children, who was the first woman to sail around the world.

  I’d never thought much about it, but having Elsie for a wife, seeing Mrs Johnson and Mrs Macarthur and all they did, hearing about Great-Aunt Jeanne, knowing Birrung all those years ago, seeing all the skills the Indian women had, it made me wonder about all the other history that doesn’t mention women. It’s only men telling the stories, because that’s who gets listened to. Maybe they left the women out. Makes you think.

  As those sailing ships ploughed across the merciless oceans, women were there too. Some were wives of captains or officers, others disguised as men among the crew. We can’t know how many, for those women kept their secrets well, and so did their crewmates. You owe the deepest loyalty to a comrade who endures the crashing waves with you, the lifeless stretches of the doldrums where ships wander with no wind to push them onwards as the crew slowly dies of thirst.

  Among us settlers too a woman could be the most courageous and resilient, carrying a baby on her hip or back as she sheared a sheep or milked a cow or rode a thousand miles to take her cattle to good pasture.

  And this is why I’ve told you Elsie’s story. All of you who read this, no matter what your life’s journey is, know that the brave companion next to you can be a woman. And never let those who say, ‘But she’s a girl!’ hold you back.

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Truth and Fiction

  Barney Bean and Elsie and her family, Bill and Barney’s other farmhands and Maggie the servant are all fiction.

  The other characters existed and did the things described in this book.

  Jeanne Baré or Baret was a member of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s expedition on the ships Boudeuse and Étoile in 1766 until 1769. She was a botanist and farmwoman who contributed a great deal to our knowledge of plants, including discovering the bougainvillea we plant so often in our parks and gardens, and was the first woman to sail around the world. There is no evidence, however, that she had a great-niece called Jeanne who decided to emulate her adventures.

  English and American ships could take women on board at the discretion of the captain — captains sometimes even took their wives on long voyages, though this happened rarely, due to the hardships and dangers of the voyages, and the need to look after family and estates at home. However, King Louis XV directly forbade any woman to travel on a French ship.

  Nonetheless in 1817, not long after this book is set, Frenchwoman Rose de Freycinet stowed away, disguised as a man, on her husband’s ship bound for New Holland. She wrote a magnificent journal about the experience. Matthew Flinders’s wife, Ann, failed in her attempt to accompany her husband when she was discovered before they left England.

  There are also many women known to history who were sailors or soldiers — and held other professions similarly forbidden to women — and lived their lives disguised as men. Dr James Barry, for example, was a hero of the Boer War. It was only on her death that the distinguished military surgeon was discovered to be a woman. Her disguise was the only way that she could have followed the career she loved and where she achieved so much, both as a soldier and a surgeon. Other soldiers were found to be women only after their deaths on the battlefield.

  While life on board was crowded, it rarely involved washing, and even the lavatory was a perch above the stern of the ship, where trousers could hide the anatomy. Poor diet and hard work meant sailors had little fat but strong muscles, so a woman’s figure would become naturally more androgynous — neither male nor female. Some binding under a shirt and padding at the waist might never be discovered — nor was it. Unlikely as it may sound, women did successfully disguise themselves, sometimes for most of their lives.

  It is hard to understand these days how few opportunities women had for the challenges and adventures open to men. An adventurous woman almost invariably had to travel as a man, at least for some of the time. Most professions were out of the question, meaning lifelong financial dependence on others, nor could women obtain university degrees until last century — and, even now, in all too many parts of the world, girls are denied an education, or the same kind of education a boy might receive, simply because they are female.

  English and Australian medical texts, even in the 1890s, stated that learning mathematics might make women mad or depressed or unable to have children. (Note to any female reader: this is not an excuse to not do your maths homework. Some of the world’s greatest mathematicians are female and have kids.)

  The English and the French

  Since France and England became allies in World Wars I and II, much of the traditional enmity between the two countries has vanished. But in the early years of the colony of New South Wales, England and France had been at war, on and off, for almost a thousand years, with the rulers of both countries claiming all or part of the other. My own name, French, probably derived from French invaders who settled in Ireland via England. Barney’s and Elsie’s countries were t
raditional enemies, and it would have seemed impossible at the time to imagine they could be otherwise.

  New South Wales was established mainly as a base to supply English navy and merchant ships, particularly whaling, sealing and trading vessels, as well as ships of war. The English were also often at war with the Spanish and the Dutch, and their ships could not be supplied at French, Spanish or Dutch ports whenever that was the case. According to William Pitt, the English prime minister, the colony was to be a port that could be self-sufficient in food and supply English squadrons in time of war so they could attack French, Dutch and Spanish bases and shipping.

  Captain (later Governor) Phillip also had long professional experience of war and espionage with/against the French. He had even spent 1785 in France, reporting on French ports’ facilities and their navy.

  Botany Bay lacked the fresh water, good grass, useful timber and safe harbour Joseph Banks had reported as existing there, so the colonists would definitely have moved on in any case, but the haste in sailing to Port Jackson, now Sydney, was almost certainly due to the arrival of the French.

  Phillip knew of la Pérouse’s expedition. He also knew the French could report that the English had not yet made a settlement; nor would he have wanted them to know the strength of his military provisions. Phillip had placed a watch to look for sails from other ships on the horizon, in a part of the world that had possibly been seen by only one European ship before the fleet arrived. As soon as sails were seen, he sent the HMS Sirius to investigate. Realising the French would immediately see there was no established settlement to support Britain’s claims to New South Wales, he promptly removed himself and his eleven ships to Port Jackson, an infinitely better harbour.

  Within decades, Sydney became a port for English pirates or ‘privateers’, with a licence to attack Dutch and French ships when England was at war with their countries. The ships and trading goods were rich prizes.

  Our Historical Myths

  So often our history is translated to make it look much nicer than it really was. One myth is that we were a haven for convicts who had only stolen a handkerchief or loaf of bread, and indeed, anyone stealing goods worth more than a guinea had to be condemned to death at the time. Given this, magistrates chose prisoners who might use a second chance, changing the charges to a lesser offence and therefore a lower sentence — transportation. Thus some of the convicts sent to New South Wales had done worse things than the records show.

  Another popular myth is that the Macarthurs’ wool meant the colony was able to trade its way to prosperity. Instead whaling and sealing kept the colony afloat until the gold rushes.

  The gold rushes are a source of another myth. Many white people had known where gold was in Australia for decades before the rushes, but as gold belonged to the government, no colonists thought it was worth collecting. Indigenous people knew about it too, of course, but as the soft ore had no practical use, they didn’t bother with it either. Australia’s gold rushes happened because a crook worked out a public relations plan to get a reward for it — but that is another story. (See my book Gold, Graves and Glory.)

  Our true history is both fascinating and complex — and it contains a lot of ‘secrets’ that those who write history books decided to leave out. The roles of women in our history is one of those ‘secrets’.

  The Expedition of la Pérouse

  La Pérouse and his expedition left Brest on 1 August 1785 in the Astrolabe (under Paul Antoine Fleuriot de Langle) and the Boussole. They were to explore both the north and south Pacific, mapping and looking for trade potential or scientific knowledge, and send back reports through existing European outposts in the Pacific.

  The expedition had ten scientists on board, as well as two chaplains who also had scientific training. I have carefully not named Elsie’s father, as several of the scientists might have fitted the role, but they almost certainly didn’t smuggle their wife and child on board. In these books the fiction wriggles between the historical facts. Making Elsie the daughter of any of the actual crew would mean changing the true history of these brave — and doomed — men.

  Because la Pérouse’s whole expedition did vanish. La Pérouse gave John Hunter his records to send back to France. Despite the countries’ enmity — and despite each expedition’s great curiosity about the military ambitions of the other — they had more in common than divided them: they had crossed the world, leaving loved ones behind, facing extraordinary dangers and potential death. They offered each other whatever assistance they could — and la Pérouse’s records did find their way to France, despite the wars between the two nations.

  But once the French ships sailed from Botany Bay, they were not heard of again.

  On 25 September 1791 the French government sent Rear Admiral Bruni d’Entrecasteaux in the Recherche and Espérance to find la Pérouse.

  In May 1793 d’Entrecasteaux thought he saw smoke signals on the island of Vanikoro, now part of the Solomon Islands, but the reefs and winds made it too dangerous to get closer. (D’Entrecasteaux died in July 1793.)

  During the various Napoleonic wars between England and France from 1800 to 1814, rumours spread in France that the English had killed the French expeditioners at Botany Bay. But the letters and diaries of men like Watkin Tench and John Hunter make it clear that relations were friendly, even if they were suspicious about the real reason the French expedition was at Botany Bay, and that they too mourned the disappearance of brave colleagues.

  In 1826 an Irish sea captain, Peter Dillon, visited the island Tikopia, also now part of the Solomon Islands, and bought some swords he thought might have belonged to la Pérouse or his officers. He was told they came from the nearby coral atoll island of Vanikoro, where two big ships had been wrecked. Dillon sailed to Vanikoro and found cannonballs, anchors and other evidence of the remains of the ships in water between coral reefs. Jean-Baptiste Barthélemy de Lesseps, the man who had taken la Pérouse’s records back overland from the Russian port before the ships sailed on to Australia, the only man to survive the expedition, stated that these remnants came from the Astrolabe, one of the expedition’s ships.

  Expeditions in 1964, 2005 and 2008 finally located the wreckage of the Boussole and solved the mystery of the disappearance of la Pérouse’s expedition. The Boussole had been wrecked on Vanikoro’s coral reefs, and then the Astrolabe was wrecked too, but survivors were able to unload it and save much of its cargo and fittings from the wreckage.

  The local inhabitants appear to have killed the surviving crew of the Boussole. According to Vanikoro oral history, survivors of the Astrolabe built a two-masted raft or boat from the wreckage and sailed west about nine months later. It seems possible that they tried to sail back to the British colony at what is now Sydney, but were wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef, with all the crew dying except for one young crew member who may have been adopted by the local people. Two other survivors stayed behind in Vanikoro, but also left before the Irishman, Captain Dillon, arrived. They too probably perished trying to reach a port.

  The expedition that had mapped so much of the ocean was finally claimed by the waves.

  Modern La Perouse

  Far from murdering la Pérouse and his expedition, Governor Phillip had la Pérouse’s journals and letters sent back to Europe with the First Fleet ship, the Sirius. The English named the northern peninsula area at Botany Bay, where the French had their stockade and gardens, ‘The French Garden’. They later changed it to ‘La Perouse’ and that is what the area is still called. According to Lieutenant Dawes of the First Fleet, the headland area had been called Wadba Wadba, but as the sounds of the Cadigal language can’t be expressed easily in English, this would only be an approximation.

  The grave of the expedition’s naturalist and chaplain, Father Louis Receveur, was marked with a tin plate. When it was taken, the British replaced it with another and tended the site. In 1825 Hyacinthe de Bougainville, son of Louis-Antoine, paid for a tombstone designed by Government Archi
tect George Cookney. If you visit La Perouse, you will still find memorials to the French expedition that arrived at the beginning of colonial Australian history, but then sailed into the blue of sky and water, never to be seen again.

  She’s Just a Girl

  My childhood is half a century in the past, which may be a long time for you, but is just a blink in history.

  When I was a little girl at preschool, I wasn’t allowed to play horses with the boys, but ordered to play with dolls with the other girls. Women weren’t allowed to be mechanics or engineers; men laughed at women drivers and waited for them to crash their cars; and while, finally, women could legally become doctors, lawyers or study for university degrees, few places would employ them. Married women could not even be teachers or nurses or permanent public servants. Over and over we were told ‘a woman’s place is in the home’.

  My friends and I said, ‘A woman’s place is everywhere,’ but we had to fight to get there. There are still many battles for equal opportunity to be won.

  To truly understand history, we also need to understand why women are so rarely mentioned in the history books, even though they were usually there too. Only the things men did were deemed important. The credit for women’s achievements that could not be ignored, in science, art, politics, business and adventuring, was usually given to their male colleagues.

  Remember this, whenever you study history: if women aren’t mentioned, keep looking. They’ll usually be there, somewhere.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JACKIE FRENCH AM is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the 2014–2015 Australian Children’s Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016 Jackie became a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to children’s literature and her advocacy for youth literacy. She is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors and writes across all genres — from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction for a variety of age groups. ‘Share a Story’ was the primary philosophy behind Jackie’s two-year term as Laureate.