by Joan Druett
Then they set sail for New Zealand, with Musgrave satisfied that no stone had been left unturned in the hunt for castaways. However, as he remarked wistfully, “I should like much to unravel the mystery as to how the man came here, whom we found dead.”
It was a puzzle that was going to be solved much more quickly than he expected, and by none other than François Raynal.
TWENTY-THREE
Answers
Raynal, Alick, and Harry, meanwhile, had been deeply regretting their decision to sail to Melbourne on the Sword-fish—the passage, which should have taken a couple of weeks, eventually lasted three months! First, a westerly gale forced the schooner to take shelter in a bay in the north of Stewart Island. It was a week before it was safe to depart from there, and then a second storm sent the captain scurrying for refuge again. “The sailors,” Raynal pronounced, “thought the schooner enchanted,” and were muttering about a Jonah on board.
Their grumbles turned to growls after the third attempt to leave Foveaux Strait—“A heavy wave crushed in two of our hatchways, deluged the cabin, and flung the schooner on her beam ends. She would have heeled over had I not cut, at the moment, the main sheet,” Raynal bragged. Because there was so much damage, they were forced to put into Port Chalmers, the deep-sea anchorage for Dunedin, to carry out repairs—repairs that took up most of the following month. Accordingly, they were still there on November 8, when to Raynal’s vast surprise Captain Musgrave arrived on the Victoria, replenishing her coal on the way to Sydney.
Amazed, Raynal learned that Musgrave had been to the Aucklands yet again. As it happened, though, he had some startling news of his own. When the English mail steamer had arrived in Port Chalmers the previous evening, he had bought a newspaper, and a headline on an inside page had leapt up at him—“Narrative of the Wreck of the Invercauld on the Auckland Islands, by Captain Dalgarno.” It was the first clue that any of the Grafton men had that there had been another shipwreck while they were on the island, and that other castaways had suffered the same ordeal.
The story that followed the headline gave Captain Dalgarno’s version of the awful story, along with some of the circumstances surrounding the deaths and disappearances of sixteen of the nineteen wreck survivors. Much, however, was left undescribed. Not once did he mention either Holding or Smith by name, instead using the all-inclusive word “we” when describing accomplishments such as coracle making or sea lion killing—“We thought ourselves very fortunate when we fell in with a sea lion, which we killed with cudgels cut from the trees with our pocket-knives,” he wrote. Nor did he offer any kind of explanation for his strange failure to persuade the captain of the Julian to search the island before departing for the far side of the Pacific.
At the conclusion of this unrevealing narrative, Dalgarno also made the odd mistake of claiming that the ship Julian, after rescuing himself and his two companions, “steered for Valparaiso, where we landed a few weeks later.” The ship, in fact, arrived at Callao, Peru, on June 28, 1865. There, Smith was sent to the hospital, while Dalgarno and Holding reported to the British consul. Dalgarno was given his fare to return to England and left on the mail boat the very same evening, leaving Holding and Smith behind.
A week later he arrived in Panama, and after crossing the isthmus to Aspinwall he caught the steamship Shannon to the English port of Southampton, where he paused to write to the owners of the Invercauld, informing them of the loss of their ship. “In about twenty minutes after striking, she was in atoms,” he wrote in this gloomy communication, which the Aberdeen Journal printed on August 2, 1865:
The boys Middleton and Wilson, and four seamen were drowned; the remainder nineteen of us, getting washed ashore through the wreck, all more or less hurt—the night being dark and cold. We saved nothing but what we had on our persons; and before being washed from the wreck, I hove off my sea boots, so as to enable me to reach the shore.
We all crept close together as we could to keep ourselves warm. The spray from the sea reaching us made it one of the most dismal nights ever anyone suffered, and we were all glad when day broke. We went and collected a few of the most suitable pieces of the wreck to make a hut to cover us from the weather, where we made a fire, the steward having saved a box of matches.
We remain[ed] four days at the wreck, [then] we proceeded to go on the top of the island to see if we could find food or any inhabitants. It was no easy matter to reach the top, it being 2000 feet high, and almost perpendicular. On the following morning we made towards the bay that was on the east side, which occupied some days, the scrub being so heavy to walk amongst. The cook and three seamen died during this time. All of us were getting weak for want of food and from cold. We reached the bay and found some limpets on the rocks. We caught two seals and found them good food.
After living three months on limpets, they got done, all we had again was roots and water, seeing no more seals. By the end of August the only survivors were myself, the mate and Robert Holding; the carpenter, the boys Liddle and Lancefield, being among the last that died.
Because of legal necessity, Robert Holding was named in this (though with no mention of his resourcefulness), but Andrew Smith was not, the assumption being made that the owners would know whom he meant by “the mate.” In the longer “Narrative” that Dalgarno wrote for a local newspaper after getting home—the same one Raynal, Musgrave, Alick, and Harry read in Invercargill—Dalgarno did not mention Holding by name at all, simply calling him “the seaman,” and again, Smith was referred to only as “the mate.”
Having posted this notification to the ship’s owners, Captain Dalgarno was free at last to go to Aberdeen, pausing only to pen his longer “Narrative” for newspaper publication. That done, he returned to the house in the hamlet of Buxburn, four miles northwest of the port, where his young son and daughter had lived ever since their mother, Helen McMillan Dalgarno, had died. “His heath his still delicate,” noted the local paper. This was confirmed by Dalgarno himself, who had ended the “Narrative” with the words, “I took my passage on board the mail-packet to return to England, where, thank God, I arrived some days ago; but with my health so completely broken up, that I fear I shall be compelled to abandon for ever my profession.” Prophetic words, because he was never given another command.
Andrew Smith—the man who wasn’t named in either of Dalgarno’s accounts—arrived in Aberdeen sometime in August, the Aberdeen Journal recording on September 6 that “Mr. Smith, late mate of the Invercauld,” was in good health when the writer visited him, “with the exception of a feeling of pain and numbness in the legs and feet.” The journalist was there to press him to write his own version of the castaway ordeal, but Smith resisted all such appeals until the following year, when he wrote a short account for the Glasgow publishing firm of Brown & Son and Ferguson, with the title The Castaways: A Narrative of the Wreck and sufferings of the Officers and Crew of the Ship Invercauld of Aberdeen, on the Auckland Islands.
It begins, “Having been requested to give a narrative of the wreck and sufferings of the officers and crew of the Invercauld of Aberdeen, I have to state, as some excuse for the delay in its appearance, that I understood Captain Dalgarno was to give an account of them, and in this expectation I deferred drawing up this narrative.” However, it is unlikely that he was unaware that Dalgarno had produced his own version, which indicates that the relationship between the two men had soured. Having produced this document, Andrew Smith, like Dalgarno, dropped out of sight. The newspaper stories stopped that same month of September 1865, and neither he nor Dalgarno appeared in the records again.
At least, they had had their little moment of fame. No newspaper writer was ever interested in Robert Holding. Back in Callao, the British consul had sent him to a common seamen’s boardinghouse instead of giving him a ticket home—“such is the difference in the treatment of officers and men that poor Jack has to take his chance.” He was penniless, but three of the seamen from the Julian gave him five dollars each, which
tided him over for a while. The crew of a visiting British warship saw his plight too, and “made a whip around and presented me with $35.00. I don’t forget the Navy,” he commented.
After waiting around in the Peruvian port for three weeks, occasionally visiting Smith in the hospital, Holding managed to get a seaman’s job on a small Welsh vessel, Mathewan, which was bound for Europe. “Having been round Cape Horn I cannot say that I relished the idea,” he wrote, but, being a beggar, he had no choice. And so, in this humble fashion, he left the Pacific Ocean and its terrible memories behind.
Robert Holding took his discharge from the Mathewan at Rotterdam on October 21, 1865, and then, after visiting his family in England, he resumed his seafaring career. In 1888 he gave up the sea, migrated to Canada, and then after working as a machinist in Toronto and Kingston, Ontario, he headed for the goldfields of West Shining Tree. Having had some luck in the prospecting way, he bought a hotel with the proceeds and became a publican. This colorful and varied career ended when he died on January 12, 1933, his legacy to his family being the remarkable memoir of his experiences as a castaway, which he commenced in 1926, at the age of eighty-six.
BACK IN NOVEMBER 1865, despite the implications of the report of the loss of the Invercauld, Captain Norman came to the firm conclusion that there was no one left alive either on Campbell Island or in the Auckland Islands group. Accordingly, he ordered the anchor weighed, and the Victoria departed from Port Chalmers for Melbourne, Australia. As a measure of their respect, the pilots who accompanied him out to the heads did not charge for the service.
A few days later, Raynal, Alick, and Harry sailed out of the same port in the schooner Swordfish. This time, as Raynal described with patent relief, “our voyage was fair and favourable,” so they arrived in Melbourne just a few days behind the Victoria. Meanwhile, the three comrades had lost track of George Harris: “I do not know whether he still resides in New Zealand, and if he has succeeded in his new trade of gold-digger,” Raynal wrote later.
A month after arriving in Melbourne, Alick Maclaren returned to sea, joining the crew of a Liverpool clipper. Harry Forgès, who reckoned that he had experienced more than enough of the ocean and its hazards, went to work for an uncle who kept a large sheep station two hundred miles inland, which for him was a good safe distance from the sea. This left François Raynal alone in the port, where he had to remain under medical care because his health was still very poor. Soon, however, Musgrave joined him, having come to Melbourne to settle with his family. In his report of the voyage of the Victoria, Captain Norman had strongly commended Musgrave for his assistance, which he had found invaluable, and this reference, accompanied with warm backing from the Invercargill merchant John Macpherson (who was also a personal friend of the Minister of Trade, James G. Francis), landed Thomas Musgrave a job with the Department of Trade & Customs in that port.
This triumph was soon followed by the launch of Musgrave’s book, which was published by the local firm Henry T. Dwight late that same year, 1865, with the title Castaway on the Auckland Isles: a narrative of the wreck of the ‘Grafton’: from the private journals of Capt. Thos. Musgrave, with a map and some account of the Aucklands. Whether Musgrave consulted with Raynal as he compiled the book is unknown. What is certain is that Musgrave’s editor, a local luminary by the name of John Joseph Shillinglaw, had a great deal to do with its final form.
Shillinglaw was a noted raconteur and prized dinner guest—and a talented editor. Not only did he persuade Musgrave to pad out the bare bones of the intermittent journal he had written to turn it into a book, but, understanding that Musgrave’s style rang with a natural sincerity, he allowed him to tell it in his own voice. The book, dedicated to John Macpherson and the Minister of Trade, James G. Francis, “as a tribute of gratitude,” was very successful locally, leading to another edition, published in London by Lockwood in 1866, as, Castaway on the Auckland Isles: a narrative of the wreck of the Grafton and of the escape of the crew after twenty months suffering: from the private journals of Captain Thomas Musgrave, together with some account of the Aucklands, and which, despite the slight difference in title and the order in which the appendices (which describe sea lions and the Auckland Islands) appear, was identical to the first.
In 1867, Thomas Musgrave was given the job of “harbour boat captain”—or pilot—for the Gippsland Entrance of the harbor, with a salary of £200 per annum and a staff of six. Subsequently, he was put in charge of a number of lighthouses, and eventually died at one of these, Point Lonsdale lighthouse, Victoria, on November 7, 1891, at the age of just fifty-nine.
Now, he lies under a marble headstone in picturesque Queens-cliff Cemetery, close to the wife who predeceased him by just a few months. Aptly, he is surrounded by the graves of many men who drowned at sea, and the lighthouse keepers and lifeboat men who saved many more from shipwreck.
“AS FOR MYSELF,” wrote Raynal, “when I recruited my strength I quitted Melbourne, carrying with me the most agreeable recollection of the generous attentions lavished upon me, during my stay there, by its inhabitants.” What he had done in the meantime to keep body and soul together is unknown, though there was an unlikely report printed later in The Australian that he “practised mesmerism.” The writer of this report also claimed inside knowledge of the mysterious lode on Campbell Island—which, he says, was copper, not argentiferous tin. Charles Sarpy, according to this piece of unfounded speculation, was married to a granddaughter of the firm of Underwood & Co., which had a vague mercantile connection with the Enderby-inspired colony, and had heard about a copper mine from one or other of the people who had lived at Hardwicke. Though Raynal came from a good family, and was an excellent scholar, as the writer averred, he claimed that the Frenchman joined the expedition just to get his hands on the copper.
According to Raynal’s own account, after leaving Melbourne his sole ambition was to get to France. He went to Sydney first, however, and “waited upon our partners. With respect to them, I had not only a personal resentment to satisfy, but an act of justice to accomplish,” he said, and went on to relate that he “reproached them in severe terms” for their callous indifference and “their guilty forgetfulness of their solemn engagements.” Charles Sarpy and Uncle Musgrave had plenty of excuses, including their lack of funds to finance a rescue mission. They also emphatically assured him that they had reported the missing ship to the authorities. When he checked, however, it was to find that they had waited thirteen months before doing so, well outside the administrative deadline.
Finally, “on the 6th of April 1867,” as he went on, “I sailed from Sydney on board the John Masterman, bound for London.” He arrived there on August 22 and just a few days later, “with a heart overflowing with joy, I landed in France; I trod my native soil.” He had been away from home a total of twenty years.
François Raynal found his parents living in an apartment in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. For some time afterward he lived with them while he worked on his book and found a publishing firm—one that had an even greater influence on the form of his book than John Shillinglaw had had on Musgrave’s publication. This was Librairie de L. Hachette, which has a very interesting history.
Its founder, Louis Hachette, came from a poor family, but had been allowed to attend a prestigious school in Paris because his mother was a linen maid there. No sooner had he passed his final examinations as a teacher, in 1822, than the school was closed down by the authorities, being considered too left-wing, and so he was unable to claim his certificate. In 1826, Hachette somehow raised enough money to buy up a tiny bookselling business on the Rue St. Germain. The following year, in a curious echo of Raynal’s early career, he assumed the responsibility of his whole family, taking care of his mother and sisters as well as his wife and two small children. At the same time he launched into publishing, becoming the first publisher in history to specialize in textbooks for elementary schoolchildren. When rail travel became available to the common crowd, Hachette pion
eered the practice of putting stalls in railroad stations that sold cheap, light, readable books, later supplemented with travel guides. By the time he died, in 1864, he was one of the richest men in France.
Though Louis Hachette was no longer around at the time Raynal submitted his manuscript, his liberal traditions had been carried on by his successors, which meant that Librairie L. Hachette was the perfect publisher for his book. Raynal’s description of the egalitarian domestic arrangements of Epigwaitt had particular appeal to the democratically minded editorial board, and this part of the story was given due prominence. Everything that was inspiring—Raynal’s technical resourcefulness, Alick’s gallantry, Musgrave’s conscientious leadership—was emphasized, as an eloquent testament to the triumph of the human spirit in the face of tremendous difficulties.
Editorial policy also influenced the selection of an illustrator. The man commissioned was Alphonse de Neuville, a very popular artist who also illustrated books by Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas fils. As was typical with Hachette, de Neuville worked closely with the editor, who chose the subjects of the pictures for their inspirational and educational value. Even the placement of the illustrations was carefully thought out, each one preceding the relevant text by two or three pages, with the idea of keeping the reader’s curiosity and interest alive. As usual, too, it was claimed that the scenes were taken from sketches made by the author—who, unlike the illustrator, was unnamed, being kept mysteriously anonymous. It is, in fact, only possible to be sure that François Raynal is the author by comparing his book with Musgrave’s.