LA PEROUSE
There is a tall stone obelisk overlooking Botany Bay not far from Sydney,
Australia, commemorating the great French seafarer Jean-Francois de Galaup,
Count de La Perouse. Why in Australia, one might ask. The thing is that
after  La
Perouse sailed from the Australian coast in January 1788 he was never seen
again. The brave French skipper simply disappeared. He was later searched
for, though, and the effort has since given us some clues to what might
have happened…
The first European settlers in Australia found neither gold, silver, spices
nor any other riches there. To an outsider this large swath of land in
the South Pacific seemed totally useless. James Cook, who made New South
Wales part of the British Empire, did not even find drinking water there
and his initial notion was that the continent was unsuitable for human
life. And still, it would be an unforgettable mistake to surmise that there
was nothing useful on such a huge chunk of land. Small wonder that before
very long the French started taking interest in the newly-discovered continent.
In their own effort to colonize Australia, the British suddenly started
sending there their condemned criminals. On February 7, 1788 Australia
was formally declared a British colony and the Union Jack was hoisted over
the new colony’s first city, Sydney. Shortly after the first Australian
Governor, Sir Arthur Phillips fully settled down in his capital, two French
ships, the Astrolabe and the Boussole, commanded by Captain La Perouse,
cast anchor at the city harbor. The French were just as surprised by the
meeting as their British hosts because the Aborigines were the only people
they expected to find there. What really brought the French so far away
from home?
By the age of 40 Jean-Francois de La Perouse was at the height of his naval
career. With 18 military campaigns under his belt, he was touted as a daring
and very experienced navigator. Little wonder that King Louis XVI put him
at the head of a four-year expedition to the Pacific with an eye to colonizing
whatever stretch of dry land that might have missed the attentive eye of
Captain James Cook. On August 1, 1785 two 500-ton frigates, the Boussole
and the Astrolabe, left their moorings at Brest, France, and headed towards
the South American coast. Crisscrossing the Pacific, de La Perouse discovered
a strait that separates Sakhalin Island from Hokkaido and which has since
been known as La Perouse Strait. Carefully prepared as the expedition was,
the audacious French were still dogged my mishaps losing 21 men as they
fathomed the ocean depths off Alaska and another 12 men, including the
Astrolabe’s skipper Fleriot de Langle, all killed by savages on Samoa island.
Australia was the last destination. In late January 1788 de La Perouse
left the Australian coast heading for New Caledonia, Santa Cruz and the
Solomons planning to return home in a matter of six months. He, nor
any of his men was seen again, though. It wasn’t until five years later,
in 1793 that the French, their hands previously tied by the Revolution,
the Jacobins, the storming of the Bastille, the guillotine and other
unpleasant things, finally managed to send out an expedition to find La
Perouse and his men. For various reasons the first such attempt fell
through and was never repeated…
It was not until 30 years after the disappearance of the La Perouse expedition
that Peter Dillon, an Irish adventurer and merchant, found evidence
of the tragedy. In Tikopia (one of the islands of the Santa Cruz
archipelago) he bought some swords he had reason to believe had belonged
to La Perouse after a local inhabitant showed him the silver handle of
a sword with La Perouse’s initials engraved on it. The man said he
had obtained the sword from nearby Vanikoro Island where two big ships
had broken up many years previously. It appears that both ships had been
wrecked on the reefs. One quickly went under, along with most of the crew,
while the other was unloaded and taken apart. Even more surprisingly, locals
talked about two men, a master and his servant who, just two years before
Dillon’s arrival there, lived on the island. Years later they found cannon
balls, anchors and other evidence of the ships in water between coral reefs
which were later identified as all belonging to the Astrolabe and the Boussole.
It was now clear that that was exactly where one of the grandest French
research expeditions had found its end… Judging by the sword handle
found at the site, La Perouse was hardly able to survive that terrible
storm. What we do not know, however, is the name of the man who for more
than three decades awaited rescue from his fellow countrymen but never
lived to see them come…
There is more to La Perouse’s expedition than meets the eye though.
Among the thousands of people vying to take part in the expedition was
a 16-year-old Junior Lieutenant from Paris. His name was put on the preliminary
list but was later deleted. The young man, a teenage Corsican by the name
of Napoleon Bonaparte, remained in France and for a good reason too. Fate
had a way more fascinating future laid out for him than just a lonely life
on a tiny island lost in the Pacific…
08/22/2005
|
