FRIGATES THAT VANISHED IN THE SOUTH SEAS
When our forefathers were fighting in the Revolution, which was not so
very long ago in history, the world was a vastly entertaining place
for a man who loved to wander in quest of bold adventures. Nowadays
the unknown seas have all been charted, and it is not easy to realize
that a great part of the watery globe was unexplored and trackless
when George Washington led his ragged Continentals. There were no
lean, hard-bitten Australian troops to rally to the call of the mother
country when England was fighting most of Europe as well as the
American Colonies, because not a solitary Briton had then set foot upon
the mighty continent of the South Pacific.
For three centuries the high-pooped merchant ships and the roving
buccaneers of all flags had been sailing on the trade routes to the
New World and to the East Indies, but scarcely a solitary keel had
furrowed the immense expanse of blue water which is called the South
Seas. Daring traders as were the old skippers of Salem, it was not
until 1811 that the first of them, in the bark _Active_, bartered a
cargo with the Fiji Islanders, and he was only four years later than
the pioneer ship of the British East India Company.
In the rivalry for the honors of discovery, France was moved by the
desire to continue on the sea the illustrious traditions of her great
explorers who had won empire in North America. The peace of Versailles
in 1783 had ended her conflict with England, and although that absurd
blockhead of a monarch, Louis XVI, was far more interested in exploring
the menu of his next meal, there were noble spirits eager to win
victories in peace as well as in war, and they persuaded the ministry
to send a splendidly equipped expedition to the mysterious Pacific and
the legendary coasts of Asia. Their choice of a leader was Captain
Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de la Pérouse, soldier and sailor, who
had proved his mettle by destroying the Hudson’s Bay posts as an act of
war, and thereby wringing with anguish the hearts of the directors of
that opulent British company.
La Pérouse is a shadowy name to this generation and wholly forgotten
by most of us, but he was a great and gallant gentleman who was of the
rare company of those that wrought enduring deeds in a younger, ruder
world, and so helped to build for those who should come after him.
It was his fate to vanish with his ships, and so utterly were those
fine frigates and their hundreds of sailors erased from the seas that
no fragment of tidings was discovered for almost forty years. Their
disappearance was one of the sensations of an era in which shipwrecks
were so frequent that they had to be quite extraordinary to arouse
public attention.
The two frigates carried an elaborate party of scientists, which
included a geographer, a civil engineer, a noted surgeon, an
astronomer, a physicist, a botanist, and a clock-maker. They were
prepared to survey, map, and investigate any distant shores which
had been overlooked by the persistent English, Dutch, and Portuguese
navigators. It was typical of French thoroughness that “Fleurien, the
superintendent of ports and arsenals, contributed an entire volume of
learned notes and discussions upon the results of all known voyages
since the time of Christopher Columbus.”
Laden with all manner of stores and merchandise the two ships _La
Boussole_ and _L’Astrolabe_ sailed bravely out of the ancient port of
Brest on August 30, 1785. By way of Madeira they ran the long slant
across the Atlantic to Brazil, and during this first leg of the voyage
La Pérouse showed himself to be a wonderfully capable leader. Those
old wooden war-ships were so many pest-houses, as a rule, in which
sailors sickened and died by scores during prolonged periods of sea
duty. The quarters in which the men were crowded were wet and foul
and unventilated in rough weather, and the diet of salt meat bred the
disease of scurvy. The journal of this voyage says:
After ninety-six days’ navigation we had not one case of illness
on board. The health of the crew had remained unimpaired by change
of climate, rain, and fog; but our provisions were of first-class
quality; I neglected none of the precautions which experience and
prudence suggested to me; and above all, we kept up our spirits
by encouraging dancing every evening among the crew whenever the
weather permitted.
Around Cape Horn and to the Sandwich Islands, which Captain Cook had
discovered only a few years earlier, the lonely frigates steered their
wandering course, and then northward to the Alaskan coast of America.
While exploring a bay among the glaciers two boats were swamped and
lost in the breakers, and the shipmates of the drowned officers and men
built a monument of stone with this epitaph carved upon it:
At this entrance of this port, twenty-one brave sailors perished.
Whoever you may be, mingle your tears with ours.
Thence La Pérouse coasted down to Monterey Bay, and was cordially
welcomed among the Spanish missions of California. He had it in mind
to cross the unknown stretches of the Pacific, and so set out to
reach China by a new sailing route. This brought him within sight
of Guam, where he landed, and then he touched at Manila. Next he
explored Formosa and the coast of Tartary, and tarried awhile among the
primitive fishing folk of Saghalin and Kamchatka. It was pleasanter
when the frigates turned southward again and floated in the warm
and tranquil South Seas. The second in command, M. de Langle, was
killed during a clash with the natives of the Navigator Islands, and
thirty-two of the French sailors were slain or wounded while trying to
fill the water-casks.
Short-handed and dismayed by this tragedy, La Pérouse went to Botany
Bay, Australia, where the English were just then beginning to establish
a colony, in order to send his sick and wounded ashore and to refit
his worn, weary ships. They had been away from France almost three
years, and the frigates hoisted sails that were patched and threadbare
until it seemed as though a breeze would blow them from the yards. The
clothes of the men were no better. The paint was weather-worn on the
sides and bulwarks, weeds and barnacles grew thick on the planking,
and the decks were cracked and blistered by tropical suns. They were
like the phantom ships of some old sailor’s yarn.
Yet La Pérouse was ready to go on with his quest, nor was there any
sign of mutiny among his men. Most of them were hard and brown and
healthy, and ready to follow him to other ends of the earth. It was his
purpose to depart from Botany Bay and explore the Australian coast and
the Friendly Islands, and finally to lay his course to reach Mauritius,
in the Indian Ocean, at the end of the year of 1788. This was the last
word that came from him to France. Two more years passed, and not a
ship had sighted the roving frigates, nor had they been seen in any
port. The people of France were proud of La Pérouse and his romantic
achievements, and although the unhappy nation was in the throes of
revolution, the National Assembly passed a decree which read in part:
That the King be entreated to give orders to all ambassadors,
residents, consuls, and national agents at the courts of foreign
powers that they may engage those different sovereigns, in the name
of humanity and of the arts and sciences, to charge all navigators
and agents whatsoever, their subjects, in whatever place they may
be, but especially in the southerly part of the South Sea, to
make inquiry after the two French frigates, _La Boussole_ and
_L’Astrolabe_, commanded by M. de la Pérouse as well as after their
crews, and to obtain every information which may ascertain their
existence or their shipwreck; so that in case M. de la Pérouse,
and his companions should be found, no matter in what place, there
shall be given to them every assistance, and all means procured
for them, that they may be enabled to return to their country with
whatever may belong to them.
It is further decreed that the King be entreated to direct that one
or more vessels be equipped and several learned and experienced
persons embarked therein, to the commanders of which may be given
in charge the double mission, to search after M. de la Pérouse
and also at the same time to render this expedition useful and
advantageous to navigation, to geography, and to the arts and
sciences.
This hope of rescue appealed to the quick imagination of France. La
Pérouse was a national hero. It was argued, with good reason, that
he might be waiting on some solitary island of those empty seas
where topsails had never yet lifted above the blue horizon. Again
two frigates were elaborately fitted out at Brest, and rechristened,
with a pretty touch of sentiment, _la Recherche_ (The _Research_) and
_L’Esperance_ (The _Hope_). They sailed early in 1791, touching at the
Cape of Good Hope, where the vice-admiral in command got wind of a
curious rumor that “near the Admiralty Islands in the Pacific Ocean the
captain of a British sloop-of-war had seen men dressed in the European
style and in what he took to be French uniforms.”
This fanned the spark of expectation and seemed a promising trail to
follow, but the most careful search failed to confirm the report. Among
the reefs and islands the frigates cruised in vain until they had been
away from home more than two years. Then without finding a trace of La
Pérouse and all his gallant officers and patient, resolute seamen, they
sailed to the Dutch East Indies. There they received amazing news from
their beloved France. Louis XVI had been beheaded, and the agonized
republic was at war with the armies of Europe. The Dutch officials of
Sourabaya, regarding all Frenchmen as lawful enemies, held the crew of
the frigates as prisoners, and this was the end of the search for La
Pérouse.
The people of storm-tossed France had other things to think of, and
they forgot all about the lost explorer and his ships’ companies.
There was reason to believe that some of them were alive when the two
frigates had been trying to find them. In 1791 Captain Edwards was
roaming the South Seas in the British frigate _Pandora_, whose mission
was to run down and carry home for punishment the famous mutineers
of the _Bounty_. He sighted the island of Vanikoro and ran along its
shore, no more than a mile outside the barrier reef. In his log he
noted that natives appeared to be attempting to communicate with him
by means of smoke signals. Captain Edwards was a brave, but stupid,
officer of the Royal Navy, and it failed to occur to him that the
natives of this little island, which had been undiscovered until
then, would be most unlikely to try to talk to him in this manner.
In the light of later information there is every probability that
this smoke was made by survivors of La Pérouse’s party, and they were
still marooned on Vanikoro several years after their shipwreck. Their
emotions must have been profoundly melancholy when they saw the tall
British frigate glide past unheeding and drop from their wistful vision.
It was not until 1813 that the first thread of this tangled skein of
mystery was disclosed. La Pérouse had vanished a quarter of a century
before, and his ships were long since listed on the sadly eloquent
roll of “missing with all hands.” It is hard to astonish a deep-water
sailor, because nothing is too strange to happen at sea. The British
merchantman _Hunter_, on a voyage from Calcutta to New South Wales and
Canton, stopped at the Fiji Islands to pick up some sandalwood and
_bêche-de-mer_ by way of turning over a few dollars in trade. Already
the beach-comber had begun to find a refuge from toil in the South
Sea Islands, and Fiji was plagued with runaway sailors whose idea of
paradise was to loaf and get drunk and dance with the girls.
While the _Hunter_ was taking on her cargo, a party of these salt-water
vagabonds engaged in a murderous row with the natives, who decided
to be rid of them. The earnest intention of the embattled Fijian
warriors was to exterminate their European guests. The chief mate of
the _Hunter_, Mr. Dillon, happened to be ashore with a boat’s crew, and
he was a lusty man in a shindy, as his name might indicate. Out of the
mêlée he succeeded in hauling a German beach-comber, Martin Bushart,
who seems to have been a sober, decent fellow, and a Lascar sailor.
They were taken off to the ship and allowed to remain there.
When the _Hunter_ sailed for China, this derelict of a Martin Bushart
made the singular request of Chief Officer Dillon that he be landed on
the first island that happened to be convenient to the vessel’s course.
Dillon’s story fails to explain why this simple-minded “Prussian,” as
he called him, should have desired to run the risk of being killed and
perhaps eaten after he had escaped by the narrowest margin. However,
the captain and the mate of the _Hunter_ were obliging mariners who
sensibly concluded that it was a man’s own business if he yearned to
hop from the frying-pan into the fire, and so they let the ship go
toward the first land sighted after leaving Fiji.
This happened to be the island of Tucopia, and if you care to prick it
off on the chart, Chief Officer Dillon gives the position as latitude
12° 15´ S. and longitude 169° E. The Lascar sailor who also had been
saved from the irate Fijians and their uplift movement elected to seek
this new place of exile along with Martin Bushart as a sort of Man
Friday to a Prussian Robinson Crusoe, and so the singular pair were
left on the beach of Tucopia, where they waved an unperturbed farewell,
while the _Hunter_ hoisted colors and fired a gun to express her
regards and best wishes. What kind of welcome the natives extended them
is left to conjecture.
Mr. Dillon, when it came to writing about the episodes, unconsciously
employed the trick of the playwright who permits so many years to
elapse between the acts of the drama. Nothing could be more concise
than his method of joining the facts together. He tells us:
We landed Martin Bushart and the Lascar on this island the 20th
September, 1813. On the 13th of May, 1826, in command of my own
ship, the _St. Patrick_, bound from Valparaiso to Pondicherry, I
came in sight of the island of Tucopia. Prompted by curiosity,
as well as regard for an old companion in danger, I hove my ship
to off the island of Tucopia. Shortly a canoe put off from the
island and came alongside. In it was the Lascar. Immediately after
another canoe came off with Martin Bushart, the Prussian. They were
both in sound health and were extremely rejoiced to see me. They
informed me that the natives had treated them kindly; that no ship
had touched there from the time they were first landed until about
a year previous to my arrival when an English whaler visited the
island for a short time.
Captain Dillon mentions the dates in a very casual fashion, but some
years had elapsed with a vengeance--thirteen of them, in fact--during
twelve of which Martin Bushart had dwelt contentedly without seeing the
face of another white man. The ties that bound him to his island had
been strong enough to hold him there when the chance was offered to
sail away in the English whaler.
While the pair of them were visiting Captain Dillon on board of the
_St. Patrick_, the Lascar showed the sailors a tarnished old silver
sword-guard, and one of them bought it of him for a few fish-hooks.
Captain Dillon happened to see it, and asked Martin Bushart where
it had come from. In this strangely accidental way was revealed the
clouded mystery of La Pérouse and his lost frigates. Bushart explained
that when he had first landed on the island the natives possessed as
their chief treasures this ornate sword-guard, the handle of a silver
fork, a few knives, tea-cups, glass beads and bottles, and a spoon
engraved with a crest and monogram. In addition to these furnishings of
a ship’s cabin, they had also some iron bolts, chain-plates, and axes.
Martin Bushart had been curious to discover how these islanders had
obtained such relics of disaster, for the _Hunter_ was the first ship
that had ever been seen off Tucopia when he was set ashore there in
1813. He was informed that a large group of islands called Manicola
lay to leeward about two days’ sail in a canoe, and that voyages
were frequently made there for trade and sociability. It was from
the people of Manicola that the articles of iron and silver had been
obtained. Now, Captain Dillon remembered the story of La Pérouse, as
did every shipmaster who traversed the South Seas, and so he examined
the sword-guard and discovered engraved initials, faint and worn, but
legible enough for him to surmise that they were those of the French
discoverer and navigator.
His interest keen, Captain Dillon went ashore with Martin Bushart, who
interpreted for him, and they held a long conversation with the chiefs
of Tucopia. Many years before, so the tale ran, two great ships had
anchored among the islands of Manicola. Before they were able to send
any boats ashore or to become acquainted with the natives, a very
sudden storm arose, and both ships were driven upon the reefs and were
destroyed by the fury of the surf. The people of Manicola rushed in
crowds to the beach, armed with clubs, spears, and bows and arrows,
and the sailors of the ships fired muskets and big guns at them. This
infuriated the people, who killed some of the shipwrecked men when
they were washed ashore or managed to make a landing in their boats.
The survivors showed a friendly spirit and offered axes, buttons, and
trinkets as gifts, at which the people ceased to attack them.
The foreign sailors saved a large quantity of stores and other material
from the wrecks, and at once began to build a small vessel from the
timbers of the two shattered frigates. They worked with astonishing
skill and speed, and built a schooner that was large enough to carry
most of them away. The commander promised to return and bring off
those whom he was compelled to leave behind. Crowded into this little
makeshift craft, a large number of the officers and men of the lost
_Boussole_ and _L’Astrolabe_ steered away from Manicola and were never
heard of again. A second shipwreck swallowed them somewhere in the
South Seas. It was impossible to ascertain whether La Pérouse himself
was one of this company. Those who were left behind lived with the
people of Manicola and were kindly treated by the chiefs.
The Lascar had made two voyages to Manicola and had actually talked
with two aged Europeans, who told him that they had been wrecked many
years before in a ship, the fragments of which they pointed out to him.
They told him that no other ship had ever stopped there since and that
most of their companions were dead, but that they had been scattered so
widely among the islands of the group that it was impossible to know
whether any more of them were still living. By the Lascar’s reckoning,
this would have been about thirty years after the disaster that
overwhelmed the frigates of La Pérouse and, for all that is known, he
himself may have been one of those aged men who dwelt so long beyond
all knowledge of their countrymen in France and to whom the priceless
gift of rescue was denied.
Captain Dillon was determined to proceed at once to Manicola and find
and save those two aged castaways whom the Lascar believed to be
Frenchmen. Leaving Tucopia, he cracked on sail, and Martin Bushart went
with him, having concluded to return to civilization and much moved
by the friendship which prompted the Irish shipmaster to visit him
after so many years had passed. The Lascar remained behind, having a
large and happy family, which he declined to desert. Within sight of
the Manicola group a dead calm held the good ship _St. Patrick_, and
for seven days not a breath of wind stirred her spires of canvas. She
was running short of provisions, leaking badly, and most reluctantly
Captain Dillon was compelled to resume his voyage to India.
Reaching Calcutta, he presented a carefully written report to officials
of the British Government and stated his conclusion that the remains
of the expedition of La Pérouse were to be found among the islands
of the Manicola group. The story was so credible that the Government
made a ship ready and placed her in command of Captain Dillon, who
got under way in January, 1827. It was September before he arrived at
Tucopia, where he found the Lascar, who, for some reason of his own,
refused to accompany the party to Manicola. Martin Bushart was still
with Captain Dillon, however, and he conducted a thorough investigation
among the people of his own island home in order to discover all the
relics possible. Tucopia was systematically ransacked, and among the
articles brought to light were more swords, bits of iron and copper,
and silverware with the monogram of La Pérouse.
After a fortnight, Captain Dillon took his ship to Manicola, where
the green mountains towered from the sea. Alas! no aged Frenchmen
came down to the beach to greet them, nor could any living survivor
be found. Almost forty years had gone since they were cast away, and
the last of them had slipped his moorings, with a farewell sigh and
a prayer for France. When Captain Dillon’s party went ashore in a
flotilla of armed boats, all the chief men of the island were assembled
in the council-hall, and the most venerable and influential of them
delivered himself of a long oration, the facts of which differed
somewhat from the story as the natives of Tucopia had retold it to
Martin Bushart and the Lascar. It is probable, however, that the
patriarchal chief, speaking at first hand, told the truth when he said
to Captain Dillon:
A long time ago the people of this island, upon coming out one
morning, saw part of a ship on the reef opposite Paiow where it
held together until the middle of the day when it was broken by
the sea and fell to pieces so that large parts of it floated on
shore along the coast. The ship got on the reef in the night when
it blew a tremendous hurricane which broke down great numbers of
our fruit trees. We had not seen the ship there the day before. Of
those saved from her four men were on the beach at this place; whom
we were about to kill, supposing them to be evil spirits, when they
made a present to our chief of something and he saved their lives.
These men lived with us for a short time and then joined the rest
of their own people on the other island of Paiow. None of these
four men was a chief. They were only subordinate men who obeyed
orders. The things which we have brought together to show you were
procured from the ship wrecked on that reef where, at low water,
our people were in the habit of diving and bringing up what they
could find. Several pieces of the wreck floated on shore, from
which we obtained some things; but nothing more has been found for
a long, long time.
We killed none of the ship’s crew at this place, but many dead
bodies were cast up on the beach. On the same night another great
ship struck a reef near another of our islands, Whanou, and went
down. There were many men saved from her, and they built a little
ship, and went away five moons after the big one was wrecked. While
building it, they had a high fence of logs all around them to keep
out the islanders, who were also afraid of them, and therefore
there was not much intercourse between them.
The white men often used to look at the sun through something made
of wood and brass, but they carried it away with them as being
very precious. Two white men remained behind after the rest went
away. These I remember, although there were more, no doubt. One
of them was a chief and the other a common person, who attended
on this other, his master. The white chief died about three years
ago. His servant went away to another island with one of our chiefs
some time before that. The only white men that the people of these
islands have ever seen were those who came ashore from the two
wrecked ships and you who stand before me now.
Obedient to orders, the friendly islanders had assembled for Captain
Dillon’s inspection everything that had been fished up or handed down
to them from the pitiful fragments of La Pérouse’s frigates. There
was much iron and copper, broken chinaware, silver plate stamped with
the lilies of France, a ship’s bell, several brass cannon, and pewter
dishes also bearing the _fleur-de-lis_. On the bronze bell was the
emblem of the holy cross between images of the Saviour and the Virgin
Mary, and so the symbols of religion, of faith, of suffering, and of
consolation had been preserved for those survivors who grew old and
died on these undiscovered islands of the South Seas.
It was evident that the frigates had driven ashore on two different
islands of the group, and Captain Dillon visited the scenes of both
disasters. Native divers explored the reefs and found cannon embedded
in the sand and massive oaken timbers and other memorials which
enabled him to fix the position of the ships. Of the stockade and the
launching-ways upon which the stout-hearted French seamen had built
their little schooner not a trace could be found. During forty years of
luxuriant growth the jungle had obliterated man’s handiwork, and the
logs had rotted into mold.
The extraordinary fact was noted that the survivors who lingered into
old age on these islands had left no written record or message behind
them, not a word to indicate who they were. Lacking paper, they might
have carved upon boards the brief epitome of their story or lettered
it with charcoal on bits of bark, and the kindly chiefs of Manicola
would have guarded the record with care. Like ghosts of sailormen, they
lived in the memories and the traditions of these South Sea Islanders.
Captain Dillon made an interesting discovery while exploring the reefs,
and he thus describes it:
Being in want of water, two men from each boat landed with the
water kegs and went up to the nearest house. On passing it, one
of our people called out in Spanish, “Here is a _fleur-de-lis_,”
which M. Chaigneau and I, who followed and understood him, desired
him to point out. He directed our attention to the door of a house
where we saw at the bottom of the threshold a decayed piece of fir
or pine plank with a _fleur-de-lis_ and other ornamental work upon
it. It had probably formed part of a ship’s stern and when complete
exhibited the national arms of France. It was placed upon edge to
barricade the passage, for the double purpose of keeping the pigs
out and the children in the house. This we bought for a hatchet.
It was in Captain Dillon’s mind that one of the survivors had gone
to another island, according to the old chief’s story, and so after
finishing the investigation of the Manicola group, he sailed to ransack
the seas near by. Nothing came of the search, and the natives whom he
questioned here and there had never seen or heard of other white men
excepting in the legends of the wreck of the two great ships as they
had listened to the tales and songs of visitors from Manicola. Captain
Dillon returned to Calcutta, where his enterprise and success were
highly approved by the British Government of India, which ordered him
to proceed to France with the precious relics of the lost expedition of
La Pérouse.
The Irish merchant skipper found that he had become a distinguished
personage. His Most Christian Majesty, Charles X of France, was pleased
to make him a chevalier of the Legion of Honor, with an annuity of four
thousand francs. Chevalier Dillon relates:
I was now taken to the French court and presented to the king
who received me very graciously and conversed with me upon the
subject of my voyage. He was well acquainted with the history of La
Pérouse’s expedition and addressed several judicious questions to
me respecting the loss of that celebrated navigator, and inquired
what was my opinion as to the probability of any of the crew being
yet alive on the Solomon Islands.
While in Paris I met several times with the Viscount Sesseps who
is the only person of La Pérouse’s expedition now known to be
alive. He was attached to it twenty-six months and was landed at
Kamchatka to convey dispatches and the charts and journals to
France. He is now sixty-five years of age and in good health. He
accompanied me one day to the Ministry of Marine for the purpose
of viewing the relics procured at Manicola which he examined
minutely. The piece of board with the _fleur-de-lis_ on it, he
observed, had most probably once formed a part of the ornamental
work of the _Boussole’s_ stern on which the national arms of France
were represented. The silver sword handle he also examined and
said that such swords were worn by the officers of the expedition.
With regard to the brass guns, having looked at them attentively,
he observed that the four largest were such as stood on the
quarter-deck of both ships, and that the smallest gun was such as
they had mounted in the long-boats when going on shore among the
savages. On noticing a small mill-stone, he turned around suddenly
and expressed his surprise, exclaiming, “That is the best thing you
have got! We had some of them mounted on the quarter-deck to grind
our grain.”
Savants and naval officers weighed all the evidence, and were of the
opinion that at least two of the survivors had been alive as late as
1824, or thirty-six years after the shipwreck, and that one of them
was possibly La Pérouse. The theory was advanced that after his great
adventure had been eclipsed by a misfortune so enormous, he might have
been unwilling to return to France, fancying himself disgraced, and
that he perhaps chose to maroon himself at Manicola when his comrades
sailed away in their tiny schooner. Be that as it may, their fate was
no less tragic, for the sea conquered them and left no sign or token.
Long after Captain Dillon had made his famous voyage of discovery,
the belief still persisted in France that La Pérouse and some of his
officers and men were existing somewhere in the South Seas and awaiting
the rescue that never came.
Soon after Captain Dillon visited Manicola, a French ship arrived there
on a similar mission. Having satisfied himself as to the location of
the wreck of the flag-ship, _L’Astrolabe_, the captain sent his crew
ashore to erect an enduring monument of stone, upon which was carved
the words:
“To the Memory of La Pérouse and his Companions.”