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.